I intended a short, inoffensive article on ME ū, devoted chiefly to the Early American au-spellings. The present monograph has grown out of unavailing struggles to retain my original intention and the accepted phonological theory in face of the recalcitrant rhymes and spellings of Professor Miles L. Hanley's Wisconsin Collection. Various extended analyses of minor factors that figure largely in the following pages were needed, in the first place, to settle my own misgivings; they are retained in the hope that they may perform a like service for the reader. I am fully conscious of the many points on which either my imagination or my methodology may have failed me, and it is with certain inward doubts that I present my tentative conclusions for criticism, correction, and amplification.