When I was in De Smet this summer, we were talking about the Big Slough and as always a quote from Emily of Deep Valley popped into my head. Other people in the conference planning group said they had the same thing happen to them. It’s so nice to be with people who understand you. I hope all our readers get that chance at the conference this summer.
Oh, and the other thing the quote makes pop into my head is Cherry Jones reading Farmer Boy. Jones, clearly not a farm girl, says hay mow (rhymed with row) instead of hay mow (rhymes with now). Every time I listen to it, I spend the whole time automatically correcting her. Now you can too. 
Lovelace, Maud Hart. Emily of Deep Valley. New York: Harper Trophy, 2000. ISBN 0064408582
“The Deep Valley slough, pronounced sloo, was the marshy inlet of a river. When Emily had first read Pilgrim’s Progress, after finding it mentioned in Louisa M. Alcott’s Little Women, she had pronounced the Slough of Despond sloo, too. She had called it sloo until Miss Fowler had told her in English class that Bunyan’s Slough rhymed with “how.” Miss Fowler had made the correction in a casual unembarrassing way, putting her emphasis on the fact that Emily alone, out of the class, had read Pilgrim’s Progress.” pp.15-16.
Emily Webster, an orphan living with her grandfather, is not like the other girls her age in Deep Valley, Minnesota. The gulf between Emily and her classmates widens even more when they graduate from Deep Valley High in 1912. Emily longs to go off to college with everyone else, but she can’t leave her grandfather. Emily resigns herself to facing a “lost winter,” but soon decides to stop feeling sorry for herself. And with a new program of study, a growing interest in the Syrian immigrant community, and a handsome new teacher at the high school to fill her days, Emily gains more than she ever dreamed. This is one of three non-Betsy-Tacy novels she set in the same community of Deep Valley, a stand in for her home town of Mankato, Minnesota. Betsy and Tacy do make a brief cameo appearance. I love this book because it really depicts the time period so well.
Sarah Sue Uthoff
http://trundlebedtales.wordpress.com
Look for a reissue of Emily of Deep Valley in Fall 2010! (along with Carney/Winona!)
I don’t think you should be so hard on Cherry Jones. I mean, how many times does ‘hay mow’ come up in conversation, anyway.
It just so happens that Cherry Jones grew up in a tiny rural town in NW Tennessee, a town so far out in the sticks that the nearest Waffle House is more than 40 miles away, and in another state (Kentucky).
Don’t forget: Cherry Jones won 2 Tony Awards and just won an Emmy for her role as “President Taylor” on the hit TV show ‘24,’ so I bet the rest of her ‘reading’ on this audio tape was pretty good.
I always pronounced it mow (rhyming with row). Thanks for letting me know.
When I read the Little House books as a child I mentally pronounced “slough” as “sloff.” Thank goodness I never said it out loud.