diff --git a/CHANGES.txt b/CHANGES.txt
index af51a9dd9e..9aadeffa91 100644
--- a/CHANGES.txt
+++ b/CHANGES.txt
@@ -19,6 +19,7 @@
  * Add ability to stop compaction by ID (CASSANDRA-7207)
  * Let CassandraVersion handle SNAPSHOT version (CASSANDRA-9438)
 Merged from 2.1:
+ * (cqlsh) Fix using COPY through SOURCE or -f (CASSANDRA-9083)
  * Fix occasional lack of `system` keyspace in schema tables (CASSANDRA-8487)
  * Use ProtocolError code instead of ServerError code for native protocol
    error responses to unsupported protocol versions (CASSANDRA-9451)
diff --git a/pylib/cqlshlib/cqlhandling.py b/pylib/cqlshlib/cqlhandling.py
index 6f4c8160a3..e03c418642 100644
--- a/pylib/cqlshlib/cqlhandling.py
+++ b/pylib/cqlshlib/cqlhandling.py
@@ -22,6 +22,7 @@ from . import pylexotron, util
 
 Hint = pylexotron.Hint
 
+
 class CqlParsingRuleSet(pylexotron.ParsingRuleSet):
     keywords = set()
 
@@ -72,9 +73,11 @@ class CqlParsingRuleSet(pylexotron.ParsingRuleSet):
     def explain_completion(self, rulename, symname, explanation=None):
         if explanation is None:
             explanation = '<%s>' % (symname,)
+
         @self.completer_for(rulename, symname)
         def explainer(ctxt, cass):
             return [Hint(explanation)]
+
         return explainer
 
     def set_keywords_as_syntax(self):
@@ -96,6 +99,19 @@ class CqlParsingRuleSet(pylexotron.ParsingRuleSet):
                 else:
                     # don't put any 'endline' tokens in output
                     continue
+
+            # Convert all unicode tokens to ascii, where possible.  This
+            # helps avoid problems with performing unicode-incompatible
+            # operations on tokens (like .lower()).  See CASSANDRA-9083
+            # for one example of this.
+            str_token = t[1]
+            if isinstance(str_token, unicode):
+                try:
+                    str_token = str_token.encode('ascii')
+                    t = (t[0], str_token) + t[2:]
+                except UnicodeEncodeError:
+                    pass
+
             curstmt.append(t)
             if t[0] == 'endtoken':
                 term_on_nl = False
@@ -191,7 +207,7 @@ class CqlParsingRuleSet(pylexotron.ParsingRuleSet):
             # for completion. the opening quote is already there on the command
             # line and not part of the word under completion, and readline
             # fills in the closing quote for us.
-            candidates = [requoter(dequoter(c))[len(prefix)+1:-1] for c in candidates]
+            candidates = [requoter(dequoter(c))[len(prefix) + 1:-1] for c in candidates]
 
             # the above process can result in an empty string; this doesn't help for
             # completions
diff --git a/pylib/cqlshlib/pylexotron.py b/pylib/cqlshlib/pylexotron.py
index b4ac36f599..b7558f5372 100644
--- a/pylib/cqlshlib/pylexotron.py
+++ b/pylib/cqlshlib/pylexotron.py
@@ -100,7 +100,17 @@ class ParseContext:
             # pretty much just guess
             return ' '.join([t[1] for t in tokens])
         # low end of span for first token, to high end of span for last token
-        return orig[tokens[0][2][0]:tokens[-1][2][1]]
+        orig_text = orig[tokens[0][2][0]:tokens[-1][2][1]]
+
+        # Convert all unicode tokens to ascii, where possible.  This
+        # helps avoid problems with performing unicode-incompatible
+        # operations on tokens (like .lower()).  See CASSANDRA-9083
+        # for one example of this.
+        try:
+            orig_text = orig_text.encode('ascii')
+        except UnicodeEncodeError:
+            pass
+        return orig_text
 
     def __repr__(self):
         return '<%s matched=%r remainder=%r prodname=%r bindings=%r>' \