I am not well steeped in the background intricacies of this discussion,
nor, at the moment in Pale Fire at all, but having just run
through Lolita in my teaching I noticed a parallel between
Humbert's spoonerism "Show, wight ray" and Shade's "Night Rote."
Shade's title could have been triggered by play with the phrase "right
note".
All this may have been mentioned before, as may a curious fact about
the HH invention:
From Wiktionary:
Wight: "A being of one of the Nine Worlds of heathen
belief, especially a nature spirit, elf or ancestor. "
Wight ray, indeed!
Stephen Blackwell