Rhymes

For a courting's a pleasure but parting is grief
And a false-hearted lover is worse than a thief.
For a thief will just rob you and take what you have,
But a false-hearted lover will lead you to your grave.

"On Top of Old Smoky" was one of the "pop" songs that my childhood piano teacher gave me to play, in the misguided hopes that popular music would be more enticing to me than classical.  A few minutes ago, I found myself singing it in the shower.

It's not the first time as an adult that I've found myself singing it, and I'm always caught up by the faulty rhyme between "have" and "grave," as marked above.  A quick check on the internet shows that many recent lyrics have changed "have" to "save," in order to make the rhyme tolerable.  But I know that the lyrics on my sheet music -- which I can't locate now -- were as above, and I remember being disturbed by them even as a kid.

The song, like many folk songs, originated in the Appalachian Mountains.  One of  the first reductions of the song to writing was done by an English folklorist who wandered throughout the mountains during World War I, learning the local music.  According to Wikipedia, the words were sung to a completely different melody than the one we know, the modern melody having been adopted from a song called "The Little Mohee."  

The modern version of the song was made popular by a folk group called The Weavers, who released a recording of it in 1951 that sold over a million copies.  No more than two years later, I was assigned the song by my piano teacher, but I have the undocumented feeling that the singer shown on the cover sheet was an individual, not a group.

But I digress.

During the shower, I began wondering about why the song had this fake rhyme between the two words.  It happens often in poetry.  I can sort of understand that a poet, writing a poem, might be impressed by the fact that the two words looked alike, even if they didn't sound alike.  But a folk song?  One not written down until the early twentieth century?

But then I looked up the pronunciations of "have" and "grave."  Bingo!  "Grave" has two acceptable pronunciations -- with a long a or a short a.  And "grav" rhymes pretty well with "have."

"Have" and "grave" (with a long a) are called "eye rhymes," for obvious reasons.  The less used pronunciation of "grave" explains this case of eye rhyming.  Possibly or probably, "grav" was the common pronunciation of "grave" in the Appalachians at the time the lyrics evolved.  Similarly, "flood" and "brood" at one time rhymed, although my dictionary doesn't give alternative pronunciations that might rhyme today.  Such eye rhymes are called "historical rhymes."  

When you read Middle English poetry, and even Shakespeare, you find many examples of historical rhymes:

The great man down, you mark his favourite flies;
The poor advanced makes friends of enemies.
--Hamlet

or

When my love swears that she is made of truth,
I do believe her though I know she lies,
That she might think me some untutored youth
Unlearned in the world's false subtleties.

--Sonnet 1

Several on-line correspondents have claimed that in the English Midlands, "subtleties" and "memories" are even today often pronounced to rhyme with "lies."  As, presumably, they were in Shakespeare's time.

On the other hand, when I see an eye rhyme in a poem by a modern writer, I don't know what to think.  I'm not a poet.  Maybe he thinks we enjoy poetry with our eyes, rather than our ears?  Or maybe he just doesn't care, and I'm the philistine I suspect I am for objecting?  Maybe so, maybe so.  

But now I know I'm entitled to sing "On Top of Old Smoky," making "grave" rhyme with "have" if it makes me feel better.  And it does.