So I was singing The Cruel Miller as I washed dishes

[conuly]

Except that I stopped after he asked her to go out and walk with him and talk about their wedding day, because the verse after that rhymes "struck her to the ground" with "blood came raining from the wound" and I'm never sure how to work that.

Which I guess means that he doesn't murder her? So he's not such a cruel miller after all? Kind of a boring and pointless song, then. Nice melody, though, the version I know.

************

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Comments

[janewilliams20.livejournal.com]

I wonder how old it is and where it's from for that rhyme to work?

[old-cutter-john.livejournal.com]

I'd imagine they're both pronounced the way house is pronounced in much of Canada.

[janewilliams20.livejournal.com]

Wound (as in injury, not thread) and ground both pronounced like house? Huh? All spelt with a "ou", yes, but.... I can see I need to find out how Canadians say "house".

[old-cutter-john.livejournal.com]

Pretty close to brute or Pluto. Guessing at the original from North America is somewhat complicated by our rule that a vowel that precedes a voiced consonant is longer than the same vowel preceding an unvoiced consonant, which doesn't apply in British English.

[janewilliams20.livejournal.com]

But the original, that will have caused the "rhyming" pattern...
http://mysongbook.de/msb/songs/r_clarke/cruelmil.htm
"This song relates to events around 1684, possibly in the area around Oxford or Reading, England.
This version of the song dates from 1813. "

The only other "odd" rhyme I can see in that version is towards the end
"All in a few days after, my true love she was missed.
I was taken on suspicion, and into prison cast."

But I have no idea what an accent from the Oxford area in either 1684 or 1813 would sound like :(

[old-cutter-john.livejournal.com]

Can't imagine. Some weird vowel shift, perhaps. Or maybe the rhyme just worked as badly as we'd guess, and it was okay.

[conuly]

Well, it's actually pretty darn popular and widespread. I mean, that IS the version I use, but there are others all over the Anglosphere, so it's probably a mistake to assume they all use rhymes that work in any accent from the Oxford area, or from the 1600s.

[conuly]

The song dates to the late 1600s, and that version is from the 1800s.

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

"Wound" and "ground" is a rhyme that occurs in lots of folk songs and ballads. I think - though I'm not sure - that these words DO actually rhyme in some Scottish accents. I've often seen "round" written as "roon'" by people trying to reflect the Scottish pronunciation, or "doon" for "down." Many folk songs use lines, couplets or even whole verses taken from earlier songs, so it COULD have slipped into an English song from various earlier Scottish ones.

Or perhaps the words were pronounced the same in English accents, too, back then? Most English Mummers' Plays include the lines "is there a doctor to be found / to cure this man's most deadly wound?" (or words to that effect.)

However, traditional folk songs and ballads never care overmuch about strict rhymes - e.g. Binnorie rhyming "dam" with "swan" - so who knows?

[conuly]

Well, wound and ground must have been commonly rhymed at some point in the past or else all folk songs fall apart. Regardless, I still never am sure how to sing it today!