This is the most conspicuous instance of a Southern mode of pronunciation which has turned affair into affarr, declare into declar, hair into har, stairs into stars, &c.
1825. Will you never break yourself, pray, of these abominable Virginia habits?… Will you never be done with I reckon? must you continue, all your life long, to say har, for hair; stars, for stairs; far for fair; thar for there?—John Neal, ‘Brother Jonathan,’ i. 88.
1834. I would teach the Southrons, likewise, some of them, that stairs were not stars, and clear weather not clar weather.—Knick. Mag., iii. 445.
1837. Cl’ar for clear, y’ar for year, h’ar and hy’ar for here, whar for where, fa’r for fair, war for were, affa’r for affair, &c.—R. M. Bird, ‘Nick of the Woods,’ i. 42–5, 63, and passim.
1853. Car for care, clar for clear, far for fair, &c.—S. A. Hammett (‘Philip Paxton’), ‘A Stray Yankee in Texas,’ pp. 138–9, and passim.
1833. It would be ridic’lous if it should be a bar, (bear) [said the Kentuckian], them creturs sometimes come in here, and I have nothing but my knife.—Knick. Mag., i. 90.
1843. “They say you’ve no barr nor turkey out thare, in Filledelfy?” “No: no bears on four legs. But still we’ve a smart sprinkle of dandy out our way.”—B. R. Hall (‘Robert Carlton’), ‘The New Purchase,’ i. 154.
1847. Determined to have the body, I cut a grape-vine for a rope, and dove down where I could see the bar in the water, fastened my queer rope to his leg, and fished him, with great difficulty, ashore.—T. B. Thorpe, ‘The Big Bear of Arkansas,’ p. 29 (Phila.).
1847. Then I tracked the critter out of the field to the woods, and all the marks he left behind, showed me that he was the bar.—Id., p. 25. (Italics in the original.)
1847. I can give you plenty to eat; for beside hog and hominy, you can have bar-ham, and bar-sausages, and a mattrass of bar-skins to sleep on, and a wildcat-skin, pulled off hull, stuffed with corn-shucks, for a pillow. That bed would put you to sleep if you had the rheumatics in every joint in your body.—Id., p. 21.
1847. A list of varmints that would make a caravan, beginning with the bar, and ending off with the cat; that’s meat though, not game.—Id., p. 16.
1850. The bar and painter got so saucy that they’d cum to the tother side of the bayou and see which could talk the impudentest!—H. C. Lewis (‘Madison Tensas’), ‘Odd Leaves,’ p. 170 (Phila.).
1851. I’ve heard of some monsus explites kicked up by the brown bars, sich as totein off a yoke o’ oxen, and eatin’ humans raw, and all that kind o’ thing.—‘Polly Peablossom’s Wedding,’ &c., p. 49.
1851. I kalkilated them curs o’ hisn wasn’t worth shucks in a bar fight.—Id., p. 51.
1851. Supposin’ you was after a bee-gum, and one of these big black bar was after you, and a smart chance of red skins were after the bar.—Id., p. 103.
1851. The bar in our neck o’ woods has a little human in um.—Id., p. 53.
a. 1853. The modern and most fashionable pronunciation of this animal’s name is bar.… Bars are divided into two classes: the white bar and the black bar; and these are subdivided into the brown bar of the Alps and the grisly bar of the Rocky Mountains.—Dow, Jun., ‘Patent Sermons,’ &c., iv. 280.
1854.
| The Royal Tiger was present thar, | |
| And the Monkey and the Polar Bar. | |
Oregon Weekly Times, Sept. 23. |
1865. I ain’t no giant-killer. I ain’t no Norwegian bar.—Bill Arp’s ‘Letter to Artemus Ward,’ Sept. 1.
