Re: /ru:m/ for Rome and the Gods of the Copybook Headings

On Mon, 15 Jul 2024 12:34:09 +0000, Aidan Kehoe wrote:

>
  “We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace.
   Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
   But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would
come
   That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone
out in
   Rome.”
>
The old pronunciation of <Rome> as /ruːm/ in English was mentioned on a
Languagehat thread the other day,
https://languagehat.com/war-words/#comment-4604383 . OED2 comments “The
pron
(ruːm), indicated by the old spelling Room(e) and by the rime with doom
etc.
was retained by some educated speakers as late as the 19th cent.”
>
Kipling came out with it in 1919; I read the poem at intervals and this
interval happened to be shortly after the Languagehat thread.

I don't follow, since "come" doesn't rhyme with "doom".  Kipling's rhyme
looks like an ordinary eye rhyme, though I don't know whether at some
point "come" rhymed with some pronunciation of "Rome".
--
Jerry Friedman