Man behind the Mythology

[Bêthberry]

Are you referring, XPhial, to Letter # 61, dated 18 April 1944, where Tolkien complains that he wasted time answering a letter from the Eighth Army, being asked to settle a wager on "how to pronounce the name of the poet Cowper. His full reply is as follows:

Deeming it below the dignity of a 'Regius prof' to adjudicate on Big Money, I sent as Delphic an oracular reply as I could, giving the adjt. a good deal more fact, I expect, than he wanted. Not of course that there is any doubt that the poet called himself Cooper (of which his name is merely the older spelling): oup, owp spells oop in English: there are no aups (in Latin value) so stoup, group, soup and formerly also droup, stoup (verb), troup, coup(er), whouping-cough, loup etc. (not to mention roum, toumb).

P. 72 in my 1995 paperback HarperCollins edition.

*curtsies*

[ September 14, 2003: Message edited by: Bêthberry ]