THE NUMERAL-WORDS
[To 'the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—I have been interested in your correspondents' letters commenting on the Numeral-Words; and find to my delight that some of the childish gibberish with whichWecounted in our games many years ago, actually was of ancient origin. The " Eena, ineena, nracka," &e., which Mr. Hugh Nicol adds to the originally published -list -bears too close a resemblance to our own to be mere coincidence. Ours ran something like this " Eenie, weenie, mink, moe."
There was published in the United States some years ago a book entitled Our Southern Highlanders, dealing with the life, language and customs _of the mountain people in the South. 1Vith some of these I am acquainted, and living as they do so far from the beaten paths of travel they are an Anglo-Saxon breed, undefiled by those mixtures so common in America. But I recall from this book a chapter dealing with the language of these people which is wholly . without modern words. There are words in common use there which the writer informs us are not to be found in any English dictionary published since early in the seventeenth century.
That, of course, is easy enough to explain, for these people are the descendants of the earliest English who came to our shores, and moving back into the mountains were soon cut off from the rest of the world. Quite naturally, therefore, the English they speak is more purely Anglo-Saxon than that of most Englishmen to-day.--I am, Sir, &c., .
EDGAR R. MCGREGOR. Fourteenth and Clutpline Streets, Wheeling, II'. Pa.
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