THE SPREAD OF THE COCKNEY ACCENT. [To rsa Exorros or
Tais "SrscrAros.."] §LR,—In your issue of September 24th last " Rustic Moralist" complains with good reason of the spread of "the Cockney accent," first to the Home Counties, and latterly to the Essex, Kent, and Sussex coasts. He prophesies that very soon there will be no one left in the South of England to call a "spyde " a spade. Can any of your readers explain the origin of this particular perversion—the substitution of "y" for "a"? It must be very recent. I have just been looking at John Leech's "Pictures of Life and Character." He gives us many sayings of London cabbies and policemen and small boys, but this particular phenomenon is absent from them all. And I do not remember that it occurs in any of Charles Dickens's stories of Cockney life. If, then, it came into being during the lifetime of most of your readers, was it the result of what philologians call " phonetic decay"; or was it, like frozen "mutton, an importation from this country, or from the neighbouring continent called " Strylia " by many of its inhabitants, where it is far more common than here ? If so, it may be due to some obscure climatic influences in these parts when it began, and to have "caught on" afterwards when it found its way to England.—I am, Sir, Sec.,
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