't
EARLY ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION,
WITH ESPECIAL REFERENCE TO
SHAKSPERE AND CHAUCER,
CONTAINING AN INVESTIGATION OF THE CORRESPONDENCE OF
WRITING WITH SPEECH IN ENGLAND FROM THE ANGLOSAXON
PERIOD TO THE PRESENT DAT, PRECEDED BY A SYSTEMATIC
NOTATION OF ALL SPOKEN SOUNDS BY MEANS OF THE ORDINARY
PRINTING TYPES.
INCLUDING
A RE-ARRANGEMENT OF PROF. F. J. CHILD'S MEMOIRS ON THE LANGUAGE OF
CHAUCER AND GOWER, AND REPRINTS OF THE BARE TRACTS BY SALESBTJRY
ON ENGLISH, 1547, AND WELCH, 1567, AND BY BARCLEY ON FRENCH, 1521.
ALEXANDER J. ELLIS, F.E.S.,
FELLOW OP THE CAMBRIDGE PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY, MEMBEE OTf THE LONDON MATHEMATICAL
SOCIETY, MEMBEE OF THE COUNCIL OF THE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY, FORMERLY
SCHOLAR OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE, B.A. 1837.
PAET I.
ON THE PRONUNCIATION OF THE XIV TH, XVI TH, XVII TH, AND
XVIII TH CENTURIES.
LONDON:
PUBLISHED FOB THE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY BY
ASHER & CO., LONDON & BERLIN,
AND FOR THE EARLY ENGLISH TEXT SOCIETY, AND THE CHAUCER SOCIETY, BY
TRUBNER & CO., 60, PATERNOSTER ROW.
1869.
SPEAKE THE SPEECH I PEAT YOU, AS I PEONOUNC'D IT TO YOU.
Shakspere, Tragedies, p. 266, fo. 1623.
LEGENDI SEMPER OCCASIO EST, AVDIENDI NON SEMPEE. PEAETEEEA,
MVLTO MAGIS (VT WLGO DICTTT7E) VIVA VOX AFFICIT. NAM, LICET
ACEIOEA SINT, ftVAE IEGAS, ALTIVS TAMEN IN ANIMO SEDEXT, QVAE
PEONVNTIATIO, WLTVS, HABITVS, GESTVS ETIAM DICENTIS AiTIGIT :
KISI VEEO FA1SVM PTTAMYS HLVD AESCHEflS, QYI, CVM LEGISSET
EHODHS OEATIONEM DEMOSTHENIS, ADMIEANTIBVS CYNCTIS, ADIECISSE
FEETTE, TI AE, El ATTOT TOT 0HPIOT AKHKOEITE J El EEAT
AESCHINES, si DEMOSTHENI CEEDIMTS, AAMnPO*nNOTATO2 : FATE-
BATVE TAMEN, LONGE MELIVS EADEM ILLA PEONTNTIASSE IPSVM QVI
PEPEEEEAT.
C. Plinii Caecilii Secundi Epist. ii. 3.
YEEYM OETHOGEAPHIA QVOQTE CONSVETTDINI SEEVIT, IDEOQVE SAEPE
MVTATA EST. NAM ILLA TETVSTISSIMA TEANSEO TEMPOEA, QVTBVS ET
PAVCIOEES LITEEAE, NEC SIMILES HIS NOSTEIS EAEVM FOEMAE FTEETNT,
ET YIS QTOQTE DIYEESA .... PoETASSE SICVT SCELBEBANT, ETIAM
ITA LOQVEBANTYE .... EGO (KISI QTOD CONSYETYDO OBTIXTEEIT)
SIC SCEIBENDVM QAODQTE IVDICO, QVOMODO SONAT. BjC EXIM EST VSVS
LTTEEAEVM, VT CVSTODIANT VOCES, ET VELVT DEPOSITVM EEDDANT
LEGENTLBVS ; ITAQVE LD EXPEIMEEE DEBENT, QVOD DICTVEI SVMVS.
M. Fab. Quinctiliani, Inst. Orator, i. 7.
NOTICE.
THE first portion of the Chaucer Society's publications
being ready for delivery to its members, it has been thought
advisable to issue at the same time the first four chapters
of the present work, which contain an investigation of
Chaucer's pronunciation and Prof. F. J. Child's Memoir
upon his language. The MS. of the remainder of the work,
which will be of about the same extent as the present part,
is so far advanced, that it will possibly be ready for issue
before the close of the present year ; but as the revision at
press and the, construction of the indices will be very
laborious, it may have to be delayed beyond that time. A
brief summary of the contents of both parts, and an out
line index, is here annexed. Complete Indices will be added
to make reference to the great variety of matters treated
upon, ready and convenient, as the work is intended to
give in a small space the greatest possible amount of in
formation upon a subject hitherto almost untreated.
This treatise also replaces the paper on the Pronunciation
of the Sixteenth Century, etc., which was read by the
Author before the Philological Society, on 18 January and
1 February, 1867.
A. J. E
KENSINGTON,
1 FEB., 1869.
CORRIGENDA IN PART I.
*#* Readers observing any misprints in Part J. are respectfully
requested to communicate with the author, 25, Argyll Road,
Sensing ton, W.
p. 5. under Grh, read A. £
p. 7; 1. 5, for A86A re«<? vaeA.
p. 53, 1. 6, /or aukw?k read auktt?h.
p. 57, line 9 from bottom, for oo'w read oo*w.
p. 60, 1. 17, for l read*
p. 70, 1. 18 for ut it read ut in.
p. 80, 1. 20, for inclined suspect read inclined to suspect.
p. 85, 1. 12, for that he read than he.
p. 89, n. 1, 1. 2, for he a read he is a.
p. 106, 1. 18, for refuse so say read refuse to say.
p. 113, 1. 21, for does seem read does not seem.
ADDENDA.
p. 12. After the paragraph commencing ** add :
L evanescent, made from [, before a single letter or combination,
denotes that it is scarcely audible, although the speaker is
conscious of placing his organs in the proper position for
speaking it.
L 1 evanescents, made from [ ] , enclose more than one evanescent
element, or entire evanescent words, as (|_'n ii\ k<?em ^'
paahs,) = and it came to pass.
p. 12. After the paragraph commencing add:
(') prominent, the acute accent may be placed over any element of
a diphthong or triphthong, when it is considered desirable,
to shew that it has the chief stress of the inter-gliding
vowelfe, but not necessarily the chief stress in the whole
word, fts, for example, to distinguish the pairs of diphthongs
(in iu, ui ui, ea ea,).
p. 273. Add to note 2. Compare also : whitlow, whitsour, whitster,
whitsul ; Whitacre, Whitbarrow, Whitburn, Whitchurch, Whit-
field, Whitgift, Whithorn, Whitland, Whitley, Whitmore, Whit
ney, Whitstable, etc. etc.
CONTENTS.
PART I. (Now PUBLISHED).
INTRODUCTION. PALAEOTYPE, OR THE SYSTEMATIC NOTATION OF ALL
SPOKEN SOUNDS BY MEANS OF THE ORDINARY PRINTING TYPES, pp. 1-16.
CHAPTER I. ON PRONUNCIATION AND ITS CHANGES, pp. 17-30.
CHAPTER II. AUTHORITIES FOR THE PRONUNCIATION OF ENGLISH DURING
THE SIXTEENTH, SEVENTEENTH, AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES, pp. 31-48.
CHAPTER III. ON THE PRONUNCIATION OF ENGLISH IN THE SIXTEENTH
CENTURY, AND ITS GRADUAL CHANGE DURING THE SEVENTEENTH AND
EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES, pp. 49-240.
§ 1. Introduction, pp. 49-50.
§ 2. Combined Speech Sounds, pp. 51-59.
§ 3. The Vowels, pp. 59-184.
§ 4. The Consonants, pp. 184-223.
§ 5. Realisation of the Pronunciation of English in the xvi th, xvn th,
and xvin th centuries, pp. 223-225.
§ 6. The Direction of Change, pp. 225-240.
CHAPTER IV. ON THE PRONUNCIATION OF ENGLISH DURING THE FOUR
TEENTH CENTURY, AS DEDUCED FROM AN EXAMINATION OF THE RHYMES
IN CHAUCER AND GOWER, pp. 241-416.
§ 1. Principles of the Investigation, pp. 241-257.
§ 2. The Vowels, pp. 258-307.
§ 3. The Consonants, pp. 308-317.
§ 4. On the Pronunciation of E Final in the xiv th Century, pp. 318-342.
§ 5. Professor F. J. Child's Observations on the Language of Chaucer
and Gower, pp. 342-397.
§ 6. Chaucer's Pronunciation and Orthography, pp. 397-404.
§ 7. Pronunciation during the Fifteenth Century, pp. 405 6.
§ 8. Pronunciation during the Earlier Part of the xrv th Century, with
Illustrations from Dan Michel of Northgate, and Richard Rolle
de Hampole, pp. 406-416.
VI CONTENTS.
PART II. (UNPUBLISHED.)
CHAPTER V. ON THE PRONUNCIATION or ENGLISH DURING THE THIR
TEENTH AND PREVIOUS CENTURIES, AND OF THE TEUTONIC AND SCANDI
NAVIAN SOURCES OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.
§ I. Rhymed Poems of the xinth Century and earlier.
No. 1. The Cuckoo Song (with the Music), circa A.D. 1240.
No. 2. The Prisoner's Prayer (with the Music), circa A.D.
1270.
No. 3. Miscellanies of the xm th Century, from the Reliquiae
Antique and Political Songs, with an Examination
of the Norman French El, AI.
No. 4. The Story of Genesis and Exodus, circa A.D. 1290.
No. 5. Havelok the Dane, circa A.D. 1290.
No. 6. King Horn, circa A.D. 1290.
No. 7. Moral Ode, Pater Noster and Orison, xii th Century.
§ 2. Unrhymed Poems of the xm th Century and Earlier.
No. 1. Orrmin's Orrmulum, end of xn th Century.
No. 3. Layamon's Brut, beginning of xm th Century.
§ 3. Prose Writings of the xm th Century and Earlier.
No. 1. Only English Proclamation of Henry III, 18 Oct. 1258.
No. 2. The Ancren Riwle, xm th Century.
No. 3. Old English Homilies, xn th Century.
§ 4. Teutonic and Scandinavian Sources of the English Language.
No. 1. Anglosaxon.
No. 2. Icelandic and Old Norse.
No. 3. Gothic.
CHAPTER VI. ON THE CORRESPONDENCE OF ORTHOGRAPHY WITH PRONUN
CIATION FROM THE ANGLOSAXON PERIOD TO THE PRESENT DAY.
§ 1. The Value of the Letters.
§ 2. The Expression of the Sounds.
§ 3. Historical Phonetic Spelling.
§ 4. Etymological Spelling.
§ 5. Standard or Typographical Spelling.
§ 6. Standard Pronunciation.
CHAPTER VII. ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE PRONUNCIATION OF ENGLISH
DURING THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY.
§ 1. Chaucer (Prologue to the Canterbury Tales).
§ 2. Gower (Punishment of Nebuchadnezzar, and Message from Venus
to Chaucer.)
§ 3. Wycliffe (Parable of the Prodigal Son.)
CHAPTER VIII. ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE PRONUNCIATION OF ENGLISH
DURING THK SIXTEENTH CENTURY.
§ 1. William Salesbury's Account of Welsh Pronunciation, 1567.
$ 2. William Salesbury's Account of English Pronunciation, 1547.
§ 3. John Hart's Phonetic Writing, 1569, and the Pronunciation of
French in the xvith Century, including Alexander Barcley's
French Pronunciation, 1621.
CONTENTS. Vll
§ 4. "William Bullokar's Phonetic "Writing, 1580, and the Pronuncia
tion of Latin in the xvi th Century,
§ 5. Alexander Gill's Phonetic "Writing, 1621, with an Examination of
Spenser's Rhymes.
§ 6. Charles Butler's Phonetic "Writing and List of "Words Like and
Unlike, 1633-4.
§ 7. Pronouncing Vocabulary of the xvith Century, collected from
Palsgrave 1530, Salesbury, 1547, Smith 1568, Hart 1569, Bul-
lokar, 1580, Gill, 1621, and Butler 1633.
§ 8. Conjectured Pronunciation of Shakspere, with an Examination of
his Rhymes and Puns.
CHAPTER IX. ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE PRONUNCIATION OF ENGLISH DURING
THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.
§ 1. John "Wilkins' Phonetic Writing, 1668.
§ 2. Noteworthy Pronunciations of the xvn th Century, —
No. 1. Pronouncing Vocabulary, collected from "Wallis 1653,
Wilkins 1668, Price 1668, Cooper, 1685, Miege
1688, and Jones 1701.
No. 2. Price's Difference between Words of Like Sound, 1668.
No. 3. Cooper's Words of Like or nearly Like Sound but Dif
ferent Spelling, 1685.
No. 4. Cooper's Words of Like or nearly Like Spelling but
Different Sound, 1685.
§ 3. Conjectured Pronunciation of Dryden, with an examination of his
Rhymes.
CHAPTER X. ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE PRONUNCIATION OF ENGLISH DURING
THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.
§ 1. James Buchanan's Phonetic Writing, 1766.
§ 2. Benjamin Franklin's Phonetic Writing, 1768.
§ 3. Noteworthy Pronunciations of the xvm th Century, collected from
the Expert Orthographist 1704, Dyce 1710, Buchanan 1766,
Franklin, 1768, Sheridan 1780.
CHAPTER XI. ILLUSTRATIONS OF ENGLISH AND LOWLAND SCOTCH PRO
NUNCIATION DURING THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
§ 1. Varieties of English Pronunciation in the xixth Century.
§ 2. Prof. S. S. Haldeman's Phonetic Writing, 1860.
§ 3. Mr. A. Melville Bell's Phonetic Writing, 1867.
§ 4. Dialectic Varieties of Pronunciation, English and Lowland Scotch,
in the xvi th and xix th Centuries.
CHAPTER XII. RESULTS OF THE PRECEDING INVESTIGATION.
Index of Authors cited.
Phonetic Index.
Index of all the Words of which the Pronunciation is described, indicated,
or conjectured.
OUTLINE INDEX TO THE LETTEBS EXPLAINED IN PAST I.
Note. — The figures 14., 16., 17., 18., with periods after them, refer to the centuries,
the other figures to the pages.
A
El, EY
M
Pv
14. 259,
14. 263,
14. 315,
14. 316,
16. 59,
16. 118,
16. 17. 18. 188
16. 17. 18. 196.
17. 65,
17. 124,
N
S
18. 74.
18. 129.
14. 315,
14. 317,
AI, AY
EO
16. 17. 18. 188
16. 17. 18. 214.
14. 263,
14. 260.
NG
SH
16. 118,
EU, EW
14. 315,
14. 317,
17. 124,
14. 301,
16. 17. 18. 188.
16. 17. 18. 214.
18. 129.
16. 136, 137,
0
T
ATI, AW
14. 263,
17. 139,
18. 141.
14. 266,
16. 93,
14. 317,
16. 17. 18. 203.
16. 136, 141,
17. 147,
18. 149.
14. 308,
16. 17. 18. 219.
n.
17. 99,
18. 103.
OA
TH
14. 317,
16. 17. 18. 219.
\JT
14. 266,
B
14. 308,
16. 93,
U
14. 308,
16. 17. 18. 203.
17. 99,
14. 298,
16. 17. 18. 203
GH
18. 103.
16. 160, 163.
c
14. 310,
17. 171,
14. 308,
16. 17. 18. 209.
/"I "VT
14. 260.
18. 184.
16. 17. 18. 203
214
GN
14. 308.
H!
01, OY
14. 268,
UI, UY
14. 269,
CH
14. 308,
16. 17. 18. 203.
14. 314,
16. 17. 18. 220.
I> Y
16. 130,
17. 133,
18. 135.
16. 17. 18. 135.
V
14. 317,
D
14. 308,
14. 270,
16. 104
00
14. 266,
16. 17. 18. 219.
16. 17. 18. 203.
17. 116^
16. 93,
14. 317,
E
18. 117.
17. 99,
16. 17. 18. 184.
14. 260, 318,
IE
18. 103.
WH
16. 77,
14. 260,
OU, OW
14. 317,
17. 81,
16. 104,
14. 303,
16. 17. 18. 184.
18. 88.
17. 116,
16. 136, 149,
x
EA
18. 117.
17. 156,
14. 317,
14. 260,
J
18. 160.
16. 17. 18. 214.
16. 77,
14. 314,
P
7
17. 81,
16. 17. 18. 203.
14. 316,
Y vowel, see I
18. 88.
K
16. 17. 18. 203.
Y consonant.
EE
14. 315,
PH
14. 310, 317,
14. 260,
16. 17. 18. 203.
14. 316.
16. 17. 18. 184.
16. 77,
L
Q
Z
17. 81,
14. 315,
14. 316,
14. 310, 317,
18. 88.
16. 17. 18. 193.
16. 17. 18. 203.
16. 17. 18. 214.
INTRODUCTION.
PALAEOTYPE, OR THE SYSTEMATIC NOTATION or ALL SPOKEN
SOUNDS BY MEANS OF THB ORDINARY PRINTING TYPES.
IN order to write intelligibly on speech sounds, some
systematic means of representing them must be adopted. In
order to understand the mode in which speech sounds change,
delicate physiological actions of the vocal organs must be
indicated. In order to be generally intelligible, the letters of
the Roman Alphabet in their original Latin senses, as nearly
as may be, should form the nucleus of the system of symbo-
lisation. In order to be convenient to the Printer and
"Writer, the old types, 7ra\aiol TVTTOI (paleir tii'pi), should
be used, and no accented letters, few turned, and still fewer
mutilated letters should be employed. The system of writing
here proposed to fulfil these conditions will, in consequence
of the last, be termed Palaeotype (pseHoteip). It is essen
tially a makeshift scheme, adapted solely to scientific, not
popular use, not pretending to supersede any existing system
of writing, but sufficing to explain all such systems, and to
indicate the pronunciation of any language with great
minuteness and much typographical convenience.1
The reader will have no occasion to study the whole of the
following list before beginning to read the book. The nature
of the symbols allows by far the greater number of them to
be arranged alphabetically, so that the reader can imme
diately discover the meaning of any symbol or usual combi
nation, and any unusual symbol is generally explained when
it first occurs in the following pages. It is only necessary
to bear in mind that the Roman vowels (a, e, i, o, u,) are
pronounced as in Italian, and (y, 03) as the German ii, 6, that
1 A full account of the principles improvements. As now presented,
of the notation is given in the Trans- Palaeotype is believed to contain cha-
actions of the Philological Society for racters for all the sounds considered
1867, Supplement, Parti. The sub- by Rapp, Lepsius, Briicke, Max Muller,
sequent appearance of Mr. Melville Haldeman, Merkel, and Melville Bell,
Bell's Visible Speech, and the elabo- and hence to be the most complete
ration of the following pages, have series of phonetic symbols which has
occasioned a few modifications and been published.
1
INTRODUCTION.
the italics and small capitals indicate certain modifications
of these sounds, that (h, j, w) are always diacritical, having
no meaning of their own but serving to modify the meaning
of the preceding letter, and "that (H, J, w, q, a, ai, au) repre
sent the sounds in (/my, yea, way, si»#, bwt, bite, how).
Long vowels are indicated by reduplication, as (aa, ee, ii) ;
repeated vowels are separated by a comma as (a,a, e,e, i,i).
The other common symbols are well known.
The explanation is given by keywords, the letters ex
pressing the sounds in question being italicised, and by the
symbols (* f- •( t 4- + w o -) which shew how some of the
letters are formed from others, (*) by attempting to pronounce
simultaneously the two letters between which it is placed,
by taking the contact ( (•) nearer the mouth, or (1 ) nearer the
throat, (f) by protruding, or (.j.) by inverting the tongue,
(+) tyy clicking, (w) by ' rounding' or labial modification,
(O) by 'widening' or distending the pharynx and oral pas
sages, (-) by removing the effect of the diacritic before which
it is placed, and which is inherent in the preceding letter, as
(-M?) with opened lips, (— o) with narrowed pharynx, etc. For
all English sounds, numerous other examples will be found
in Chapter VI, § 2. On p. 15, there is furnished a com
plete comparison of Palaeotype with Visible Speech, whence
the exact value of the former can be determined by a refer
ence to Mr. Melville Bell's work. Diagrams of the positions
of the tongue and lips during the pronunciation of the vowels,
are given on p. 14.
In the course of the following pages many explanations
and discussions of phonetic subjects become necessary. See
the nature of glides, diphthongs, and combined speech
sounds explained in Chapter III, § 2, the principal vowels
and diphthongs in the same chapter, § 3, especially under
the heading U, the nature of palatisation (j) and labialisation
(«>) in the same chapter, § 4, under P, B ; T, D ; C, K, Q ;
Cl I, J, and Gil, and the nature of aspiration under H. The
Tables in Chapter VI, §§ 1 and 2, and the footnotes to
Chapter VIII, § 1, may also be consulted.
Examples of the use of Palaeotype in continuous writing
will be found in Chapter V, §§ 1, 2, 3, 4 ; Chapter VII ;
Chapter VIII, §§ 3, 4, 5, 6, 8 ; Chapter IX, §§ 1, 3 ; Chap
ter X, §§ 1, 2, Chapter XI, §§ 1, 2, 3. In this Chapter XI
will be found examples of modern English and Scotch, form
ing a convenient exercise for those who wish to study the
nature of this system of writing, and allowing of a direct
comparison with Visible Speech.
KEY TO PALAEOTYPE LETTERS. 3
The mode of writing the "turned" or inverted letters is
explained in each particular case. Italic letters have one
horizontal line below them, as i ; small capitals have either
two horizontal lines, or one short oblique line, as i, below
them, tailed letters as g, j, p, q, y, when they have to be
printed as small capitals, may have a horizontal stroke above
them, like I. The letter H may be also written with its stem
crossed like t, and/ with two cross bars.
For the purposes of alphabet arrangement, se, 03 are con
sidered to be the same as ae, oe, and the turned letters
oaa^XAoaoj^i modifications of
eeEeLnocerrr respectively.
Isolated letters, words, and phrases in palaeotype occurring
in the midst of ordinary spelling are enclosed in a paren
thesis ( ) to prevent confusion.
KEY TO PALAEOTYPE.
Abbreviations. — A. arabic, C. Chinese, E. english, F. french,
G. german, I. italian, P. provincial, S. Sanscrit,
occ. occasional, = interchangeable with.
I. LETTERS.
A a = (KO), I. matto, F. chatte, (mat'to, shat)
A a = (<EO), G. m«nn, F. mateks, (man, matl«)
:A A = (CEM;), E. want, what, awgust', (wAnt, whAt, Agast*),
see (o)
A{ a, Gaelic math, good, (ma<) ; nasal twang
Aa aa long of (a), E. father, I. m«no, (faadlrj, maa'no)
Aa . aa long of (a), G. maAnen, (maa'nm)
:AA AA long of (A), E. awn, (AAH), see (oo)
Aa, aa, long of (a£)
Aan aah long of (ah)
Aah aah long of (ah)
AaA aaA long of (aA), see (A)
ae = (EO), E. man, cat, sad, (maen, kset, saad)
8393 long of (33), P. E. Bath, (Ba38eth)
a333li long of (sen)
JEh aeh = (a3M>) == (»ho) labially modified (ae) or widened (»h)
Ah ah = (OQ), occ. E. ask, staff, grant (ahsk, stahf, grahnt)
Ah ah = (ahw?), Irish sir, Austrian m^n (s«hr, mahn)
Ai ^ ai E. aye, G. ham, (ai/nain), see (ai)
AA aA F. an, temps, cent, (aA, taA, saA), see (A)
Au au G. haws, (naus), see (au)
Ay ay theoretical G. euch (ay/cn)
4 INTRODUCTION.
B b E. lee, (bii)
B b sonant of (p), which see, ? = (btf)
:B B = (bj), lower lip against teeth, Briicke's b2
'B 'b = (b*p), flat Saxon b, Rapp's IT
Bh bh G. w in the middle and south, (v) without the teeth
Bj bj ' = (b*/)
Brh brh = (bh^), lip trill, G. brr for stopping horses, Briicke's K
~Rw hw =(b*w), F. bois, (hwd)
G c = (s)-) ? nearly (th), Spanish 2, and c before e, i, Badajoz,
(Baadaaxooc*)
C c = (z\}? nearly (dh), Spanish d (?), cmda.d (ciueaar)
D d E. do, (duu)
D d = (d*g), usually accepted A. ,>a, Lepsius's A. b
:D D = (dj), S. ^
.D .d = (df), tip of tongue on gums
<D 'd = (d*t), flat Saxon (d), Rapp's r
Dh dh E. thee, Danish \ed, (dhii, vedh), "Welsh dd
Dh dh (dh*gh), Newman's A. ^ja, Lepsius's A. b
:Dhh Dhh Lepsius's Dravidian sound, nearly (ozh)
Dj dj = (d*j), Hungarian gy, E. verdure, (vj'dji)
Dw Aw = (d*w), F. doit (d^a)
Dzh dzh E./u^ing, (dzhadzh'iq)
E e = («o), E. m^t, G. f«?tt, F. j^tte, (met, fet, zhet), see (E)
E e = (e-o), E. aerial, F. ete (^eriel, ete), I. e chiuso
:E E = (se-o), I. e aperto, occ. E. met, G. fett, (mEt, fst)
g; a = (ah-o) turned e, written 9, E. bwt (bat), see (a)
g 9 = (ew] = (03-0), turned e, F. que j« me repent? (^
zhs m» repaAt^)
:g; a: = (a~o) turned a:, occ. E. hut (hart)
^ B = («?o) = (u-w\ turned a, written e , E. mention,
real, (men-shim, rii'Bl)
Ee ee long of (e), E. nwre, Mrtry, (meej, Meej'n')
Ee ee long of (e\ E. ailing (ee'liq), see (eei, ce'j)
:EE EE long of (E), like a bleat
g;a aa long of (a), replaces (j, aj, SDJ) in South E.
£9 99 long of (*)
:ga aa long of (a)
^•8 BB long of (B)
gph aah long of (ah)
$£9h 99h long of (?h)
Eei eei occ. E. they, (dheei), for (Ahee)
Ee1} <?e'j occ. E. Me, (fw'jt), for (feet}
ECA CCA long of (CA), see (A)
aaA long of (OA), see (A)
ah = (ah-w), West E. sir, fj'rst (sohr, fahrst)
^h 0h = (EW), occ. F. eti
Ei ei Scotch tme (teim), Portuguese ei
KEY TO PALAEOTYPE — LETTERS. 5
g;i ai usual E. eye, time, (ai, taim)
EA CA F. vin (veA), see (A)
g> aA F. un emprwwt, (aAn-aApraA), see (A)
Eu eu I. jE"wropa, (Euroo*pa), Cockney and Yankee town (teun)
g^u au usual E. howse, shout (nans, shaut)
F f E. foe, (foo), gentle hiss
F f = (f (•), upper lip against lower teeth
.F .f violently hissed (f)
Fh f h = (f *kh)
Fw fw = (f*wh), the back of the tongue in the (u) position,
F./ois, (fwa)
G g E. go, (goo)
G 9 = (gj) = (g*j), occ. E. guard., (0jud), F. <jweux, (^oe)
:G G sonant of (K)
'G 'g = (g*k), flat (g), Rapp's K
Gh gh G. tage, (taagh-e), Dutch g, S. 1"
Gh gh = (gjh) = (gh*j), G. wie^e, (bhii^h^)
:Gh Gh buzz of (xh)
.Gh .gh violently buzzed (gh)
Gj gj = (g\ which see
Gjh gjh = (gh), which see
Grh grh = (gh,}), A. £, heard in gargling
Gw gw = (g*w), F. goitre, (gw?atr')
Gwh gwh = (gh*w), G. au^e, (a
rGwh &wh = (oh*w)
H E. he (mi), S. ^ V ^, (bn, da, gn), jerked utterance
H* H' jerked whisper
h with no capital, diacritic, with no meaning by itself,
but modifying the meaning of the preceding letter in
any manner that is convenient, see (ah, th, sh, 'h), &c.
H h A. — (haa)
'h a scarcely audible (a) as Cockney park, (paa'hk)
hh with no capital, diacritic, variety of (h), see (Ihh)
Ht0 ~KW a voiced whistle
an ordinary whistle, distinct from (wh, kwh)
i = (fc'-o), E. event, F. fini, fiche, (ivent', fini, fish)
1 i = (io), E. raver, finny, fish, (riv'J., fin'i, fish)
:I i =(IM;), occ. G. ii, Swedish y
Ii ii long of (i), E. eve, (iiv)
Ii ii long of (i), E. happy... (naep'n), in singing
:Ii n long of (i)
Iu iu E. futility, (fiutH'iti)
/u in American variety of (iu)
luu iuu E. fwtile, (nuu'tA)
6
INTRODUCTION.
J
J
E. yet, G.ya, (jet, Joa)
j
with no capital, diacritic, palatal modification of pre
ceding letter.
'j
faint sound of (j, i) into which E. (ee] occasionally
tapers, see (««'j)
Jh
Jh
occ. E. Aue (jhiuu), occ. G. /a (ihaa), occ. F. cei7 (0jh)
K
k
E. key, can, coal, (kii, kaen, kool)
K
k
= (kj) = (k*j), occ. E. cart (&art), F. jweue (to)
:K
K
= (kj), A. (J (Kaaf)
Kh
kh
G. dacA, Scotch locA, (dakh, lokh)
Kh
kh
= (kjh) = (kh*jh), G. siecA, (szii*h)
:Kh
Kh
related to (K) as (kh) to (k)
KH
kn
S. *§, upper G. Aomm, (knom)
.Kh
.kh
violently hissed (kh)
kj
kj
= (A), which see
Kjh
kjh
= (kh), which see
Krh
krh
= (kh(j), Swiss cA, A. • (krhaa)
JvW
kw
= (k*w), E. queen, F. g-woi, (kt^iin, kwa), Latin qu
Ivwn.
:Kt0h
k^h
= (kh*wh), G. aucA, (aukwh), "Welsh chw, Scotch quh
L
1
E. ?ow, (loo)
L
I
Polish barred I •
:L
L
= (Ij), S. 35
T
I
turned T, written as 1 with M below, lisped (!)
.L
.1
= (!(-)
Lh
Ih
whispered (1), breath escaping on both sides the tongue,
E. feft = (fellht) at full, occ. F. tabfo, (tablh)
Zh
Ih
whisper of (/)
:Lh
Lh
according to Lepsius, Dravidian I in (TamiLh)
jjh
ih
whisper of (i)
Lhh
Ihh
= (ISh), breath escaping on the right side of the tongue
only, Welsh U
Jq
Ij
= (l*j), I. ffli (Iji)
Ljh
Ijh
whisper of (Ij)
Lz0
IM>
= (l*w), F. loi (Iwa), Anglosaxon wl-
Lw
Iw
= (l*w)
L?0h
Iwh
= (lh*wh)
Lwh
Iwh
= (Vh*wh)
M
m
E. me, (mii)
m
no capital, diacritic, = (A), which see
Mh
mh
voiceless (m), E. te»«pt (temmht) at full
MM>
raw
= (m*w), F. moi, (nwa)
N
n
E. nap (naep)
JV
n
= (n*q), see (rf)
:N
N
= (nl), S W
KEY TO PALAEOTYPE LETTERS. 7
A — no capital, written v) not joined to the following
letter, diacritic, French nasality, the four French
nasals, vm, an, on, un, are written for convenience
(VCA, aA, OA, 9A), though perhaps more properly
(ASBA, CA, OA, 9A), according to Mr. Melville Bell
(vaeA, ohA, ohA, OA)
.N .n = (n)-), see (.d)
Nh nh voiceless (n), E. tent = (tennht) at full
:Nh Nh according to Lepsius, Dravidian nasal before (nh)
Nj nj == (n*j), F. and I. gn, Spanish n, Portuguese nh
Njh njh whispered (nj)
J$w nw = (n*w), F. rcoix, (nwa)
0 o = (a«>) = (OQ), I- ° aperto, F. homme (om)
0 o = (an = (O-Q) E. omit, American stone, whole,
(oimV, ston, HO!)
0 o = (aw} = AQ), turned c, written o, being used for
small capital o which is not sufficiently distinct from
the small o, E. on, odd, (on, od)
(E ce = (ee0) = (*o), F. j<?wne, G. bocke, (zhcen, bcek-0),
Feline writes (zhm, zhoecen), for F. jeune, jeune
(E ce — (M-W\ Galic laogh, (fegh)
:(E (E = (a-o)= (A-M>), Rumanian or "Wallachian 'a, 'e, 'i,
'o, 'u
33 oo = (oho), written ao, E. first, (fsojst), see (j)
CEi 031 = occ. F. fldl, (oei, ceirh, oeilj) or (^i), occ. Dutch uy
(Eo3 oeoe long of (03), F. jetine, (zhoeosn)
(Eos (BOB long of (o?)
:(E(E CECE long of (CE)
g)9D 9390 long of (so)
CEy cey occ. Dutch uy
Oh oh = (ahw>) = (ohj), (o) modified by raising the tongue
Oh oh — (9H>), (o) modified by raising the tongue
:0h oh = (9D«>) = (aho), (o) modified by raising the tongue
01 oi North G. neu, (noi), see (ay, oy)
Oi oi P. E. boy, (boi)
:0i oi usual E. oyster, (oist'i)
OA OA F. bow (boA), see (A)
Oo oo long of (o), I. uomo, (uoo'mo), P. E. home, (noom)
Oo oo long of (o), E. home, (noom), see (oo'w]
:0o oo long of (o), drawled E. odd, God, (ood, Good), different
from E. awed, gated (AAd, gAAd)
Ooh ooh long of (oh)
Ooh ooh long of (oh)
:0oh ooh long of (oh)
OOA OOA long of (OA), see (A)
Oou oou occ. E. know, (noou)
OOM oou more usual E. know, (noou)
Oo'w oo'w occ. E. no, (noo'w), for (noo)
Ou ou Dutch OM, P. E. out, (out), see (au)
8 INTRODUCTION.
Oa. on P. E. house, (nous)
Oy oy occ. upper G. 0wch, (oyAh)
P p E. pea (pii)
P p mm (p*k)? = (pw)?, Lepsius's Peruvian or (Khetslr-
wa) p
:P P « = (pj ), lower lip against teeth
Ph ph whisper of (bh), an old sound of <£> ?
PH pn S. ^, Bavarian gferd, (pneerd), Schmeller Gr. p. 137.
PJ PJ = (p*-0
Prh prh = (ph<j), whisper of (brh), which see
Pw pzf = (p*w), F. pois, (pwa)
Q q E. singer, linger, siwker, (s»qM, leq-gi, ss'qkM), S ^
Q % = (<1J) = (<1*J)> distinct from (nj), S. »T
:Q Q =(qj)
Qh qh = voiceless (q), E. sink = (sj'qqhk) at full
Qj qj = (q) which see
R r E. ray (ree}, breath passes over the tip of the tongue
which trembles slightly, Spanish r suave.
R r uvula trill, F. r provencal or grasseye, Paris, (Pari)
:R B = (4), S. T
}j 3. turned r, written as r with " above, E. vocal r when
not preceding a vowel, ear, air, are, oar, poor, (iir,
eej, aai, ooi, pwwr), hearing, airing, mooring, (hiir-
r^q, eej'rzq, mMMJ're'q,) pervert, mwrmwr = (pexvejt',
maj'mao:) or (p^v^t*, mrmi), or (povxt', mj'mj), see (^)
y j, turned r, written as r with " above, E. palatal vocal
r when not preceding a vowel, ear, air = (iu, ee^)
more accurately than (iii, eej), and (serf, surf) may
be distinguished as (se^f, saxf ) or (s^f, sif ), this dis
tinction is frequently neglected in speech.
rl i turned L, written as r with „, below, glottal low Ger
man trill, nearly (g)
.It .r = (r<i) strongly trilled Italian, Spanish, Scotch r
Rh rh whisper of (r)
Eh rh whisper of (r)
:Rh Eh • whisper of (E)
:Rhh Ehh Lepsius's Dravidian sound, nearly (Ezh)
ih whisper of (i)
Rsh rsh Polish przez, (prshez), (r) very brief, (sh) distinct
Rw rw — (r*w), F. roi, (rwa), Anglosaxon, and early E. wr-
T^w iw — (a*w), occ. E. (0110) in place of (aiu) = our
Rzh rzh Polish rzaz, (rzhaz), (r) brief
S s E. so, (soo)
8 s = (s*kh), Lepsius's and usually received A. ^
Sh sh = E. she, F. chant, G. schein, (shii, shaA, shain)
KEY TO PALAEOTYPE - LETTERS.
Sh
sh
= (sLj.), S. "^
Shj
shj
= (sh*jh), occ. G. stellen, sprechen, (shjtel'm,
shjpre£h'en)
Sj
SJ
= (s*jh), Polish &
SM>
sw
— (s*wh), F. soi = (swa) or (sua), not (swsC)
Swh
sw>h
= (sh*wh), F. cAoix = (shwa) or (shu#), not (swha)
Sz
sz
= G. initial s, so, (szoo) «
T
t
E. tea, (tii)
T
t
= (t*k), Newman's and usually received A. b
:T
T
= (4), s- ^
.T
.t
= (t)-), tip of tongue on gums
Th
th
= E. ^Ain, (thin), modern Greek 0
Th
th
= (th*kh), Newman's A. ^
:Thh
Thh
Lepsius's Dravidian sound, nearly (ish)
Tj
tj
= (t*j) whisper of (dj), occ. E. virtue, (vj'tjiu)
Tsh
tsh
E. cAest, ma^cA, cafoAing, (tshest, maetsh, kaetsh*«'q)
T«>
tw
= (t*w), F. ^oi, (twsC)
U
u
= (#M>), F. powle, E. Lomsa, (pul, Lu,irza), see (w)
U
u
= (tew} = (UQ), E. pwll, cook, (pwl, kwk), generally
confused with (u)
:U
u
= (YM>), Swedish u short
fh
uh
= (yw] = (TTQ), I. o chiuso, (o) verging into (u)
Ui
ui
F. oui = (ui), F. ou'i = (u,i)
Uu
uu
long of (u), E. pool, (puul)
Uu
UU
long of (w)
:Uu
TJTJ
long of (TJ)
Z7i«h
uuh
long of (uh)
V
V
E. veal, (viil), F. v, North G. w, see (bh)
V
V
= (vf), buzz of (/), which see
.v
.V
buzz of (.f), which see
Vh
vh
= (v*gh), buzz of (fh), which see
Vw •
w
= (v*w), F. wix, (\wa)
W
w
E. witch, (w^tsh)
jr
tt>
diacritic, labial modification of preceding letter
W
UI
turned m, written m, defective lip trill, occ. E. vew>y
t^rne, (veui'« trauu)
Wh wh whisper of (w), E. which, (whitsh)
X x Spanish x, j, Quixote, Mexico, or Qui/bte, Mexico,
(Kiixoo-tee, Mee'xiikoo)
X x buzz of (x)
Y y = (tw) = (IQ), F. h«tte, G. lilcke, (yt, lyk-e)
Y y = (YQ), Welsh u, and final y, pwmp, ewyllys, (pymp,
ewalhh-ys), E. houses, goodness, (nauz-yz, gwd'nys)
:Y Y Polish, Bohemian, Hungarian y, Russian (jerr)
10 INTRODUCTION.
Yi yi F. lui, ennui, (lyi, a^nyi)
Yy yy long of (y), F. flute, G. gemiith, (flyyt, g*myyt')
Yy yy long of (y)
:Yy YY long of (Y)
Z z ' buzz of (s), E. zeal, miser, (ziil, marzj) ^
Z z ibuzz of («), Newman's and usually received A. i?, Lep-
sius's A. (jo
Zh zh buzz of sh, E. vision, F. ^ens, (vizh'tm, zhaA)
Zfa gh = (zh.J.), buzz of (sh)
Zhj zhj = (zh*j), buzz of (shj)
Zj zj = (z*j), buzz of (sj)
Zs zs final E. s, 2, when fully pronounced, days, flies, buzs,
(deezs, flaizs, bazs)
ZM> zw = (z*w), see (SM>)
Zwh zwh = (zh*w), see (swh)
2. SIGNS.
(') turned comma, when final, simple whisper, as E. bid, (bit') ;
before a vowel, diacritic, attempt to whisper the vowel,
as ('a), whispered (a) ; before a sonant, diacritic, semi-
vocalise, see ('b, 'd, *g)
(') apostrophe, simple voice, F. abb, (abl'), E. little, rhythm,
open = (Kt-'l, rtth-'m, oo'p'n), often written (lt't'1, rtth'm,
oop-n), S. ^ ^ = ('E, '!)
(") double apostrophe, long of ('), S. ^ ^ = ("B, "1)
(-) hyphen, read words or letters that are written apart as if
they were written close, opposed to (,), letter elided, as
F. nous avons un ami, dit-il a 1'homme, (nuz- avoAz- 8An-
ami, dit- il a 1- om)
(-) minus, before a diacritic, remove its effect from the pre
ceding letter in which it is inherent, thus (ce=M-w means
that the sound of a? is heard, when (u) is first pronounced
and then the lips opened
(\) turned 1, A. \ (;aa'lef), Hebrew K, Greek soft breathing (?)
(,) comma, diuresis, begin the followingletterasifithad.no
connection with the preceding, E. minutiae = (mmimr-
shi,i), E. unerring, unowned =(an,ere'q, an,oond')
(,,) double comma, commence the following letter so gently that
its commencement is difficult to determine, spiritus lenis (?)
(.) period, pronounce the following letter emphatically
(.,) period and comma, commence the following letter with great
abruptness, strongly marked hiatus
(;) semicolon, open the glottis suddenly, A. * (nanrza),
A. ^Ty Jt (;
KEY TO PALAEOTYPE SIGNS. 11
(i) turned semicolon, close the glottis suddenly as in stammer
ing, or suddenly cease any sound, as when startled,
leaving a sound half uttered; (s.'.} is a suddenly checked
emission of breath, strongly resembling a click (J), as in
Zulu (ik.niwa), Visible Speech, p. 126.
g turned 3, A. C , bleat baa = (baegaeg)
*
(") turned comma and apostrophe, speak the following word in
a subdued tone or voix voilee.
(4) turned apostrophe, nasalize the preceding letter, but not as
in F. nasalisation (A)
(j) turned !, attempt to pronounce the preceding letter with
inspired breath, (f;, ph;), calling a bird
(J) attempt to pronounce the preceding letter with the air in
the mouth without inspiring or expiring, click, E. tut =
(tj), E. cl'ck (tjSj)
g turned 5, Caffir dental click, Appleyard's c, = (tj), or (t|-J),
as in (iqgbha'te), Visible Speech, p. 126.
g turned 2, Caffir cerebral (Lepsius) or palatal (Appleyard)
click, Appleyard's q = (t|:j:), as in (Egugalern'), Visible
Speech, p. 126,
I turned 7, Caffir (uni-) lateral click, Appleyards x, = (tjSJJ)
with prolonged suction, as in (gaq^anvri)} Visible Speech,
p. 126.
f- turned 4, Hottentot palatal click, Boyce's qc, = (tjj) pro
bably, Lepsius's Standard Alphabet, 2nd ed., p. 79.
8 turned 8, Waco click = (K+), Haldeman, Analytic Ortho
graphy, p. 120.
0 turned 0, distend the pharynx and cheeks, ' widen' the
sound.
j made from f, take the preceding letter nearer the throat and
further from the lips, inner position.
(• made from f, take the preceding letter further from the
throat and nearer to the lips, outer position.
4 turned f , invert the tongue so that the under part strikes
the palate, when pronouncing the preceding letter, see
(D, L, N, R, sh, T)
protrude the tongue when pronouncing the preceding letter.
§ bi-lateral, allow the breath to escape on both sides of the
tongue or mouth, but not over the tip of the tongue or
through the middle of the mouth.
5 made from §, uni-lateral, allow the breath to escape on one
side of the tongue or mouth only. .
<i turned ?, trill any free p*art during the utterance of the pre
ceding consonant.
* link, form a new position by attempting to pronounce the
two letters between which it is placed, at the same instant,
but giving prominence to the first letter named, see (lj)
= (1*0
12 INTRODUCTION.
** governor, placed between two letters at the beginning of a
phrase, shews that the first is to be pronounced like the
second throughout, indicating a defect of utterance, as
(!**!<), (1) pronounced with a nasal twang; when no
letter precedes, it indicates that the effect of the following
letter is heard in all letters, (**.p) close lips, (**tf) pro
truded tongue, (**,) general nasal quality, (**.') strained
voice, etc., Visible Speech, p. 81.
(•) turned period, before a word, speak the word emphatically as
(•mi did it, nii -did tt) ; after a letter, (•) shews that it
occurs in an accented syllable, as (bir«'q, nwk'i'q, ripooz')
(:) colon, before a capital letter, (in which case it is written
below it, as p,) shews that it is the capital of a small
capital letter, see (:E) capital of (E) ; after a letter, shews
that it occurs in a secondarily accented syllable, as
(inkomipriHen: sibil'iti, Harw^:ma3n: )
•^^-~ written under a word indicates spaced letters, used
to give prominence to a word in palaeotype, answering
to italics in ordinary printing.
Following a Word.
(..) low level tone, C. high (pniq)
(••) high level tone, C. low (pm'q)
(.•) rising tone, C. high (shaq)
(..•) tone rising from low pitch, C. low (shaq)
(.'.) rise and fall, circumflex, C. (fu-kjen shaq)
(•.) falling tone, C. high (knceoe, kmu, km)
(\.) falling tone to low pitch, C. low (ksceoe) •
(•.•) fall and rise, inverted circumflex
(i-) stop voice in high pitch, C. high (shui, zhif, njipf)
('.) stop voice in low pitch, C. low (shut, zhii, njipf)
Preceding a Word.
speak in a high key
speak in low key
PALAEOTYPE AUD VISIBLE SPEECH COMPARED.
The diagrams on p. 14, transferred by Mr. Melville Bell's per
mission from p. 8 of his English Visible Speech, will be the best
guide to the pronunciation of the vowels. Each of the first nine
diagrams represents the position of the tongue for the four vowels
written below it. For the first and tflird vowels in each diagram, the
passages behind the narrowest part of the channel formed by the
tongue are in the usual condition, but for the second and fourth
vowel in each diagram, they are distended, making the vowels
' wide.' For the first and second vowel in each diagram, the lips are
open. For the third and fourth vowel in each diagram, the lips are
more or less rounded, — namely, for Nos. 1, 2, 3, as in No. 10, for
PALAEOTYPE AND VISIBLE SPEECH COMPARED. 13
Nos. 4, 5, 6, as in No. 11, and for Nos. 7, 8, 9 as in No. 12. As the
principal interest in the following investigation attaches to changes
in the vowel system, a careful study of these diagrams will be of
material assistance. If any reader pronounce the key words with a
vowel requiring a different position from that here pointed out, his
pronunciation differs from the author's, and the value of the symbol
is to be determined from the diagram in preference to the key word.
In order to fix the value of the palaeotypic letters, they are on
p. 15 compared with those of Mr. Melville Bell's Visible Speech, by
means of his " Cosmopolitan Telegraphic Table," which has been
here reprinted by his permission. The figures indicate the columns
and the letters the lines. The following is Mr. Bell's classification,
which will be frequently alluded to.
Columns 1, 2, 3, 4 contain consonants, lines a, b, c, d, e, f are
voiceless, lines g, h, i, k, I, m, are voiced ; lines a, g are primary,
lines b, h are mixed, lines c, i are divided, lines d, k, are mixed
divided, lines e, I are shut, lines/, m are nasal.
Column 5 consists of glides, which are represented in palaeotype
on a different principle, see below, Chapter III, § 2. The letter
(H), 5/, is considered as the true English aspirate in palaeotype, but
Mr. M. Bell considered (H'), or 9«, to be the more correct form.
Columns 6, 7, 8 are vowels, column 6 lack vowels, column 7
mixed vowels, column 8 front vowels, and in each column lines a, b,
c, are primary, lines d, e, f are wide, lines g, h, i are round, lines
k, I, m are wide round, lines a, d, g, k are high, lines 5, e, h, I are
mid, and lines c, f, i, m are low vowels.
Columns 9, 10 contain the aspirates and modifiers.
GLOSSOTYPE.
An investigation of historical English spelling in Chapter YI, § 3,
suggested the possibility of enlarging the alphabet required for
writing the theoretically received pronunciation of literary English,
so as to meet the requirements of writers of our provincial dialects,
who endeavour to preserve the analogies of ordinary spelling. It
was found necessary to deviate from these slightly for the repre
sentation of our complicated diphthongal system, and some foreign
sounds, which occur provincially, but are unrecognized in our or
thography. The use of the short mark (") to indicate the provin
cial shortening of vowels generally long in the literary dialect, and
of the long mark (") for the lengthening of vowels generally short, is
hardly a deviation from ordinary usage. The principles of this
scheme are explained in Chapter YI, § 3, where the exact value of
the letters is explained, and its use is exemplified in Chapter XI.
But for convenience, a very brief key is given on p. 16. The name
GLOSSOTYPE refers to the chief use for which it was intended — the
writing of provincial Glossaries. It is hoped, however, that such
a scheme, although designedly incomplete, may be found useful to
all who may occasionally wish to indicate pronunciation with some
degree of exactness, but do not care to enter upon general phonetic
investigations.
14
INTRODUCTION.
LINGUAL POSITIONS OF THE VOWELS.
No. 1.
a, -B, u,
No. 2.
No. 3.
i, it I, y.
No. 4.
a, a, o, o.
No. 5.
* , i«^
3, ah, 0h, oh.
No. 6.
e, *, ce.
No. T.
t
A, 3.
No. 8.
ah, ao, «h, oh.
No. 9.
E, ae, ^h, aeh.
LABIAL POSITIONS OF THE VOWELS.
No. 10.
u, u ; U, «/; ; i,y.
No. 11.
o, o ; <?h, oh ; 3, ce.
No. 12.
A, D ; tfh, oh ; *h, aeh
PALAEOTYPE AND VISIBLE SPEECH COMPARED.
15
MR. MELVILLE BELL'S VISIBLE SPEECH LETTERS.
I
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
0
a
C
O
O
O
I
1
I
I
O
1
a
b
a
n
^
D
J
3
I
C
0
I
b
c
c
CO
CD
3
ft
J
I
I
X
i
c
d
a
&
2*3
3
v
1
1
I
t
t
d
e
a
a
0
D
i
3
1
C
?
.
e
f
a
Q
O
O
>
I
I
I
o>
<
f
ff
G
o
Q
3
i
1
I
£
5
*>
f
h
e
&
ti5
B
?
I
\
1
0
<k
h
i
8
CO
GO
3
*
J
I
1
!
c
i
k
e
SQ
as
e
g
1
I
f
*
3
k
I
G
CD
Q
0
i
1
I
1
A
II
I
m
G
CD
05
O
5
J
I
i
V
O
m
I
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
0
PALAEOTYPIC EQUIVALENTS OF VISIBLE SPEECH
LETTERS.
I
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
0
a
kh
jh
rh
ph
>
OS
Y
i
H'
•
a
b
ki«h
3
sh
wh
r
a
9
e
(
daub
linj{.
b
c
/h
!Jh
Ih
f
i,J
(E
oh
E
>
>
c
d
lw\i
th
*E
fh
j
•R
y
Z
«
•>
d
e
k
tj
t
P
UI
a
ah
e
A
«
e
f
qh
ujh
nh
mh
H
a
GO
se
iitwh
i
f
ff
gh
j
r
bh
W
n
u
i
6
Ht
9
h
gwh
z
zh
. w
rw
o
o\\
3
4 )
t
h
i
I
y
1
V
y
A
ah
3\\
1
i
i
k
Iw
dh
<jfh
vh
.1M>
U
//h
y
I"
t
k
I
g
i
d
b
U,W
O
oh
oe
.
§s
I
m
q
a
ri
in
'h
0
oh
seh
))
*
m
i
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
s
0
16
INTRODUCTION.
KEY TO GLOSSOTYPE.
See p. 13. Isolated letters and words in glossotype should be inclosed in ( ).
!E) is never mute ; all vowels and combinations having ( " ) or ( ~ ) over them, except
ii), are the short or Ion" sounds of the vowels and combinations without these marks,
which should not be used for any other letters, thus : (a) is the long sound of (a) ; (£e)
the short sound of (ee) ; (u) is to be used whenever it is thought that the proper form
(ou) might create confusion.
C. Cockney, D. Dutch, E. English, F. French, G. German, /. Italian, P. Provincial,
S. Scotch, Sw. Swedish, W. Welsh.
VOWELS.
DIPHTHONGS.
CONSONANTS.
ta gnat
i knit
aiy may
aiw C.
b lee
n-g ingrain
a P.
18.
ay 8.C.
aw C.
ch chest
nk think
aa ask
iTtfhP.G.ti
aay high
aaw how
d doe
n-k in-come
aa ask
o not
aey S.
aew C.
dh the
p pea
ae ware
5P.
ahy G. ai
ahw G. au
f fee
r ray
aeS. e
oa, oa /. d
ahy aye
ahwP.
S ff°
'r air
ah father
oe, oe G. 6
auy P.
auw P.
ghZ>.G.
r I.S, r
Ihf.O.S. a
oh rose
ey S. tide
ew /. eu
H he
rh P.F. r
ai wait
oh 8.
eew I. iu
(written A)
s see
ai S. at
ON F. on
iw mew
j jay
sh she
ax F. an
oo pool
oy boy
owP.
k coo
t tin
ao 8.
oo S. book
oyP.
6wP.
kh G. C. ch
th thin
ao S. man
ou, u could
ohy P.
ohw know
1 k
v vale
au all
6uP.
ooyl.F.P.
'1 little
w wail or
au want
u nut
uy high
uw how
Ih W. 11
-w (after
e net
a p.
uiy F, ui
m me
vowels)
e S.
ue,ue$w?.w
euy F. eui
euw D.
'm rhythm
wh why
ee meet
uh worth
n wo
J yet, or
ee S.I.F.
uhP.
In all these diphthongs
the first element has the
'n ojsen
-y (after
ex F. in
eu F. eu
eu F. eu
ui, ui F. u
UN F. un
(') murmur
sound assigned in the
preceding column, which
is run on quickly, with a
glide, to a following (ee)
or (oo) written (y) or (w).
Diphthongs are also formed
N P. W
(written n)
ng thing
Foreign and (
vowels)
z zeal
zh vision
)riental sounds
P. by affixing (') as
represented by Italics and
When more than two vowels
(roh'd) almost (rohud) =
small capitals, by special
come together and the first
road, and by affixing (ui),
convention.
two form one of the pre
which should then be
Accent the first syllable, un
ceding combinations, read
written (ui), as D. (neuuis)
less (') or (•) is written after
them as such, as (reeent'er
= huis, theoretical G.
some other syllable, as :
( =ree-ent-er) =re-enter.
(frouind) = freund.
august, august-, august'.
17
CHAPTER I.
ON PRONUNCIATION AND ITS CHANGES.
THOUGHT may be conveyed from mind to mind by various
systems of symbols, each of which may be termed language.
A real, living, growing language, however, has always been
a collection of spoken sounds, and it is only in so far as they
indicate these sounds that other symbols can be dignified
with the name of language. But a spoken sound once
written ceases to grow. Even when an orthography is
chosen which varies with the sounds from day to day, each
written word is, as it were, but an instantaneous photograph
of a living thing, fixing a momentary phase, while the organ
ism proceeds to grow and change till all resemblance to the
old form may in course of time be obliterated. The systems
of writing which have been generally adopted, far from
acknowledging this fact, force us, as it were, to recognize
mature or ancient men from the portraits of youths or
children, and ignore the ever-active irrepressible vitality of
language. We speak of the "dead" languages of Rome and
Athens, unconscious that our own English of a few years
back has become as dead to us, who can neither think in the
idiom nor speak with the sounds of our forefathers.
Spoken language is born of any two or more associated
human beings. It grows, matures, assimilates, changes, incor
porates, excludes, developes, languishes, decays, dies utterly,
with the societies to which it owes its being. It is difficult
to seize its chameleon form at any moment. Each speaker
as thought inspires him, each listener as the thought reaches
him with the sound, creates some new turn of expression,
some fresh alliance of thought with sound, some useful modi-"
fication of former custom, some instantaneous innovation
which either perishes at the instant of birth, or becomes part
of the common stock, a progenitor of future language. The
different sensations of each speaker, the different apprecia
tions of each hearer, their intellectual growth, their environ
ment, their aptitude for convejdng or receiving impressions,
their very passions, originate, change, and create language.
2
18 PRONUNCIATION AND ITS CHANGES. CHAP. I.
"Without entering on the complex investigation of the
idiomatic alterations of language, a slight consideration will
shew that the audible forms in which these idioms are clothed
will also undergo great and important changes. The habit
of producing certain series of spoken sounds is acquired
generally by a laborious and painful process, beginning with
the first dawn of intelligence, continued through long stages
of imperfect powers of appreciation and imitation, and be
coming at last so fixed that the speaker in most cases either
does not hear or does not duly weigh any but great devia
tions from his own customary mode of speech, and is rendered
incapable of any but a rude travesty of strange sounds into
the nearest of his own familiar utterances.
We may apparently distinguish three laws according to
which the sounds of a language change.
First, the chronological law. Changes in spoken sounds
take place in time, not by insensible degrees, but per
saltum, from generation to generation.
Second, the individual law. A series of spoken sounds
acquired during childhood and youth remains fixed in
the individual during the rest of his life.
Third, the geographical law. A series of spoken sounds
adopted as the expression of thought by persons living
in one locality, when wholly or partly adopted by an
other community, are also changed, not by insensible
degrees, but per saltum, in passing from individual to
individual.
At any one instant of time there are generally three gene
rations living. Each middle generation has commenced at
a different time, and has modified the speech of its preceding
generation in a somewhat different manner, after which it
retains the modified form, while the subsequent generation-
proceeds to change that form once more. Consequently
there will not be any approach to uniformity of speech
sounds in any one place at any one time, but there will be a
kind of mean, the general utterance of the more thoughtful
or more respected persons of mature .age, round which the
other sounds seem to hover, and which, like the averages of
the mathematician, not agreeing precisely with any, may for
the purposes of science be assumed to represent all, and be
called the language of the district at the epoch assigned.
Concrete reality is always too complex for science to grasp,
and hence she has to content herself with certain abstractions,
and to leave practice to apply the necessary corrections in
individual cases. Thus, if we descended into every minute
CHAP. I. PRONUNCIATION AND ITS CHANGES. 19
shade of spoken sound, the variety would be so interminable,
each individual presenting some fresh peculiarities, that all
definite character would be lost. In actual life this necessary
abstraction is replaced by the second law which gives fixed
ness of utterance to the individual, regardless of surrounding
change. Indeed, few persons of mature years, even in the
most civilized communities, think of the sounds they utter.
They speak to communicate thought, not to examine the
instrument which they employ for that purpose, and they
would be constantly checked, and irritated by thinking of
how they speak, rather than of what they speak.
It is this individual fixity of habit, and powerlessness of
adaptation that operates in producing the per saltum geogra
phical changes, in which must be included, not only the
changes made in foreign words, but also those resulting
from any society withifa a society, — schools, colleges, cliques,
coteries, professions, trades, emigrations, — in short any means
of isolating some companies of speakers from others. Slang
is only a form of dialect.
One marked result of the third law is that a uniform
system of spoken sounds cannot extend over a very large
district. All the speakers must have frequent opportunities
of hearing the sounds from youth up, or they will be unable
to appreciate and imitate them. Education, which sends
teachers as missionaries into remote districts to convey the
required sounds more or less correctly, but, more safely and
certainly, rapid communication of individuals, such as rail
roads now effect, does much to produce uniformity of speech.
How far, however, even in small, educated and locomotive
England we are yet removed from uniformity of speech, may
be learned by a very slight attention to the sounds heard in
different districts, each of which has its own characteristic
burr or brogue, less marked perhaps than it was in Higden's
and Caxton's time, but still unmistakable.1
The results of emigration and immigration are curious and
important. By emigration is here specially meant the sepa
ration of a considerable body of the inhabitants of a country
1 Treuisa in his translation of Hig- to relate how when " certayn mer-
dcn's Polychronicon, 1385, says "alle chauwtes .... taryed atte forlond . . .
Jie langages of j*e norj-humbrfs & and axed for mete, and specyally . . .
specialich at jorkc is so scharp slittinge axyd after eggys ... the goode wyf
& frotyng* & vnschape ; J>at we souj^ren answerde that she coude speke no
men may \at langage vnneJ7e vnder- frenshe .... and thenne at last a
stonde." And Caxton (Prologue to nother sayd that he wolde haue eyren,
Eneydos) complains that " comyn En- then the good wyf sayd that she vnder-
glysshe that is spoken in one shyre stod hym." See Chapter XI for ex-
varyeth from a nother," and goes on isting varieties of pronunciation.
20 PRONUNCIATION AND ITS CHANGES. CHAP. I.
from the main mass, without incorporating itself with another
nation. Thus the English in America have not mixed with
the natives, and the Norse in Iceland had no natives to mix
with. In this case there is a kind of arrest of development,
the language of the emigrants remains for a long time in the
stage at which it was when emigration took place, and alters
more slowly than the mother tongue, and in a different
direction. Practically the speech of the American English
is archaic with respect to that of the British English, and
while the Icelandic scarcely differs from the old Norse, the
latter has, since the colonization of Iceland, split up on the
mainland into two distinct literary tongues, the Danish and
Swedish. Nay, even the Irish English exhibits in many
points the peculiarities of the pronunciation of the xviith
century.
By immigration, on the other hand,' is meant the introduc
tion of a comparatively small body into a large mass of
people, with whom they mix and associate. This may be
commercially (as when German emigrants settle in the
United States), or by conquest (as when the Norsemen settled
first in the north of France, and secondly in England, or
when the Goths ruled in Italy). In these cases the immigrant
language is more or less lost and absorbed, especially if it is
not so developed as the language among which it enters, and
into which it introduces comparatively little change. The
French element of our language, for example, is only indi
rectly traceable to the Norman Conquest, for we find it very
slightly marked, even in the xm th century. The Roman
occupation of England and the English domination in India
have produced very little effect upon either the immigrant
or receiving language, principally from the want of associa
tion. The languages have remained practically unmixed.
The Roman language in France and Spain de facto ousted
the Celtic of the inhabitants, and, after natural changes,
altered by the absorption of the Frankish and Moorish im
migrations.
The alterations thus introduced into a language produce
but little effect on the idioms (that is, the expression of the
relations of conceptions), but principally affect the words
employed. Thus English has remained a Low German
dialect through all the introductions of French, Latin, and
Greek elements, and French, Spanish, and Italian remain
Latin notwithstanding the Frankish, Moorish, and Gothic
additions which they have received. But in all these
languages great changes have fallen upon the forms of the
CHAP. I. PRONUNCIATION AND ITS CHANGES. 21
words used. We are apt to regard (bzslrap, bislrof, bis'po,
ves'kovo, 0vEEk, obhiis'po, epiis'kop, epis'kopus, epis'kopos)
as entirely different words, and to call (breek briik, keez kiiz,
obMdzh' obliidzlr) etc., different pronunciations of the same
words. But the latter are really only less marked examples
of the same phenomenon as is exhibited in the former. If
the latter pairs of words are to be regarded as the same, the
former nine must also be classed as one. In the latter we
have chiefly chronological, in the former we have chiefly
geographical changes. In both cases we have examples of
the variation of one sound as it passes through various
mouths — volitat vivu' per ora virum.
Even without reference to written forms, the conception
of altered forms of one original sound (that is, of various
pronunciations of the same word), naturally arises in men's
minds, but when languages come to be written as well as
spoken, this is more strongly forced upon them — at least in
those cases which the writing notices. Writing, that won
derful method of arresting sound which has made human
memory independent of life, and has thus perpetuated know
ledge, was necessarily at first confined to the learned alone,
the priest and the philosopher. These fixed, as nearly as
they could appreciate, or their method of symbolisation,
which was necessarily insufficient, would allow, the sounds
of their own language as they heard them in their own day.
Their successors venerating the invention, or despairing of
introducing improvements, trod servilely in their steps and
mostly used the old symbols while the sounds changed
around them. Within the limits of the powers of the old
symbols some changes were made from time to time, but
very slowly. Then in quite recent days, the innovation of
diacritical signs arose as in French and German,, whereby a
modern modification of an ancient usage was more or less
indicated. Occasionally, whole groups of letters formerly
correctly used to indicate certain sounds came to be con
sidered as groups indicating new sounds, — not in all cases,
but in many perhaps, where the sounds had changed by re
gular derivation. Before the invention of printing, writers,
become more numerous, had become also less controlled by
the example of their ancestors, and endeavoured as well as
they could, with numerous conventions, inconsistencies, im
perfections, and shortcomings, rendered inevitable by the
inadequacy of their instrument, to express on paper the
sounds they heard. When we are fortunate enough to find
the real handy work of a thoughtful writer, as Orrniin, we see
22 PRONUNCIATION AND ITS CHANGES. CHAP I.
how much might have heen done to clear our mode of writing
from inconsistencies. But with the invention of printing,
came a helief in the necessity of a fixed orthography to
facilitate the work of the "compositor and reader. The re
gulation of spelling was taken from the intellectual and given
to a mechanical class. Uniformity at all hazards was the
aim. And uniformity has been gained to a great extent in
late years, but at a sacrifice which uniformity is far from
being worth — loss of a knowledge of how our ancestors spoke,
concealment of how we speak at present, innumerable diffi
culties to both reader and writer, and hence great impedi
ments to the acquisition of knowledge. The numerous
societies for printing old English books which are now at
work, and especially the Early English Text Society, have,
by conscientiously printing manuscripts literatim, done much
to restore our knowledge of ancient sounds as well as ancient
sense. But the veil of our modern spelling lies over our
eyes, and it is not easy to gain the key to the mystery which
these texts are calculated to display.
" Nobody," says Archdeacon C. J. Hare,1 " who has a due
reverence for his ancestors or even for his own spiritual
being, which has been mainly trained and fashioned by his
native language, — nobody who rightly appreciates what a
momentous thing it is to keep the unity of a people entire
and unbroken, to preserve and foster all its national recol
lections, what a glorious and inestimable blessing it is to
' speak the tongue that Shakspere spake,' will ever wish to
trim that tongue according to any arbitrary theory." But
the English of to-day do not know ' the tongue that Shak
spere spake.' They may be familiar with the words of his
plays according to their own fashion of speech, but they
know no more how Shakspere would have uttered them than
they know how to write a play in his idiom. The language
of Shakspere has departed from us," and has to be acquired
as a new tongue, without the aid of a living teacher. What
this means can only be justly appreciated by observing how
foreigners, after most laborious study of our own modern
language from books and grammars, proceed to write and
speak it. You will read and hear whole sentences in which
every phrase shall be in accordance with grammar, and yet
perhaps not a single sentence so composed as an Englishman
would have penned it, or so uttered as an Englishman would
have spoken it. A language can only be learned by ear.
But how did our glorious old writers speak? What
1 On English Orthography, Philological Museum, Vol. 1, p. 645.
CHAP. I. PRONUNCIATION AND ITS CHANGES. 23
sounds did Goldsmith, Pope, Dryden, Milton, Shakspere,
Spenser, Chaucer, Langland, call the English language?
Or if we cannot discover their own individual peculiarities,
what was the style of pronunciation prevalent at and about
their time among the readers of their works ? The inquiry
is beset with difficulties. It would be almost impossible to
determine the pronunciation of our contemporary laureate,
but surely with our heap of pronouncing dictionaries, it
would seem easy to determine that of his readers. Yet this
is far from being the case. It is difficult even for a person
to determine with accuracy what is his own pronunciation.
He can at best only give an approximation to that of others.
In the present day we may, however, recognize a received
pronunciation all over the country, not widely differing in
any particular locality, and admitting a certain degree of
variety. It may be especially considered as the educated
pronunciation of the metropolis, of the court, the pulpit, and
the bar.1 But in as much as all these localities and pro
fessions are recruited from the provinces, there will be a
varied thread of provincial utterance running through the
whole. In former times this was necessarily more marked,
and the simultaneous varieties of pronunciation prevalent
and acknowledged much greater. In the xm th, xiv th,
and xv th centuries it is almost a straining of the meaning
of words to talk of a general English pronunciation.2 There
was then only a court dialect of the south, and the various
" upland," northern, eastern, and western modes of speech.
And hence we can only seek to discover the court dialect,
and then, having partly ascertained the value of the letters,
endeavour to ascertain the pronunciations meant to be in
dicated by such writers as Dan Michel and Orrmin.3
But how are we to arrive at a knowledge of the court
dialect ? Moliere ridicules the notion of having a master to
teach pronunciation, and -certainly the analysis of speech
sounds, was at no time, and is not even at the present day,
notwithstanding the appearance of so many treatises in quite
recent times, down to that of Mr. Melville Bell, 1867, a
favorite subject of investigation. It is voted tiresome or
unnecessary, and the greater number of even those who
1 The pronunciation of the stage is rum modum loquendi solum sum secu-
inclincd to be archaic, except in the tus, quern solum ab infancia didici,
modernest imitations of every day life. et solotenus plenius perfectiusque cog-
2 Thus in 1440 the author of the novi."
Promptorium Parvulorum says, " Comi- 3 The subject of a standard pro-
tatus Northfolcie" or, according to nunciation is specially considered below,
another reading, " Orientalium Anglo- Chap. VI, § 6.
24 PRONUNCIATION AND ITS CHANGES. CHAP I.
touch upon it incidentally, in grammars and orthoepical
treatises, are profoundly ignorant of the nature and mechan
ism of speech, and the inter-relations of the sounds which
constitute language.1 The consequence is that writers being
unaware of the mechanism by which the results are produced,
were constrained to use a variety of metaphorical expressions
which it is extremely difficult to comprehend, and which
naturally have different meanings in the works of different
authors. Thus sounds are termed thick, thin, fat, full,
empty, round, flat, hard, soft, rough, smooth, sharp, clear,
obscure, coarse, delicate, broad, fine, attenuated, mincing,
finical, affected, open, close, and so on, till the reader is in
despair. For example, in English, German, Italian, Spanish,
'hard c' is (k), but 'soft c' is (s) in English, (ts) in Ger
man, (tsh) in Italian, (c), that is, nearly (th), in Spanish. The
Germans call (g) the 'soft' of (k), and (>h) the 'soft' of
(g). But the English call (g) 'hard g/ and (dzh) 'soft g,'
and 'soft g' is (x), or nearly (kh), in Spanish. Most writers
term (s, th) hard sounds, and (z, dh) soft, but Dyche2 finds
(s, th) soft, and (z, dh) hard. One writer calls o obscure
when it sounds as (a) or (uu), no matter which, but y final
obscure when (i), and sharp and clear when (ai).
Some writers, again, content themselves with using key
words. This is indeed the easiest method for the writer, and
conveys very fair notions to contemporary readers. It has
been adopted in the description of Palaeotype to avoid prolix
explanations. But the publication of Mr. Melville Bell's
Visible Speech has enabled me by referring to his symbols to
fix the sounds with accuracy, for Visible Speech contains an
exact account of the disposition of the organs for producing
the sounds, and hence by carefully studying that work at
any time — centuries hence — the exact sound could probably
be recovered. Not so with key words, for they involve the
•
1 The beautiful phonetic short-hand sounds, but with very small success,
invented by Mr. I. Pitman, under the . even among those who were most
name of Phonography, and developed earnest in the use of phonetic types
by the assistance of many co-workers, as an educational appliance. The sub-
gave rise to a desire to print phoneti- ject was not sufficiently attractive. At
cally, in consequence of which a pho- present Mr. Melville Bell's recent
netic English alphabet was invented treatise on Visible Speech, renders a
by Mr. I. Pitman and myself, which, study of the whole subject compara-
with various subsequent modifications, tively easy. And he has supplemented
has been extensively used in England it by a system of shorthand writing
and America. From the first I en- which will be applicable with almost
deavourcd (in my treatises on the equal facility to all languages in the
Alphabet of Nature, 1 845, and Essen- world, rendering his system extremely
tials of Phonetics, 1848,) to make this easy to write even at full,
alphabet a menus of extending a know- * Guide to the English Tongue, 1710.
ledge of the inter-relations of speech
CHAP. I. PRONUNCIATION AND ITS CHANGES. 25
very riddle which we have to solve. Only those who, like
the present writer, have spent hours in endeavouring to dis
cover what was meant by a simple reference to a key word
given three hundred years ago, can fully appreciate the ad
vantage of an exact description like that furnished by Visible
Speech.1 There is some relief when many key-words are
given, or when contemporary languages are cited. But
here the imperfect appreciation of the citer is painfully con
spicuous, and allowances have always to be made on that
account. Many writers, too, content themselves with re
ferences to the Latin, Greek, or Hebrew sounds, apparently
forgetting that the older pronunciation of these languages is a
matter of dispute, and that the modern pronunciation varies
from country to country and century to century. Let any
one begin by studying Sir T. Smith, Hart, Bullokar, Gill,
and Butler, in order to determine the pronunciation of
Shakspere from these sources alone, — or even with the as
sistance of Palsgrave, — and he will soon either find himself
in the same slough of despond in which I struggled, or will
get out of his difficulties only by a freer use of hypothesis
and theory than I considered justifiable, when I endeavoured
to discover, not to invent, — to establish by evidence, not to
propound theoretically, — the English pronunciation of the
xvi th century.
The first ray of light came to me from a corner which had
hitherto been very dark. "While searching for information,
some book or other led me to consult William Salesbury's
"Welsh and English Dictionary, 1547. The introduction
contains a very short and incomplete introduction to English
pronunciation, written in quaint old Welsh. My imperfect
knowledge of the language was sufficient for me to perceive
the value of this essay, which mainly consisted in the
transcription of about 150 typical English words into Welsh
letters. Now the Welsh alphabet of the present day is re
markably phonetic, having only one ambiguous letter, y,
which is sometimes (a) , or (a), and at others (y} . Did Salesbury
pronounce these letters as they are now pronounced in North
1 At the latter end of his treatise of the speech organs, — or if possible
Mr. Melville Bell has given in to the also from the living voice of some one
practice of key words, and assigned thoroughly acquainted with the system
them to his symbols. Let the reader — and then determine Mr. Bell's own
be careful not to take the value of the pronunciation of the key word from
symbol from his own pronunciation of the known value of the symbol. This
the key words, or from any other per- pronunciation in many instances differs
son's. Let him first determine the from that which I am accustomed to
value of the symbol from the exact give it, especially in foreign words,
description and diagram of the position Both of us may be wrong.
26 PRONUNCIATION AND ITS CHANGES. CHAP. I.
Wales? Most fortunately lie has answered the question
himself in a tract upon Welsh pronunciation written in
English, and referring to many other languages to assist the
English reader. The result was that with the exception of
y, the sounds had remained the same for the last 300 years.
Here then we have a solid foundation for future work, — the
pronunciation of a certain number of words in the xvi th
century determined with considerable certainty ; and from this
we are able to proceed to a study of the other works named,
with more hope of a satisfactory result. These tracts of
Salesbury are so rare, and one of them so little intelligible
to the mass of readers, that at the suggestion of the Philo
logical Society, they will be transferred to the pages of this
essay, — the English treatise almost entire, the Welsh treatise
complete with a translation.1
The pronunciation of English during the xvi th century
was thus rendered tolerably clear, and the mode in which it
broke into that of the xvnth century became traceable.
But the xvn th century was, like the xv th, one of civil war,
that is of extraordinary commingling of the population, and
consequently one of marked linguistic change. Between the
xiv th and xvith centuries our language was almost born
anew.2 In the XVIT th century the idiomatic changes are by
no means so evident, but the pronunciation altered distinctly
in some remarkable points. These facts and the breaking
up of the xvn th into the xvm th century pronunciation,
which when established scarcely differed from the present,
are well brought to light by Wallis, Wilkins, Owen, Price,
Cooper, Miege, and Jones, followed by Buchanan, Franklin,
and Sheridan. It became therefore possible to assign with
considerable accuracy, the pronunciation of Spenser, Shak-
spere, Milton, Dryden, and Pope, or rather of their con
temporaries.
This was much, but it was not enough. No treatise on
Early English pronunciation could be satisfactory which did
not include Chaucer. But here all authorities failed. Pals
grave is the earliest author from whom we learn distinctly
how any English sound was pronounced, and then only
through the analogy of the French and Italian. Two princi
ples, however, suggested themselves for trial. In tracing
the alteration of vowel sounds from the xvi th through the
xvn th to the xvm th century a certain definite line of
change came to light, which was more or less confirmed by
a comparison of the changes, as far as they can be traced, in
i See Chapter VIII, §§ 1 and 2. 2 See Chapter IV § 1.
CHAP. I. PRONUNCIATION AND ITS CHANGES. 27
other languages. Hence the presumption was that from the
xiv th to the xvi th centuries, if the sounds had altered at all,
they would have altered in the same direction. But a second
principle was necessary to make the first available. This
was found in the fact that since writing was confined to a
comparatively small number of persons, the majority of those
who heard and enjoyed poetry would be ignorant of the
spelling of the words. Hence the rhymes to be appreciated
at all must have been rhymes to the ear, and not the modern,
monstrosity of rhymes to the eye. If we could have a manu
script in Chaucer's own handwriting, we should therefore
expect to find all the rhymes perfect. Hence we might
conclude that when two words rhymed together in one of
Chaucer's couplets, they also rhymed together in his pro
nunciation, and if they would not have rhymed together in
the xvi th century, one of them must have altered in the
definite line of change already discovered. In conformity
with these principles the whole of the rhymes in Chaucer's
Canterbury Tales as exhibited in the best available manu
script, together with those in all his other poems as edited
by Mr. Morris, and those in Gower's Cont'essio Amantis,
have been carefully examined, and a system of pronuncia
tion deduced for the xiv th century.1
Much uncertainty must necessarily prevail concerning the
pronunciation of English from 1400, the death of Chaucer, to
1530, the date of Palsgrave's French Grammar, as the
changes were numerous and rapid, both in language and
pronunciation. Similarly if we had lost the xvn th century
books on English pronunciation, it would have been impos
sible to restore it, from a knowledge only of the pronuncia
tions in the xvi th and xvm th centuries. But standing on
the secure ground of the xivth century we can, without
much doubt penetrate into still more remote regions, espe
cially with the help of Orrmin's orthography, which lands
us into Anglosaxon.
Before proceeding to the detailed investigation, it may be
convenient to present the main results in a tabular form.
This has been attempted in the merest outline, on the two
following pages. An explanation of the construction of the
table is added on p. 30.
1 For a detailed account of this investigation, see Chapter IV.
28
PRONUNCIATION AND ITS CHANGES.
CHAP. I.
Modern Spelling
Chaucer
XIV
Shaks]
Spenser
XVI
>ere -p
Hilton
Drj-den
xvn
ape
Goldsmith
XVIII
a short
a
a
•
•
a long
aa
aa
Ml
ee
ai, ay
ai
ai, aai
seaei, ee
eei, ee
au, aw
au
au, aau
AA
AA
e short
e
e
e
e
e long
ee
ee, ii
ee, ii
ii
M
ee, e
ee, e
ee, e
ii, e
M
ee
ii
ii
ii
«', *y
ai
ei, eei, ai
eei, ee
eei, ee, ii
eu, ew
eu, yy
yy» eu
in, eu
iu
gh
kh
kh, H'
H< -
- -
f, y short
f
f
f
f
f, y long
n
ei, ai
ai
ai
o short
0, U
o, u
A, 0, 9
o, a
o long
00
00
00
00
M
of, oy
00
ui
oo
oi, ui
00, AA
00, AA
AI, 01 ; 111, 81
01
00
oo
uu, u
uu, a
uu, a
ou, ow
uu, oou
ou, oou
au, oou
au, oo
« short
u ; f, e
u; f, e
u, a ; f , e
u,a; f,i
n long
yy
.
yy
yy, iu
iu
CHAP. I.
PRONUNCIATION AND ITS CHANGES.
29
Modern Spelling
Chaucer
XIV
Shaks
Spenser
XVI
jere p
Milton
Dryden
XVII
ope
Goldsmith
XVIII
hand
Hand
Hand
Hsend
naend
tale
taal-e
taal
tseael
teel
rain, way]
rain, wai
rain, waai
raesein, waeaei
reen, weei
saw, awe
sau, au
sau, aau
SAA, AA
SAA, AA
m
eg
eg
eg
eg
these, we
dheez, wee
dheez, wii
dheez, wii
dhiiz, wii
mean, head
meen, need
meen, ned
meen, ned
miin, ned
seen
seen
siin
siin
siin
obey, they,
obai1, dhai,
obei' dheei,
obeei1, dheei,
obee1, dheei1
vein, receive
vain, resaiv
vain,reseeiv
veen, reseev
veen, risiiv
few, stew
feu, styy
feu, styy
feu, stiu
fiu, stiu
night
nt£ht
m'Aht, nzn't
nin't, nait
nait
bit
b«t
bit
brt
bzt
bite
bt't'te
beit
bait
bait
holly, wonder
HoK, wun-der
Hol'f, wun-der
Hol't, wan'der
Hol't, wan-der
hope
Hoop
Hoop
Hoop
Hoop
soap, broad
soop, brood
soop, brood
soop, brAAd
soop, brAAd
joint, boil
dzhuint, buil
dzhoint, buil
dzhoint, buil ;
dzhaint, bail
dzhoint, boil
fool, blood
fool, blood
fuul, blud
fuul, blad
fuul, blad
now, know
nuu, knoou
nou, knoou
nau, noou
nau, noou
pull, but, busy,
bury
pul, but, btz't
ber-j
pul,but, bt'z'*,
beri
pul, bat, bt'z'j,
ber-t
pul, bat, btz'»,
ber-»
muse
myyz*e
myyz
myyz, miuz
miuz
30 PRONUNCIATION AND ITS CHANGES. CHAP. I.
Taking the principal modern combinations of vowels, and the
one consonant combination, gh, for which the pronunciation
of successive centuries have mainly differed, I have arranged
them in the first column of the preceding table. It must be
borne in mind that these spellings are modern, and in many
cases replace at present other spellings which were current
in the xivth to the xvith centuries. In the four next
columns I give in palaeotype, as explained in the introduc
tion, the pronunciations prevalent during the xiv th, xvi th,
xvn th, and xvm th centuries. For this rough and general
view of the subject there is no perceptible difference between
the xvm th and xix th centuries. It must not be supposed
that the pronunciation here indicated prevailed throughout
the centuries to which they are attributed. The xivth
century pronunciation refers only to the latter half of that
century. The xvith century is represented rather in its
former half and middle than in the latter part when it was
verging to the xvn th century pronunciation. The xvn th
century pronunciation represents the fully established pro
nunciation of the time in the middle and latter part of the
century. And the xvm th century pronunciations is that of
the latter part. Hence we may roughly term the pronuncia
tions exhibited those of Chaucer, Spenser, Dryden, and Gold
smith. Shakspere and Milton are transitional between
Spenser and Dryden, while Pope lies between Dryden and
Goldsmith. These names are therefore placed at the top of
the columns, and between the columns, as an assistance to
the reader. As single letters are more difficult to appreciate
than entire words, examples of each mode of speech are
given. The same combination of letters was not always
pronounced in the same way in all positions, even in the
xiv th century ; hence it is sometimes necessary to give two
sounds and two examples, and in this case the more usual
(not the older) sound is put first. In the latter part of the
xvi th, in the xvn th and later centuries, anomalies of pro
nunciation became more common, and nothing but detailed
lists of words, such as will be furnished hereafter, will serve
to explain them. The reader must therefore remember that
this table gives merely a general view to serve as a guide in
studying the subsequent details.
31
CHAPTER II.
AUTHORITIES FOR THE PRONUNCIATION OF ENGLISH DURING
THE SIXTEENTH, SEVENTEENTH, AND EIGHTEENTH CEN
TURIES.
§ 1. Sixteenth Century.
1530, 22 Henry VIII. Palsgrave, John.
Lesclarcisseraent de la Langue Francoyse ; compose par
maistre Jehan Palsgraue Angloys natyf de Londres,
et gradue de Paris, London, 4to.
19 folios unmarked, 473 folios numbered, the English in black
letter, the French in Roman characters. The book is written in
English although the title is French. It was reprinted by the
French Government, and edited by F. Genin, in 1852.
Palsgrave graduated at Cambridge as well as in Paris, and was
appointed French tutor to the princess Mary, sister of Henry YIII,
when a marriage was negociated between her and Louis XII of
France in 1514. He was made a royal chaplain, and on going to
live at Oxford in 1531, there took the degrees of M.A. and B.D.
He is supposed to have died in 1554. He must consequently have
spoken the educated southern and court dialect of the latter part
of the xv th, and the early part of the xvi th century.
This work contains a very elaborate account of French pronuncia
tion, frequently elucidated by reference to contemporary English
and Italian. The pronunciation of several English words is thus
incidentally established with more or less certainty.
To the French reprint is added a reprint of
An Introductorie for to lerne to rede, to pronounce and
to speke French trewly, compyled for the right high,
excellent and most vertuous lady The Lady Mary of
Englande, doughter to our most gracious soverayn
Lorde Kyng Henry the Eight.
By Giles du Guez or du Wes, with no author's name, except as
shewn by an initial acrostic, and no date, but apparently about
1532. The rules for pronunciation are few and insufficient, ex
tending over three quarto pages.
1545, 37 Henry VIII. Meigret, Loys.
Traite touchawt le commvn vsage de Tescritvre francoise,
faict par Loys Meigret, Lyonnois : auquel est debattu
32 AUTHORITIES SIXTEENTH CENTURY. CHAP. II. §1.
des faultes, & abus en la vsage, & ancienne puissance
des letres. Auecqpriuilege de la court. Paris, 12mo,
in Italics, pp. 128 unnumbered.
This little book incidentally enters into a discussion of the pro
nunciation of the French language, and thus renders Palsgrave's
English analogues more certain. Where Meigret differs from Pals
grave, it is difficult to decide whether Palsgrave is in fault through
•want of appreciation and English habits, or Meigret from being
a Lyonnese instead of a Parisian. See another work by Meigret
described under its date 1550. This little work is also remarkable
as having in some way suggested Hart's English work on Ortho
graphy, 1569, subsequently described. Hart says, translating his
phonetic spelling into modern English orthography: "You may
see by this little treatise I have been a traveller beyond the seas,
among vulgar tongues, of which that small knowledge I have, hath
been the cause of this mine entreprize. And therewithal the sight
of a treatise set forth in print at Paris, Anno 1545, by a worthy
man, well learned both in Greek and Latin, named Leuis Meigret
of Lyon, touching the abuse of the writing of the French tongue,
whose reasons and arguments I do here before partly use, as he did
Quintilian's, whom it appeared he had well studied. And I have
seen divers French books put forth in print in that his manner of
Orthography, of some well liked of, and received, and of others left
and repugned. But what good & notable thing can take a speedy
root, amongst a multitude, except the princes & governors, (by
the grace which God may give them) do favour & somewhat
countenance it."
1547, 38 Henry VI & 1 Edward VI. Salesbury, W.
A. Dictionary in Englyshe & Welshe London,
4to, black letter.
The complete title is given below, Chapter VIII, § 2, which
contains a transcript of the preliminary Welsh essay on English pro
nunciation, with a translation.
From Anthony a Wood's Athenae Oxonienses by Philip Bliss,
London, 1813, vol. i, p. 358, we learn that Salesbury was born of
an ancient family in Denbighshire, studied at Oxford, and was
entered at Thavies Inn, Holborn, London. In his latter days he
lived with Humph. Toy, a bookseller in St. Paul's Churchyard. He
translated the New Testament into Welsh, and obtained a patent
for printing it, from Queen Elizabeth, 1567. He wrote also other
works, see under 1567.
As a Welshman, Salesbury was of course liable to mispronounce
English, but he was so early removed to England, and had so long
an opportunity of studying the Southern English pronunciation to
which his treatises shew that he was fully alive, that any assertion
of his must carry great weight with it, however much opposed it
might be to theory. His pronunciation is evidently more modern
than Palsgrave's.
CHAP. II. § 1. AUTHORITIES SIXTEENTH CENTURY. 33
1550, 4 Edward YI ; 4 Henri II of France. Meigret, Loys.
Le trEtte de la GrammEre Fran9OEze fEt par Louis
MeigrEt, LionoEs. Paris, 4to of a folio shape,
This very curious French Grammar, (which is not noticed hy M.
Genin in' his introduction to Palsgrave, although it was so nearly
contemporary,) is entirely printed phonetically, apparently to carry
out the suggestions of Meigret' s little book already described, better
than he had done in a former work, which he alludes to thus :
"1'ecritture qe j'ey obsErue (combien q'Elle ne soEt pas du tout
selon qe reqeroEt la rigeur de la prononc,ia9ion) En la translation du
MEnteur de Ionian," (fo. 105.) His alphabet consists of the letters
"a, E ouuErt, e clos, i Latin, o ouuErt, ou clos, u, y GrEc de
mime puissance qe 1'i, b be, p pe, f ef, ph phi, u conso., c ca
Latin, k ca GrEc ou kappa, q qu, g ga ou gamma, ch cha aspire,
d de, t te, th the aspire, f, 9, s, es, z zEd, 9h c,he, 1 E!, L EL molle,
m im, n En, N En molle, r Er, i ji consonante, x, cs, ks, gs, ix,"
(fo. 155) where I have used E for an e with a tail like 9, i for an
1 with a short mark over it like i, and N for an n with the second
stroke produced and terminating in a backward hook, which re
sembles the letter c, and with a short mark over it like u. The
powers of these letters, taken in order, appear to have been, (a, E,
e, i, o, u, y, i; b, p, f, f, v, k, k, k, g, k, d, t, t, s, z, sh, 1, Ij,
m, n, nj, r, zh, ks, gz).
La Grammaire Fran9aise et les Grammairiens au XYI6 siecle, par
Ch.- L. Livet, Paris, 1859, gives an abstract of all Meigret's works
and of his controversies with G. des Autels, and J. Pelletier, from
which it appears that Meigret lived in Paris, and had been an
assiduous frequenter of the court of Fra^ois I, (p. 139). The dis
pute principally affects Meigret's E, e, (pp. 127, 132, 140), o, ou,
(p. 139), ai, (p. 130), ao, (p. 122), eu, (p. 130), and shews the transi
tional state of French pronunciation at the time. M. Livet's book
also contains notices of Jacques Dubois (Jacobi Sylvii Isagoge, 1531),
J. Pelletier (Dialogve de 1'orthografe et prononciacion franqoese, 1555,
a year after Meigret had been forced by his publisher to use the
ordinary orthography), Pierre Ramus ou de la Ramee (Grammaire,
1 ed. 1562, 2 ed. 1572, last 1587,) Jean Gamier (Institutio gallicae
linguae, 1558), Jeaen Pillot (Gallica3 linguae institutio, 1581), Abel
Mathieu (Devis de la langue fturujoyse, 1559), Robert Estienne
(Dictionnaire fran9.-lat., 1539, Traicte de la Gram. fran9. without
date), Henri Estienne (H. Stephani Hypomneses, 1582, Traicte de la
conformite, Deux Dialogues, without date, 1578?, Precellence, 1579),
Claude de Saint- Lien (Claudii a Sancto Vinculo de pronunciatione
ling. gall. 1580), Theodore de Beze (De Francicae linguae recta pro
nunciatione tractatus, Theod. Beza auct. 1584). If to these we add
Palsgrave & du Guez, neither of whom are abstracted by M. Livet,
we can trace the change of French pronunciation from the earlier to
the later part of the xvrth century, till it subsided into a form
practically the same as the present, by a course remarkably similar
to that pursued by the contemporary English pronunciation.
34 AUTHORITIES — SIXTEENTH CENTURY. CHAP. II. § 1.
1555, 3 Mary. Cheke, Sir John.
Joannis Cheki Angli de pronunciatione Graecae potissi-
mum linguae disputationes cum Stephano Yuintoniensi
Episcopo. Basle, 24mo.
In this work several illustrations of Greek sounds are drawn from
English words which are printed phonetically in Greek letters, to
give a conception of the author's theoretical pronunciation of Greek.
Adolph Mekerch of Bruges, in H. Stephanus's collection De vera
pronunciatione Graecae et Latinae Linguae, 1587, adopts in many
places the very expressions of Cheke, but changes his illustrative
words from English to Flemish, which he again prints phonetically
in Greek letters. In this way a comparison of English and Flemish
in the xvi th century is instituted. Cheke horn at Cambridge in
1514, moved in the best literary society, was secretary of state
1552, and died 1557.
1567, 10 Elizabeth. Salesbury, W.
A playne and familiar Introduction, teaching how to
pronounce the letters in the Brytishe tongue, now com
monly called Welsh .... London, 4to, English in
black letter, Welsh in Roman.
All the portions of this rare book which are useful for the present
investigation are reprinted, with illustrative notes, below, Chap.
VIII, § 1. See 1547, supra p. 32.
1568, 11 Elizabeth. Smith, Sir Thomas.
De recta et emendata lingvae anglicse scriptione, dia-
logus, Thoma Smitho Equestris ordinis Anglo authore.
Lutetiae. Ex officina Roberti Stephani Typographi Regij .
Paris, folio, 44 folios. Date of colophon, 13 Nov 1568.
A beautifully printed book in large Eoman letters with tables of
illustrative words printed according to a phonetic alphabet, without
the ordinary spelling, Smith's object being to improve the ortho
graphy not explain the pronunciation. The value of his 34 letters
in the order of his alphabetic table (fo. 41) is apparently as follows,
(a, aa, b, tsh, d, dh, e, ee, ii, f, v, g, dzh, H, i, ei, k, 1, m, n, o,
oo, p, k, r, s, z, sh, t, th, u, uu, yy, ks.)
Smith uses c for (tsh), which has occasioned many misprints, ¥>
for (dh), a letter like the Anglosaxon e with a diaeresis for (ii), an
inverted A or y for v, the Anglosaxon 5 for (dzh), a reflected z for
(sh), 6 for (th), v for (yy). The long vowels he has represented
by a diuresis, and as he considers (ei) to be the long of (*'), he prints it 'i.
Since then (ee) is e, and (ii) is a character almost identical in appear
ance, misprints occasionally occur. In all cases of phonetic writing
when diacritic accents are employed, misfortunes of this kind are fre
quent. Hence the importance of indicating length by reduplication,
as in palaeotype, or by some constant additional sign, as in Vis. Speech.
Sir Thomas Smith was born at Saffron Walden, Essex 1515,
was fellow of Queen's College, Cambridge 1531, public orator
CHAP. II. § 1. AUTHORITIES — SIXTEENTH CENTURY. 35
1536, provost of Eton, master of requests to Edward VI, secretary
of state 1548, privy councillor and assistant secretary of state 1571,
succeeded Burleigh, and died 1577. Hence his pronunciation must
be accepted as the most literary and courtly of a time somewhat
subsequent to Palsgrave's. He was not much acquainted with
French,1 or probably with any other living language, and conse
quently without the assistance of Salesbury great doubts would be
felt as to many of his pronunciations.
1569, 12 Elizabeth. Hart, John.
An Orthographic, conteyning the due order and reason,
howe to write or painte thimage of mannes voice, most
like to the life or nature. Composed by J. H. Chester,
Heralt. The contents whereof are next folowing. Sat
citosi (sic) sat bene. Anno. 1569. London, 12mo.
The first part in black letter, the latter part in italics with new
letters for (sh, dzh, tsh, dh, th, '!,) and a dot under a short vowel
sign to lengthen it. Eeprinted in lithography by I. Pitman, 1850,
the first part in the phonography or phonetic shorthand of that date,
the latter part in a longhand writing imitating the italic original.
The name John Hart is taken from the British Museum catalogue.
Dr. Gill calls him "e fecialibus vnus, qui eoruw more ex gradu
officii nomen sibi Chester assumpsit." He is cited as " Master
Chester" by Bullokar. It seems probable that he was a Welshman,
as he writes (uuld) for (would), that is, he did not pronounce (wuu)
as distinct from (uu).
This is a most disappointing book. The writer knew several
languages, as French, German, Italian, Spanish, and there is little
or no doubt as to the general value of his symbols, but in the words
of Dr. Gill, " sermonem nostrum characteribus suis non sequi sed
ducere meditabatur." He has in fact chosen a pronunciation then
coming in, heard by few, and distasteful to the old school. See
below, Chapter III, § 3, El, AI, and Chapter VIII, § 3. One of
the causes of the writing and publication of this work, was Hart's
acquaintance with Meigret's book of 1545, see above p. 31.
It appears that this book of Hart's was twenty years older than
its real date, which would bring it up to 1549, for he says (fo. 5J):
"The liuing doe knowe themselues no furthir bounde to this our
instant maner, than our predecessors were to the Saxon letters and
writing, which hath bene altered as the speach hath chaunged, much
1 This he informs us of in the be- been unintelligible most probably to
ginning of his treatise De recta et emen- Aristophanes, as it certainly would be
data, lingua Grceca prontmciatione to any modern Greek. "While he was
Epistola, 1568, in which also several in Paris he met with a modern Greek,
passages occur which are useful in the who was 'furious at the notion of in-
determination of English pronunciation. troducing " tarn vastos sonos et absonas
The two treatises are bound in one diphthongas in Graecam linguam," but
volume in the British Museum Library. the two disputants could not argue the
He introduced Erasmus's system of point, "quoniam ego Gallice parum ad-
Greek pronunciation, which is similar to modum, ille non ita multo plus, Latin£
that now used at Eton, and would have nihil callebat," fo. 5d.
36 AUTHORITIES — SIXTEENTH CENTURY. CHAP. II. § 1.
differing from that which was vsed with in these fiue hundreth, I
maye say within these two hundreth yeares : which I considered
of about .xx. yeares passed, and thought it worth my labour, if I
coulde finde the meane of remedie, of our present abuse. And so
framed a treatise therevpon, and would then it had bene published,
but I am the gladder it hath bene stayed vntill this time, wherein
so well a learned gentilman, in the Greeke & Latine tongues, &
trauailed in certain vulgares sir Thomas Smith knight, hath written
his minde, touching this matter, in hys booke of late set forth in Latin,
entituled, De recta Sf emendata lingua Anglicce scriptione. Where
of and of this my treatise the summe, effect, and ende is one.
Which is, to vse as many letters in our writing, as we doe voyces
or breathes in our speaking, and no more ; and neuer to abuse one
for another, and to write as we speake : which we must needes doe
if we will euer haue our writing perfite."
1570, 13 Elizabeth. Levins, Peter.
Manipulus Yocabulorura : a Rhyming Dictionary of the
English Language by Peter Levins. 4to.
This book has been reprinted by the Early English Text Society,
under the able editorship of Mr. Henry B. Wheatley. The words
are arranged according to their orthographies, so that very little assist
ance is given towards determining the pronunciation. The place of
the accent, however, is generally marked, but as evident errors are
committed, no reliance can be placed on it. It is chiefly valuable
for shewing the received orthography of that period, and as such
will be frequently cited.
1573, 16 Elizabeth. Baret, John.
An Alvearie or Triple Dictionarie, in Englishe, Latin
and French : very profitable for all such as be desirous
of any of these three languages London, fo.
The introductory remarks upon each letter afford some slight
assistance. John Baret, was fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge,
and graduated in 1554. His pronunciation belongs therefore to the
middle of the xvrth century, and to the educated class, but his
county is not known.
1580, 23 Elizabeth. Bullokar, William.
Bullokars Booke at large for the Amendment of Ortho
graphic for English speech : wherein, a most perfect
supplie is made, for the wantes and double sounde of
letters in the olde Orthographic, with Examples for the
same, with the easie conference and vse of both Ortho
graphies, to saue expences in Bookes for a time, vntill
this amendment grow to a generall vse, for the easie,
speedie, and perfect reading and writing of English,
(the speech not changed, as some vntruly and maliciously,
CHAP. II. $ 1. AUTHORITIES — SIXTEENTH CENTURY. 37
or at the least ignorantlie bio we abroade,) by the which
amendment the same Authour hath also framed a ruled
Grammar, to be imprinted heereafter, for the same
speech, to no small commoditie of the English Nation,
not only to come to easie, speedie, and perfect vse of
our owne language, but also to their easie, speedie, and
readie entrance into the secretes of other Languages, and
and easie and speedie pathway to all Straungers, to vse
our Language, heeretofore very hard vnto them, to no
small profite and credite to this our Nation, and stay
there vnto in the weightiest causes. There is also im
printed with this Orthographie a short Pamphlet for all
Learners, and a Primer agreeing to the same, and as
learners shall go forward therein, other necessarie Bookes
shall spedily be prouided with the same Orthographie.
Herevnto are also ioyned written Copies with the same
Orthographie. Giue God the praise, that teacheth
alwaies. When truth trieth, errour flieth. Seene and
- allowed according to order. Imprinted at London by
Henrie Denham 1580. London 4to.
In black letter, the new characters being also in black letter,
with divers points, hooks, etc., placed above and below. His
object was to keep as closely as possible to the existing orthography,
and mark the pronunciation, and also certain grammatical forms.
The union of these two objects serves greatly to complicate Ms
orthography, which perhaps no one but tbe inventor could have
used. He reckons 37 letters, most of which, have duplicate forms
"for help in eqiu'oc'y." These 37 letters in order apparently re
present tbe sounds (a, b, s, k, tsb, d, e, ii, f, dzh, g, H, i, 1, '1, m,
'm, n, 'n, o, uu, p, ~kw, r, s, sb, t, db, th, yy, u, v, w, wb, ks, J, z)
Bullokar admits seven diphthongs (ai, au, eei, eu, oi, oou, uui)
with m "seldom in use," and rather uncertain in his text. The
reduplicated forms and tbe fineness of tbe diacritical strokes, render
his book troublesome to tbe reader, but tbe above interpretation,
founded on Salesbury's information, furnishes a tolerably consistent
account of English pronunciation. There are some long vowels not
included in tbe scheme, namely (aa, ee, oo) which are generally
represented by accents, as a, e, i, y, 6, although ae is commonly em
ployed for (ee). In the case of long i and ou, be seems to bave re
tained the ancient sounds (n, uu,) in place of the (ei, ou) given by
Salesbury and Smith, see Chapter III, § 3, I, but he unfortunately
generally neglects to write the accent on i.
The pronunciation of Bullokar was certainly antiquated in some
particulars, agreeing better with Palsgrave's than with that of any
intermediate author, and preceding in a direction contrary to Hart's.
Hence Gill looked upon him with favour, and says, " liulolcerus vt
paucula mutavit, sic multa fideliter emendavit." Altogether the
38 AUTHORITIES — SIXTEENTH CENTURY. CHAP. II. § 1.
book is very valuable for determining the pronunciation of the early
part of the xnth century. See Chap. VIII, § 4.
1611, 9 James I. Cotgrave, Handle.
A Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues,
London imprinted by Adam Islip. Fo.
There is a short account of French pronunciation which inciden
tally gives some assistance towards the determination of English
sounds. Although this book appeared in the xvnth century, its
pronunciation belongs to the xvi th.
1611, 9 James I. FZorio, John.
Queen Anna's New "World of "Words, or Dictionarie
of the Italian and English tongues, collected, and newly
much augmented by J. F., Reader of the Italian vnto
the Soueraigne Maiestie of ANNA, crowned Queene of
England, Scotland and Ireland, &c., and one of the
Gentlemen of hir E-oyall Priuie Chamber. Whereunto
are added certaine necessarie rules and short obserua-
tions for the Italian tongue. Fo.
The first edition appeared in 1598, and of course had no reference
to James's queen, Anne of Denmark. It also did not contain any
account of the pronunciation. This second edition, in treating of
the Italian pronunciation of e, o, discriminates their open and
close sounds, which are marked throughout the book, and exempli
fies them, together with some of the consonants by a reference to
English, which, allowing for Italian errors, is useful.
1619 first ed., 1621, second ed., 17-19 James I, Gill, Alexander.
Logonomia Anglica. Qua gentis sermo facilius addiscitur
Conscripta ab Alexandra Gil, Paulinso Scholae magistro
primario. Secund6 edita, pau!6 correctior, sed ad vsum
communem accommodation Small 4to.
This second edition differs from the first mainly in the characters
employed ; there are, however, a few verbal differences in the text.
The pronunciation exhibited, with perhaps two exceptions, that of
long » and of au, was that of the middle of the xvith century,
although the book appears in the xvii th, for Dr. Gill evidently re
sisted all modern mincing and effeminacy of speech, as the new
fashions appeared to him. He was born in Lincolnshire, 1564, the
same year as Shakspere, became a student of Corpus Christi
College, Cambridge, and graduated in 1583, and was made head
master of St. Paul's school in 1608. He died 1635. Milton is
said to have been one of his pupils. Dr. Gill had several fancies
besides old pronunciations, thinking it best to speak "ut docti inter-
dum" — anglice, pedantically — rather than like the " indoctus,"
although if the latter followed his ears in phonetic spelling the doctor
says : " susque deque habeo."
CHAP. II. § 2. AUTHORITIES — SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 39
Dr. Gill's alphabet of 40 letters will be rendered in order by the
following palaeotypic symbols, — (a aa AA b tsh d dh e ee f v g dzh
H kh * ii ai k kw Imnqoooprsshtthyyuuuw wh ks J z).
Dr. Gill's book enters at great length on the subject of pronun
ciation, without, however sufficiently describing the sounds, and is
peculiarly valuable in giving numerous passages from Spenser and
the Psalms written phonetically. See below Chapter YIII, § 5.
1633, 9 Charles T. Butler, Charles.
The English Grammar, or the Institution of Letters
Syllables, and "Words in the English tongue. "Where-
unto is annexed an Index of Words Like and Unlike.
Oxford. 4to.
Printed phonetically with new characters for (ii, uu, dh, tsh, kh,
gh, ph, sh, wh) and a mark of prolongation. There is great dif
ficulty in determining the value of his vowel system. He was of
Magdalen, Oxford, an M.A. and a country clergyman. His pro
nunciation belongs to the end of the xvi th century, as he clearly
fights against many of the new pronunciations which were starting
up, and the true xvn th century pronunciation seems not to have
developed itself till the civil war had fairly begun. Butler pub
lished a work on the management and habits of bees, The Feminine
Monarchy or History of the Hees, Oxford, 1634, both in the ordinary
and in his phonetic character. These are the first English books
entirely printed phonetically, as only half of Hart's was so presented.
But Meigret's works were long anterior in French. See below
Chapter YIII, § 6.
§ 2. Seventeenth Century.
1640, 16 Charles I, Jonson, Ben.
The English Grammar. Made by Ben. Johnson. For
the benefit of all Strangers, out of his observation of
the English Language now spoken, and in use. Fo.
This was published two years after Jonson' s death, and the text
is known to have been altered from his MS. in some parts. Jonson's
pronunciation ought to have belonged to the xvith century, as he
was born 1574, only ten years after Shakspere, but he seems to
have inclined towards the xvn th century use.
1646, 22 Charles I. Gataker, Thomas.
De Diphthongis Bivocalibus, deqe Literarum qarundam
sono germano, natura genuina figura nova, idonea,
scriptura veteri veraqe. London, 24mo.
This is useful for a few diphthongs, but is not of much value
generally.
40
AUTHORITIES SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. CHAP. II. § 2.
1651, 3 Commonwealth. Willis, Thomas, of Thistlewood,
Middlesex.
Yestibulum Linguae Latinae. A Dictionarie for children
consisting of two parts : 1. English words of one syllable
alphabetically with the Latine Words annexed. 2. Words
of more syllables derived from the Latine words adjoined.
This first part consists of a vocabulary of more than 4000 mono
syllables, professedly arranged in order of rhyme, but with very
few exceptions arranged only according to the spelling. In some
of these exceptions we find real rhymes with differing spelling, but
on the other hand we have words classed together which do not
rhyme, so that there is by no means so much to be learned from it,
as was to be hoped. The following are the only rhymes which
are noticeable throughout the whole vocabulary. The initial syllable
in italics as -affe is that under which these words and others having
the same termination are arranged. It is to be understood that
only such words in each list are given in this extract as were in
some respect curious or irregular, and that all other monosyllables
having the prefixed termination are to be supplied by the reader.
-affe, laugh, chafe, safe, Eaphe
-aie, — -ay, treie, weigh, whay
-ain, reign
-air, heir, major
-ait, eight, height, sleight, straight
-arre, = -ar, far, tar, warre
-arfe, dwarfe, scarfe, wharfe
-arm, swarm, warm
-am, warn
-arp, warp
-art, heart, thwart
-ash, quash, wash
-aste, the waste medituttium
-atte, Wat, what
-atch, watch
draught, naught
fault, vault
-ea, keie, the, yea
-ead, head, knead, lead, plumbum
-earn, dream, phleagm, realm
-ear, blear, pear
-eas, ceas, greas, leas, peace
-eef, beef, brief, chief, grief, theef
-eeld, yeeld, field, shield
-end, friend
-ere, here, there, where
-ew, dew, due, few, glue, Jew, lieu,
rue, sew suere, sue, shew, shrew,
view, yew
-i = -ie = -y, eie, buy, by, high, my,
nigh, vie, skie, why, wry
-tie, guile, style
-ill, guilt
-imme = -im, hymne
-ime, climbe
-ine, signe
-irre, firre, myrrhe, sir
-iv, giv, liv, seiv
-o = -owe = -oe, bowe, blowe, crowe,
glowe, growe, knowe, lowe, mowe,
rowe, slowe, sowe, snowe, towe,
throwe
-oad, broad, goad, load
-oh, chough, cough, dough, though,
trough, rough, through
-owle = -oal = -ole, bowle crater,
jowle, powle tondere, prowl, rowle
rotula, sole, soul, scrowle schedula,
toll, towle sonus, trowle advolvere
-on = -onne, John
-one = -oan, bone, groan, Joan
-o, = -oe, to, toe, doe agere, woe pro-
care
-oom, loom, Rome, toomb
-oos, goose anser, loos, noos nodus
-oov, moov, move, proov, prove
-ord, cord, foord, horde, sword
-orce, hors equus
-ose, prose, rose, those, whose
-oath, oath, both, frothe, growth, loath,
mothe, slothe
-othe, bothe, cloathe
-ov, dov, glov, lov, shov
-ova, bough, bow, brow, cow, how, mow
fcenile, mow struere, now, plough,
prow, sow, thou, trow, vow
-ous, a hous
-ouse, to house
-urn = -umme, some, summe, thumb
-Mrs, burs emporium, curs, nurs, purs,
to purs reponere
-urst, burst, cnrst, worst
-me, bruise.
CHAP. II. § 2. AUTHORITIES SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 41
1653-1699, 1 Protectorate— 11 William "and Mary. Wallis,
John.
Joannis Wallisii Grammatica Lingvuae Anglicanae
Cvi praefigitur De Loqvela; sive de sonorum omnivm
loquelarivm formatione: Tractatvs Grammatico-Physi-
cvs. Editio Sexta. Accessit Epistola ad Thomara
Beverley ; de Mvtis Svrdisqve informandis. Londini,
excvdebat Gvil. Bowyer, prostant apvd A. Millar,
1765. First edition 1653, second 1664, sixth 1699, the
Oxford reprint of this edition 1765. The latest edition
shews no variation in pronunciation from the second.
"Wallis was born at Ashford in Kent 1616, and died in 1703.
In 1649 he was appointed Savilian Professor of Geometry at Oxford.
During the civil war he made himself useful to the parliamentary
party by decyphering letters in secret characters. His chief fame
rests on his mathematical powers.
The introductory treatise on sound is of great importance, and
establishes with much certainty the meaning of every symbol used.
He did not attempt an alphabet, and consequently did not write
out complete passages according to the pronunciation, which is
greatly to be regretted. This work is the chief authority for the
middle of the xvii th century.
1668, 9 Charles II. Wilkins, John.
An Essay towards a Real Character, And a Philosophical
Language. Folio.
"Wilkins was born in Northamptonshire 1614, and was therefore
older than Wallis, although his work was not published till much
later. His father was a goldsmith at Oxford. He graduated at
Oxford 1631, and was made warden of Wadham College, Oxford, in
1648, just before Wallis came to Oxford. The two must have been
well acquainted, and were among the original promoters of the
Royal Society. In 1668 he was made Bishop of Ripon. He died
1672.
In this curious work, there is a very good English treatise on
phonetics. He used a complete phonetic alphabet, and wrote the
Lords prayer and Creed in his character, reproduced in palaeotype,
below Chapter IX, § 1.
The alphabetical scheme on p. 358 of his work when translated
into palaeotype will read thus —
(k g qh q kh gh H a
t d nh n th dh Ih 1 rh r sh zh s z jh i e a A
p b mh m f v wh u o y)
The short sound of (o) is not recognized in English. Long vowels
are imperfectly represented by accents. Confusing, as so many have
done, (j w) with (i u) he writes (i-i i-u u-u u-i) for (ji Ju wu wi).
42 AUTHORITIES — SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. CHAP. II. § 2.
1668, 9 Charles II. Price, Owen.
English. Orthographic or The Art of right spelling, read-
ing, pronouncing, and writing all sorts of English Words. .
WHEREIN Such, as one can possibly mistake, are digested
in an Alphabetical Order, under their several, short, yet
plain Rules. ALSO some Rules for the points, and pro
nunciation, and the using of the great letters. TOGETHER
WITH The difference between words of like sound. All
which are so suited to every Capacitie, that he, who
studies this Art, according to the Directions in the
Epistle, may be speedily, and exactly grounded in the
whole Language. Oxford 4to. The author's name is
given on the authority of the British Museum copy in
which it is pencilled.
As interpreted by Wallis and Wilkins, this book is of great use
in discriminating the exact sounds of the different vowel digraphs
in the xvn th century, furnishing almost a pronouncing vocabulary
of the period. The author was probably a Welshman.
1669, 10 Charles II. Holder, William, D.D., F.R.S.
Elements of Speech, an Essay of Inquiry into the
natural production of Letters with an appendix concern
ing persons Deaf and Dumb. 8vo.
Reprinted by Isaac Pitman, 1865. Not a very important treatise for
our purpose, but useful in helping to fix some of the vowel sounds.
1677, 18 Charles II. Poole, Josua.
The English Parnassus : Or a Help to English Poesie.
Containing a Collection of all the Rhythming Mono
syllables, &c. 8vo.
"Not much, confidence can be placed on the classifications of words,
though they are not so purely orthographical as Willis's. Thus
base, bays, blaze, case, are made to rhyme ; calf, half, Ralph are
entered both under afe and alfe ; Alice, else, ails, balls, which cer
tainly never rbymed, are placed together ; similarly ant, aunt, pant,
vaunt, want ; words with ee and simple e are separated from words
with ea, so that the different uses of ea are not shown ; and so on.
The list seems to be rather one of allowable, than perfect rhymes,
and consequently is of little service.
1685, 1 James II. Cooper, C., A.M.
Grammatica Linguae Anglicanae. Percgrinis earn ad-
discendi cupidis pernecessaria, nee non Anglis praecipue
scholis, plurimum profuturu. COM Prcefatione & Indice, in
quibus, quid in hoc libello perficitur, videatur. London,
16mo.
The first 94 pages, out of the 200 which this book contains, are
devoted to a consideration of the sounds of speech, and peculiarities
CHAP. II. § 2. AUTHORITIES SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 43
of orthography and pronunciation, with long lists of words contain
ing the several vowel sounds, which render it of great use for the
determination of the pronunciation of the xvn th century. I am in
debted to Mr. J. Payne, of the Philological Society, for my acquaint
ance with this valuable work.
1688, 3 James II. Miege, Guy, gent.
The Great French. Dictionary. In Two parts. The
first French and English ; the second English and
French ; according to the Ancient and Modern Ortho
graphy. Fo. London.
There is much valuable information prefixed to each English
letter and digraph, concerning the customary pronunciation, written
in French.
1700, 12 William and Mary. Lane, A.
A Key to the Art of Letters ; or, English a Learned
Language, Full of Art, Elegancy and Variety. Being
an Essay to enable both Foreiners, and the English
Youth of either Sex, to speak and write the English
Tongue well and learnedly, according to the exactest
Rules of Grammer .... London, 24mo, pp. xxiv, 112.
A meagre treatise on Grammar by way of question and answer,
in which 16 pages are devoted to spelling. The vowels are six,
y being admitted and w excluded, although it is said that "we
usually sound w like the vowel u, and for the most part we
write it instead of u, in the middle and end of words, as in
Vowel, Law, Sow, etc.," and " when y begins a syllable, we sound
it as in the word yea, and then it is a real Consonant; every
where else it is a vowel, and is sounded like i ; and is always
written at the end of words instead of i, as in my, thy, &c." The
liquids are three, m being excluded "because a Mute before it can
not, without force, be sounded with it in the same Syllable with
the Vowel after it." This should imply that n can be so sounded,
and hence that k, g were pronounced in knot, gnat. The change of
U- before a vowel into (sh) is not recognized ; " we sound ti before
a Vowel, like si, as in the word Relation" The following assertion
and its justification are curious : " E Servile is of great use in the
English Tongue ; for by its help we can borrow the most significant
and useful Words from other Languages, to inrich our own ; and so
far disguise and transform them into good English, that others can
not lay claim to them as theirs ; as for Example, these Latin words,
Candela, Vinea, Linea, Brutum, Centrum, are made good English,
by the help of e Servile, thus ; a Candle, a Vine, a Line, a Brute,
a Centre. Q,. JVhat need is there to disguise words borrowed from
other Languages ? A. It is necessary to disguise Words borrowed
from other Languages, because no free People should have a Foreign
Face on their current Words, more than on their current coin, both
being Badges of Conquest or Slavery." The following is a curious
44 AUTHORITIES — SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. CHAP. II. § 2.
conceit: "E Subjunctive is written at the end of a word after a
single Consonant, to make the single Vowel before it long
E Subjunctive is really sounded with the single Vowel before the
Consonant, and so makes the Subjunctive or latter Vowel of a Diph
thong ; otherwise it could not make the Syllable long, as in the
words, Fire, more, pale, read, Fier, moer, pael" This leads us to
suppose that he said (foiar, mooar, peeal) ; the two former are com
mon, the last is adduced by Cooper (p. 42).
This author is cited by the Expert Orthographist (p. 46). In
the title he is called, " M.A. late Master of the Free-School of Leo-
minster in Herefordshire, now Teacher of a private School at Mile-
end-green near Stepney." There is a certificate at the back of the
title from the Masters of Merchant-Taylors, Charterhouse, Christ' s-
Hospital, and Westminster, in favour of the use of this book to "all
who desire to learn, pronounce, and write the English Tongue
exactly." It is, of course, dedicated to the young Duke of Glouces
ter, and is of extremely little use as regards pronunciation, but
belongs, like the following, to the xvnth century, whereas the
Expert Orthographist who cites it, belongs entirely to the xvm th
century.
1701, 13 "William and Mary. Jones, John, M.D.
Practical Phonography: or, the New Art of Rightly
Speling (sic) and Writing Words by the Sound thereof.
And of Rightly Sounding and Reading Words by the
Sight thereof. Applied to The English Tongue. De-
sign'd more especially for the Vse and Ease of the Duke
of Glocester, (sic). But that we are lamentably disap
pointed in our Joy and Hopes in him. By J. Jones,
M.D. You may read the Preface, where you have an
account of what the Book performs ; which ('tis hoped)
will not only answer Men' s Wishes, but exceed their
Imaginations ; that there could be such mighty Helps
contrived for Reading, Spelling, and Writing English,
rightly and neatly ; with, so much Ease. London. 4to.
The above title is transcribed from a copy I have in my posses
sion. The Duke of " Glocester" referred to, died 29th July, 1700,
aged 11. In the copy in the British Museum, dated 1704, of which
the whole text is identical with mine, the title runs thus —
"The New Art of Spelling. Design'd chiefly for Persons of
Maturity, teaching them how to spell and write Words by the
sound thereof, & to sound & read words by the sight thereof,
rightly neatly and fashionably. I. It will instruct any person
that can read & write to spell & write most languages that he
can speak & uses to read in a few hours by a general rule con
tained in two or three lines, & the use of a spelling alphabet,
which may be written on the 12th part of a sheet of paper to
carry about them. II. Short & easy directions whereby any
CHAP. II. § 2. AUTHORITIES — SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.
45
one may be taught to spell tolerably well in a few days, & in
half a year's time may be perfected in the art of true spelling.
III. A child or any person who can read or write may by the
help of this book learn to spell & write perfectly in a small
time. IV. Rules for foreigners by which they may sweeten
their language, & directions how to invent a universal one.
Applied to the English Tongue by J. Jones, M.D."
Notwithstanding the prolixity of the title it gives but a very
inadequate conception of the book, which is a sort of pronouncing
dictionary arranged under the simple sounds and their various re
presentations, in the form of a dialogue. Thus he asks "when is
the sound of a written aa, ah, ac, ad, ada, ac, ae, ag, agh, ah, aha,
ai, aia, aie, aig, aigh, al, alf, ana, ao, ap, ath, au, ave, aw, ay, ayo,
e, ea, ei, ena, exa, ey, ha, i, ia, ina, ioa, o, oa, ua, wa, wha?"
And to each of these questions he gives an answer, often containing
a long list of words, from which may be inferred, not always the
pronunciation generally received as best, but certainly the different
pronunciations which were more or less prevalent. This is in fact
the peculiar value of the book to those who seek to know how
people actually pronounced at the time when Dryden died (1700)
and Pope (b. 1688) was in his teens.
His single rule for spelling is as follows : — All Words which can '
le sounded several ways, must be written according to the hardest,
harshest, longest, and most unusual Sound. And the Spelling Alpha
bet, spoken of on his second title, runs thus : —
The easier and The harder
pleasanter and harsher
Sounds spoken Sounds written
A Spelling ALPHABET.
a
b
d
e
ee
g
m
ng
00
sh
t
V
u
z
somewhat like to
' e, o .
P •
t, th.
i, 0, U
e, i, o
c, ch
n
n
0, U .
ch, s
th .
f,P*,
a, e, i, o
(^ S .
•«
as in Clerk, Wagon
a
3
T3
>l(
1
a
b
d
e
ee
g>ge
m
ng
00
sh
t
V
u
z
as in Hatton, Murther
as in Girl, Fagot, injure
as in he, Shire, Women
as in Ink, sink
as in Face, Nephew
as in Evan, even, Sir, Son ...
as in Ease, cause
Then upon the principle of the grammarian
Visum est Grammaticse inetrieis lenire laborem Prseceptis,
he proceeds "for Memory's sake" to reduce the above to verse.
Afterwards come long explanations of the use of this alphabet in
teaching spelling, the last of which is, as he says, "more a Shift
than a Rule," and is simply this :
"When you are (notwithstanding all that is directed) in Doubt
of spelling a Word rightly, the last Shift will be to change the
46 AUTHORITIES — EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. CHAP. II. § 3-
Word or Expression, so as to preserve the Sense or Meaning ; as
suppose that you cannot, or are in Doubt of spelling the "Word
Affection, write Kindness, Love, Favour, &c. instead thereof;" ....
This was the " shift" employed in speaking hy the deafmute Dr.
Kitto, when he wished to use words that he knew well by sight
but had never heard during his youth before the accident which
made him stone deaf. — See Kitto' s Lost Senses.
This book closes the xvn th century and trenches on the xvm th,
because the Author was compelled by his plan to introduce all the
most altered forms of speech as well as the least unaltered.
§ 3. Eighteenth Century.
1704, 3 Anne. Anonymous.
The Expert Orthographist : Teaching To "Write True
English Exactly, By Rule, and not by Rote. According
to the Doctrine of Sounds. And By such Plain Ortho
graphical Tables, As Condescend to the Meanest Capa
city. The Like not Extant before. For the Use of
such Writing and Charity Schools which have not the
Benefit of the Latin Tongue. By a Schoolmaster, of
above Thirty Years Standing, in London. Persons of
Quality may be attended at their Habitations ; Boarding
Schools may be taught at convenient times. London :
Printed for, and Sold by the Author, at his House at
the Slue- Spikes in Spread-Eagle-Court in Grays-Inn-
Lane. Where it is also Carefully Taught.
This little book, 8vo, 112 pages, for a knowledge of which I
have been indebted to Mr. Payne of the Philological Society, is full
of tables, but does not enter with sufficient minuteness into the
"Doctrine of Sounds " (which is paraded in capital letters in the
title page) to render delicate points at all appreciable. The great
peculiarity of the work is, that though it bears date 1704 the same
year as that on Jones's second title page, it belongs exclusively to
the xvm th" century, and differs as much from Jones, as Hart from
Smith in the xvrth century. Thus Jones only allows eighteen
words containing ea to be pronounced with (ii), this author (whom
I shall call the Orthographist) gives a list of 255 such words, and
allows only four words in ea, to have the sound of (ee), viz. bear s.
and v., swear, tear v., wear. Again, Jones distinctly asserts that ei is
"never" pronounced (ii), the Orthographist gives ten words in
which ei is so spoken. These shew totally different systems of pro
nunciation. Dr. Jones was a physician, and hence we may better
trust his pronunciation than that of a visiting schoolmaster living in
a court turning out of Grays-Inn-Lane, who, attending " persons of
quality" would naturally adopt the thinnest pronunciation for fear
of being thought vulgar. The curious thing, however, is, that
though Dr. Jones endeavoured to collect, and did actually collect
CHAP. II. $ 3. AUTHORITIES — EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 47
a great variety of even ridiculous pronunciations, for the purpose of
assisting pronouncers of all kinds to spell, he seems to he entirely
unconscious of these sweeping innovations, which are valuable as
the foreshadows of coming events.
1710, 9 Anne. Anonymous.
A Short & easy Way for the Palatines to learn Eng
lish. Oder eine kurze Anleitung zur englischen
Sprache zum Nutz der armen Pfalzer, nebst angehang-
ten Englischen und Teutschen ABC. London, 8vo.
pp. 64 and 18.
A little tract in which the pronunciation of several words is ap-
proximatively given in German letters. The Upper Palatinate was
wasted by Louvois, general of Louis XIY. in 1688, and 5000 of the
distressed people for whom this tract was intended emigrated to
England in 1709.
1710, 9 Anne. Dyche, Thomas.
Guide to the English Tongue, London 12mo.
The pronunciation of nearly 200 words is imperfectly indicated
hy re-spelling them. E. Coote's English Schoolmaster 1673, which
is bound up in the same volume in the British Museum, and is often
referred to, contains no information on pronunciation. The four
teenth edition of Dyche's Guide, 1729, also in the British Museum,
contains a few alterations, and has been chiefly followed.
1713, 12 Anne. Anonymous.
A Grammar of the English Tongue. With the Arts of
Logick, Rhetorick, Poetry, &c. Sixth edition. 8vo.
There is no date throughout the book, but as it is dedicated to
the Queen, and as the example given for finding " the Moon's Age
at any time," refers to 1 Jan. 1713, it was probably published
about that time. The first part, consisting of 52 pages is devoted
to Spelling and Pronunciation. The latter agrees almost exactly
with that of the Expert Orthographist (1704), but in the notes and
especially from p. 43 to 52, there is a translation of many of Wallis's
observations on phonetics and on English pronunciation, generally
without acknowledgement, and evidently in happy ignorance of the
fact that they belonged to a diiferent stage of pronouncing English,
and in several cases directly contradicted the rules which the author
himself had previously given. It is a mere compilation, but cor
roborates other accounts of the xvm th century pronunciation.
1766, 7 George III. Buchanan, James.
Essay towards establishing a standard for an elegant
and uniform pronunciation of the English Language,
throughout the British Dominions, A Work entirely
new ; and whereby every one can be his own private
48 AUTHORITIES — EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. CHAP. II. § 3.
teacher. Designed for the Use of Schools, and of
Foreigners as well as Natives, especially such whose
Professions engage them to speak in Public. Extera
quid quaerat sua qui Yernacula nescit ? As practised
by the Most Learned & Polite Speakers. London, 8vo.
This almost amounts to a pronouncing dictionary, and like it,
aspires rather to lead than follow general usage. The pronunciation
it exhibits does not materially differ from that now heard, except
in admitting many usages as "learned and polite," which would
probably be considered much the contrary by modern Orthoepists.
The xvrn th century pronunciation is fully established in this work.
But allowances must be made for certain Scotticisms, which will be
more particularly pointed out in Chapter X, § 3.
1768, 9 George III. Franklin, Benjamin.
A Scheme for a New Alphabet & reformed mode of
Spelling, with Remarks & Examples concerning the
same, and an Enquiry into its Uses, in a correspondence
between Miss Stephenson & Dr. Franklin written in the
Characters of the Alphabet.
From the Complete "Works in Philosophy, Politics, & Morals of
the late Benjamin Franklin; now first collected and arranged, with
memoirs of his early life, written by himself, 3 vols, London 8vo.
Johnson, 1806. Vol. ii. p. 357.
The preceding works from the time of Wilkins, exactly 100 years
previously, have furnished us with no connected specimen of English
speech. They have generally contented themselves with giving
lists of words illustrating particular usages. By this means the
whole pronunciation of a word had to be collected from different
lists, and some parts of it remained doubtful. This is not the case
in Buchanan's book, because he gives the pronunciation of every
part of the word. But even then the isolated words do not seem to
convey the same idea as connected sentences. The paper of Dr.
Franklin therefore, is very acceptable, and will be printed at length
in Chapter X, § 2. Being the pronunciation of a man of 62, who
had passed his life among colonial English, it has necessarily rather
an old appearance, and, notwithstanding the actual date, must be
considered as belonging to the earlier part of the xvm th century.
1780, 21 George III. Sheridan, Thomas.
A General Dictionary of the English Language, One
main Object of which, is, to establish a plain and per
manent Standard of Pronunciation. To which is pre
fixed a Rhetorical Grammar. London, 4to.
This is the first of the modern army of pronouncing dictionaries,
and indicates a pronunciation which only differs in isolated instances
from that now in use. It is therefore unnecessary to pursue the
list further.
49
CHAPTER III.
ON THE PRONUNCIATION OF ENGLISH IN THE SIXTEENTH
CENTURY, AND ITS GRADUAL CHANGE DURING THE SEVEN
TEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES.
§ 1. Introduction.
THE authorities enumerated in the preceding chapter,
enable us to form a tolerably correct conception of the pro
nunciation of English during the xvi th century, and to note
the principal changes which it underwent in the xvn th and
xvmth centuries. It is the object of this chapter to shew
as precisely as possible — although of course far from as pre
cisely as desirable — what the pronunciation indicated for
each period really was. The results which have been given
by anticipation at the end of Chapter I, are arranged alpha
betically. But it will be far more convenient to adopt a
different order in the present chapter, and revert to the
alphabetical in a subsequent recapitulation. See Chapter VI.
The principal authorities described in the last chapter
will be better appreciated by arranging them chronologically
in connection with the names of the contemporary sovereigns
and the chief contemporary writers. Any statement can
thus be immediately referred to its proper political and
literary epoch.
It must be remembered that the authorities for a period
are necessarily somewhat more recent in date than the period
itself, for the account which an elderly man gives of pro
nunciation refers in general to that which he acquired as a
youth. It is in most instances safe to assume that a man's
system of pronunciation is fixed at twenty to twenty-five
years of age. The first ten years of his life are spent in
acquiring sounds from his nurse, his mother, and his family.
In the next ten, he is jostled with his schoolmates or work
mates, and he will probably adapt his mode of speech to his
environment. After the mental faculties have matured, the
acquired habits have become settled, and the environment
fixed at twenty to twenty-five, little change may be expected,
except under rare and peculiar circumstances. It is probable,
therefore, that each of the authorities on the next page, re
fers to a pronunciation prevalent twenty or thirty years
before the actual date.
50 PRONUNCIATION IN XVI -XVIII TH CENTURIES. CHAP. III. § 1.
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE OF AUTHORITIES.
DATH
OF
WORK
AUTHORITY.
WRITERS.
SOVEREIGNS.
For the XVIth Century.
1530
Palsgrave, London
Lord Surrey, 1516-46
1509 Hen. VIII
Tyndale's Bible, 1535
1545
Meigret, Lyons
Sydney 1544-86
1547
Salesbury, "Wales
Spenser 1553-98
1547Edw. VI.
1550
Meigret, Lyons
1555
Cheke, Cambridge
1558 Elizabeth
1567
Salesbury, Wales
Shakspere 1564-1616
1568
Smith, Essex
1569
Hart
1570
Levins
1573
Baret
Ben Jonson 1574-1638
1580
Bullokar
Massinger 1584-1640
Milton 1608-1674^
1603 James I
1611
Cotgrave
Authorized Version
1611
Florio, Italy
[1611
1621
Gill, Lincolnshire
Butler 1612-80
1625 Charles I
1633
Butler
1640
1646
Jonson, Westminster
Gataker
1651
1653
1668
1668
Willis, Middlesex
Wallis, Kent
Wilkins, Oxford
Price
1669
Holder
1685
1688
1701
Cooper
Miege, France
Jones, Wales
For the XVII th Century.
Dryden 1631-1700
Pope 1688-1744
1649 Common-
[wealth
1660 Charles II
1685 James II
1688 Wm. Ill
1702 Anne
1704
1710
1766
1768
1780
For the XVIII th Century.
Expert Orthographist
Dyche
Buchanan, Scotland
Franklin, U.S.
Sheridan, Ireland
S. Johnson 1709-84
Goldsmith 1728-74
1714 George I
1727 George II
1760 George III
CHAP. III. § 2. COMBINED SPEECH SOUNDS. 51
§ 2, Combined Speech Sounds.
It is a favourite, and occasionally convenient theory, to
suppose that there are three principal vowels (a, i, u), as
that there are three principal colours, or rather pigments,
blue, red, and yellow, whence the rest are formed by mixture.
Neither theory must be taken literally, or be supposed to
represent a fact in nature. Both partake of the same degree
of partial truth and complete error, as the still older theory
of the four elements. But as earth, water, air, fire, still re
present solids, liquids, gases and chemical action, so the (a,
i, u) represent the most open position of the mouth with
respect both to tongue and lips, and the two most closed
positions with respect to tongue and lips respectively through
which a vowel sound can be produced. A vowel sound is
properly a musical tone with a definite quality or timbre,1
and, to be distinctly heard and recognized, the position of the
vocal organs must be kept fixed for an appreciable duration
of time, the longest time being really a small fraction of a
second.2 But vocal sounds may be also heard through
changing positions. These are the " glides," a which are
naturally generated in passing from any position of the
organs of speech to any other, while the vocal ligaments of
the glottis continue to act. The best mechanical illustration
of this effect is obtained by sliding the finger down a violin
string, while the bow is kept in action. This glide is the
essence of all combination of vocal elements ; the cement, as
it were, which binds them into masses. In diphthongs, as
(ai, au), the action is most clear, and Mr. Melville Bell has
introduced a series of glide signs for exclusive use in diph
thongs. But the same action is audible in (pa, ka), the
glide commencing with the loosening of the contact, and
continuing until the full sound of (a) is produced. It is this
glide which alone gives sound and meaning to the (p, k).
In palaeotype the isolated letters all mark fixed positions,
whether initial or final, and their combination indicates the
glide occurring between them, in addition to their own value,
unless a comma (,) be interposed, which cuts out the glide,
and thus distinguishes the dissyllable (u,i) French ou'i, from
the monosyllable (ui) French oui, which again must be dis-
1 This is Sir Charles Wheatstone's deliberately three times, and rapidly,
theory, subsequently verified by Prof. four times in a second.
H. Helmholtz, Die Lehre yon den 3 This phonetic term was introduced
Tonempfindungen, 2nded. 1865, p. 163. and explained by myself, Universal
2 The word eat, although contain- Writing and Printing, 1856, p. 6, col.
ing a long vowel, can be pronounced ^woA English Phonetics, 1854, p. 8, §61.
52 COMBINED SPEECH SOUNDS. CHAP. III. § 2.
tinguished carefully from the monosyllable (wii), English we,
where the first element is a buzz and not a vowel. This
convention in notation will be strictly carried out and should
be carefully observed by the reader. As a necessary conse
quence (aa, nn, ss) represent prolonged (a, n, s), but (a,a,
n,n, s,s) repeated (a, n, s). The prolongation of consonantal
sounds may appear strange, but if unowned is compared with
unknown, or missile with missent, it will be readily perceived
that the (n, s) in the second of each pair is really prolonged,
thus (9n,oond* annoon*, imVi'l nu'ssent'), and that the ortho
graphy (an,noon', nus,sent') would not quite meet the latter
case, as there is no cessation of sounds, no ending of the one
(n, s) and beginning of the following. Again, in comparing
open opening ; stable stabling, schism schismatic (oopun oop'm'q ;
steeb'll steeb'Kq, s/z'mm szzmget^'k), the greater length of
sound of (n,l,m) in the first three words over that which it
has in the second three, will be apparent. Generally, how
ever, it is sufficient to mark (oop*n, steeb'l, s?'z'm), because
the effort to pronounce (n, 1, m) independently of any follow
ing vowel will necessarily lengthen the sound. But that
some attention to this difference is occasionally necessary, is
shown by such French words as stable, schisme, which French
orthoepists also mark (stabl, shizm), although their sound is
not at all (stabll, shizmm), but either (stabl', shizm') with the
faintest vowel murmur following, thus making (1, m) initial
and consequently shortening the sound, or (stablh, shizmh)
with an entire remission of the vocal murmur. In palaeotype
the distinction will often be made thus : English (steeb'l,
s/z'm), French (stabl', shizm'), so that ('1, 'm, 'n) = (ll,mm,nn).
The glide which connects two vocal elements has a ten
dency to draw those elements into nearer relation than they
would have had if pronounced apart ; that is, as in the course
of speech it is necessary to pass rapidly from one position of
the vocal organs to the other without intermitting the voice,
the two positions naturally draw nearer to each other. It
has long been observed that certain vowels affect certain
consonants. Thus, in Polish, it is laid down as a rule in
language, that " hard consonants when brought by inflection
or derivation before high vowels are changed into softer or
weak consonants."1
The other Sclavonic languages have similar rules. In the
Gaelic language there is also a division of vowels into broad
a, o, u, and small e, i — "leathan agus caol" — with the celebrated
rule which so singularly influences their orthography, " broad
1 J. Biernacki. Theoretisch-praktische Grammatik der polnischen Sprache,
CHAP. III. § 2. COMBINED SPEECH SOUNDS. 53
to broad and small to small, — leathan ri leathan, an 'us caol
ri caol."1 Of course, this rule only indicates a change of the
intermediate consonant in actual speech. In German we
find ach, loch with one sound of ch (kh), ich, dcht, euch, locher,
tucker with another (Ah), and auch, tuch with a third (kwh),
thus (akh, lokh ; iAh, eAht, oiAh, losAh'er, tyyAlrer ; aukwk,
tuukeflh) ; so that the Germans find a natural character in this
change. But no such change occurs in Dutch, or in Swiss
patois, which do not possess (A:h). Again, a modern Greek
informs me that (kh) is always replaced by (Ah) in his lan
guage, whatever be the adjacent vowel. This seems also to
have been the case in old Sanscrit, where (Ah) has given way
to (sh), just as most Englishmen hear a Saxon say (/r'ish-
im'shm'sht) for (ir iAh miA-h niAht) irr' ich mich nicht, (dwjsh)
for (durAh). The old Germans had also a feeling of attrac
tion in the vowel sounds in succeeding syllables, as zahn
zahne, fusz fusze, bock bo'cke, mann manner, (tsaan tsEE'ne, fuus
fyyse, bok bcek'e, man niEn'er) which the moderns have lost,
and which is simply unintelligible in the modern English
tooth teeth, foot feet, man men, (tuuth tiith, fut fiit, maen men).
The initial consonant is in European languages mostly
altered to suit the following vowel. We are familiar with
the change of sound of c in the first and second syllable of
cancel = (kaen'sel), and are accustomed to regard it as a me
chanical rule of pronunciation, whereas it is the modern pro
duct of an action of a vowel on the preceding consonant.
Sometimes the action takes place by an apparent desire to
avoid this attraction. Most persons are familiar with (Aaajd,
gasad.) for card, guard, but few are aware that it was through
a precisely similar change that Latin cantus, campus fell
through (Aant, Aamp) into French chant, champ, both being
now (shaA). In Arabic, however, the vowel yields to the
consonant, and it is chiefly by the " widening" of the follow
ing vowel, properly due to extending the pharynx for the
1837, p. 8. The division of vowels and consonants referred to is, in palaeotype
deep vowels (a, aA, e, o, wh, Y, u)
high vowels (e, BA, e, e, o, i, . .)
hard consonants (bd g H khk/mnpr s t bhz)
softer (.. dz dz zh sh ts rz sh ts .. zh)
weak (bj dzj zh sj sj tsh Ij mj nj pj .. sj tsj bjh zj)
Such a combination as (/i) is impossible to a Pole, who is compelled to say
either (£Y) or (Iji).
1 This is thus explained in J.Forbes' s same class, i.e. both broad or both
Double Grammar of English and Gae- small ; as cazleag, a girl, feor«g, a
lie, 1843, p. 28: "In words of more squirrel. It would be false orthogra-
than one syllable, the last vowel of phy to write words thus: caelag,
each preceding syllable, and the Jlrst feor-eag, cut-lag, Iwr-eag, cur-adh,
of each succeeding one must be of the barreadh."
54 COMBINED SPEECH SOUNDS. CHAP. III. $ 2.
pronunciation of the consonant, that an Englishman distin
guishes Arabic 1? ^o ^ k, whatever sounds Arabic scholars
may finally agree that the latter symbols represent, from
(t d s z).1 The rounding of the lips has often a similar effect
in English, as in war, wan, what, wash, squall, = (WAAJ, WAII
won, whAt whot, wAsh wosh, skwAAl).
A final consonant may yield to the vowel, or force the
vowel to consort with it. Both cases are common, the
French fait as derived from Latin factum shews both effects.2
In English, and also in French, (1, r, r, a) have had very
disturbing effects on the preceding vowel. But the greatest
changes ensue when two vowels come together, first as pure
diphthongs, and afterwards degenerating into a single derived
vowel sound. It is precisely because (1, i) are so vowel-like
in sound that they react so strongly on the preceding vowel.
Glides and mutual actions do not occur only between two
vowels or vowel and consonant, but are also frequent between
two consonants, and are. especially marked where one is a
mute (p t k), or sonant (b d g), and the other continuous. In
German the sound (ts) initial is a true diphthong, like (tsh)
initial in English. Many writers have considered (tsh, dzh)
initial to be simple sounds in English, while (tsh, dzh) final
as in watch, grudge, are generally recognized to be com
pounds. This is explained by a consideration of the nature
of a syllable.
When a number of pure vowels come together with glides
between them, it may so happen that there is a gradual
change from a close to an open, an open to a close, or a
close to an open and thence to another close position, as
in (ia, ai, iai), or (ua, au, uau), or (iau, uai), etc. In all
these cases the ear recognizes one undivided group (<rv\\a{3r))
or syllable. But if the transition be from open to close and
thence to open, as (aua, aia), the ear immediately recognizes
two groups or syllables, and the division between them is
felt to be the moment of the smallest opening of the vocal
organs, thus in (aua) the syllable does not divide before or
after (u), but during the pronunciation of the pure (u) as
held fixed without any precedent or subsequent glide from
or to the (a). There is in this case a decided interval between
the two glides. In attempting to make the separation of the
groups more evident, a speaker would either simply prolong
(u), thus (auua), or prolong it with a cessation of force in
1 See (t rti d d h * z) in the palaeo- forms seem to have been (fakt, fa£t,
typic alphabet. faiAt, fait, feet). The form (faifa) pro-
8 Omitting the last syllable, the bably originated the old spelling faict.
CHAP. III. § 2. COMBINED SPEECH SOUNDS. 55
the middle, which might be expressed by (au-ua), or would
absolutely pause and thus repeat the (u), as au,ua). In this
way orthographers, by separating the glides, arrive at the
conception of doubling the letter which indicates the smallest
opening. This, however, becomes more strongly marked
when the division of the two glides is a mere buzz, as (ava),
or sonant as (aba), or mute as (apa), for in these cases pro
longation being either difficult or impossible, the ortho-
grapher, trying to ascertain the letters, says (av,va, ab,ba,
ap,pa), and by thus separating the glides, actually alters the
whole character of the word. In the English and other
Teutonic languages real cases of prolonged medial consonants,
or really separated glides, are rare, not occurring except in
compound words or connected words, compare soappot, boot-
tree, bookcase, penknife, till late, till eight, Miss Smith, yes sir,
etc.1 Hence these nations readily adopted a system of
doubled consonants for those cases where the first glide was
unmistakeable ; that is, where the first vowel being short
and accented, it was difficult to leave out the glide and pro
nounce it independently of the vowel ; for example (a,ba) is
ir»ore difficult than (ab,a).2 The doubling of consonants came
finally to be considered the mark of a short accented vowel,
and is so consistently applied by Rapp,3 who, adopting the
usual German grammatical term, calls this effect a " sharpen
ing" (sch'drfung} of the vowel. But Orrmin had used the
same means of indicating short vowels even in unaccented
syllables, in the first attempt at a regular English ortho
graphy, and lays the greatest stress upon this mode of mark
ing short vowels.4
To continue the theory of the syllable. The separation
can be made, as we have seen, by a buzz, whisper, sonant, or
mute, as well as by a vowel, and several of these being inter
posed, the syllable divides on the least vocal or narrowest
aperture. Thus in watching (wAtshfq), the syllable divides
1 Many speakers say (pen-if ) for vowel as could be used at the begin-
(pen-naif), waiters are apt to fall into ning of a word,— except in the case of
(jesu) for (jes-sj), and few care to manifest compounds — to belong to the
distinguish Miss Smith from Miss Myth syllable containing that vowel, thus
(missmtth-, nris,mttlr). In such a discipline beging, he would divide d*»
common name no mistake is likely, but plm be,gtq). Such divisions are mere
would Miss Sterry be distinguished matters of practice, and are beside the
from Miss Terry, or Miss Stent from scientific investigation of the natural
Miss Tent, real names from the London division of words into groups of sounds.
Directory P 3 M. Eapp. Versuch einer Physiolo-
2 Mr. Melville Bell finds the division gie'der Sprache, 1836-1841.
(a,ba) quite as easy as (ab,a), and hence * See the passage from the Orrmu-
always considers so much of the con- lum quoted in Chapter V, § 2.
sonantal group which precedes any
56 COMBINED SPEECH SOUNDS. CHAP. III. § 2.
between the glide from (A) to (t), and the glide, in this case
non- vocal, from (t) to (sh). The orthographer dividing the
syllables then says (wAt,tsh«q), and hears first a (t) and then
his presumed simple sound (tsh) ; whence the orthography
tch, which never occurs initially. Between ch in chin, and
tch in watching, there is this difference, that in (tshm) there
is only the glide from (t) to (sh), but in (wAtshiq) there is
also the glide from (A) to (t). The palaeotypic orthography
(wAtsh?'q) implies all this, for to remove the last named glide
in the last word we must write (wA,tsh*q).
In (wAtsh) we have the same effect of the (t) with its
double glide, but as the second glide is entirely unvocal, the
ear does not recognize a distinct group, and hence receives
(wAtsh) as a single group or monosyllable. Indeed so little
is a final whisper accounted, that it is generally introduced
in English after final mutes, to give them the double glide
and make them more audible ; thus Wat ! would be uttered
(WAt* !) not (WAti) as we should be almost forced to write
if we wished to imply the absence of the ('). In the word
act (aekf) we have first a mute (k) with only a precedent
glide, so that the (t) would be inaudible without the (').
But to say (sekT) would be unpleasant and affectedly pe
dantic. This mode of overcoming a difficulty, which is so
common and natural in Teutonic nations, is unknown in the
Romanic or Semitic. The French say (akf), or in poetry
(akte), and are inclined even to (ak'f). The Italians assi
milate the (k) to the (t), and dividing the glides say (at,to).
The consequence is that consonants have more weight in
Romanic than in Teutonic tongues, and not only cannot so
many be pronounced in succession, but when two consonants
that cannot be pronounced as an initial combination follow a
vowel, they necessarily lengthen the syllable — not the vowel,
as grammarians erroneously assert.
The hisses are never felt to produce new groups, and hence
are added on with the greatest liberality before as well as
after close positions. Thus wrists, scrips, (rests, skrz'ps),
and in Polish szczkae (shtshkatsj), to hiccough, in which we
have a frequent combination (shtsh) containing one stop (t),
preceding the stop (k) with the same ease to a Pole, as the
simple (sh) before (t) and (p) in stehen, sprechen, (shtec,en,
shpre&h'en) presents to a German or Englishman, who are
unaware of the difficulties which such combinations offer
to Frenchmen and Italians, and to Arabs, whose easy sounds
are in turn a very shibboleth to Europeans.
The division of syllables to the eye is therefore a great
CHAP. III. § 2. COMBINED SPEECH SOUNDS. 57
difficulty, unless some mark be placed over or under the
letter of division, or unless this mark, placed for conveni
ence of printing before or after the letter of division, is to be
understood as merely pointing that letter out. Thus writing
the hyphen as usual for this purpose, (wA-tsluq) or (wat-sh/q)
might be used, but the latter is objectionable as it divides
a very close glide. In palaeotype it is not necessary to
divide syllables, and when they are divided in speech, the
consonants are really doubled, as already mentioned, thus
(wAtjtsheq). When the accent mark is written in palaeotype
it is generally placed where it is convenient to the printer or
writer, but as it forms a break to the eye it should not be
interposed between close glides, so that either (wA'tsl^q) or
(wAtsh'eq) is preferable to (wAt'sheq).
Unaccented short vowels do not generally glide on to the
following consonant ; but this follows them legato (smoothly)
and not staccato (abruptly), to use musical terms. Thus in
event, society, (i,vent', so,s8r,e,t«) we have in English no glides
—although it is seldom necessary to indicate their absence
as above. On the other hand, the absence of marked accent
in French makes the glide distinct, as in evenement, socitte
(even'maA, sosi,ete). Grammarians, as usual, do not recog
nize these distinctions.
A short accented vowel is in English always followed by a
consonant on to which it glides, almost before it begins to be
heard ; whereas a long accented vowel can be distinctly
heard before the glide to the consonant. Consequently the
glide with us affects the short more than the long vowel.
One result of this is that English long and short accented
vowels do not form precise pairs. Thus peat pit, gate get,
father gather, sought sot, pool pull = (piit p^t, geet get, faadh'j
gaedhu, sAAt sot, puul pwl). The distinction is here made
clear to the eye. The vowel (00} does not occur as a short
vowel in closed syllables in recognised English, but hole whole
are not unfrequently distinguished as (nool, nol). The long
vowels (ee, 00} are also very frequently pronounced (ee\, oou)
or (ee'j, oo'w) with a faintly indicated (i, u), following them
with the utmost rapidity just as the sound is expiring. It
is only before the letter r (j) that this effect is generally
avoided, and then the vowel sounds are changed, thus more,
Mary, door, glory are properly (meej, Mee.rn, dooJ, gloo-rrO,
although (moo'j, ~M.ee'}Ti, doo'j, gloo''ri) and even (Mee'ri,
gloo'ri) are sometimes heard. This diversity of long and short
vowels, similar to that which probably prevailed in Greece
when the distinctions rj e, w o were introduced, while no written
58 COMBINED SPEECH SOUNDS. CHAP. III. § 2.
difference was made between a t v long and short, serves
to mark the difference between syllables with long and short
vowels very clearly. If a foreigner neglects the distinction we,
in the ignorance of our ears, often accuse him of lengthening
the vowel, thus we write his pity (pit'i) as peetee, confounding
it with (pii'tii), and we make a Scotchman speak of his meenis-
terr and his book (mirmste.r, buuk) when he only says
(min'/ste.r, buk) in place of our (mm'tsti, bwk). Most of the
old English writers thought that the vowel sounds in bite bit
formed a pair, and we shall find Sir T. Smith completely
puzzled with the English ee (ii) of which he knew no short
sound. In languages like the Italian, where the short and
long vowels exist in perfect pairs (ii i, ee e, EE E, aa a, oo o,
uuh tih, uu u) the distinction of long and short vowel is not
much perceived, except before separated glides or doubled
consonants, as they are termed, and consequently no necessity
for indicating them orthographically has been felt. In
Italian also, final short accented vowels occur unprotected by
a following consonant, as cittd amd do (tshit,ta' amo* tsho1)
which however take a doubled consonant when followed by
an enclitic syllable as amovvi (amov,vi).
These different usages are important to be allowed for,
when we derive the pronunciation of any language through
the observations of one who is not a native. He necessarily
hears the sounds incorrectly and imitates them at first, if not
always, with more or less reference to those with which he
is familiar. Those Englishmen who hear a Scot or German
say (man, man), hear the words as either (maen) or (mon),
sounds which being unfamiliar to the Scot and German are
liable to sound in their ears as (mEn, mon).1 It is this dif
ficulty in appreciating foreign sounds which renders the use
of any universal system of writing so difficult. Yet indistinct
and imperfect as a foreigner's accounts must necessarily be,
it is almost entirely by their means that we are able to
arrive at a conception of the old sounds of our language. It
1 An amusing instance of the diffi- intended to mean (bakhshiish-), itself
culty of hearing foreign sounds is an error for (bakrhshiish'). This letter
quoted in Max Muller's Lectures on (krh) 7^ ^ almost in variably con-
the Science of Language, 2nd series, founded with (k) by Englishmen.
1864, p. 169, from Marsh's Lectures, Similarly, if an Englishman asks a
and taken by him from " Constantino- Saxon to repeat after him / had a hat
pie and its Environs, by an American on my head, instead of (ai naed 9 nset
long resident" New York, 1835, ii. 161. on mai ned) he will probably obtain (ai
The writer is certain that he spells at HEt a HEt on mai HEt), where the three
least one word correctly, for it had English unusual sounds (med met Hed)
been so impressed on his mind ; this are reduced to the one common Ger-
word is bactshtasch ! letters which man (HEt) =hatf.
ought to mean (bsektshtsesh), but were
CHAP. III. §3. A — XVI TH CENTURY. 59
is the foreigner who generally wants to have the sounds
explained, and we find the writers of pronouncing diction
aries of English to be mainly Welsh, Scotch, Irish, American,
French, and German. Those early English writers who
gave an account of our pronunciation had not studied the
nature of spoken sounds sufficiently to refer them to any fixed
positional scale, such as we now possess in Visible Speech.
Hence they illustrated them as they best could by reference
to other tongues ; frequently indeed by Latin and Hebrew,
which being very differently pronounced in different countries
gave but an indifferent clue. It is only by making allow
ances for old habits, that we can hope to arrive at an ap
proximate conception of the sounds they had in their mind.1
It is not therefore to be expected that we can assign the
older pronunciation of our language with anything like the
minute accuracy with which the modern pronunciation of
English can be indicated by means of Palaeotype and Visible
Speech. We can, however, approximate to the sounds so
nearly that one who thus pronounced them would appear to
utter familiar words in perhaps rather a singular manner, but
not so strangely by far as a foreigner's attempts at modern
English, or as the modern English would have sounded in
the ears of our ancestors.2
§ 3. The Vowels.
A — xvi TH CENTURY, •
1530. PALSGRAVE says: "The soundyng of a, whiche is most
generally vsed through out the frenche tonge, is suche as we vse
with vs, where the best englysshe is spoken, whiche is lyke as the
Italians sounde a, or they with vs, that pronounce the latine tonge
aryght."
The Italians at present always say (a), and never (a). The
French at present generally say (a) but sometimes (a). The
reference to Latin, as pronounced "aryght" ought to imply
the existence of another English pronunciation in common
use, which was not (a). This wrong pronunciation we have
no means of eliciting. Then again the English pronuncia
tion referred to is a theoretical standard, " where the best
1 The key- words in Visible Speech, who saw them would have read (wan
p. 94, are pronounced differently by Mr. tatsh 9V nwtsha), sounds which would
Melville Bell and myself, (p. 25, 'n. 1.) have probably been unintelligible to
2 While writing this I saw the their author (Shakspere, T. & C. iii, 3,
words " One touch of nature," pla- 175), who would have certainly under-
carded on the streets of London, as stood (oon tutsh ov naa-tyyr), strange
the name of a drama. Most of those as this may now seem to our ears.
60 A — XVI TH CENTURY. CHAP. III. § 3.
englysshe is spoken," implying that there was another pro
nunciation which Palsgrave did not approve of. The only clear
result we obtain is negative, — the long sound was certainly
not that now in use in England, " where the best englysshe
is spoken," that is not (ee, ee, eei). But could we trust Pals
grave to have heard the difference between (se, a, a), or if he
had heard it, to have thought it worth noting ? In the next
century at least Wallis heard the French a as (A), and we
know that even at the beginning of tfce present century the
French emigres heard the English a in all as their a, and
gave that as the French sound in their Grammars. Walker
gives (iiklAA') as the pronunciation of eclat, though Smart
writes (eeklaa'), the Frenchmen Feline1 and Tarver giving
(ekla).
The sound (a) is more marked and was probably more
ancient than the finer sound (a), for which the tongue has to
be raised from a " low back" to a " mid back" position.1 It
is very possible that the French may have used (a) and have
subsequently refined it into (a). It is very probable that
the Anglosaxons used (#), as the present Germanic nations,
and the Scotch, have still a great tendency so to do. Perhaps
one of the sounds (a, ah, A) was the faulty pronunciation of
the Latin a, to which Palsgrave objected. Either (a) or (A)
is still used in Scotch Latin. It is not likely that at so early
a period the very thin (se), — a sound which Englishmen from
historical tradition connect with (a), but which foreigners
consulting their ears, refer to (e, E) — was recognized as the
use of those who spoke English best. It seems safest to con
clude that Palsgrave, living in the latter part of the xv th
and early part of the xvith century, recognized (aa) long
and (a) short as the best pronunciation of English a, and
that he would at any rate have accepted that pronunciation.
This view is confirmed by Gilles du Guez's account of French
pronunciation, probably printed in 1532, and reprinted at
the end of the French reprint of Palsgrave. He says : " Ye
1 "Walker's Pronouncing Dictionary, ciples of the French pronunciation,
and Smart's Walker Remodelled, are developed in a short treatise by J. C.
well known. Adrien Feline, Diction- Tarver, French Master, Eton, London,
naire de la pronunciation de la (Longman) 1847, C. G. Jobert's Collo-
langue Franfaise, indiquee au moyen quial French, London, (Whittaker)
de caracteres phonetiques prec6de d'un 1854, and Theriafs Le Phonographe
memoire sur la reforme de 1' alphabet. ou la Prononciation Franchise rendue
Paris, 1851. This and Tardy' s Expla- facile a tous les Strangers, Paris, (chez
natory pronouncing dictionary of the les auteurs, rue de 1'Ouest, 11,)1857,
French language in French and Eng- are the best guides to modern French
lish, wherein the exact sound and ar- pronunciation that I have seen,
ticulation of every syllable are dis- 2 These technical terms are explained
tinctly marked, according to the prin- in the introduction p. 13.
CHAP. III. § 3. A — XVI TH CENTURY. 61
shal pronounce your a as wyde open mouthed as ye can,"
which ought to make French a •=. (a) • " your e, as ye do in
latyn, almost as brode as ye pronounce your a in englysshe."
This makes French e — (E), and proves that English a was
not (ae), because Grilles du Guez, as a Frenchman, would not
have distinguished (E, ae). Neither du Guez nor Palsgrave
separate the close from the open French e (e, E) which
Meigret has found necessary to distinguish by two signs.
Gilles du Guez was French master to Henry VIII. and his
daughter, afterwards Mary I.
1567. SALESBURY says of the Welsh sound of a that " it
hath the true pronunciation of a in Latin," meaning of course
his pronunciation of that letter, and that it is never sounded
" so fully in the mouth as the Germaynes sound it in this
word wagen" He also distinguishes it clearly from (a) with
a following (u) or (i). This distinction, hereafter considered,
leads me to suppose that his "Welsh a was neither (a) nor
(93), and consequently that it was then true (a). The con
clusion is not very safe, because certainly, in the next century,
"Wallis makes the Welch a very " thin," that is closer than
(a), and probably (33), a sound said to be often heard in
Wales to this day.1
1547. Salesbury heard no difference between the English
and Welsh a, whether long or short. He says : —
" A in English is of the same sound as a in "Welsh, as is evident
in these words of English ALE, aal, cervisia, PALE, petal, SAIE, sal."
It is not usual in Welsh orthography to distinguish the
long and short vowels,, although Grammarians say that
the former have an acute accent mark. In his account
of English pronunciation, Salesbury does not always dis
criminate the long vowel, though, as here, he occasionally
doubles the vowel sign to represent length, and doubles
the consonant sign to imply the brevity of the preceding
vowel. We must not suppose, however, that where he has
neglected to double either, the sound was necessarily
either long or short. No doubt sale was (saal), if ale, pale
were (aal, paal). Again he writes narnv and sparw for
narrowe, sparroive, although no doubt the consonant was not
1 During a short residence in An- monly heard in Monmouthshire, just
glesea about ten years ago, I did not hordering on those Western English
recognize (ae) as in general use in counties where (ae) prevails. A gentle-
Welsh, although I was familiar with man from Cardigan when asked to
the sound, both long and short, from name the first letter in the Welsh al-
having resided two years in Bath, phabet, naturally called it (sese), though
where (aeaj) is the regular sound of a three other Welsh gentlemen present
long, as (Bseaeth, kaeaead). I have at the same time said (aa).
since been informed that it is com-
62
A — XVI TH CENTURY.
CHAP. III. § 3.
really doubled in either and the vowel was short in both.
Numerous examples of such carelessness occur in the short
list of words with which Salesbury has favoured us.1
SALESBUEY'S EXAMPLES OF A.
OLD SPELLING.
MEANING.
WELSH LETTERS.
PALAEOTYPE.
ale
cervisia
aal
aal
pale
sale
paal
sal
paal
saal
babe
infans
baab
baab
face
fades
ffas
faas
gracyouse
able
.comis
grasiws
abl
graa-si,us
aa-b'l
sable
sabl
saa'b'l
bake
galaunt
plage
have
lady
coquere panem
pestis
accipere
domina
baak
galawnt
plaag
haf
ladi
baak
gal'aunt
plaag
naav
laa'di
papyr
mase
sbappe
stupor
forma
papyr
maas
ssiapp
paa'pzr
maaz
shaap
ape
simia
ap
aap
narrowe
angustus
narrw
naru
span-owe
laddre
passer
scala
sparw
lad-dr
sparu
lad'er
bladd'
vesica
blad-der
blad'er
nagge
pappe
mannus
mamma vel
infantium cibus
nag
papp
nag
pap
quarter
hand
quarta pars
una manus
kwarter
hande
kwarter
Hand
handes
duae v.plures
hands
mmclz
manus
Thomas
tomas
tonras
flaxe
linum
fflacs
flaks
axe
securis
ags
aks
man
man
man
that
ddat
dbat
kappe
pila
cap
kap
Agnus
angnus
aq'nus
1 A complete alphabetical list of all
these words will be found in Chapter
VIII, § 2, at the close of the trans
lation of his tract.
CHAP. III. § 3. A — XVI TH CENTURY. 63
The preceding are all Salesbury's words containing a, in
his English spelling, Welsh transcription, and my palaeo-
typic translation of the last. The meaning is given in
Latin where he has given it in "Welsh, but not otherwise.
The long a, so far as I can conjecture from other sources,
is placed first. Words with the combinations al, an, ash,
etc., which will be considered hereafter, are omitted.
This long list of words in which the long and the short
sound of a is represented by the same letter, occasionally
doubled for the long sound, is conclusive in shewing that
long a and short a were to Salesbury's ears, sounds differing
only in duration. And as there could be no reasonable doubt
that short a was then, as it still is generally in the provinces,
and is admitted to be by some of our orthoepists in a great
number of words,1 the true Italian (a), so we are led to con-
conclude that the long a was also the true Italian (aa), to
Salesbury.
1568. Sin T. SMITH says : " A igitur Latinum Angli habent tarn
breue quam kwgum," and after giving some examples, adds : " et
alia sexcenta, vbi nullius literarum somis auditur in lingua nostrati
nisi a vocalis Romanae longae breuisque."
This ought to be decisive, but unfortunately we shall find
that Smith considered the Latin i long to be the English *
long, that is (ei) according to Salesbury, and hence he might
have considered the Latin a long to be (ee) as in England to
this day. Hence it is only by comparison with Salesbury
and others that we can interpret his examples thus : —
"A breuis (man) homo, (far) longe, (nat) petaso aut galerus, (mar)
corrumpere, (pas) superare, (bar) vectis, (bak) dorsum.
"A longa (maan) juba equi, (faarwel) vale bene, (naat) odisse,
(maar) equa, (paas) passus, (baar) nudus, (baak) in furno coquere."
The words (man, baak) being given in Salesbury interpret
all the rest. Smith does not give the ordinary spelling, but
always adds the Latin signification.
1569. HAUT, in describing the "due and auncient soundes" of the
five vowels, says of A, "the first, with wyde opening the mouth,
as when a man yauneth," and he identifies it with the German,
Italian, French, Spanish, and Welsh a.
This identification has the misfortune of being too wide
and again leaving us in doubt as to (a, a, se). But (aa, a)
seems the most probable. Still Gill's censure of Hart, which
we shall find justified for ai, would make us doubtful of a,
were not Hart confirmed by Palsgrave and Salesbury.
1 Those of which staff, bath, basic, demand, are types. Other orthoepists, how
ever, prefer (ah) in these words.
64 A — XVI TH CENTURY. CHAP. III. § 3.
1580. BTJLLOXAE says, "that there be eight vowels of differing
sounds in Inglish speech : may appeere by these wordes following,
wherein are eight notes in voice differing one from another as diuers
notes in musicke."
The words are given in his phonetic orthography and are
arranged in this order, " to lack, to leak, a leek, to lick, a
lock, to look, luck, Luke," which, for reasons which will
appear hereafter, I believe are meant for (tu lak, tu leek,
a liik, tu Itk, a lok, tu luuk, Ink, Lyyk). The long a, the
short e, and the long i, all of which Bullokar uses, are not
noted in this list. Bullokar's sign for (ii) is a modification
of (e), and hence there is no security that he* should have
considered (aa) to be the long of (a), although he so notes
it. Perhaps his observation that a b dfk are the only "per
fectly perfect " letters, that is, used according to their alpha
betic names on all occasions, is meant to imply that long a
is the sound of short a produced.
1621. Gill says, "In e ct o, duplicatis, sonus a proprio aliquantu-
lum distat ; vt in GEIST laqueus,1 et GBEENE viridis, sonus vnus est,
sed in voce priori correptus, in altera longus. Sic in BUCKE hie dama,
et BOOKE liber : neque in his vlla soni differentia est, prater illam
quae in quantitate percipitur."
As then he has a proper feeling for vowel pairs, we may
feel sure that, when he says —
"A, est tennis, aut lata : tenuis, ant brevis est vt in (taloou)
TALLOWE sebum, aut deducta, ut in (taal) TALE fabula aut com-
putus : lata, vt in (tAAl) TALLE procerus — "
the two first sounds really only differ in length, but the last
differs in quality. We cannot, however, feel sure that the
two first sounds were (a, aa) as written above. In fact, the
sounds (ae, aeae) must have begun to be prevalent at the time
Gill wrote, and it is only because he decidedly opposed in
novations that I consider he really pronounced (a, aa) as was
probably customary in the days of his youth.2
1633. BUTLER (translating his phonetic spelling) says : "A is in
English, as in all other languages, the first vowel, and the first
letter of the Alphabet ; the which, like i and u, hath two sounds,
one when it is short, an other when long, as in man and mane, hat
and hate."
1 In Levins, 1670, we hare "Grinne, Pet. Why there's a wench: Come on,
pedica," on which Mr. Wheatley cites and kisse mee Kate.
Cotgrave, " Lags, a snare, gum or Luc. Well go thy waies olde Lad for
grinn." thou shalt ha't.
2 Shakspere's rhyme at the close of indicates the pronunciation (kaat,
Taming tfte Shrew, according to the naa-t).
folio 1623,—
CHAP. III. § 3. A — XVII TH CENTURY. 65
I cannot find any confirmation of this even in later writers,
until the time of Cooper, 1685, who admits a double use of a
long, pairing can cast, ken cane, as will be presently con
sidered. What Butler's pair was, whether (aeae, a) or (aa, se)
I cannot guess. But as his book was published about the
time when a began to change from (a) to (SB), he probably
did not adopt either of the true pairs (aa, a) or (aeae, 93).
The effect of the L, N, Nge, Sh upon a preceding A,
changing it to (au, ai) or (AA, ee) will be most conveniently
considered under Au, Ai and the above consonants. Omit
ting these from consideration, the best conclusion I have
been able to draw from a consideration of the preceding
authorities after repeated examination of all their passages
bearing even remotely on the subject, is that —
A long and A short during the xvi th century had in
general the sounds of (aa, a) ; but (aa, a) may have been
frequent at the beginning and (a'ah, ah) towards the
close of that period.
A — xvii TH CENTURY.
1640. BEN JONSON says: "A, with us, in most words is pro
nounced lesse, then the French d, as in, art. act. apple, ancient. But,
when it comes before I. in the end of a syllable, it obtaineth the full
French sound, and is utter'd with the mouth, and throat wide
open'd, the tongue bent backe from the teeth, as in al. smal. gal.
fal. tal. caL"
The description of French d would answer for either (a)
or (A). Although the sound had perhaps not broadened more
than to («) during Jonson's lifetime, it would not be safe to
assume any other sound than (A) for Ben Jonson's concep
tion of the French sound, which must have been opener than
the English. The precise value of the latter, however, is not
fixed; but as Jonson was born in 1574, his pronunciation was
probably that of the close of the xvi th century, and he there
fore perhaps retained (aa, a).
1653-1699. WALLIS is the great authority for the fully
developed pronunciation of the xvii th century. He recog
nizes nine vowels, being, according to my interpretation,
three guttural (A, ce, a), three palatal (93, e, i), and three
labial (o, u, y), so that the sounds of (a, a) are both lost. The
sound (A) occurs only in the combinations al, an, aw, under
which it will be considered. Of the palatal vowels he says :
" Vocales Palatinae in Palato formantur, aere scilicet inter palati
et linguae medium moderate compresso : Dum nempe concavum
66 A — XVII TH CENTURY. CHAP. III. § 3.
palati, elevato linguae medio, minus redditur, quam in gutturalibus
proferendis. Suntque in triplici gradu, prout concavum magis
minusve contrahitur. Quae quidem diversitas duobus modis fieri
potest ; vel fauces contrahendo, manente lingua in eodem situ ; vel
faucibus in eodem situ manentibus, linguae medium altius et ad
interiores palati partes elevando : utrovis enim modo fiat, vel etiam
si utroque, perinde est.
" Majori apertura formatur Anglorum a, hoe est a exile. Quale
auditur in vocibus, bat, vespertilio ; bate, discordia ; pal, palla Epis-
copalis; pale, pallidus; Sam (Samuelis contractio) ; same, idem
lamb, agnus ; lame, claudus ; dam, mater (brutorum) ; dame, domina ;
bar, vectis ; bare, nudus ; ban, exsecror ; bane, pernicies ; etc.
Differt hie sonus a Germanorum d pingui seu aperto ; eo quod
Angli linguae medium elevent, adeoque1 aerem in Palato compri-
mant ; Gennani vero linguae medium deprimant, adeoque aerem
comprimant in gutture. Galli fere sonum ilium proferunt ubi e
praecedit literam m vel n, in eadem syllaba ut entendement, etc.
Cambro-Britanni, hoc aono solent suum a pronunciare." Here the
paragraph ends in the editions of 1653, 1664, 1674, which are all
I have been able to find that were published during "Wallis' s life
time ; but the Oxford reprint of 1765 adds the words : " Italique
suum." Again he says in another place " A plerumque pronuncia-
tur sono magis exili quam apud alias plerasque gentes : eodem fere
modo quo Gallorum e sequente n in voce entendement, sed paulo
acutius et clarius ; seu ut a Italorum. Non autem ut Germanorum
d pingue ; quern sonum nos plerumque exprimere solemus per au
vel aw, si producatur; aut per 6 breve si corripiatur."
Now if we omit the reference to the Italian, and confine
ourselves to the description, it certainly ought to give (ae)
rather than (a). The tongue is, of course, more raised for (a)
than for (a) or (A). The two latter are low vowels, the for
mer is a mid vowel, but all are back vowels, that is, the
nearest approach of the tongue and palate is made with the
back not the middle of the tongue, as Wallis strictly points
out. The three vowels made with the middle of the tongue,
disregarding the effect of widening, are (ae, e, i), or, taking
the widening into effect, the three normal (E, e, i) and the
three wide (ae, e, «). Of these (ae) has the greater opening,
"majori apertura formatur." With this view agrees the
pairs of words he gives, which must have been either (aa, a)
or (aeae, as). That a change was taking place we have seen
by the citation from Butler, (p. 64) and it will appear by
Miege, (p. 71) that the .sounds (aeae, ae) were fully established
in 1688, before the death of "Wallis, and this view agrees with
all the follow ingx accounts. At the present day the sounds (a,
aa) are almost unknown in the pronunciation of many per-
1 The Oxford reprint erroneously inserts »'».
CHAP. III. § 3. A — XVII TH CENTURY. 67
sons,1 and except in a few classes of words they are unknown
among those who pride themselves on exact speaking. Hence
we need not feel surprised that the fashion of (a, aa) had en
tirely gone out in Wallis's time, and had been supplanted
by (SQ, aeae.) Nor is there any other period to which the
change, which certainly occurred, can be distinctly traced.
It is a remarkable fact that in Somersetshire where the
sound of (eeae) is very common, replacing all sounds of (aa)
in use in the east of England, as (Baeeeth, baeaes'ket, sesesk,
kseaejd, nseaeid) = Bath, basket, ask, card, hard, the sound of
(AA) or (oj) degenerates into (aa) or (aai), as (laa, draa,
kaajd) — law, draw, cord? But in Wallis's time the true
sound of (AA) and not (ad) is guaranteed by his vowel pairs,
" fall folly, call collar, cause cost, aw'd odd, saw'd sod."
The reference to the French entendement is of very little
assistance. We know how the present English stumble over
the French nasals. We may hear now (ontondmon, oqtoqd-
moq, seqtaeqdmaeq), and it is very difficult to determine what
is the oral basis of the orinasal vowel, so strangely is it modi
fied by the nasal vibration. Most French writers refer the
sound to (a), thus (aA), but English people refer it to (o),
thus (OA), very few keeping it distinct from on (OA, OA ?) As
frequent allusions will be made to the four French nasals in
vin, an, on, un, which are palaeotypically represented by (CA,
aA, OA, 8A), it may here be stated that Dr. E-app writes (EA,
aA, OA, DBA 9\), M. Feline seems to mean (EA, aA, OA, 0A),
Mr. Melville Bell uses (EBA, ohA, ohA, HA), M. Favarger, a
Swiss gentleman, who has carefully studied the relation of
French and English sounds, gives as the normal sounds (EA,
aA, OA, 0hA). The differences are here more apparent than
real, and probably all sets may be heard coexisting in France
at the present day.
The reference to Welsh indicates certainly a very thin
palatal (a) which must have closely approached to the (ae),
if not exactly reached it, (p. 61 n.). The final reference to
the Italian may have arisen from Wallis's mispronouncing the
Italian long a, making it as thin as the English long a.
1 Walker, 1732-1807, says that "the mar, &c., and in the word father." -
second sound of a ... answers nearly to Principles, 77.
the Italian a in 7'oscano, Romano, &c., 2 The fact was first forced on my at-
or to the final a in the naturalized tention by being asked in Bath for a
Greek words papa and mamma ; and in piece of card as I imagined, when a
baa ; the word adopted in almost all piece of cord was really wanted. Other
languages to express the cry of sheep. old pronunciations in use at Bath, are
"We seldom find the long sound of this (fair) fair, (keez) keys, (beek-n) beacon,
letter in our language, except in mono- but (baeaek'n) bacon; while (AA) almost
syllables ending with r, as far, tar, reappears in (noau) know.
68 A — XVII TH CENTURY. CHAP. III. § 3.
In Ireland, where we shall see that the English pronuncia
tion consorts in many other respects also with that of the
xvn th century, the name sound of the first letter of the
alphabet is (3333), as was spontaneously pointed out to me
by an Irish clergyman, the five vowels a e i o u being called
(aese, ee, ai, oo, juu), instead of (ee, ii, ai, oo, juu). A Danish
lady informed me that the sound of (aeae) in lieu of (aa) was
fashionable in Copenhagen. That the transition is easy and
is not much perceived by the generality of speakers is evident
from the present scarcely noticed co-existence of both sounds.1
But the transition from the xvi th century (aa) to the xvm th
and xix th century (ee, ee) is scarcely intelligible without
the intermediate (3333).
1668. "WTLKINS, after describing the yowel (AA) as formed with
the tongue in "a more concave posture and removed further from the
palate,", says that "the Yowel a is framed by an emission of the
Breath, betwixt the tongue and the concave of the palate ; the upper
superficies of the tongue being rendered less concave, and at a less
distance from the palate," and lie does not allow of any convexity
of the tongue till he reaches (ee).
Now it is only for some very unusual mixed vowels that
there is any approach to a concavity of the tongue, with
respect to the palate, so this may be regarded as a theoretical
error. His description must be considered to leave the
question of (SB, a) in doubt. Although it will be seen that
"Wilkins and Wallis occasionally disagree, I am inclined to
interpret Wilkins in this case by "Wallis, and to consider that
Wilkins's examples batt bate, val-ley vale, fait fate, mat mate,
pal pale, Rad-nor T-rade, implied the pairs (bact baeaet, vael'i,
V83831, faet fasaet, maet maeaet, pael psesel, Rasdnur trsesed).
1669. HOLDER writing at the same time says " "We may imagine
the vowel a to be made by the freest and openest passage of the
throat through the mouth and so to have a kind of natural articula
tion without art, only by opening the mouth ; a to be a little strait
ened by the boss of the tongue near the throat, and therefore if you
try to pass from a to 0 you will find you thrust the end of your
tongue something forward to raise the boss of the tongue towards the
palate to straiten the passage." " In a the mouth is more open,
in a. e. i. the straitenings of the concavity of the mouth between
the tongue and palate are gradual, both forward & nearer the roof."
By actual trial, I find that this would serve just as well
to distinguish (a, 33), (A A, aa), or (AA, 3333). It is therefore
not decisive. The illustrative words for a are fall folly, for
a are fate fat.
1 The words class, staff, demand, are even (ah, oh) are in occasional use hy
pronounced with (aa, a, ah, aah, SB, others.
aese), by different careful speakers, and
CHAP. III. §3. A — XVII TH CENTURY. 69
1685. COOPER seems to mark the beginning of a change
which was not complete till the next century, and does not
appear to be noticed by Miege or even Jones, for he gives
two sounds to a long, generally (aeae) as I conjecture, and
occasionally (ee). In this respect Cooper bears a resemblance
to Hart, who anticipated the general pronunciation of ai as
(ee) by a century. Cooper says :
"A formatur amedio linguae ad concavum palati paululum elevato.
In his can possum, pass by praetereo, a corriptur; in cast jaceo,1 past
pro passed prseteritus, producitur. Frequentissimus auditur hie
sonus apud Anglos, qui semper hoc modo pronunciant a latinum ; ut
in amabam. Sic etiam apud Cambrolritannos ; quandoqwe apud
Oallos ; ut in animal, demande, raro autem aut nunquam apud
Germanos. Hunc sonum correptum & productum semper scribimus
per a ; at huic character! prseterea adhibentur sonus unus & alter :
prior, qui pro vocali ejus longa habetur ut in cane, definitur sect,
sequenti ; posterior ut in was sect, septima sub o gutturalem."
He here implies that cane although considered the long
of can is not so. He also for the first time makes was =
(WAZ), whereas Wilkins wrote aaz = (usez) meaning (waez).
These are both anticipations. He implies that though short
(ae) was common, long (aoee) was uncommon, and identifies
the sound with that of the Welsh a, which he must have taken
as (seae). He allows that it "sometimes" is in use in French,
in which language it is to be supposed he called a generally
(AA). The two examples animal, demande are insufficient to
give assistance. He says that it never occurs among the
Germans. The present German sound in great part of Ger
many is (aa, a), and in Austria it becomes (aah, a) or perhaps
(A A, A). But throughout North Germany the sounds (aa, a)
are constantly heard from the more educated and refined
speakers, and though Schmeller distinguishes the Italian from
the common German a, neither Eapp nor Lepsius notice the
difference.2 Yet in the xvn th century the general impression
seems to have been that the French and Germans said (A A).
Was this really the case ? I think not.3 I would rather trace
1 Misprint for jacio? by the researches of Seyffarth, Liscov,
2 Schmeller, Die Mundarten Bayerns, etc., that long a in Greek had the
Miinchen 1821, Nos. 62. 66. Rapp, sound of Italian a in amare, that is,
Physiologie der Sprache, passim. Lep- (aa). And then he immediately said,
aim, Standard Alphabet, London and "the long a should always be pro-
Berlin, 1863, especially p. 50, where nounced like the English aw or au, as
the English sounds are taken into con- in cawl, maul, etc.," that is, (AA).
sideration. (Proceedings of the Royal Institution,
s Mr. Blackie, the Professor of Greek vol. v. p. 149.) Here then we have a
in the University of Edinburgh, when recent example of a lecturer upon pro-
lecturing on the pronunciation of Greek nunciation, confusing the two sounds(aa,
before the Royal Institution, 3rd May, AA). We must not expect our ancestors
1867, said that it had been established to have been much more particular.
70 A — XVII TH CENTURY. CHAP. III. § 3.
it to the loss of the pure (aa, a) in refined English, and its
separation into (AA) on the one hand, and (aeae, ae) on the
other. To those accustomed to say (aeae, AA) the intermediates
(aa, aa} would both be referred to (AA) rather than (aeae).
The opinion that a long had become (aeae) seems to derive
additional force from the fact, first mentioned by Cooper,
that a long had in many words become (ee). He says —
"E formatur a lingua magis elevata et expansa quam in a
proprius ad extremitatem, unde concavum palati minus redditur &
sonus magis acutus ; ut in ken video. Sic apud Germanos menschen
homines. Apud Gallos rarb at in exces, proteste, session, & Benjamin
obsolete. Hunc sonum correptum Angli semper exprimunt per e
brevem ; & e brevem nunquam aliter pronunciant nisi ante r, ubi
propter tremulam ipsius motionem, & vocalis subtilitatem subita cor-
reptione comitatam, vix aliter efferri potest quam ur ; ideo per in
pertain pertineo, & pur in purpose propositum ejusdem sunt valoris.
Vera bujusce soni productio scribitur per a, atqw a longum falso
denominator ; ut it cane canna, wane deflecto ; & ante ge ut age
aetas; in caeteris autem vocabulis, (ni fallor} omnibus ubi e quiescens
ad finem syllabae post 0, adjicitur ; u gutturalis . . . inseritur post a ;
ut in name nomen, quasi scriberetur na-um dissyllabum," He pro
ceeds to say tbat this sound is usually written ai or ay, sometimes
ey and rarely ea.
Here we have two curious facts, first the clear recognition
of an (EE) sound of long a, and secondly the insertion of (a)
after (EE) in all but a certain class of words. Thus cane,
«#we = (ItEEn, nEEsm). The peculiarity here is, that so far
from inserting (a) in modern times, the tendency is to palat-
ize the sound still more by inserting (i) thus (neeim).
Cooper returns to this point again, saying —
" Post a in omnibus, nisi in cane canna, wane deflecto, stranger
advena, strange alienus, manger praesepe, mangy scabiosus, & ante
ge ; ut age aetas ; inseritur u gutturalis, quae nihil aliud est quam
continuatio nudi murmuris postquam a formatur, nam propter exili-
tatem, ni accurativis attenditur ; ad proximam consonantem, sine
interveniente u non-facile transibit lingua. Differentia auribus, quae
sonos distinguere possunt, manifesto apparebit in exemplis sequenti
ordine dispositis.
a brevis. a longa. . a exilis.
Bar vectis Barge navicula Bare nudus
blab effutio blast flatus blazon divulgo
cap pileum corking anxietas cape capa
car carrus carp carpo care cura
cat catus cast jactus case theca
dash allido rfar£ jaculum date dactylus..;
flash fulguro flasket corbis genus flake flocculus
gash caesura gasp oscito gate janua
CHAP. III. § 3. A — XVII TH CENTURY. 71
a brevis a longa a exilis
grand grandis grant concede grange villa
land terra lanch solvo lane viculus
mash farrago mask larva mason lapidarius
pat aptus path semita pate caput
tar pix fluida tart scriblita tares lolia
Si quid amplius ad hanc veritatem confirmandam velles, accipe
exempla sequentia; in quibus ai leniter pronunciata sonum habet
a purse ; ut in cane, a verb post se admittit u gutturalem ut,
Bain balneum Hail grando Maid virgo
lane venenum hale traho made factus
main magnus lay'n jacui pain dolor
mane juba lane viculus pane quadra
plain manifestus spaid castratus tail cauda
plane laevigo spade ligo tale fabala."
Here I interpret a brevis = ( SB), a longa = (seae), a exilis
= (EE), thus (baer, bseaerdzh, bEEr), and in the last list I read
(bEEn bEEan, mEEn mEEan, plEEn plEEan) or (bEEn bEE'n),etc.
1688. MTJEGE says : Dans la langue Anglaise cette voyelle A
s'appelle et se prononce ai. Lors qu'elle est jointe avec d'autres
Lettres, elle retient ce meme Son dans la plupart des Mots ; mais il
se prononce tantot long, tantot bref. L'0 se prononce en ai long
generalement lorsqu'il est suivi immediatement d'une consonne, et
d'une e final. Exemple fare, tare, care, grace, fable, qui se pronon-
cent ainsi, faire, taire, caire, graice, faible D'ailleurs, a se
pronounce en ai bref ou en e ouvert, lorsqu'il se trouve entre deux
Consonnes, au milieu des Monosyllabes ; comme hat, cap, mad. Mais
il approche du Son de notre a, a la fin des Nonas en al, ar, & ard
qui ont plus d'une syllabe. Exemple general, special, animal,
Grammar, altar, singular, particular ; mustard, custard, bastard,
vizard, & autres semblables. Excepte regard, qui se prononce re-
gaird ; award & reward ou il sonne comme en Frangais Dans
le mot de Jane Va se prononce on e masculin, Dgene."
To understand this we must remember that English hat,
cap, mad were never, and are not now, called (HEt, kEp, mEd)
but that Frenchmen, and even Germans, do not distinguish
them from these sounds. Indeed the true sounds (Host, kaep,
meed) only differ from the former by the widening of the
pharyngal aperture. My own pronunciation of (se) has been
constantly misunderstood, and considered as (e) or (E). As
to the long sound (gese) it is now so little known in the ^East
of England and on the continent, that it would be invariably
taken for (EE) or (ee). When then Miege distinguishes
Jane = Dgene (Dzhem) from grace = graice (grees, grEEs),
we may feel pretty sure that, since in modern English (grEEs)
is as difficult to English organs as (grceses) would be to
72 A — XVII TH CENTURY. CHAP. III. § 3.
French organs, the words containing a to which he assigns ai
long and short, were really pronounced with (aeaB, ae).
As to those words in which he considered the a to be pro
nounced as in French, we know they had the sound (AA) and
not (aa) and we also know that at present most Frenchmen
pronounce our (AA) as (aa) or (aa), neglecting the labial
effect. The exception regard, was probably (re^raeaerd*), with
the palatal (<?) which is still so prevalent in this word, and
which, may have caused the pure sound of (aeae) to be pre
served. Whether the sound of (aa) occurred in mustard,
custard, etc., we cannot tell. At any rate, this notice is
not sufficient to establish the fact.
1701. JONES'S book is so curiously arranged that it is diffi
cult to determine the sound of a long from it except by in
ference. It is certain that at this time ai was sounded (ee)
or (ee), probably the former. When Jones therefore gives
a list of words in which ai has the sound of a, but may be
sounded as ai, he certainly distinguishes the two sounds.
That is although in some words ai was by some people
sounded as a, this was not universal or considered best, even
in those words. They are Abigail, aid, bargain, captain,
certain, chair, complaisant, fair, glair, hair, laid, maid, pain,
pair, plaister, stairs, etc., (32 examples are given) of which
plaister is now generally pronounced (plaas'ti). Then he
adds this note :
" The capacity of being sounded ai distinguishes them from such
as are written with an a ; because these cannot be sounded ai, as are,
chare, fare, glare, hare, lade, made, pane, pare, stares, etc."
Again, the question, " when is the sound of ai written a ?"
is not asked, and the answer to the question, " when is the
sound of e written a ?" is only answered by the cases of un
accented -ar as altar, beggar, emissary, bastard, etc. As then
Jones could not have said (ee) or (aa), I conclude that he said
(aeae), and this agrees with the fact that Jones only recog
nizes two sounds of a as in an, as, at, and as in all, ball, so
that his sound of a long, when evidently not (AA), should be
the long sound of his a in at which was certainly (ae).
From all these considerations I conclude that
a short was (03) very early in the xvn th century, and
that it has retained that sound to this day, except in the
provinces, and also that a long was generally (3003) from
at least the middle of the xvn th century to its close,
although about the close it began to degenerate into (ee)
in many words. It is possible, however, that the sound
of (aa) may have remained unrecognized before r when
CHAP. III. § 3. A — XVII TH CENTURY. 73
not followed by a vowel, and even in several of those
words, as bath, ask, grant, etc., because it may still be so
heard in the xix th century.
Rhymes at the latter end of the xvi th and during the
xvn th centuries are not of much use in determining sound,
unless they are frequent usual normal rhymes. Thus from
Shakspere's rhymes in —
Venus and Adonis v. 47, broken open, 134 voice juice, 419 young
strong, 592 neck back, 773 nurse worse; and in Lucrece v. 13
beauties duties, 62 fight white, 72 field killed, 78 tongue wrong,
113 hither weather, 303 ward regard heard, 408 blue knew, 554
dally folly, Sonnet 20 created defeated ; Lover's Complaint 302
matter water ; Passionate Pilgrim 308 talk halt,
nothing could be inferred. But when on looking through
the whole of his poems (exclusive of his plays) I find only
the following examples of long a rhyming to ai, Venus v. 271
mane again, 529 gait late, Lucrece v. 6, waist chaste, Sonnet
128 state gait, of which gait and waist are only modern forms
for gate ivaste,1 so that there is only one real example left
(mane again), we may safely conclude that Shakspere pro
nounced the sounds differently, that is, as I believe (aa, ai).
When in the xviith century, a long and ai altered, as I
think, to (sese, aei) and in the latter part of the century ai
became (eei) or (ee), we may well expect to find these rhymes
more abundant. In Milton's rhymed poems I find only —
Lycidas care hair, raise blaze praize, 1} Allegro maid shade, fail
ale, cares airs, 77 penseroso cares airs, state gait, fail pale, Arcades
blaze, praise, Sonnets 8 spare air bare, 15 praise amaze raise displays,
19 state wait, 20 air .spare, Nativity, near the end, pale jail, Fair
Infant air care, Solemn Music made sway'd, Anno JEtatis xix (1627)
aid made, Psalm 2 made sway'd, 4 spare prayer, 80 declare prayer,
laid made, 83 said invade, strays blaze, 88 prayer are.
These cannot be considered numerous in such a large col
lection of verses. But Milton's contemporary Waller has,
in some 130 pages of his works which I have examined, 21
1 In Merry Wives, act i., sc. 3, 1. 41 dyl," and Palsgrave "wast a myddle;"
(Globe edn.) according to the old quarto the word is not in Levins in this sense,
of 1619, supposed to be the first sketch, In the same 4to. of 1630, act 1, sc. 4,
we have the following orthography of 1. 31 (Globe edn.) and act 3, sc. 3, 1. 68,
waist : "Fal. "Well my honest lads, He we have first " I should remember him,
tell .you what I am about. Pis. Two do's hee not hold vp his head (as it
yards and more. Fal. No gibes now were ?) and strut in his gate ?" and
Pistott ; indeed I am two yards in the secondly " the firme fixture of thy foote,
waste, but now I am about no waste : would give an excellent motion to thy
briefly, I am about thrift you rogues gate in a semicircled farthingale." I do
you." In the quarto of 1630 the two not find the word in this sense in
words are wast, waste. The Promp- Promptorium, Palsgrave, or Levins,
torium has "waste of a mannyg myd-
74 A — XVIII TH CENTURY. CHAP. III. § 3.
cases of a similar kind. Dryden has 27 instances in his
Fable of Palamon and Arcite alone, which belonged to the
close of the xvn th century.
Now (eeae) and (ee) are not very unlike, and before (j) it
is difficult to distinguish them, as care, air (kaeaei, ee-i),
especially if the (ee) be deepened into (EE) as is sometimes
done.1 Hence we must not be surprised that poets to whom,
as Byron confesses
" sometimes
Monarchs are less imperious than rhymes,"
should take the liberty of considering these sounds as
identical. If they had been (sese, seaei) they would have
passed for rhymes, just as few of those who now insert
an (i) after (ee) as in (weeit, strmt) wait, straight, are even
aware of the fact, much less would feel that the rhyme
were injured, if others said (steet, greet) or even (steet, greet)
for state, great. The Grerman habit of rhyming (03, e) and
(y, i) although justified by the pronunciation of the unlettered,
is yet admitted by the best poets. In this case the vowels
differ by the important distinction of labialisation, whereas
(EE, seae ) as they may have been sounded, differ only by the
effect of widening, which is constantly disregarded.
A — xvin TH CENTURY.
1704. The EXPERT ORTHOGRAPHIST talks of the "short
and long sound common to all the vowels in rat & rate."
This ought to mean that these words were (rset, reeset), but
with a person so destitute of real phonetic feeling, (rget, reet)
might have been thought to have a " common sound." His
expression also might not have meant that the long sound
and the short sound were the same. The following passage
is noteworthy.
" Take special notice that the Dipthong ai and the Yowel a are
very apt to be mistaken," i.e., confused one for the other, " the
Londoners, affecting (as they think) a finer pronunciation, would
quite lose the sound of the proper diphthong ai, as too broad and
clownish for their fine smooth Tongues ; but the honest Countryman,
not to say our Universities will (by no means) part with authentick
Custom, time out of mind, according to its natural sound ; however,
to reconcile this difference, you must be sure to keep close to the
1 The story that King James I., ye sail hae," and united the hishoprics,
wishing to bestow the bishopric of although it labours under the historical
either Bath or Wells on a west country difficulty of uniting the sees 500 years
divine, asked him which he would have, after their union, serves to shew the
and on being told Bath (Bseceth), re- near coincidence of the sounds,
plied " Baith (beeth) say ye, then baith
CHAP. III. § 3. A — XVIII TH CENTURY. 75
orthography, which that you may the better do ; always remember
that the single a must end no English word ; but if they will speak
fine, yet be sure that you write true, by adding y, not da but day.
Observe that tho' many times this Diphthong ai is parted in proper
names, as Ja-ir, La-ish, Sepharva-im &c. yet * is usually swallowed
up, in the sound of the forgoing a, especially when the word ends
in ah as Benai-ah, Serai-ah &c. the i is not sounded."
This feeble attempt to keep long a and ai apart seems to
be dictated by theoretical grounds. He had previously said
there were 15 sounds : " five short and five long sounds be
longing to the vowels, besides five such proper diphthongs as
make five other distinct sounds, differing from the foregoing
ten sounds." And he assigns as his first reason for admitting
none other but ai, cm, oi, oo, and ou to be proper diphthongs,
that "none but these five have such a plain distinct sound,
different from the five vowels." Hence it was important
for him to distinguish long a and ai, though in pronunciation,
the utmost difference which. I can suppose him, with his
palatal tendencies, to have made, is to have called long a (ee)
and ai (eei). The first conclusion is strengthened by his
identifying his long a with, the vowel in there, were, where,
which was certainly (ee).
1710. DYCHE distinctly says ai, ay = a in care, and as
Cooper in 1685 had given the pairs sell sail, sent saint, tell
tail, tent taint, there ought to be no doubt that at this time
the change of the sound of long a from (aa) to (ee) was fully
established, notwithstanding that Jones only nine years be
fore would not allow that long a was pronounced as ai. At
the same date as Dyche, the anonymous instructor of the
Palatines writes the words / make, I have, care in German
letters ei malik, ei hdhf, kdhr which should mean (ei mEEk,
ei HEEf, kEEr), but would have been written even if the real
sound had been (aeae). Here have is made to have long «,
as it used to have ; it is now (nsev) and the pronunciation,
(neev), indicated by the German letters is very doubtful.
1766. BUCHANAN always uses ai to represent the long
sound of a.
1768. FRANKLIN simply gives men, lend, name, lane as
examples of the same sound, and this is nearly the modern
practise.
This change of (a) into (e) has also occurred in French.
Chevallet1 says : " Le changement de a en e est frequent dans
le langage du peuple de Paris : . . . . des le commencement
1 Origine et formation de la langue Franchise. Paris, 1853-7, vol. i., part
3, p. 59.
76 A — XVIII TH CENTURY. CHAP. III. $ 3.
du xve siecle Geoffroi Tory observe chez les dames de Paris
la tendance que je viens de signaler. . . . 'Les dames de
Paris au lieu de a prononcent e bien souvent, quant elles
disent : ' Mon mery est a la porte de Peris ou il se faict
peier' . . . telle maniere de parler vient d'accoustement de
jeunesse ;' Geofiroi Tory, Champfleury, fo. xxxiii, V1." The
same writer quotes (vol. i, part 2, p. 55) from various imitators
of popular pronunciation, e'riere, tramontane, terrir, douainier,
errhes, ouete, plaine, cle"rinette, epaigneul, for arriere, tramon
tane, tarir, douanier, arrhes, ouate, plane, clarinette, £pagneul.
1780. SHERIDAN seems altogether to ignore the sound of
(aa) in English, allowing only (aeae) to the English a in far,
bar, psalm, balm. Being an Irishman who had devoted his
attention for years to English pronunciation, while his fre
quent residences in Ireland kept his ear alive to the Irish
pronunciations of English then current in educated society,
his remarks upon Irish pronunciation are of considerable
importance. They serve to shew generally that the Irish
peculiarities arose partly from the persistence of xvn th cen
tury pronunciations, and partly from an endeavour to correct
that pronunciation by the then current English usage, which,
learned rather by rule than custom, was carried to an excess.
There will be frequent occasion to notice this as we proceed.
With respect to a, long a is frequently (seae) in Irish where
it is (ee) in English, and sometimes (seae) in Irish against
(93) in English. He instances patron, matron, rather,
which in England were (pee'tron, mee'tran, raadh'i) and in
Ireland (pest'ren, meet1 ran, rseaedhu). These were evidently
the older, xvn th century sounds, which have again become
current in England, where even the older (raa'dhi) is com
mon. The pronunciation (raedh'j), may be heard from
Americans, among whom there is also a great tendency to
wards the pronunciation of the earlier settlers, 1628. Thus
the true sound (naBrt) may be heard in America, which is
very rare in England.
As a general rule the words in -aim, which Sheridan pro
nounced (-aeEem), were according to him, called (-AAm) in
Ireland, as (bAAm, sAAm, kwAAin, kAAm, kAAf) for balm,
psalm, qualm, calm, calf, and this was a distinct xvn th cen
tury sound. In the following words, which he cites, there
is sometimes an " overcorrection" of the kind above alluded
to : gape, gather, catch, quash, clamour, wrath, icroth, farewell,
squadron, were then pronounced in England (gaesep, goedlrar,
kaetsh, kwoesh, klsenrar, rAAth, rAth, fserwel, skwAd'ran)
and in Ireland (geep, gedlrar, kEtsh, kwAsh, kkcarmar,
CHAP. III. § 3. E, EE, EA — XVI TH CENTURY. 77
raeaeth, raeth, feerwel, skwaeae'dran). The received usage of
the xix th century varies between the two, and may be taken
as (gecp, gsedh'J, kgetsh, kwAsh, kUem'J, raath, rAAth, feej1-
wel", slwAd'ran.)
The recognized pronunciation in the xvm th century seems
then to have been, short a = (se) in all cases, long a
generally = (ee), the exact quality (ee, ee, EE) being
doubtful, and in those cases in which (aa) is now fre
quently heard, as in dart, father, etc., long a was = (aeae),
as it always was in the xvn th century.
E, EE, EA — xvi TH CENTURY.
1530. PALSGRAVE says : "E in the frenche tong hath tare
dyverse sowndes, for somtyme they sownde hym lyke as we do in
our tonge in these words, a beere, a beest a peere, a beene and suche
lyke .... The sowndyng of e, whiche is most generally kepte with
them, is suche as we gyve to e in our tong in these wordes aboue
rehersed, that is to say, lyke as the Italianes sounde e, or they with
vs that pronouwce the latine tonge aright : so that e in frenche hath
neuer suche a sownde as we vse to gyue hym in these wordes, a bee
suche as maketh honny, a beere to lay a deed corps on, a peere a
make or felowe, and as we sounde dyuers of our pronownes endynge
in e, as we, me, the, he, she, and suche lyke, for suche a kynde of
soundynge both in frenche and latine, is allmoste the ryght pronun
ciation of i, as shall here after appere."
Here are laid down two sounds of English e long, as (ee)
in bear, beast, pear, bean, and as (ii) in bee, bier, peer ; we, me,
thee, he, she, but the spelling of the two sets of words is not
distinguished. We shall see that in the xiv th century all
these words were pronounced with (ee) and that they were
spelled indifferently with e or ee, sometimes with ie, and rarely,
if ever, with ea. In Palsgrave's text ea is very rare, but in
his vocabularies he uses it freely. The following words taken
from his vocabulary of substantives will illustrate his con
fused use of e, ee, ea. To shew a further advanced state of
spelling I add Levins's orthography 1570 of the same words
preceded by two dots, after Palsgrave's explanations.
"Bee a flye .. bee, beche tree .. bech, beed of stone or wode .. bead,
beam come .. beane, befe meate .. beefe, beakyn fev au guet .. beacon,
beame of an house .. beame, beare a he beest.. beare, beere for deed
men .. beare, beest.. beast, beatyng .. beate, dede acte .. deede, deed
body., dead, deane of a church, defnesse lacke of heryng.. deafe,
demyng judgying .. deeme, derenesse chierte .. deare, derlyng a man
mignon .. darling, eare of a man or beeste .. eare, ease rest ..ease,
easier a hye feest .. easter feast, feanyng faincte .. fain, feate of arms
78 E, EE, EA XVI TH CENTURY. CHAP. III. § 3.
.. feate, fedyng place .. feede, felyng .. feele, fearyng .. fear, fesant
coke faisant .. fesant, feest .. feast, f ether plume .. f ether, gere cloth
ing., geare, geet a blake stone, heed pate or nob ..head, hepe of
money .. heape, heale of body., heale, heele of the fote .. heele,
helthe .. healthy, heape a great quantite .. heape, heer of the heed
cheuevl .. heyry, fierce, a deed body .. herse, heerryng a fysshe .. her
ring, hearyng the place whereby we here ovye .. heare, hert of any
beest cveur .. heartie, her the of a chymney .. herth, heate .. heate,
hevyn ciel .. heaven, ielousy .. jelouse, kepyng obseruation .. keepe,
leclw a surgion.. leche, leed a metall .. leade, lees pasture, leafe of a
tree .. leafe, lefenesse cherete .. liefer, leage two mile ., league, leaning
to., leane, leJce an herbe .. leeke, lenenesse maigrete .. leane, lepe or
start savlt .. leape, leaue lycence .. leave, leven for bredde .. leven,
leaner to lyfte with., lever, meale of meate .. meale, meane of a
songe may en'., meane, measure of two gallons .. measure, mede drinke,
mede rewarde .. meede, medowe felde .. medowe, mekenesse humilite ..
meeke, nede besoing .. neede, nedyll to sowe with..needil, neare of
a beest roignon, nesyng with the nose esternuement .. sneeze, neates
ledder cordovayn, peace ..peace, pece or parte of a thyng..pece,
peache afrute .. peache, pecocke a byrde, peake of a ladyes mournyng
heede .. peake, peele of belles, pele for an ovyn .. peale, peerle a stone
.. pearle, pese frute pays .. pease, pescodde, quene lady .. queene, queans
garse.. queane, realmc roiaulme, rede to playe or pype with., rede,
reed herryng.. redde, reed breest a byrde .. brest, reednesse rovgevr,
redy money .. reddy, rele for yarne .. reele, reherser .. reherse, release
forgyvenesse, reame of paper .. reame, rere banket ralias, rerewarde of
men arriere garde., rerewarde, resonableness .. reasonable, reason ..
reason, season tyme .. season, see water mer .. sea, secole charbon de
terre, sede of herbes .. seede, sege before a castell.. sege, sekenesse
maladie .. sicknesse, seeke, sekyng or serchyng .. seeke, seale a fysshe ..
scale, seame of sowyng .. seame, seme for to frye with seyn de povrctau
[saindoux], semelynesse .. semely, see breame a fysshe, sertche enquyre
.. searche, seate a place .. seate, teching lerning.. teache, tediomnesse ..
tedious, teele a byrde plignon.. teale, tele a byrde plinget .. teale,
teme of a plough or oxen..teame, teere of wepyng.. teare, tete,
pappe or dugge, a womans brest .. teate, tethe dens .. teethe, veele
flesshe .. veale, wede clothyng .. weede, weke for candels .. weak,
weykenesse flebesse .. wayk, weke a senyght .. weeke, welthe .. welth,
wepyng plcur . . weepe, were to take fysshe, werynesse or grefe..
wearie, wesant the pype .. weysand, wesyll a beest .. wesyll, wevyng
frame .. weave, whele of a carte .. wheele, whete come .. wheate, yere
xii monethes .. yeare, yest or barme for ale, zele love or frenshyp ..
zeele, Zealand^ a countrey.
This long list will shew that in Palsgrave's time no definite
rule had been laid down for the spelling of these words, and hence
the reader could not discriminate the sounds. It was not till
after the middle of the xvi th century that anything like a rule
appeared, and then ee was used for (ii), and ea for (ee). But
Levins shews that the rule was by no means consistently
CHAP. III. $ 3. E, EE, EA — XVI TH CENTURY. 79
applied so early as 1570. And even at a later period ea was
often used for (e) the short vowel, and simple e often repre
sented (ee) and sometimes perhaps, but not often, (ii). We
often find hee, mee written like thee to givp the full sound of
(ii) and prevent the pronunciation (ee), which was given to
the. The introduction of the difference ee, ea was therefore
a phonetic device, intended to assist the reader. Great diffi
culty again arose as many words in ea came to be pronounced
(ii) without any change being made in the spelling, and we
find orthoepists obliged to give long lists of words with ea as
(ee), as (e) and as (ii). If it had only been recognized that
ea was a modern innovation, introduced with a phonetic
purpose,1 writers and printers might not have hesitated to
replace ea by e, ee in the two last cases. It is now perhaps
too late to write feest, beest, reep, beem, etc., but there is no
reason but habit against this spelling, and abundance of
historical authority in its favour.
Palsgrave in saying that e was sounded as in Italian, takes
no notice either in French or Italian of the double sound
(e, E) into which (e) splits, although Meigret, 1550, finds it
necessary to use two distinct vowel signs for the two sounds.
In modern English we distinguish ail, air, = (eel, eei), but
in some parts in the north of England I find this distinction
unknown, and (ee) alone pronounced. Hence I suspect that
the older English sounds were (ee, e). The short sound (e)
has remained, apparently unchanged, from the earliest Eng
lish times to the present day.
1547. SALESBURY gives the two sounds (ee, ii) and also
notices the mute or unpronounced e. He scarcely ever uses
ee or ea. As examples of (ee, e) he gives in his Welsh pro
nunciation A WERE, WREKE, BREKE, WRESTE = a weir, wreak,
break, wrest, and calls attention to the difference of meaning
in BERE, PERE, HELE, MELE according as they are pronounced
with (ii) = bier, peer, he^l, meel (to meddle ?), or with (ee)
in bear, pear, heal, meal. Omitting mute e and ea, the fol
lowing are all the words containing e, of which he gives
the sounds ; the old spelling is in small capitals, and the
Welsh transcription in italics : —
BEEDE bred (bred) panis, LABDEE lad-dr (lad'er), ETTEEMOEE efer-
mwor (evermoor) in aetenmm, THONDEE ihwndr (thund'er), WONDEE
wndr (und'er = wund'er), CHESE tsis (tshiiz) caseus, FEENDES frinds
1 This was so little suspected that ciato," and when he says it was then
we find Wallis imagining that ea was "nunc dierum" pronounced (ee) he adds
properly pronounced as (eea) or (ee') "sono ipsius a penitus suppresso," as if
"per e masculinum, adjuncto etiam si it ever had heen sounded since the xmth
lihet exilis d sono raptissimo pronun- century, except in provincial dialects.
80 E, EE, EA — XVT TH CENTURY. CHAP. III. § 3.
(friindz) amici, TREES triys (triHz) arlores, SUTTEE swffffre (suf'er)
sinere, GELDING gelding (geld'iq), GYLBEET Gilbert (GiTbert), GTNGEB
tsintsir (dzhin'dzher) zinziber, BEGGYNGE begging (beg'i'q), EGGE eg
(eg) ovum, JESTT tsiesuw (Dzhee'zyy), QUENE kwin (kwiin) regina,
EENT rent (rent), TEEBTJEE tresuwr (trez'yyr) thesaurus, VELTJET velfet
(vel'vet) holosericum, VEETTJE vertuw (vertyy), THE dde (the), to
gether with the Latin EGO egu (eg'u), DEI deei (dee'i).
Of these the words chese, frendes, quene have the sound of
(ii). It should be observed that Bullokar also gives (friindz),
and so does Wallis, and so late as 1701 Jones admits this
sound, thus making the new spelling ie indicate (ii) in
" Algier, bier, canonier, friend, fusilier, grenadier, Tangier,"
and harmonizing friend, fiend, both formerly (freend, feend),
but then (friind, fiind), and now (frend, fund).
As respects ea Salesbury agrees with others in giving SEA
see (see) mare, YEA ie (jee), SEASON seesyn (seez'in) tempestas
vel occasio, but he is peculiar in EASE ies (jeez) otium, LEAUE
lief (keev) licentia, since Hart gives easy (ee'zi), and Gill
writes leave (leev). I can find no authority for the insertion
of i = (j), and am inclined suspect a misprint, because the
four words EASE, LEAUE, SEA, YEA are given together and
transcribed ies, lief, see, ie, so that the last ie may have
occasioned the two former, and he introduces them by
saying : " In certain words they place A sometimes, as we
should consider it, rather carelessly according to our custom,
out of its own power and rather metamorphosed into the
vowel e," this should merely imply that ea was written for
ee, meaning prolonged e (ee), and not that in two of the
words e was also altered into the Welsh i, meaning English y.
If then we read ees, leef for ies, lief, in Salesbury's Welch
transcription, we shall reconcile it with his observation and
with the usages of other orthoepists.
1568. SMITH, agreeing generally with Salesbury, calling
the English e " e Latina," pronounces yet, yes (jet, J/s), but
gives also the pronunciation (jet, jes), though by introducing
it with an " alii vocant," he clearly prefers the former.
1569. HART says, describing this vowel: "The seconde
with somewhat more closing the mouth," than for a, "thrust
ing softlye the inner part of the tongue to the inner and
vpper great te*eth, (or gummes for want of teeth) and is
marked e." He writes (dheez) for these, and (mirterz,
Hier) for metres, here. In 1580, Bullokar writes both (neer)
and (mir) for here,1 and has also (siil'dum) for seldom.
1 Henry IV., part 1, act i., sc. 2, 1. apparant thatthou artheirc apparant,"
65, Quarto 1613) : "were it not heere ought to have been pronounced (wer it
CHAP. III. § 3. E, EE, EA. — XVII TH CENTURY. 81
1621. Gill says, "E, breuis est hac form& (e), vt in (net) rete :
ct longa sic, (ee), vt in (neet) NEATE. i. nitidus adiectiuum : Sub-
stantiuum NEATE significat omne genus bouum."
The pronunciation in the xvi th century is therefore toler
ably certain. All words now spelled with ee had (ii),
a few final e as he, me, she, we, had also (ii), almost every
word now written with ea, or words written with ea in the
latter part of the century had (ee) though some had (e).
All simple e long were (ee). Exceptions were here
(mir) occasionally, hear, year (mir, jiir) in Bullokar,
appear is marked (apiir) in Butler 1633, who also dis
tinguishes (teer) lacerare, (tiir) lacryma, and wishes
dear, weary, hear to be called (deer, wee'r^, Heer) instead
of (diir, wii're, mir) which he therefore implies to have
been the more usual pronunciation.
E, EE, EA.— XVTITH CENTURY.
It would be waste of time to establish that through the
xvn th century and down to our own times short e has
remained (e) and ee has been (ii). The difficulty only turns
upon the pronunciation of long e and of ea.
1653. WALLIS says: "e profertur sono acuto claroque ut Gal-
lorum 6 masculinum," except before r as will be hereafter con
sidered ; " ea effertur nunc dierum ut ^ longum : sono ipsius a
penitus suppresso, et sono literae e producto. Nempe illud solum
prsestat a ut syllaba reputetur longa. Ita met obviam factus, meat
victus, set sisto, sedere facio, seat sella, etc., non sono differunt nisi
quod vocalis illic correpta, hie producta intelligatur."
He however gives the exceptions near, dear, hear = (niir,
diir, niir). Wilkins has (ii'vil) for evil,1 but he writes Jesus
as (Dzhee'sas), where the first (s) is probably a mere over
sight for (z).
1668. PRICE says : "E soundes like, ee, (ii, i) in le, even, evening,
England, English, he, here, me, she, we, ye," probably the complete
list at that time. He also says : " ea soundes e, d-r-a-w-n out long
as lead, weak." And then subjoins the following list : —
Appeal, appease. Bean, bear, beast, beat, beneath, breach, break,
not neer aparent, dhat dhou art Hair in alluding to raisins, pronounced in
aparent), but for the sake of the joke the usual but unrecognized manner
we may suppose Falstaff to have pro- (reez'nz), a pronunciation given by Price
nounced in Hart's way, and called heir 1668 as the correct sound, and, as we
(neer), a pronunciation certainly well see by Hart, well known at the time,
known in Shakspere's time, although l The ags. forms y/el, eofel, point
censured by Gill so late as 1621. Again, to the sounds (yyvel, ee'-vel), at a very
in the same play, act ii., sc. 4, 1. 264: early period, and consequently to acon-
" If reasons were as plenty as blacke- current (ii'vl, ee-vl) in old English,
berries," was (if reez-nz wer az plen'tz The contracted form ill shews that the
az blak-bem), and the joke consisted (ii) sound had the preference.
6
82 E, EE, EA — XVII TH CENTURY. CHAP. III. § 3.
to break. Cease, cheat, clean, cleave, compleat, conceal, congeal.
Deal, decrease, defeat, displease, dream. Eager, can, ear, earn,
easie, Easter, endeavour, estreat, eat, eaves. Feature, forswear.
Glean. Heal, heap. Jealousie. Meal, mean. Reach, reveal. To
sheath, speak, spear, spread, squeak, seam, seamstress, streak,
surcease, swear. Teach, teazils, treatise. Weave, weaver. Zeal."
Of these the following are still either (ee, ee) or (e), bear, break,
earn, endeavour, forswear, Jealousie, spread, swear, while the rest have
become (ii). "Ea sounds short (e) in head, dead, ready. Bed
stead, beard. Earl. Feather. Heaven. Measure. Pearl, pleasure.
Search, stead, sweat. Thread, threaten, treasurie, treasure. Wealth,
weary, weather," of which only beard, weary have now changed.
John Kemble used to be laughed at for speaking of his
bird, meaning beard; we have here old authority for the
sound.1 Price makes ea sound as a and there is consider
able probability that he meant (ae) and neither (a) nor (aa),
in heard, heart, hearken, searge. Jones said both hard and herd
for heard (p. 86) ; serge, is borne out by the modern (klaaak,
saa-rdzhimt) for clerk, sergeant. The only words in which
Price admits ea to sound as ee (ii) are dear, appear ; blear-eyed,
chear, clear, hear, near, read, year, which short list also em
braces all "VTallis's exceptions.
1685. COOPER has not named any instances in which e
long is (ii), but he enters fully into ea.
First ea = (e) in already, behead, bread, breadth, breakfast,
breath, cleanse, deadly, dearth, death, dread, earth, endeavour,
feather, head-y, health, heaven, heavy, leather, leaven, leaver [lever]
leaveret [leveret], pageant, reachles [reckless], ready, realm,
spread, stealth, threaten, treachery, tread, wealth. Here en
deavour has (e) instead of (ee) as in Price ; breakfast is
shortened as at present, and lever has now become (ii).
Second ea = (ee), of which more presently. This is a
long list beginning with appeal, appease, beacon, etc. Most
of the words now have (ii), except break, forswear, great,
sweat, wear. The words can = yean, enitor, eavs = eaves,
subgrunda, learn lampas, lease formula locationis, deserve note.
Third ea = (EE), of which more presently. With the
single exception of scream clamo, all the words have the com
bination ear, as bear, beard, earl, early, earn, earnest, learn,
rehearse, scarce cribrum, search, shear, potsheard, swear, tear,
wear.
1 Sheridan, 1780, giving a list of Irishmen, who, wishing to imitate the
Irishisms, notes (biird) as the Irish and English (ii) pronunciation of ««, carried
(bsrd) as the English pronunciation of it too far, as Sheridan points out in
beard. Most probably (biird) was at some other cases, (p. 92).
that time one of the mistakes made by
CHAP. III. § 3. E, EE, EA — XVII TH CENTURY. 83
Fourth ea = a, which we have identified with (ae), (p. 71),
in hearties, hearten, hearth.
Fifth ea = (ii) in arrear, besmear, blear-ey'd, dear, ear-wig,
fear, gear, hear, near, sear, shears, spear, tear lacryma, weary,
whereas Price speaks weary: with (e). Here arrear, ear-wig,
fear, gear, sear, shears, spear, tear s., weary, are in addition to
Price's list, which also contains words not here found. It is
clear that the (ii) sound was beginning to assert its claims
to the domain which it has since almost entirely conquered,
and from which the orthography ea was intended to drive it,
so powerless is the artificial barrier of spelling, to arrest the
natural flow of speech.
Cooper's vowel system is peculiar, and is clearly founded
upon a careful analysis of his own pronunciation. His list
of exact pairs of long and short vowel sounds is as follows :
12 345678
can ken will folly full up meet foot
cast cane weal fall foale — need fool.
Now there can be little doubt that the series of short
vowels in the upper line was meant for (se, e, i, A, u, a,
i, u), although (E, a), may have been used for (e, a). Hence
the long vowels should be (aeae, ee, ii, AA, uu, — , ii, uu). The
second may of course have been (EE), and the third may
have been (ee) rather than (ii). The two sounds are closely
enough allied for even a careful analyzer to confuse. In
order to bring a Frenchman to the sound of (i) it is necessary
to exaggerate the sound into (e). Persons endeavouring to
prolong (i) are very apt to fall into (ee). Other orthoepists
seem to have confused Cooper's second long vowel with (aeae)
when it was spelt a as in cane, and with (ee) in other cases.
It is to be remarked also that Cooper finds his second long
vowel expressed by ea almost only before r. This rather
points to (aeae, EE, ee) as his first three vowels, which others
reduced to two (aeae, ee). There is no evidence, beyond
Cooper, for (ii) occurring long, or (e) short, in English. The
inference is that Cooper had either a peculiar pronunciation,
or that vowel sounds appeared to him exact pairs, which do
not so appear to us. He seems not to have been satisfied
with the pair (ii, i), which is even now commonly adopted,
and hence he tried to find (ii, i) in the English (need, meet),
although he owns that in this case "minima datur differentia
inter correptionem et productionem," and indeed the differ
ence is rather due to the consonants than to the vowels, the
sonant (d) having a sound of its own in addition to the glide
from (ii). Again he strove to find a proper long vowel to
84 E, EE, EA — XVII TH CENTURY. CHAP. III. § 3.
(*'), and, observing a difference then between weal and wear,
corresponding to the modern difference between ail and air
(eel, eej), he assumed that the finer sound was the real long
of (»), and thus paired (ee, i). Acting upon this conclusion
I shall transcribe Cooper's vowels accordingly. He seems,
precisely in the same way, to have heard the difference (uu, u)
and refusing to consider them as pairs, endeavoured to hear
(u) in foot as distinct from fool and Ml, and then, not find
ing the real long sound of his (u), took (oo) in foal as its
nearest representative. This would reduce his vowel scale to
the following, which I shall adopt in future citations.
12345678
kaen kEn wil fAl« ful ep niit fut
kaesest kEEn weel £ul fool — niid fuul
The distinction between the words in ea which Cooper pro
nounces (ee), and those in ea which he pronounces (EE),
may have been a step in the direction of change from (ee) to
(ii) which may have been commencing at his time in the long
list of words to which he assigns (ee), although it was not
accomplished till much later.
HOLDER, 1669, does not make these distinctions, contenting
himself with fate fat, seal sell, eel ill (fasaet faet, seel sel, iil *1),
but admits that some vowel may lie between (SB) and (ee).
In comparing Cooper with his contemporaries we must then
consider his (ee, EE) as represented by their single (ee).
1688. MIEGE after laying down the rule that e long is (ee),
the French e aigu, and e short is (e), the French e ouvert,
excepts the following which have the sound of (ii, i), be, he,
she, me, we, "qui s'ecrivaient autrefois avec deux e," yes, besom,
evil ; eve, even, evening, here ; the termination -eous ; employ
ment, enquiry, " qui s'ecrivent indifferemment avec un e ou
avec un i" ten, linnen, penny, hence, then, thence, when, whence,
which he transcribes in French letters " tinn lininn, peny,
hinnce, denn, dence, hoinn, hoinnce," so that he gives e and
not i in three of the words (by mistake?). This last list is
peculiar to this author.
Miege gives long e masculin, (ee), as the general pronuncia
tion of ea, but says that the a counts for nothing in the fol
lowing words, for which ea therefore = (e), beard, bread,
breakfast, breath a., dealt, dearth, death, Earl, early, to earn,
earnest, earth, feather, head, health, heard, hearken, hearth,
heaven, heavy, leap, learn, leather, leaven, leaver, meadow,
pageant, peasant, pillow-bear, potsheard, read " le Preterit et
Participe," rm</y, realm, to rehearce, scarce, search, stead, stealth,
threaten, treachery, tread, wealth, weather; of which beard,
CHAP. III. § 3. E, EE, EA — XVII TH CENTURY, 85
hap, lever, pillow-beer, have now (ii). It is observable that
he gives hearken to (e), and also that the vowel in breakfast
was shortened at so early a period.
Miege makes ea = (ii) in these words only, besmear, blear-
eyed, clear, dear, gear, hear, near, shears, spear, in which we
miss some of Price's words, though the list is increased by
besmear, gear, shears, spear.
" Bear un ours et pear une poire, se prononce bair, pair.9'
There is a modern American pronunciation, probably (baesej),
but generally heard by Englishmen as (baai), which may
date from this time, for as Miege evidently means bear to
have a broader sound that he heard in other words, the real
sound may have been (basser). See Cooper's third list as
noted above, (p. 82),
1701. JONES says that the sound of e (ee) is written ea
" in all words or syllables, that are, or may be sounded long,"
except a certain number of words where it is written e only,
and it is perhaps worth giving these lists as shewing many
words in e, e-e, now mostly pronounced with (ii-), which had
all (ee) so lately as the end of the xvn th century, because
the fact is little known, and its announcement is generally
received with incredulity. Those marked (*) have still (ee)
or (e).
1) eke, *e're (ever), *e're (before), mere, rere, the, *there, these,
*were, *where ; glebe, Medes, mete, nepe, scene, scheme, sphere,
Swede, Thebe, Theme.
2) adhere, antheme, austere, blaspheme, *cherub, cohere, com
plete, concede, *credit, discrete, *felo, female, *ferule, frequent,
Hebrew, impede, negro, *nephew, obscene, *pedant, pedee, poeme,
serous, sincere, supreme, systeme, *tenet, terrene, *treble, *venew;
— *crevice, crewel, menow, *nether, *plevin, *wnether.
3) "all Scripture names and proper names from other languages,
as Belus, Jehu, Jesus, &c."
4) " all that begin with the sound of ce, de, e, per, pre, re, se."
"With these we must contrast the words in which e had the
sounds (ii, i] ;
1) the termination -ecus.
2) initial be- as become, bedew, before, &c.
3) the six words, be, he, me, she, we, ye.
4) the ten words, chesel [chisel], crete, England, English, here,
mere, metre, Peter, saltpetre, Twede.
5) the six words, Evan, Eve, Eveling, even, evening, evil. To
which in another place he adds devil.1
In the following list e is said to be sounded as a, which
1 Jones says that devil is " sounded de'il, are curious in connection with the
dill sometimes." This, and the Scotch derivation of ill from evil.
86 E, EE, EA, XVII TH CENTURY. CHAP. III. § 3.
was most probably short (ae) : Berks, clerk, eleven, Herbert,
merchant, mercy, Owen, phrentick, verdict, yellow, etc. ; of which
phrentick has asserted itself in the orthography frantic; mercy,
yellow, and sometimes verdict are known as vulgarisms; eleven,
Herbert are now unknown, merchant is known as an archaism,
and Berks, clerk are very common. This list seems to shew
that Miege's service, bear, pear in which he makes e = ai
French, had the same sound, especially as (saarm) is a
well-known vulgarism at the present day.
The only words in which Jones allows ea to be like a (ae)
are heard, heart "to distinguish them from hard (not soft),
Hart (or Stag)," but he also gives heard the sound of (nerd).
Jones makes ea short = (e), in beard, bread, breadth, breast,
breath, cleanse, dead, dealt, dear, dearth, death, dread, earl,
earn, earth, head, heard, hearth, lead, leap, meant, meash, pearce,
pearl, reach, read, reath, realm, scarce, search, searge, sheard,
shread, slead, spread, stead, stealth, sweat, thread, threat, tread,
wealth, yearn ; — bedstead, bestead, heaven, heavy, leacher, leather,
leaven, measure, peasant, pheasant, pleasant, steady, treasure,
weapon, weasand, weather ; most of which have preserved their
sounds, though some have changed their spelling.
The only words in which Jones allows ea to have the
sound (ii) are chear, clear, dear, ear, gear, hear, mear, near,
year; — appear, beadle, beaw (biu) now (boo), instead, stead,
steam, team, yea, yeast.
Collecting together all the words spelled with ea and pro
nounced with (ii) as given in the preceding lists, we find them
limited to the following — all others in ea having (ee) or (e).
appear dear mear1 steam
arrear ear near team
beadle earwig read a tear
besmear fear sear1 weary
blear-eyed gear shears yea8
chear1 hear spear year
clear instead* stead8 yeast8
Those marked (*) are now spelled cheer, mere, sere; those
marked (2) had often the sound (e) at that time, and perhaps
more regularly ; (3) the word yea is not marked (jii) except
by Jones.
This list must be borne in mind in judging of rhymes in
the xvn th century. In Croker's Johnson, ed. 1848, p. 57,
it is said respecting Howe's couplet
As if misfortune made the throne her seat,
And none could be unhappy but the great,
which Dr. Johnson in his Plan of a Dictionary in 1747 had
CHAP. III. § 3. E, EE, EA — XVII TH CENTURY. 87
adduced to shew that great had sometimes the sound (griit),
that Lord Chesterfield remarked it was " Undoubtedly a bad
rhyme, tho' found in a great poet," — an observation which
shewed first that Lord Chesterfield did not know the pro
nunciation of English when Howe was young, and secondly
that he was so little aware of the habits of great poets (at
least if he reckoned Shakspere and Dryden among them) that
he looked to their greatness as a guarantee for the perfection
of their rhymes. Now Howe lived from 1673 to 1718. We
may therefore expect to gather his pronunciation from Cooper,
Miege, and Jones. The first gives (seet, greet), the rules of
the others would imply (seet, greet). The rhyme was there
fore perfect. While Pope's couplet, adduced by Johnson to
shew the other sound of great,
For Swift and him despis'd the farce of state
The sober follies of the wise and great,
would have been to Howe a somewhat imperfect rhyme (geae,
ee), and one which I have but rarely found when examining
the rhymes of this period.
As the point has been so much disputed, the orthoepical
accounts have been given at great length, and it will be in
teresting to add the result of an examination of Dryden's
rhymes in his Absalom and Achitophel, Annus Mirabilis,
Palamon and Arcite, Wife of Bath, Grood Parson, Theodore
and Honoria, Religio Laici, Flower and Leaf, Cymon and
Iphigenia, with respect to the pronunciation of the long c
and ea. Rejecting those in which both spelling and sound
were, as far as is known, identical in the rhyming termina
tions, the following are the results.
1) Eegular rhymes, (ee, ee) ; ease with these seize, sea with
survey prey weigh key lay way sway, wear despair, reveal frail,
leave with deceive receive, mean obscene, congeal hail, remain'd
glean' d, there hair, please these, theme dream, bear heir ;
2) Nearly regular rhymes, a long with its corresponding short
vowel (ee, e) ; feast with breast guest address'd rest, set with great
retreat, increase less, heat with sweat threat, beat threat, conceal
with tel dispel, appeal rebel «;., zeal dwell, please with grievances
images, yet great, extreme stem, supreme them ;
3) Eegular rhymes (ii, ii), cheer with clear year, years ears,
appear with year ear tear «. steer gear cheer clear, near with clear
ear, dear here, clear ear, career spear, fear with leer cheer near steer
tear «. ear ;
4) Possibly regular rhymes owing to variety of pronunciation,
(ii, ii) ; rear with fear appear, to bear with hear year tear s. hear
appear spear, but also bear with heir hair fair were, and were with
career spear appear ; where with clear near, there with spear appear
88 E, EE, EA — XVIII TH CENTURY. CHAP. III. § 3.
disappear clear fear ; for we still hear were, where, there pronounced
(wiii will dhiii) as vulgarisms ;
5) Rare irregular rhymes (ee, ii) now become regular as (ii, ii) ;
heap sweep, retreat feet, deal wheel, disease degrees (?), severe bier,
plead freed, repeat sweet, unclean seen ;
6) Faulty rhymes, (e, ii) petitioners years, pensioners fears, steed
with fled head, feet sweat, field beheld, kneel' d compell'd, unseen
men, reed head, — (e, i) contest resist, sense prince, but civil devil,
does not belong to this place, for the rhyme was perfect (»', *) ; —
(ee, aese) wear care, tears v. spares.
These rhymes, notwithstanding an occasional laxity which
Dry den seems to have preferred as a relief,1 serve to shew the
general correctness of the rules laid down by the orthoepists
on this point.
E, EE, EA — xvm TH CENTURY.
1704. The EXPERT ORTHOGRAPHIST dashes at once into
the full sounds of the xvm th century. " Tho' ee be
reckoned among the Dipthongs," says he, " yet what differ
ence is there in the sound of meet to come together, and mete
to measure, in proceed and intercede ? " Hence making the
exceptions that there, were, where, " though they have e at
the end, yet it serveth only to lengthen the foregoing e into
a long," that is (ee), he gives the following 17 monosyllables
and 26 polysyllables as having the sound (ii), which may
be contrasted with Jones's lists, (p. 85 : Bede, Crete, ere
even now (ee-i), glebe, glede a kite, here, Mede, mere, mete,
Pede, rere now rear, scene, scheme, sphere, these, Vere ; adhere,
apozeme, austere, blaspheme, cohere, complete, concede, concrete,
convene, extreme which Jones spelled extream, greve "or Lord,"
impede, intercede, interfere, intervene, Nicene, obscene, portgreve,
precede, recede, replete, revere, severe, sincere, supercede, supreme.
Jones gives only 18 words out of the 28, (p. 86), in which
he and preceding orthoepists allow ea to have the sound of (ii),
1 Besides the faulty rhymes named resemblance between the vowels ; thus
in the text the following have been Dryden could not have rhymed son
noted : (seae, AA) prepare war, — (e, with seen pain cane, or beat with coat,
seae) possess, place, — (o, u) blood with etc. Some even of the above may be re-
good wood, — (u, A) took, flock, — ferred to peculiar or archaic pronuncia-
(M, oo) shook with broke spoke, poor tions, so that Dryden's rhymes are not,
with more swore ; — (a, A) strung wrong, properly speaking, the monsters of mo-
return scorn, turn born, — (A, oo) lost dern times, known as rhymes to the eye,
with boast coast ; god abode ;— (9, au) as move love grove, has was gas, seat
won mith town crown, son with crown, great, pour flour, changed hanged,
— (uu, au) swoon with drown'd sound. That keep the word of promise to our eye
We also twice find (oon, Am) none And break it to our ear.
Absalom. Notwithstanding the di- See a further examination of Dryden's
versity there is always some point of rhymes in Chap. IX, § 3.
CHAP. III. § 3. E, EE, EA — XVIII TH CENTURY. 89
59' others having short (e) and all the rest having long (ee)
for ea. The orthographist only admits 4 words in which ea
is sounded like a long, that is (ee) ; viz^ bear s. and v., swear,
tearv., wear ; 3 words in which ea "is sounded like a short,"
that is (se), viz. hearken, heart and its derivatives, hearth;
but gives 95 examples of ea sounded as (e) short including
beard ; and then no less than 255 in which " ea is sounded
ee or e long " that is (ii). This last list of ea = (ii), includes
the words break, deaf, deafen, great, indeavour, — but endeavour
is in the list of ea = (e), — leassee, pear, shear, yea, yearn, in
all of which, except shear which is often (shiij), and yearn
which is (jJn), the old long (ee) is still preserved; and
though (briik, griit) may still be heard from a very few, I
have not been so fortunate as to hear (diif, indirvJ, liisir,
piii, jii, jiiin). We can imagine a Gill of the period ex
claiming again : "Non nostras hie voces habes, sed Mopsarum
fictitias!" It is impossible to believe that this represented
the generally-received pronunciation of the time.
1710. DYCHE, so far as I can understand his notation,
agrees with Jones, but between him and Buchanan 1766,
were fifty years, which seem to have had a great effect on our
pronunciation, in settling long a to (ce) and long e and ea to
(ii). They were years in which there was a remarkable ten
dency to thinness and meagreness of sound owing to a pre
dilection for the higher lingual or palatal vowels. The
change from (ee) to (ii) was attempted to be carried much
further than actually succeeded. Thus chair,1 steak, break,
great were (tshiii, stiik, briik, griit), oblige was (obliidzh*)2
and (k, g) before (aa), where the sound of (aa) really re
mained, were palatalised into (k, g) as in (&aa.id, #aajd). All
these sounds might have been heard from elderly speakers
some thirty years ago, and those which have remained to
the present day, are accounted old pronunciations. In the
xvn th century however, they were modernizms which did
not set through, and our present pronunciations (tsheer,
steek, breek, greet, oblaidzh') were older, although uot all
of them the oldest forms. In the provinces (tshiii) is still
frequent, and (obliidzlr) is nearly universal in Scotland.
1710. The anonymous instructor of the Palatines, writes
me, he, we, she, be in German letters mi, hi, wi, schi, bi as par
ticular exceptions, and gives as examples of ea sounding
i ""WTiy is a stout man always happy? (tsheer, tshiir) the latter being one of
Because he a cheerful (chair full)." This the words which had then changed its
is a conundrum of that period, and could sound, notwithstanding the spelling
not have belonged to any other, for in chear, since altered to cheer.
the XYII th century, chair, chear were 2 So pronounced by Dyche.
90 E, EE, EA — XVIII TH CENTURY. CHAP. III. $ 3.
sometimes almost (bisweikn fast] as German i (ii), the words
heap, heat, cheap, clean, ckar.
1766-8. Buchanan and Franklin may be said to have
completely adopted the present usage respecting e long
and ea. The following are all the words in Franklin's
examples, with his transcriptions, translated into palaeotype,
and following all his inaccuracies :
Long e, serene siriin, editions iidishans, religion rilidshon, idea aidia ;
— ea long, pleased pliiz'd, stream striim, clear kliir, meaning miiniq,
easiest iiziiest, least liist, increasing inkriisiq, speaker spikor, readers
ridors, to read riid, dear diir ; — greater greetor greter ; — ea short,
heaven nev'n, already alreadi Alreadi, / have read red, unlearned
onlarn'd.
An Irish gentleman, born in 1755, told me he remembered
the change. It is to be observed that the change is not yet
made among the less educated class in Ireland, and was
probably universal in Ireland when this gentleman was a
youth. He came to England as a young man, and observed
the custom growing. He distinctly remembered a youth who
asked for (piiz) peas, being told to say (peez) " like a man."
The thinner voice of woman has perhaps occasioned all thin
ness of utterance to be called effeminate. Thus Meigret says :
" Je vou' LESS' a pEnser qElle graQ5 aora 1'e clos En SE' vocables
HIES, tEs, SES, si nou' 1'y prono^Qons. come nou' fczons En pere mere :
E come font je ne sey qels effeminez miisrons [N = (nj)] auEq vn
prasqe clos resErremEnt de bouQhe : crexans a mon auis qe la VOES
virille de 1'home ne soEt point tant harmonieuze, ny aggreabl' ao'
dames q'une laijhe, foEbl' E femenine. Or quant a moE ie ne
poursuy pas icy 9ete dolxett' [i = Ij] E effeminee facjon de parler :
car je la LESS' aoz amoureuz poursuyuant tant eeulement gete
jenerall' E comune fa9on, qi sunt son home, E qi Et regu' Entre IE'
mieus appriz."
Just in the same way Smith exclaims against the " mulier-
culso delicatiores et nonnulli qui volunt isto modo videri loqui
urbanius" who use (ei) for (ai). And Dr. Gill works him
self up into absolute rudeness, in the following noteworthy
passage. After observing that the eastern English are fond
of thinning their words, saying (fir, kiver, deans) for (feier,
kuver, dans),^re, cover, dance, he goes on to say :
a * autem illam magnopere affectant
1 Printed laxv^rtiv by an error, but means "with a sweeping train," as a
corrected in the errata. All palatalis- parody of the Homeric eA/ceo-fireirAos,
ation or diminution of the lingual "if it be not rather leicd, lecherous."
aperture in vowels produces this effect The allusion is evidently to wvy^t, and
of meagreness, thinness of sound. the word might be translated " wrig-
2 This is an unusual word found in gling," as a mark of affectation.
Hes. Op. 371, which Liddell says
CHAP. III. § 3. E, EE, EA — XVIII TH CENTURY. 91
nostrse Mopsae J quae quidem ita omnia attenuant, vt a et o, non
aliter perhorrescere videantur quam Appius Claudius z. sic enim
nostrse non emunt (lAAn) lawn*, et (kaambrik) cambric, sindonis
species ; sed (leen) et (keembrik) ; nee edunt (kaapn) capon caponem,
sed (keepn) et fere (kiipn) ; nee unquam (butsherz meet) BTJTCHEBS
MEAT carnem a lanijs, sed (butsherz miit). Et quum sunt omnes
(dzhmtlermn) non (dzhentlwz'men3) gentlewomen, i.e. matronse no-
biles, nee maids ancillas vocant (maidz) sed (meedz). Quod autem
dixi de a, recanto ; nam si quando 6 grayistrepum audiretur, locum
concedunt ipsi a, sic enim aliquoties ad me pippiunt 4 (oi pre ja gii
jar skalerz liiv ta plee) pro (ai prai Jou 5 g^v JUUT skolars leev tu
plai), / pray you give your scholars leave to play. Quseso concede
tuis discipulis veniam ludendi."
"We cannot but regret that Dr. Gill had not greatly ex
tended his list. (Leen) does not seem to have survived, but
(keem'brak) is now the recognized pronunciation, though I
have heard (kaanrbn'k). So with (kerp'n). This anticipa
tion of the change from (aa) to (ee), which was not fully ac
complished till nearly a century after Gill's time, is remark
able. It must, however, be considered as a xvn th and not a
xvi th century sound. (B«tsher, meeds, plee) will be con
sidered hereafter. Here we are principally interested in the
anticipations (miit, liiv) for, (meet, leev), meat, leave, which
are not named as exceptions by any professedly xvn th cen
tury writers, and (meet, leev) being then the rule, would
have sounded most probably as affected to Price, Cooper, and
Jones as they did to Gill.
Generally with regard to the change of (ee) into (ii) it is
observable that in Modern Greek (as has been probably the
custom for nearly 2000 years), 77 is pronounced (ii), while
there seems reason to suppose that it was originally (ee) or
perhaps (ee), although, at least in one word, it was confounded
with (ii) at an early period.6 Also in the passage from Latin
to the modern Romance language, (ee) fell not unfrequently
1 It would be difficult to find any present day, ignorant as we are of the
authority for this piece of Latin. The effect that our pronunciation would
English is mopseys, sluts, which may have produced on our ancestors.
be related to mop, mope. 6 Probably an inaccuracy for (ju).
2 The pronunciation is an exact 6 The old quotation 6 8' ii\i6ios 8>oirep
palastotypic reproduction of Gill's, and vp6ftarov 0rj j8»j Xtyuv ftaSlCei, does
the ordinary spelling in italics is my not absolutely establish (ee) or even
addition throughout. (EE) as the sound. The latter is far
3 Both words require to be written more bleating, and Schmeller calls it
with ('!), or else to have (,) inserted that vowel which any lamb can teach
after (1), as (dzhmtl,raien, dzhentl,wi- us, "liber den uns jedes Lammchen
men,) to avoid a pronunciation in three belehren kann." The well-known pas-
syllables, sage in Plato, Crat. c. 15, olov, ol n±v
-4 This pipping, chirping effect is &px°"^TaT(" 'Wpa>' TV W«'pa'' ^>cd\ovt>,
precisely that now produced upon our only shews that some old people pro-
ears by the flunkey (Dzhiimz) of the nouuced that particular word in that way.
92 E, EE, EA — XVIII TH CENTURY. CHAP. III. $ 3.
into (ii),1 and as the Latin me, te, se became the Italian mi,
ti, si, so the English pronouns he, she, me, we, thee, as some of
the commonest words, were the first which fell into (mi, shii,
mii, dhii), having remained as (nee, shee, mee, dhee) to the
close of the xiv th century.
1710. SHERIDAN'S usage agrees with the modern, but his
observations on educated Irish usage are important. He
says that ee, ie were pronounced as (ii) both in England and in
Ireland, but that ea, ei, e when sounded "with (ii) in England
" almost universally " received the sound of (ee) in Ireland,
as (tee, see, pleez) tea, sea, please. But he adds that " gentle
men of Ireland, after sometime of residence in London, are
apt to fall into the general rule, and pronounce these words"
great, a pear, a bear, to bear, forbear, swear, to tear, wear,
which were exceptionally pronounced with (ee) in England,
"as if spelled greet, beer, sweer," that is, as (griit, piir, biir,
swiir, tiir, wiir). Omitting these mistakes, which had nothing
to do with the true Irish habits of the time, we see that the
latter really belonged to the xvn th century. Again Sheridan
says : " the final mute e makes the preceding e in the same
syllable, when accented, have the sound of (ii) as in the words
supreme, sincere, replete. This rule is almost universally
broken through by the Irish, who pronounce such words as
if written suprame, sinsare, replate" that is with (ee) as in the
xvn th century. In Sheridan's list of miscellaneous words
with Irish pronunciations, we find several examples of forcing
a rule too far, as above stated (see also p. 76). The complete
list is as follows, to which I have annexed my own pro
nunciation in the present century : —
Written. Irish. English 1780. English, 1868.
cheerful tshiirful tshErful tshiirfwl
fearful fnrful fErful fiirfwl
beard biird bErd biiid
leisure lEzh'ar lirzhar lezh'i
search seertsh sEitsh sitsh
tenure tEirjor tirruar ten'iui
tenable tEn-sebl tirnaebl ten'ub'l
1 Diez, Gram, der rom. Sprachen, cire (cera), marquis (marchensis), merci
2nd ed., vol. i., p. 139, gives as ex- (mercedem), pris (prensus), poussin,
amples, Italian Corniglia (^Cornelia,) raisin, tapis (tapetum), venin ; old
Messina (Messene), sarracino (sara- French, pai's (pagense, now pays), seine
cenus) — to which the initial di-, ri- (sagena), sen (serenus). He also re-
and several others may he added. — Span. marks on the same tendency in the old
consigo (secum), venino (venenum) ; high German fira (feriae), pina (Ital.
port, siso (sensus sesus). — Prov. herhitz pena), spisa (spesa), which have under-
(vervecem), pouzf (pullicenus), razim gone another change in modern times,
(racemus), sarraci. — French, brebis, becoming Feier, Peine, Speise.
CHAP. III. § 3. O, OO, OA — XVI TH CENTURY.
93
Written.
Irish.
wherefore
whiirfoor
therefore
dhiirfoor
breadth
brEth
endeavour
endii'var
mischievous
nu'stshirvas
reach
retsh
zealous
zii'las
zealot
zirlAt
English, 1780.
whErfoor
dhErfoor
bradth
endEvar
nus'tshivos
riitsh.
ZEl'8S
English, 1868.
wheei'fooi
dheei'fooj;
bredth
endevr
nm'tshtvBS
riitsh.
zel'i3s
zel'Bt
0, 00, OA XVI TH CENTURY.
1530. PALSGRAVE says: "0 in the frenche tong hath two diuers
matters of soundynges, the souwdyng of o, whiche is most generall
with them, is lyke as we sounde o in these words in our tonge a
boore, a soore, a coore, and suche lyke, that is to say, like as the
Italians sounde o, or they with vs that souwde the latin tong aright."
1567. SAXESBTTKY says : " 0 in Welsh is sounded according to the
right sounding of it in Latin : eyther else as the sound of o is in
these Englyshe wordes : a Doe, a Roe, a Toe : and o never soundeth
in AVelsh as it doth in these wordes of Englysh : to, do, two.'" And
again, 1547, speaking of English, he says : "0 takes the sound of
[Welsh] o (o) in some words, and in others the sound of w (uu) ;
thus TO, to, (too), digitus pedis ; so, so, (soo), sic ; TWO, tw, (tuu)
duo ; TO, tw (tu) ad ; SCHOLE, scwl, (skuul) schola .... But two oo
together are sounded like w in Welsh, as GOOD gwd (guud) bonus ;
POORE pwr (puur) pauper."
1568. — SIR T. SMITH simply says: "0 Latina," giving as ex
amples the following words, which he only writes phonetically, but
are here given in ordinary spelling —
Short — smock, horse, hop, sop, not, rob, bot, pop.
Long — smoke, hoarse, hope, soap, note, robe, boat, pope.
Smith makes oo in loot, look, mood, fool, pool, too the same as the
Latin u long, meaning (uu). See under U.
1569. IT A TIT says : " The fourth [vowel], by taking awaye of all
the tongue, cleane from the teeth or gummes, as is sayde for the a,
and turning the lippes rounde as a ring, and thrusting forth of a
sounding breath, which roundnesse to signifie the shape of the
letter, was made (of the first inuentor) in like sort, thus 0." And
his English examples are no, not, so.
1580. BFLLOKAR says: "Ohath three soundes, and all of them
vowels; the one sound agreeing to his olde and continued name,
another sound, betweene the accustomed name of, o, and the old
name of, v, and the same sound long, for which they write oo,1 (as I
do also, but giuing it a proper name, according to the sound thereof),
the thirde sounde is as, v, flat and short, that is to say, as this
sillable ou, short sounded : for which some of the better learned did
many times use, oo. &, v, according to their sounds, but most times
1 The two o's are united in one type as the o and e are in the type oe.
94 O, OO, OA — XVI TH CENTURY. CHAP. III. § 3.
with superfluous letters." He illustrates the three sounds by the
words.
1) sonne filius, vpon, bosome (first vowel), corne, close.
2) sonne sol, out, bosome (second vowel), come.
3) loked, toke, boke, sone.
1611. PLORIO says, speaking of the Italian (wh, o) : "So likewise
to the close 0, I have throughout my book given this oualle forme
0. and to the open this round form 0. The first close or oualle is
euer pronounced as the English single Y. in these wordes, Bun, Dug,
Flud, Gud, Rud, Stud, Tun, &c., whereas the other round or open
is euer pronounced as our 0. in these words Bone, Dog, Plow, God,
Rod, Stone, Tone &c. as for example in these Italian wordes, lo
hondro il mio Dio cdn dgni diuotidne, where euer, 0. is close and
oualle. And in these, lui mi vuole torre la mia tdrre ; or else, lui
mi ha rdsa la mia rosa ; where Torre with an open or round 0. is
a verbe and signifieth to take, and tdrre with a close or oualle 0.
is a noune substantiue, and signifieth a tower ; and Rdsa with an
oualle and close 0. is a participle of the verb Rodere, and signifieth
Gnawne or Mbled, and Rosa with a round or open 0. is a noune
substantiue, and signifieth the floure that we call a Rose."
1621. GILL gives as key words for his long and short o, "coale, to
coll," and calls them &>, o.
In endeavouring to discover what are the sounds intended,
it is necessary first to examine what sounds of o exist. They
are all round vowels, that is, the action of the lips with a
tolerably round opening is necessary. The tongue must also
not be much raised, or the sound falls into (u, w) or at least
(wh) the Italian o chiuso. At the same time the tongue must
not be too much depressed, or the sounds become (A, o), the last
of which is the modern English o in odd, which Mr. M. Bell
considers to be a wide form of (A), and which is generally,
though inaccurately, confounded with (A), just as (z) is
usually confounded with (i) . Hence we obtain two forms, by
raising the back of the tongue to a mid position, and round
ing the lips in a medium manner, namoly (o, o), the latter
being the wide of the former. In present English (o) only
occurs as a long vowel, and in the south it usually has a
faint sound of (u) after it, thus (Hooum, Koo'wm) home, but
this is unhistorical, except where a w is written ; thus we
may distinguish no, know as (noo, noou). The other sound
(oo) is often beard long in provincial English as (noom) home.
Unaccustomed ears then confound it with (AA) or (oo). The
long sound (oo) is also- sometimes heard from those London
speakers who wish to prolong the sound of o in dog, cross,
off, office, without degenerating into (dAAg, krAAs, AA£, AAf'/s),
or being even so broad as (doog, kroos, oof, oof'/s). It is also
the sound now most esteemed in oar, glory, story, memorial,
CHAP. III. § 3- O, 00, OA — XVI TH CENTURY. 95
once called, and still so called by elderly people, (oo'i, gloo'x'ii,
stoo'tri, memoo'j'rM), but now professedly called (00.1, gloo-rrj,
stooJTi, memoorml), the action of the glide from (00} to
(j) having resulted in widening the vowel.1 Mr. M. Bell
recognizes two other sounds (oh, oh) related to (o, o) by being
mixed instead of back vowels. The former he hears in the
French homme, where I hear (o), and the latter in the
American stone, where I hear (0). The sounds are unusual
to English ears, and it will be unnecessary to distinguish
(o, oh) or (o, oh) for any purpose in this treatise. Generally
(ston) is heard as (stsn), which is the modern English form
in such phrases as (o weigh ticehe stone (tu weei twelv stan).
The sound (HO!) for (HOO!) whole, is by no means uncommon,
although most persons hear it as (nel), and it is imitated by
writing " the hull of a thing."
Now long o being (00) and short o in closed syllables being
(o), as note, not (noot, not), English writers have got so much
into the habit of considering these two sounds as a pair, that
when they speak of long and short 0 we naturally expect
these sounds and not (00, o). This creates the difficulty.
The ear and judgment are confused. Sir T. Smith may
have pronounced his key words (smok smook, nors Hoors,
Hop, Hoop), and yet have considered them as pairs, for he
actually has so considered the more distant sounds (beit, bet).
As the Welsh at the present day, so far as I have observed,
say (oo, o) and do not use either (0) or (o), they probably so
pronounced in Salesbury's time. But Salesbury would in
that case have heard (00, o) as (oo, o), so that his identifi
cation of the English with the Welsh 0, although probably
correct, would not suffice to decide so delicate a point. Quite
recently I have heard Welsh gentlemen who seemed to me
to say (poob) and not (poob) declare that the vowel sounded
to them the same as that in my pronunciation of robe (roob).
Hart's description, giving the lingual positions for a (a) and
the rounding of the lips should produce (o) exactly. And I
am inclined to think that the normal English sound up to
the end of the xvi th century was (oo, o), both long and
short. This would make sense of Hart's examples no, not, so
as (noo, not, soo), and would make Smith's and Gill's long
and short o, perfect pairs, thus : Gill coll, coal, (kol, kool) ;
Smith smock, smoke, (smok, smook).
1 Of course this sound degenerates anxious to correct this, say (gloo,T»),
into (oo) or (AA), so that (gLvA-rz) or without any (j), the effect of which
even (dlAAn) may often be heard in was decidedly unpleasant.
London. I have heard clergymen, who,
96 O, OO, OA — XVI TH CENTURY. CHAP. III. § 3.
My own impression, after considerable thought on the sub
ject, though it would be difficult to enumerate all the reasons
which have led me to this conclusion, is, that (oo, o) must be
considered as the normal sound, intermediate to (a) and (u) ;
and that (o, u} are felt as approximations towards (u), and
(o, A) as approximations towards (a). To me the Italian
sounds o chiuso and o aperto, close and open o, are respectively
(uh, o), the former coming from Latin u, the latter from Latin
o. The regular short German and French o I also consider to
be (o). To shew however the ease with which sounds so
near may be confused, I may mention that Mr. Melville Bell
in taking down sounds from my dictation, heard my (o, on)
as (oh, un).1
I shall assume as at least most likely that (oo, o) was the
original sound of long and short o previous to the xvith
century, but that (oo) inclining often towards (u) had
become (uu) in many words in the xvith century, other
words retaining the pure (oo).2 It was, I believe, to
separate these two effects that a diversity of spelling
was introduced. The o which became (uu) was written
oo, and the o which remained unchanged became oa. The
change was precisely similar to the introduction of the two
spellings ee, ea at the same period, and the device was
the same, viz., the more guttural sounds of each, that is, the
sounds more nearly approaching to a, were represented by
adding on a as ea, oa, and the other sounds further from a,
were represented by simple duplication as ee, oo. When o
had changed to (u) the spelling u gradually prevailed, but
sometimes simple o and sometimes oo was employed. The
older spelling ou also occasionally remained. We have seen
that the orthography ee, ea was not fixed in Palsgrave's time.
Similarly we find him writing in the passage first quoted
under this letter, (p. 93), boore, soore, coore for boar, sore, core.
Reverting to Palsgrave's vocabulary of nouns, we find the fol
lowing spellings, to which I add Levins's, as under EA (p. 77) :
"£oke .. booke, boh oihe .. othe, bokeram, bochtte for a well.,
bucket, lokyll .. buckle, bocler for defence .. bockler, bone a request ..
1 See Visible Speech, Plate viii. con- and that given by Mr. M. Bell, must
taining the speech of Portia on Mercy, generally Be attributed to further in-
written in Visible Speech letters from vestigation on my part,
my dictation, where (noht, droh-peth) 2 In the examination of Chaucer's
are written for what I intended to pro- pronunciation I shall endeavour to
nounce as (not, drop'eth.) This speech shew that in his time the sound of o
will be found as an example in Chap. had not split into two, although I think
VIII, § 8, Ex. 1. The differences be- that o was written not unfrequently for
tween the pronunciation there exhibited an original (u).
CHAP. III. § 3. O, 00, OA — XVI TH CENTURY. 97
boone, lour age herbe, boore beest .. bore, boorde for buylding .. boord,
borde cloth nappe .. borde, boarder that gothe to borde .. border,
boster uantevr, botfe to rowe in bateav .. bote, boty that man of warre
take .. booty, botlar.. butler, bottras .. buttresse, bottrye .. butterie,
boote of lether .. boote, boothe .. boothe, bully on in a woman's girdle,
bouke of clothes, cloke a garment .. cloke, coke that selleth meate ..
cooke, cole, of fyre .. cole, coupe [coop], core of frute .. core, corse a
deed body .. corse, courser of horses .. course, cosyn kynsman ..
cousin, costes charge .. coste, cost of a countre .. coaste, cote a byrde ..
coote, cote for a ladde .. cote, cover .. cover, couple .. couple, course ..
course,1 doo a beest ..doe, dokelyng .. duckling,2 dole .. &oole, dome
jugement.. doome, dong hyll.. dungil, dore a gate .. door, doublet,
dove .. doove, doute .. doubte, fole .. foole, foole a colte .. fole, foome
.. fome, foo .. foe, for owe .. furrowe, fote .. foote, foulde for shepe ..
fould, foule .. foule, good .. good, golde a metall .. golden, goulfe of
eorne, so moche as may lye bytwene two postes, otherwyse a baye ..
gulfe, gode for a carter .. gode, goore of a smock .. gore, gose a foule
.. goose, goseberry .. gooseberrie, goost .. ghoste, gote a beest .. gote,
yottesmylk, grome .. groome, grote money .. grote, hode .. hoode, hoke ..
hooke, hole.. hole, holy., holy, hony..honye, honny combe, honny -
suckell .. honysuckle, hore .. whore, hope .. hope, hote house .. hote,
horse a beest .. horse, hoorsnesse of the throte .. horse, host of men ..
hoste, hose for ones legges .. hose, houpe [hoop], ionkette ..junkets,
iouse ..juce, lode. .lode [load], lofe of bredde .. lofe, loke.Aooke,
lope [loop], lome [loam], losyng perdition .. lose, love .. loved, mole
moule a beest .. moule, moleyne an herbe, molet a fysshe .. mullet,
moone a planet .. moone, moneth .. month, mode in a verbe .. moode,
more a fen .. moore, mote a dytche .. mote, mote in the sonne .. mote,
moton [mutton], moultytude .. multitude, moulde a form .. mould,
mournyng .. mourne, noone mydday .. noone, ncnve a relygious wo
man .. nunne, norisshyng .. nourish, nose [in the body of his work
constantly written noose] .. nose, ore of a bote .. ore,3 ote come .. otes,
othe sweryng .. othe, oulde mayde .. ould, plome a frute .. ploume,
podyng .. pudding, poddell a slough .. puddel, poke or bagge .. poke,
pocke or blayne .. pocke, pole a staffe .. pole, pompe [pump], ponde ..
ponde., pore .. pore, poore [poor], profe .. proof e, prose, rho bucke a
beest .. roe buck, robe .. robe, roche a fysshe .. rochet, rode a crosse ..
roode, rofe .. roofe, roke .. Tooike, rope .. rope, rose ..rose, rote of a
tree .. roote, sloo worme .. sloe, smoke .. smooke, sokelyng .. souke,
sole a fysshe .. sole, sole of a fote .. sole, sole of a shoo .. sole, somme
[sum], sonne .. sonne,4 sope to wasshe with .. sope, soper .. supper, sore
a wound .. sore, sote of a chymney .. sooty, sothenesse [soothness],
sodayne [sudden] .. sodayne, soule [soul] .. soule, souldier .. soldiourie,
souter sauetier, soveraynte of a kynge .. soveraygne, spoke of a
wheel .. spoke, stoble .. stubbil, stone .. stone, store .. store, tode [toad]
.. tode, too of ones fote ..toe, toost of breed .. toste, tothe dent..
1 The adjective coarse is also spelled 3 Levins uses oore for a metallic
course both by Palsgrave and Levins. ore.
2 The verb to duck is spelled douk 4 Both Palsgrave and Levins use
both by Palsgrave and Levins. sonne for both son and sun.
98
O, 00, OA — XVI TH CENTURY. CHAT. III. § 3.
toothe, vout under the ground .. valte, wode [woad] .. woodwasse,
wodwosse, wood or tre that is fallen .. wood, wodde to burne .. wood,
woodnesse rage .. woode, wolfe .. wolfish, woman .. woman, wombe,
wonders .. wonder, wo sorowe .. woe."
It is evident that long o and oo were not yet separated by
Palsgrave to whom also the device of oa or oe final, (see doo,
foo, wo) had not yet occurred, and although oo was freely
used by Levins, oa was almost unknown to him.
A comparison of Bullokar's notation of the three classes of
words he cites, leads me to the conclusion that their sounds
were, in palaeotype —
1) son, upon, boz'um, koorn, kloos.
2) sun, ut, boz'um, kum.
3) luuked, tuuk, buuk, suun.
The pronunciation (son) is however peculiar. Smith gives
(sun). Where direct authority cannot be obtained it is ex
tremely difficult to distinguish which of these sounds should be
given to o in any words of the xvi th century. Generally we
may conclude that the o, oa, — not the ow, — which is now (oo)
or (oou) was then (oo), being the old sound but very slightly
altered ; what is now (uu) it is not so safe to conclude was then
(uu) unless in the course of the century we find the spelling
oo adopted. "What is now (o) was pretty certainly (o) at that
time, being almost the old sound preserved. But it is not
quite so certain that what is now (a) was formerly (u), for
some of these may have been (o), or both sounds may have
prevailed, thus Bullokar and Smith differ respecting son, and
none, one were (noon, oon). It is also very probable that
many o represented (u) even as early as Chaucer's time. The
following cases of o, oo, oa = (u) or (uu) are taken from the
authorities for this century.
above
afford
among
blood
board
bombast
book
boot
brood
broom
come
cook
cool
coot
cover
do
done
food
foot
forth
good
goose
hood
ooze
some
two
wood
hoof
other
soon
whom
woof
hoop
loof
look
loose
pool
poor
prove
rook
soothe
stood
stool
sword
whoop
whore
wolf
womb
wool
"Worcester
word
work
loving
mood
mother
room
root
shoe
thorough
to
ton
woman
won
wonder
worm
worship
worst
mouth
shovel
too
wont
worth
move
smother
took
woo
wost
conjurer government
To these Shakspere authorises the addition of Rome.1
1 Julius Caesar act i. sc. 2, v. 156 : —
Now is it Rome indeed, and Roome enough
When there is in it but one onely man.
CHAP. III. § 3. o, 00, OA — XVII TH CENTURY. 99
The following are all the words containing o which Sales-
bury adduces, leaving ou, ow, oi, ol to be considered hereafter.
GOD God (God) ; CONDICYON condisywn (kondis'mn) ; ETJEEMOEE
efermicor (evermoor) ; * THONDEE thwndr (thun'der), WONDEE wnder
(wurrder);2 HOPE hoop (noop); ORANGES oreintsys (oreindzlus), FOLE
ffwl (fuul).; HOLY holi (noo'li, HoH),3 HONEST onest (on'est); HONOTJEE
onor (on'or) ; EXHIBITION ecsibisiwn (eksibis-i,un) ; PEOHEBITION pro-
ilisiwn (proo,ibis'i,un); JOHN tsion, sion (Dzhon); BOKE Iwk (bunk) ;
TO, to (too) meaning a toe; so so (soo) ; TWO tw (tuu), TO to (tu) the
preposition ;• SCHOLE scwl (skuul) ; GOOD, gwd (guud) ; POOEE pwr
(puur) ; EOS ros (rooz) a rose, SEASON seesyn (seez'm);4 TOP top (top) j
THOMAS tomas (Tonvas) ; THEONE trwn (truun) ; OXE ocs (oks).
Florio (p. 94,) evidently heard bone, dog as (boon, dog),
and, if (looon) had been said, he would have most probably
heard that sound as (bwwhn), just as at present Englishmen
confuse the Italian (uuh., o), o chiuso long and o aperto short,
with their own (po, o). Hence his remarks give a presump
tion in favour of (oo, o).
0, 00, OA — xvn TH CENTURY.
1653. "WALLIS says of the guttural vowels "d86 aperta: Si
apertura majori sen pleno rictu spiritus exeat, formatur Germanorum
a vel d5 apertum. Neque Germani solum sed et Galli, aliique non
pauci, eodem sono suum a plerumque proferunt. Angli sonum
ilium eorreptum per 6 breue ; productum vero plerumque per au
vel aw, rarius per d exprimunt. Nam in fdll, folly ; hdll, haul,
holly ; call, collar ; lawes, losse ; cause, cost ; aw d, odd ; saw d, sod ;
aliisque similibus ; idem prorsus Vocalium sonus auditor in primis
syllabis, nisi quod illic producatur his corripiatur. Atque hinc est
quod Hebraei suum camets longum, et camels breve seu comets chatuph,
(hoc est, nostrum d apertum et d breve,) eodem charactere scribunL
Nam eorum 7^ et 7^ non aliter diflferunt quam nostrum edll et coll.
" 6 rotundwn. Majori labiorum apertura formatur 6 rotundum ;
quo sono plerique proferunt Gra3corum GJ. Hoc sono Galli plerum
que proferunt suum au. Angli ita fere semper proferunt o pro
ductum vel etiam oa (ipso a nimirum nunc dierum quasi evanescente ;
de quo idem hie judicium ferendum est ac supra de ea 6) : Ut, one,
1 The inserted w is perplexing, it words were meant. This shews that the
should give the sound (muor), and quality of the long and short o was the
Price uses wo to indicate (uu). But same to him.
Smith pronounces (moor). 4 The origin of this y is not appa-
2 The initial (w) has been supplied, rent. The real sound of the word
because its omission has been regarded seems to have been (seez'n).
as a Welsh habit, and Salesbury'smode 8 The Oxford reprint has o in each
of writing did not give him the means case, which is erroneous.
of representing (wu). 6 "We have seen that the a was never
3 Salesbury does not distinguish pronounced in either case ; that it was
holly, holy either in sound or spelling, a mere orthographical device.
but his interpretation shews that both
100 O, OO, OA — XVII TH CENTURY. CHAP. III. § 3.
unus ; none, millus ; whole, totus ; hole foramen ; coal, carbo ; boat,
cymba ; oat, avena ; those, illi ; chose, eligi ; etc. At ubi o breve est,
ut plurimum. per d apertum (de quo supra) rarius per 6 rotundum
pronunciatur.
" Oo sonatur ut Germanorum •A. pingue, seu Gallorum ou. Ut in
vocibus good bonus, stood stabam, root radix, foot pes, loose laxus,
loose laxo, amitto.
" Nonnunquam o & ou negligentius pronunciantes eodem sono"
b ii obscuro = (a), "efferunt, ut in cdme, venio; sdme, aliquis; d6ne,
actum ; cdmpany, consortium ; country, rus ; couple, par ; cdvet,
concupiscp ; Idve, amo ; aliisque aliquot ; quse alio tamen sono rectius
proferri debent."
These extracts seem to make long o a true labial (oo),1
short o a true gutturo-labial (A) — for which however the softer
(o) may have been really sounded, and occasionally (a), a
new sound, which will be considered under U, — and long or
short oo the true (uu, u), which however may have been
(uu, «). Hence long and short o had ceased to be a pair
(oo, o), and had become the different vowels (oo, o) or (oo, A).
This fully agrees with Wilkins, 1668, who gives the follow
ing pairs, leaving (oo) without a mate,
a ( short hot-torn fol-ly fot mot Pol rod
( long bought fall fought Paule Rawd
( short
[ long bote foale vote mote pole rode
f short full fut pul
( long boote foole foote moote poole roode
but he also gives amongst as containing (99).
1668. PRICE distinguishes three sounds of o, long as in no,
"fo," more, most = (oo) according to Wallis ; short as in lot,
not, for = (o) ; " obscure like short u (a) as in son, tongue,
London, above, *approve, *behoveth, brother, come, companie,
conie, conduit, dosen, dost, doth, love, mother, *move, plover,
pomel, *prove, *remove, shovel, some, venom, *whom," all of which
with the exception of those marked * retain the sound of (a).2
Price also says : " o after w, soundes like short u, (a) as
world, *sword, * woman, won, except, o, soundes, ee, in women,
and o long in wo, wore, woke," (swa-id, wanrmi) are uncom
mon. Then follows a long list of final om, on sounded as
as (em, an), including some words in which the sound is
now ('n).
1 The French distinguish two sounds of Cambridge, that he used to saj :
of o, the close au and the open o, which " If a man say I lie, I say (prav) it ;
to my ears sound as (o, o). if he (prav) it, then I lie; if he
2 As regards prove, it is an ancient don't (prav) it, then he lies, and there's
university story of the late Prof. Vince, an end on't."
CHAP. III. $ 3. O, 00, OA — XVII TH CENTURY. 101
" O, soundes like (woo)1 oo in *Rome, do, shoe, cuckoe, *go,
*hord, mushrom, undo, who, * whore." (Ruum) we have seen
was heard in Shakspere's time, and may still occasionally be
heard ; (guu) is mentioned by Wallis in terms of disapproval ;
(Huurd) may be classed with (afuurd) afford ; and mushroom
has changed its spelling.
Price makes oa the long o, (oo), and oo generally " like
woo" (uu), but "like u" (a) in good, wool, hood, wood, stood.
1685. COOPER pairs the vowels fall folly, and foal full.
By the latter pair he could not have meant (fuul ftil), or
(fwwhl Mil). His (ful, ful, fiihl, fol) whichever way he
pronounced it, contained the nearest vowel sound to (fool)
that he was acquainted with (p. 84). He says : —
" 0 formatur a labiis paululum contractis, dum spiritus orliculatm
emittur : ut in hope spes ; productum semper, (nisi in paucis quae
per oo (uu) sonantur ; et ante / per ou (wu, ou) labiales ; ut in bold
audax) hoc modo pronunciant Angli, quern aliquando scribunt per
oa ; ut coach currus ; correptus raro auditur, nisi in paucis, quae a
consonante labiali incipiunt ; ut post w in wolf lupus, wonder minim ;
& in syllaba wor ; plura non memini : in quibusdam u hoc modo
pronunciatur, ubi praecedens vocalis est labialis ; ut pull, vello, full
plenus ; non quia debet, sed quoniam aliter facilius efferri nequit :
Et oo in good bonus, hood cucullus, wood lignum ; / stooa steti ;
Gralli per o ut globe globus, proteste protestor ; in copy exemplar
corripitur. Oermani per o, ut ostern pentecoste ; quern in principio
dictionum fere producant : in wort verbum ; Gott Deus corripitur."
Whence it appears that Cooper did not distinguish (u)
from (o) or even (o). In fact he hardly knew the true short
(u) for after describing oo he says "inter sonum correptum
& productum minima datur differentia," and he pairs foot
short, fool long, where the difference of length is solely due
to the following consonant. As I have found it necessary to
suppose that Cooper paired (ee, i), see p. 83, so here I pre
sume he paired (oo, u), sounds which have nearly the same
degree of diversity. This occasions a slight difficulty in his
diphthong ou, which will have to be afterwards considered.
Cooper gives the following list of words in o, oa which
have the sound of (uu), those marked * being unusual :
*aboard, *afford, *behoves, *boar,2 *born carried, *force, *forces,
move, *sword, *sworn, tomb, two, who, whom, whore, whosoever,
ivomb, *worn. The words *board, *forth, prove, stoup he says
are also written boord, foorth, proov, stoop. In the following
words he hears his short o =(u) ; blood-i-ly, good-ly-ness, flood,
1 Price's ovm notation, not palaeo- 2 This is boar, the animal, not boar
type. As a "Welshman he evidently =boor as given afterwards by Jones,
called woo (uu), the same as oo.
102 O, 00, OA — XVII TH CENTURY. CHAP. III. § 3.
hood, brotherhood, sisterhood, neighbourhood, falsehood, soot,
stood, wood, wool. The exceptions damosel, women (daenrzel,
w/nren) are noted. After giving examples of oa as (oo),
which are often written with o-e, he says, as cloak, cloke, he
admits the sound of (AA), as now usual, in abroad, broad, groat.
1686. MIEGE agrees in the main with the former, but he
hears long o as French o (oo), and the short o when it was
(a) as the French short o also, that is either (o) or (o) while
he says : " il y a bien des mots ou 1' o a un son mele de celui
de T a, et ou sans scrupule on le peut sonner comme un a,"
that is, he confused (a, o) or (a, A). Interpreting his signs
by former explanations we find the following novelties. 0 is
short = (a) in compounds of most, as hithermost. Borne =
(boorn), born = (bAArn) ; form a bench = (foorm), form a
shape = (fAArm) ; holy = (noo'K), holy day = (HAH dee).
Yolk, maggot, anchor, women = (jelk, maeg'et, aen'ker, w^m'en).
Home = (Ruum). On = ('n) in capon, mutton, lesson, reckon,
reason, season, apron, citron, saffron, iron, fashion, cushion,
puncheon.
1701. JONES confirms the others. The following is his list
of long o sounded as (uu) afford, bomb, comb, Ford, ford, gam-
boya, gold, Monday, More, Rome, tomb, womb, in which most
are unusual, and gold, Monday are noteworthy. The oa as
(uu) are "aboard, boar a clown," now written boor, "board."
The words doe, does, doest, doeth, shoe, woe, he likewise hears
pronounced with (uu), although he also gives (doz) for does.
He admits the sound of (a) for o in "the beginning" of
colonel, colour, etc., comfort, company, etc., coney, conjure, etc.,
money, monkey, etc., mongcorn, monger, etc. ; blomary, bombast,
borrage, bosom, botargo, brocado, chocolate, cognisance, colander,
coral, coroner, cozen, Devon, dozen, forsooth, gormandize, gromel,
London, onion, poltroon, pomado, poniard, porcelane, potato,
recognisance, sojourn, Somerset, stomach, tobaco ; in final -come,
-dom, -some, -son ; in the last syllables of chibol, gambol,
symbol. Even the unusual cases will be recognized as still
occasionally heard, but they evidently bear the same relation
to the present pronunciation with (o), as (griit, briik, tshiia)
do to (greet, brcek, tsheei). Both resulted from overdriving
a new attenuative habit.
In the xvn th century then the change from (oo, o) into
(oo, A) or (oo, o) was complete ; a few more of the (oo) had
advanced into (uu), more indeed than those which maintained
their position, and those formerly heard as (u) or (it) had
become (a), a change to be considered under U.
CHAP. III. $ 3. O, 00, OA — XVIII TH CENTURY. 103
0, 00, OA — xvin TH CENTURY.
During the xvin th century the change in the use of these
letters as just described, was so slight that it will be quite
unnecessary to enter into many particulars. It will be suf
ficient to note some examples, chiefly of exceptions to the
general rule that o long and oa = (oo), o short =; (o) or (A),
and oo long and short = (uu, u), or of exceptions to the pre
ceding exceptions to this rule.
1704. The EXPERT ORTHOGRAPHIST gives oo in flood, blood
the sound of (a), and in door, floor, moor, poor the sound of
(oo). He also makes o = (uu) in "wolf, wolves, Rome, comb,
tomb, divorce, force, forge, form to sit on, born endured, sup
ported, forth abroad, port and its compounds com, de, in, sup,
trans-port, sport, shorn and torn, engross, Ghost, most, post,
rost, and o between w and r for the most part is sounded oo
(uu) as word, work, world, worm, worry, worship, worse-st,
worsted, worst, and worth ; and in approve, behove, move, prove,
remove, reprove ; but like short u (a) in dove, glove, love, cover,
covet, groveling." He admits oa to be a nfode of lengthening
o, but says "oa in abroad, broad, and groat, have a peculiar
broad sound" without saying that it is the same as au (AA),
and "oa sounds ai in goal pronounced jail, (dzheel)."
1766. BUCHANAN writes London Lon'an, won won, lot lot ;
dost dost, work work, worship warship, woman wanrm, women
wi'nvm, wonder wan'd/r, mouth mauth, money man'i, son san ;
twopence tap'ms, poltroon poltruun, forth fo'orth ; globe gloob,
robe roob, whole whoo/; who HUU, do duu, tomb tuum, gold
guuld, Rome Ruum ; move muuv, one wsen, once wsens, only
on'K, come kam ; soap soop, broad brood, oats oots ; loath
lAAth, groat, grseaet.
1768. FRANKLIN has of AV, bosom baz'am, compared
kampeerd', other adh'ar, government gavarnment, London
Lan'dan ; only oon'li, spoke spook, wrote wot, some sam, one
wan, once wans, to too, in which will be found some uses
different from Buchanan's.
1780. SHERIDAN notes the Irishisms : (duur) door, (fluur)
floor, (kuurs) both coarse and course, (stra'v) strove, (drav)
drove, (rod) rode, (strood) strode, (shoon) shone, (fat) foot,
which he says were pronounced in England (door, floor,
koors, stroov, droov, rood, strAd, shAn, fut). Most of these
Irishisms are clearly, all of them are probably, as usual,
remnants of the xvnth century.
104
Y, I, IE — XVI TH CENTURY.
CHAP. III. § 3.
Y, I, IE — xvi TH CENTURY.
When y, i were consonants, they were employed like the
modern y, j = (j, dzh), and were never interchanged in the
old writers, although the sound of (j) was not usually con
sidered a consonant, as will be noted under y, w. When y, i
were vowels they were used indiscriminately, except perhaps
that / was always1 used as the personal pronoun, and was
not employed at the end of any other word. For the present
section they must be considered as identical.
TABLE SHEWING THE INTEODTJCTION OF IE FOE E, EE.
Price.
1668.
Minshew.
1617.
Levins.
1570.
Palsgrave.
1530.
Promptorium,
1440.
believe
beleeve
beleeve
beleve
beleueness
besiege
besiege
bier
beere (biere)
beare
beere
beere
brief
briefe (breefe)
breefe
brefe
cavalier
cashier
casheere
chief
cheife (chiefe)
cheefe, chief
chefe, chief
cheuetun
[field]
field (feeld)
feeld, field
felde
feelde
[fiend]
feend
fende
[fierce]
fierce
fierse
fyers
fersse
friend
frend (friend)
frende
frende
freende
frontier
frontier
[grieve]
Kerchief
greeue (grieve)
kerchiefe
greeve
kercher
greue
kerchefe
grevyw
kyrchefe
Pief]
liefer
lefe
lefe
liege
liege
lege
lyche
niece
neece
neece
neyce
piece
peece (piece)
peece
pece
pece
pierce
[priest]
[shield]
pearce (pierce)
prieste
sheeld
perse
preestly
perce
preest
peercy»
preest
scheeld
siege
siege
sege
sege
cege
sierse
cearse
sieve
siue (sieue)
seefe
cyve
thief
theef
theefe
thefe
theef
view
view
vewe
yield
yeeld
yeeld
yelde
yeldow
IE was often used at the end of words where we now use
y. IE in the middle of words was employed in the xiv th
century indiscriminately with e or ee, but not very frequently.
In the xv th and xvr th centuries it had fallen out of use,
though we find it fully established with the modern sound
of (ii) in the xvn th century, in which is included also the
word friend as already noted (p. 80). The preceding table
containing all Price's list and a few other words in brackets,
1 In MSS. y was not unfrequently used even for the personal pronoun in the
xv th century and earlier.
CHAP. III. § 3. Y, I, IE XVI TH CENTURY. 105
will shew the corresponding spellings in the Promptorium
1440, Palsgrave 1530, and Levins 1570, and Minshew 1617;
the spellings in parenthesis in Minshew's column, are spellings
which he recognizes and gives in cross references, but the
other spellings are those under which he explains the words.
It will be seen that Minshew's book shews the exact period of
the transition, when generally both spellings were sufficiently
known to require notice, but one was decidedly preferred by
the author, and that one was only occasionally ie. The French
niece, piece, far, siege and occasionally chief may have in
fluenced some words, but others, as believe, bier, friend, field,
lief, thief, yield, seem to have no reason, either in sound or
etymology, for this curious change of custom in spelling.
For our present purpose, then, we may dismiss ie, consider
ing it, in the middle of words, as a fanciful variation of ee
and having precisely the same value (ii) towards the close
of the xvi th century, and, at the end of words as an archa
ism for y, having the same sound (i).1
There seems to have been only one sound of short i and,
with rare exceptions, such as machine, only one sound of long
i, during the xvi th and subsequent centuries. At the pre
sent day, English short i or (i) is the wide sound of the
Italian or European short i or (i). The fine sharp clear (i) is
very difficult for an Englishman to pronounce, and although
the Scotch can and do pronounce it,2 they not unfrequently
replace it with (e) or (e), not (E). In this respect they re
semble the Italians who have so frequently replaced Latin i
by their e chiuso or (e). The Dutch may be said not to
know (i), as they regularly replace it by (e). The English
sound (i) lies between (i) and (e). The position of the tongue
is the same as for (i), but the whole of the pharynx and
back parts of the mouth are enlarged, making the sound
deeper and obscurer. According to Mr. M. Bell there
is the same distinction between (e) and (e), the latter
being the wide form of the former, and he hears (e)
1 The word pierce seems to have re- 2 Mr. Melville Bell says in a private
tained the spelling perse^nd the cor- letter, that the sound of the short " (i)
responding pronunciation to a later for Hs very common, as in give = (gi),
time. "We still write Percy, and Peirce gied, gien, gie's [derivatives], whig,
is called (Peis) or (Pis) in America. wig, hig [to build], build, -er, built
In Love's Labour Lost, Act iv. sc. 2, [often b^lt] king-dom, wick, gig,
1. 85, 1623, Comedies p. 132, we find gingham, widow, Britain, finish, whin,
"Master Person, quasi Person ? And etc." In such words the Englishman
if one should be perst, Which is the hears the long (ii). This is a point
one ?" which indicates the pronuncia- which will have to be considered here-
tion (Mas-ter Pers-on, kwaa-si " Pers- after. See especially the examples of
-oon" ? And if "oon" shuuld be Scotch pronunciation in Chap. XI. § 4.
"perst," whi'tsh iz dhe "oon"?).
106 Y, I, IE — XVI TH CENTURY. CHAP. III. § 3.
in the French et, and English day, (dei, deei\ and (e)
in the Scotch ill, English ailment (el eeil'ment) and English
air (eei), and also in my own pronunciation of the English
ell, whereas he supposes the true sounds of English men,
man to be (mEn, maen) and to differ precisely as (i, i).
My own pronunciation of man he finds frequently the
same as his pronunciation of men, so that to him I pro
nounce men, man as (men, mEn). To me (E) is a much
deeper sound than (e, e) and is heard in the French meme,
Grerman sprache (mEEm', shprEE^h-tf). This discussion will
serve to shew the nature of the difference (i, i), and the
ease with which they may be confounded. Almost every
Englishman pronounces French il as English ill (el), and
almost every Frenchman pronounces English ill as French il
(il), French He, English eel being identically (iil). Now
the true long sound of (i) is not an acknowledged sound
in our language, although in frequent use among such
singers as refuse so say happen, steal, eel, when they have
to lengthen happy, stall, z'll.1 They say (Hsep'iii, stiil, iil)
although some may prefer (stz'lll, illl) which has a bad effect.
Where the long sound of (i) might be expected, we get the
long i, to be presently noticed. Hence most of those who
examined sounds, as Wallis, naturally paired (ii), whose
short sound was absent, and («) which was without a long
sound, and probably did not hear the difference,2 though Sir
Thomas Smith could find no short sound for (ii) in the Eng
lish language.3 What we have to conclude from this is,
that because ee long and i short are represented generally by
the same character, with or without a mark of prolongation,
by orthoepists, it by no means follows that they had the same
sound. My own belief is that short i was (i) from the
1 This was remarked by Dr. Young, assertion that (»') was an independent
Lectures on Natural Philosophy. 4to. vowel sound, and resolutely paired (ii,i).
vol. ii, p. 277 : " When lip is length- This is by no means the only point in
ened in singing it does not become phonetics concerning which the ex-
leap." Observe the singing of "still perience of nearly a quarter of a century
so gently o'er me stealing," which be- has enlightened him. He would, how-
comes (stn'l so dzheent'Kr ooar mii ever, particularly notice the stopped
stiil'tVq.) Dryden's line, from his Tent vowels, which on p. 63 of that work,
Creator, " And make us temples -worthy he found himself unable to separate
thee," is well adapted to render the from their consonants, as in (pit, pet,
difference of the vowels in (-dh» dhii) paet, pot, pat, pert), but which he has
sensible. been in the habit of separating for
2 The present writer should be the many years.
last to throw stones at those who do 8 See p. 112. Cooper, as we have
not hear the difference between (i, t) seen (p. 83), forms an exception ; he
for in his Alphabet of Mature, 1845, appears to pair (ee, »), and certainly
p. 65, the first work on phonetics which does not pair (ii, t).
he published, he objected to Knowles's
CHAP. III. § 3. y, I, IE — XVI TH CENTURY.
earliest times to the present day. Against this supposition
must be placed the facts that, as already pointed out, short (i)
is not at all unfrequent in Scotland, and was apparently
recognized in English in 1701 by Jones, a Welshman, and
1766 by Buchanan, a Scotchman, and also that in Ireland
final -y, which is in England (-i), is invariably (-i). The
Irish English generally representing a xvn th century Eng
lish pronunciation, there is a possibility of (i) having been
somewhat common in England during the end of the xvn th
and beginning of the xvni th centuries, a period of English
pronunciation remarkable for a tendency to thinness of
sound. The true long vowel (ii) will come under consideration
again in the next Chapter under I, Y, when the importance
of the preceding discussion will more clearly appear.
As to long i in English at present, it is without doubt, a
diphthong, and has been generally recognized as such from
early times. But orthoepists are not agreed as to the nature
of its first element, and this becomes an important con
sideration. The Italians and French only approach the
sound of our long i very loosely, in the Italian words daino,
\aido, zaino, and the French poi'en, faience. These may be
more properly written (daarno, laai'do, tsaarno ; paiieA,
faiiaAs), so that in the Italian the first element, in the
French the second element is lengthened. In Germany the
sound written ei, ey, ai, ay is intended to be (ai), although
these diphthongs are very variously pronounced. Rapp
gives the literary high varieties (ai, ai, ei, ei) and Schmeller
notices the Bavarian dialectic varieties (a, ai, ai, E, Ei, ei, ii).1
The different Scotch sounds of long i will be fully considered
in Chapter IY. § 2, under I. In England we have only one
recognized pronunciation of i long, but we have also two
recognized sounds which may be heard in Isaiah, or in the
usual English pronunciation of j(eCp xoip, and the distinction
is, or used to be, strongly insisted on at Eton. The second
of these sounds, the English pronunciation of the Greek at,
is (ai). What is the first ? Knowles,2 following Sheridan,
says it is (A), the only difference between i long and oy con
sisting in the brevity with which the first element is dwelt
upon in the first sound. This is an Irishism no doubt,
although he is closely followed by Haldeman,3 who makes
1 Rapp, Physiologic der Sprache, and the various properties of all its'
vol. iv. pp. 85 et sqq. Schmtller, Mun- simple and compound sounds, as com-
darten Bayerns, p. 56. bined into syllables and words. Lon-
z James Knowles, Pronouncing and don, 1847, 8vo.
Explanatory Dictionary of the English 3 Analytic Orthography, § 106, 400.
Language, founded on a correct de- and examples § 602, 610.
velopement of the nature, the number,
108 Y, I, IE — XVI TH CENTURY. CHAP. III. § 3.
the first element (a), and identifies English long i with the
Q-erman ei, of which Schmeller makes the first element (a).
Mr. Melville Bell identifies the first element of his pro
nunciation of English long i with (a). The first element of
my pronunciation of the German ai he considers to be (ah),
a sound that I can only with difficulty distinguish from (a),
as T am apt to labialise (a] in speaking. But in unaccented
syllables he makes the first element of his pronunciation of
long i to be (ah). This was the element he recognized in
my own pronunciation of this diphthong in all cases. Many
Londoners certainly use (se) as the first element. Again,
Wilkins and Franklin call the first element (a). And Smart
making the first element ur without sounding the r must
mean (ao). The second element is of course the glide, and
the last element (or second as it is usually called) is the
vowel (i) or (i), very often the latter I believe in English.
Mr. Bell only recognizes the glide, 6c (see p. 15), that is, the
glide to the (j) position. According to the mode of writing
diphthongs which I adopt I must give (i) or (i) as the final
element, leaving the glide to be denoted by juxtaposition.
Hence we have the following
Analyses of English long I- —
Sheridan and Knowles (AI)
Haldeman («i)
"Walker and Melville Bell (ai) accented
Melville Bell (ahi) unaccented.
Londoners (aei)
Scotch (ei, ei, Ei, ai, ai, ohi)
Wilkins and Franklin (oi)
"Wallis and Smart (soi)
Now this being the sound of the personal pronoun, is
heard every day and constantly ; but after competent orthoe-
pists have carefully examined it, they are unable to agree as
to its analysis. One reason is of course a real difference of
pronunciation, but another appears to be that the first ele
ment is pronounced with extreme brevity, so that in British
speech it is not sufficiently heard as distinct from the follow
ing glide. In endeavouring therefore to fix it, different
observers either begin far back in the scale of distinct vowels,
or catch the sound closer and closer to (i). Thus it may be
that the whole series of sounds (o-ohaa-ahsoei) may be heard in
this diphthong, all gliding into each other with immense
rapidity. Again the first element being so indistinct, others,
as Wilkins and Franklin, or Wallis and Smart, take refuge in
one of the colourless sounds as (a, ao).
CHAP. III. § 3. Y, I, IE — XVI TH CENTURY. 109
Now I hear the vowel (a) very clearly in (ai) as in the
Etonian pronunciation of %aip ', but I cannot hear it in the
Etonian pronunciation of %et/o, nor I do hear an (e) there.
I therefore prefer to represent the English i long, the Etonian
pronunciation of Greek et by (ai), and the English aye, yes,
the Etonian pronunciation of the Greek ai by (ai). The pre
ceding discussion will apply, as to the first element, to the
present pronunciation of ow in now, how, cow.
We are now better prepared to understand what our
authorities say on the subject. The first one is sufficiently
perplexing.
1530. Palsgrave says : "/in the frenche tong hath .ii. dyuerse
maners 'of souwdynges, the souwdyng of i, whiche is most generally
vsed in the frewche tong, is like as the Italians sounde i, and suche
with vs as sounde the latin tong aright, whiche is almost as we
souwde e in these words a bee a flie, a beere for a deed corps, a peere
a felowe, a fee a rewarde, a little more soundynge towards i, as we
sound i with vs."
Now du Guez says : " Ye shal pronounce . . . your i, as
sharpe as can be," by which I understand, with the smallest
lingual and pharyngal aperture, or as clearly (i) as possible.
When Palsgrave says : " almost as we souwde e," etc., the
almost is merely one of those safeguards which orthoepists
love to insert, and can scarcely avoid inserting, when they
give the equivalent for a foreign sound which they seem to
hear in their own tongue, but doubt the correctness of their
hearing. But what does he mean by " a little more sound
ynge towards i, as we sound i with vs " ? A vowel cannot
sound a little more towards a diphthong, and yet long i was
certainly most generally recognized to be a diphthong in the
xvi th century, although it is probable that Palsgrave may
have had an older pronunciation, rather of the xv th than of
the xvi th century. Could he mean that the sound seemed
between (i) and (i) ? It would be difficult to insert one.
Could he mean that as he pronounced those English words
the sound had a tinge of (e) in it as it were (ii), and that the
French pronounced a clearer (i) ? The matter becomes still
more enigmatical as he goes on to say :
"If i be the first letter in a frenche worde or the laste, he shall
in those two places be sounded lyke as we do this letter y, in these
words with vs, by and by, a spye, a flye, awry, and suche other : in
whiche places in those frenche bokes, as be diligently imprinted,
they vse to writte this letter y : but whether the frenche worde be
written with i or y, in these two places he shal be sounded, as I have
shewed here in this rule, as in ymage, conuerty, ydole, estourdy, in
whiche the y bath suche sounde, as we wolde give bim in our tong."
110 Y, I, IE — XVI TH CENTURY. CHAP. III. § 3.
This sound, whatever it was, must be distinct from the
other sound of i. Now as Palsgrave noways describes the
sound, or hints at its being a diphthong, we can do nothing
but refer to Meigret 1550, who writes : " je vi, oi, aosi, j'ey
bati, je bati ou batis " with precisely the same sign as he
uses in " Louis MeigrEt, LionoEs." Perhaps Palsgrave
would rejoin : " true, but he was a Lyonnais ; I give the
Parisian pronunciation." In the mean time we are not
assisted towards Palsgrave's own pronunciation of the English
"by and by, a spye, a flye, awry."1 What foUows is as
perplexing : —
"For as moche as v and i come often together in the frenche
tonge, where as the v hath with them his distinct sounde, and the *
is sounded shortly & confusely, whiche is the proprete of a diph-
thonge. I reken vi also among the diphthonges in the frenche
tong, whiche whan they come together, shall haue suche a sounde in
frenche wordes, as we gyue hym in these wordes in our tong,
a swyne, I dwyne, I twyne, so that these wordes agvystr, agvyttttn,
condvyre, dedvyre, aviourdhvy, meshvy, and all suche shall sounde
theyr v and * shortly together, as we do in our tong in the words I
have gyven example of, and nat eche of them distinctly by himself,
as we of our tong be inclined to sound them, whiche wolde rather
say aviourdhv'y, dedvyt, saufcondvyt, gyuynge both to v and i theyr
distinct sounde, than to souwde them as the frenche men do in dede,
which say aviourdhvy, dedvyt, saufcondvyt, soundyng them both
shortly together, and so of all suche other."
It is a well-known modern English error to say (Iwii) for
(lyi) lui. Palsgrave, whose ears cannot have been very acute,
here seems to authorize a similar use. At the same time the
conversion of (y) into a consonant as (w), is directly opposed
to the previous direction to give (y) its "distinct sound," and
pronounce (i) "confusely." But can Palsgrave have also
meant that the second element in ui in the French words
cited was the same as in sivyne, dwyne, tivyne ? The y in the
French words is not even final or initial. It could have had
no sound but (ii) even according to Palsgrave. Did Pals
grave say (swiin, dwiin, twiin) or (swmi, dwim, tw?m) ? It
is the only legitimate inference, and there is no slight proba
bility of its being correct. "We shall see that Palsgrave pro
nounced ou as (uu), which was a xiv th century pronunciation
continued archaically into the xvi th century, and although
1 It deserves however to be recorded James the First's time has : " 0 Lord
that Gill writes (en-emai), not (en-enu), our God arise, Scatter his enemies,"
and has at least once (ainvadzhes], al- giving (en-emaiz), if the rhyme is to be
though on another occasion he writes preserved, though in modern practice
(tnvaadzh) so that the former may be we sacrifice the rhyme and often sing
a misprint. The God save the king of (en-imnz).
CHAP. III. § 3. Y, I, IE — XVI TH CENTURY. Ill
the recognized pronunciation at that time was (ou), yet the
example of Bullokar (pp. 94, 98,) shews that there were still
many who preferred the (uu) sound. In the same way
perhaps both Palsgrave and Bullokar preserved the (ii)
sound of long i, usual in the xiv th century, notwithstand
ing the general adoption of (ei). The new (ai, ou) and the
old (ii, uu) stand precisely on the same ground, and therefore
I am inclined to think that Palsgrave and Bullokar said (ii),
as distinct from (ii). Further reference to this curious re
tention of an old sound will have to be made in the next
chapter under I.
1547. SALESBURY does not leave us in much doubt, for he
writes (ei) for long i, thus :
I ei (ei), YYNE vein (vein), WYNE wein (wein) ; DYCHES deitsys
(deitsh'/z) ; THYNE ddein (dhein) ; SIGNES seins (seinz) ; Latin DICO
deicu (dei'ku), TIBI teibei (tei'bei), DEI Zte^'(Dee'i), omquei (kwei).
At the same time he reprobates this pronunciation of
Latin, and says :
"I in Welsh hath the mere pronunciation of i in Latine, as
learned men in our time vse to souwde it, and not as they . . . with
their lotacisme corrupting the pronunciation make a diphthong of
it, saying veidei, teibei, for vidi, tibi" "/in their language is
equivalent to the following two letters in ours ei, but they are com
pressed so as to be pronounced in one sound or a diphthong, as in
that word of theirs I, ei, (ei) ego." " Y often has the sound of
the diphthong ei as THYNE, ddein (dhein), tuus ; & its own sound as
in the word THYKNE, thynn, (thin), gracilis."
That Salesbury's ei was different from his ai, and that he
meant to indicate a different sound in such English words
that have long i, from that in other words having ai in his
transcription, is I think evident, because he never confounds
the two sounds, and because in modern Welsh the sound ei
sounds to me as (ai), and ai as (ai). I think, however, that
his letters ei justify me in considering, or rather leave me no
option but to consider that the English diphthong sounded
(ei) to Salesbury.
As to the short i, he identifies it with Welsh y, considering
the latter the especial sound. He also says that Welsh u
"soundeth as the vulgar English people sound it in these
wordes of English, trust, bury, busy, Huberden" I think
that he cannot point to any other sound but (i), supposing the
true Welsh to be (y}, a sound which Mr. Melville Bell hears
in the unaccented syllables : the houses, (dhy nauz'yz) as he
would write the sounds. The difference between (i, y} is
very slight indeed. In practice Salesbury is not very precise,
112 Y, I, IE — XTITH CENTURY. CHAP. III. § 3.
as may be seen by the following list of words in which short
i occurs, but his theory leads me to adopt (i) as the true
sound of English short i in his time.1
GOD BE WYTH YOTT God liwio (God birwi,o), GEACYOTTSE grasiwt
(graa'si,us), CONDICYON condisywn (kondis'*,un), TWYNCLE twinkl
(twiq'k'l), WBYNCLE wrinkl (wriq'k'l), KYNGES kings (kiqz), GELDING
gelding (geld'iq) ; GYLBEET, Gilbert (Gil'bert), GYNGEE tsintsir
(dzhhrdznir), BEGGYNGE, begging (beg'iq); HOLI, holy (noo'lt, HO!'*);
EXHIBITION ecsibisiwn (eksibis'i,un) ; PEOHrBrriON, proibisiwn (proo,-
ibis'iun) ; LYLY lili (lil'i), IADY ladi (laa'di) ; PAPYE papyr (paa'p/r),
EYGHT richt (rikht) ; THYSTLE, thystl (thzVt'l) ; THIS ddys (dlus),
BTTSY lusi (bz'z'i) ; WYNNE wynn (win) ; THYNNE thynn (then) ;
KNYZT knichi (knikht).
1568. SIE T. SMITH says: "I Latina, quae per se prolata, apud
nos tantum valet quantum Latine, ego, aut oculus, aut etiam,"
by which I understand that the three words /, eye, aye
had the same sound, precisely as we are told by Shakspere,
Borneo and Juliet, Act iii, Sc. 2, v. 45, (I quote from
Steevens' reprint of the quarto of 1609, which agrees in this
passage with the folio of 1623 ; the lines do not occur in the
quarto of 1597) :
Hath Romeo slaine himselfe ? say thou but I
And that bare vowell I shall poyson more
Then the death-darting eye of cockatrice,
I am not I, if there be such an I.
Here aye is spelled /, and thoroughly identified with it, as
" that bare vowell I," and with the suggested " eye of
cockatrice" in the next line. Although Smith identifies
these three words, Jie spells them differently, introducing 'i as
the sign for long i, and pairing it with short i. He thus
deprives the Latin language of the sound of (ii), for he pro
nounced Latin e as (ee). Hence when he comes to the sound
of (ii) in English, he exclaims in perplexity :
" Quid autem net ubi sonus invenitur quern neque Graeci, neque
Latini habuerunt, prsesertim cum omnes eorum literse in similibus
eorum sonis fuerunt absumptae ? Ecce autem sonum Anglorum et
Scotorum alium diversumque ab omnibus his,2 qui nee e (ee) nee
I (ei) reddit auribus, sed quoddam medium, et tamen simplex est,
literaque debet dici : est autem semper fere longa."
His examples are me, see, meet, deep, steep, feel, feet, sheep,
queen, mean? seek, she, week, leek, beef, neese, bee apes,
1 So far as I could hear, the "Welsh 2 That is, not one of the sounds
dim was pronounced by several Welsh which he had already considered, and
gentlemen precisely as the English which were apparently (aa a, ee e, ei i,
dim, that is (dz'm), and they all objected oo o, uu u, yy).
to the pronunciation (dim). 3 " lutelligere." Qu. mien, vultus f
CHAP. III. $ 3. y, I, IE XVI TH CENTURY. 113
whence, through Salesbury and Palsgrave, we know that the
sound was (ii). Smith therefore recognized no short (i) in
English. The sound of his i short must therefore have been
different from (i), that is, as I believe (i), agreeing with
Salesbury.
Smith recognizes the two diphthongs (ei, ai) but finds
scarcely any difference between them, although he says that
"mulierculae" pronounce (ei) for (ai). This will be con
sidered under (ai), p. 122. In no case in which the or
thography uses long i does Smith write ei, so that but for
his rather veiled identification of / with eye, we should have
had no clue to the sound intended.
1569. HART says : " Out of all doubt, no nation of the foresaide
but we and the Scottish, doe at any time sound «', in the aforesayde
sound of ei : wherefore that English Greek reader which shall giue
the same sound to * which he doth to et, doth further this errour
much amongst vs."
He also writes (reid bei) for ride by. But he makes ee in
Greeks the long sound of i in in, that is (ii), and is thus not
so accurate as Smith, who distinguishes the sound as (ii).
1580. BULLOKAR calls long i a vowel, and does seem to know
that it has a different sound from short i. He says : " I,
hath two soundes, the one agreeing to his olde & continued
name, and is then a vowell, the other sounde agreeing to the
olde name of ff, and of my g* (dzh), and is then a consonant."
He gives as examples : " I ly in my sisterz kitchen with a
pillo'w besyd her peticot, and thy whyt pilion," where the
accent denotes length, and o(w means (u). What "the old
and continued name" is, he does not write. He has no other
distinction between long and short i but this accent, and
never even hints at the possibility of their having two sounds.
He uses the accent to indicate the long a, e, y, o only, and
has a new sign e* for (ii), on which he says, and it is the only
clue I can find :
"e hath two soundes, and vowels both, the one flat, agreeing to
his old and continued name : and the other sounde more sharpe and
betwene the old sound of the old name of : e : and the name of : i :
for such difference the best writers did use : ea : for :e : flat and long:
& ea, ee, ie, eo for \e\ sharpe."
This "flat e" was undoubtedly (ee), and the "sharpe e"
was (ii). The "old name of e" is therefore (ee), and the
" sharp" sound of e, or (ii) is said to lie between (ee) and
the name of i, that is, its long sound, whatever that may be.
Now we have seen that Smith says that (ii) is "quoddam
medium," between (ee) and (ei), so that we need not expect
114 Y, I, IE — XVI TH CENTURY. CHAP. III. § 3.
more precision in Bullokar, and although it is really non
sense to say that (ii) lies between (ee) and (ei), since (ei) is
compounded of (ee) and (ii), yet as Smith actually said so,
Bullokar may have meant the same. But Bullokar con
stantly neglects to write the acute accent, his sign of pro
longation, over i. Thus he has cgntryz, cgntriz in successive
lines. Again he always writes wrytn = written with a long
y, and it would be difficult to believe that even a pedantic
theorist ever said (rweit'n). Gill writes (writ'n). If how
ever we suppose that Bullokar, as well as Palsgrave, pro
nounced long i as (ii) and short i as (i), all difficulty arising
from this source would disappear. And although the state
ment that (ii) lies between (ee) and (ii) is not so correct as
that (ii) lies between (ee) and (ii), yet it is not at all ex
travagant for a phonetist of that time. If, as will appear in
the next chapter, (ii, uu) were probably the xivth century
pronunciations of long i and ou, then the retention of (ii) by
Bullokar and Palsgrave will be precisely parallel to their
undoubted retention of (uu), and would have precisely the
same archaic effect in the midst of the general (ei, ou) as
(obliidzh', griit, briik) have at the present day amidst the
usual (tfblaidzlr, gr^t, br^k). The whole subject will be
properly discussed in the next chapter, and in the mean
time the only legitimate inference from Bullokar's notation
and practice seems to be that he pronounced long i as (ii).
1621. GILL uses also a simple sign for long i, namely j.
He says :
" Differentia significationis (quoad fieri potest, & sonus permittit)
orthografia discernitur. Sic J. ego. ei oculus, ei ita." — " Nee e,
ssepius praeponitur i, dicimus enim Mi (neei), adhortantes aut
laudantes, & ei (ei) EYE oculus, ei (eei) etiam, ita : vbi tamen
sonus vocalis, exiguum distat ab illo qui auditur in ¥>jn tuus, &
mjn meus." — "Communis dialectus aliquando est ambiguus. Audies
enim "Kai aut ¥>ei (dhai, dhei) THEY, illi." — "/, est tenuis, aut
crassa : tennis est breuis, aut longa : breuis sic notatur i, vt in sin
SINNE peccatum : longa sic 'i. vt in s'in SEENE visus, a, urn : crassa
autem fere est diphthongus ei; sed quia sono exilior paulo quam si
diffunderemur in e, retinebimus antiquum ilium et masculinum
sonum .... eumque signabimus hoc cnaractere j. vt in sjn SIGNE
signum. Omnium differentia est in win WTNITE vinco, w'in WEENE
opinor, wjn WYNE vinum."
The meaning of these passages is not very clear, and they
have occasioned me considerable difficulty, as I felt it important
to determine the precise signification of Gill's symbols. It
is clear that his j was little, if at all, different from (ei), and
that this difference consisted mainly in dwelling more upon
CHAP. III. § 3. Y, I, IE — XVI TH CENTURY. 115
the (e) sound in the diphthong which he writes (ei) than in
that which he writes j ; this is the only sense I can attach to
the expression that the sound of j "fere est diphthongus ei,
sed sono exilior quam si diffunderemur in e" as it were,
than if we were diffuse over the e. The distinction is then
precisely similar to that which Sheridan and Knowles make
between modern /, oy, where they suppose the first element
in each case to be (A), but to be instantly lost in /, and retained
long enough to be distinctly heard in oy, (p. 107). We seem
to have only to change (A) into (e) to obtain Grill's distinction
between /, eye. Gill frequently interchanges (ai, aai) and
does not seem to be very particular about the distinction
between (ei, eei), but he appears to have always attached
great importance to the first element in (ei) and (ai). He
says of diphthongs generally :
"Nee tamen in omnium diphthongorum elatione, utrique vocali
sonus integer ubique constabit. Etenim vocalis prsecedens ssepe-
numero acutius sonare videtur, & clarius ; in ai et ei, ita aures
implere, ut .i. subiungi aequius esset, quam ad latus adhaerere,"
alluding evidently to the Greek forms a, 77. The conclusion
would appear to be that Gill's j, ei, ai were more properly
(*ei, e'i, a'i) where the apostrophe indicates for the moment
the extremely unaccented or unimportant character of the
element to which it is prefixed. For this we might write
(ei, eei, aai) if Gill did not occasionally distinguish between
(ei, ai) and (eei, aai). We must not forget however that
Gill blames Hart for writing ei in place of /, where Gill
prints / meaning, probably, j. In this case his j would
appear to be considerably different from his (ei).
Another hypothesis is possible. We shall see that at the
time of Wallis, 1653, (ai) was a common form, of long i. It
is possible that this was one of the xvnth century pro
nunciations which Gill adopted, and hence his j, ei, ai may
mean (ai, ei, ai), and as this is the most convenient dis
tinction which I can draw between the sounds, and also
agrees in making j but slightly different, and yet decidedly
different, from (ei), I shall adopt it in transcribing Gill.
But for the xvi th century generally, the positive assertion
of Salesbury that long i was (ei), and the identification of the
sounds of /, eye, aye by Smith, leave me no choice but to
use (ei) for long i. Shakspere was born the same year as
Gill, yet as he did not live so long into the xvn th century,
he may have used the same pronunciation as Smith and
Salesbury. Certainly his /, eye, aye must have had the
same sound (p. 112). But perhaps long i was also often
116 Y, I, IE — XVII TH CENTURY. CHAP. III. § 3.
called (ai) as it still is, and as it probably was in the xiv th
century.
If the hypothesis here adopted for the pronunciations of
long i by Palsgrave and Bullokar; Salesbury, Smith and
Hart ; and Gill, namely (ii, ei, ai) be correct, we have the
phenomenon of the coexistence of two extreme sounds (ii, ai)
with their link (ei), during the greater part of the xvith
century, bringing the pronunciation of the xiv th and xvn th
centuries almost together upon one point. A curious ex
ample of the present coexistence of similar sounds in the.
various Scotch dialects will be given in the next chapter.
The short sound of i, I take to be (i) and not (i), notwith
standing that Gill and subsequent writers consider (ii) to
have been its long sound. This conclusion rests principally
on the authority of Smith and Salesbury.
Y, I, IE — xvn TH CENTURY.
Price's list of words in ie = (ii) has already been given,
(p. 104,) and no further notice of this combination in the
xvn th century is required.
1640. BEN JONSON, like Bullokar, entirely ignores the
diphthongal character of long i. His description answers
to (i) or (i), but certainly not to the diphthongs (ei, ai), one
of which he most probably uttered for his i . He says :
"I, is of a narrower sound then e, and uttered with, lesse open
ing of the mouth; the tongue brought backe to the palate, and
striking the teeth next the cheeke-teeth. It is a Letter of a double
power. As a Vowell in the former, or single Syllabes, it hath
sometimes the sliarpe accent ; as in "binding, minding, pining,
whining, wiving, thriving, mine, thine. Or, all words of one Syllabe
qualified by e. But, the flat in more, as in these, MIL Miter, giddy.
little, incident, and the like In Syllabes, and words compos' d
of the same Elements, it varieth the sound, now sharpe, now flat ;
as in give, give, alive, live, drive, driven, title, title. But these, use
of speaking, and acquaintance in reading, will teach, rather then
rule."
1653. WAIXIS says: "I vocalis quoties brevis est sonatur ple-
rumque (ut apud Gallos aliosque) exili sono. Ut in lit morsus,
will volo, still semper, win lucro, pin acicula, sin peccatum, fill
impleo. At quoties longa est plerumque profertur ut Grascorum et.
Ut lite mordeo, wile stratagema, stile stilus, wine vinum, pine tabe
consumer, etc., eodem fere modo quo Gallorum ai in vocibus main
manus, pain panis, etc. nempe sonum habet compositum ex Gallo
rum ^ foeminino et * vel y."
This should be (ai), or (oai), or (soi), the difference being
slight, and all so like (ai) that we may take that as the sound,
CHAP. III. § 3. Y, i, IE — XVII TH CENTURY. 117
especially as "Wilkins adopts this form. Wallis also admits
this sound in the first element of boil, toil, oil, bowl globus,
owl, which he pronounces (bail, tail, oil, haul, eul). In
another place he says that long I is " idem omnino sonus cum
Gfraecorum ei."
1668. WILKINS gives distinctly "(ai) our English i in
bite," the first element being identified with u in " but, full,
futt, mutt-ow, pull, rudd-er,' which is meant for (a), as it is
stated to be wholly guttural, and to be represented by y in
Welsh.
1668. PRICE merely talks of long and short i.
1669. HOLDER says: "Our vulgar i as in stile, seems to be
such a diphthong (or rather syllable or part of a syllable) composed
of a, i or e, i (ai, ei), and not a simple original vowel."
1685. COOPER says: "Uin Cut et i (ai), dipthongum facillime
constituunt, quam i longam vocamus ; ut wine, vinum, hoc modo
pronunciatur ante nd finales ; ut blind efficus, wind ventus : at
pirfd pro pinned acicula subnexus ; a verbo to pin ; brevis est ;
pined marcidus ; a to pine marceo ; dipthongus est. Scribitur per
ui in beguile fallo ; disguise dissimulo ; guide dux ; guidon Impera-
toris baculus : per oi in in-join in-jungo, joint junctura ; jointure
dos, broil torreo, ointment unguentum."
1688. MIEGE says : " L'autre i a un Son particulier, et qu'on ne
saurait mieux vous representer par la plume que par ces deux
Yoyelles a'i ; comme dans les mots /, pride, crime. II est vrai que
ce Son paroit d' abord un peu rude et grossier ; mais les Anglois
lui donnent un certain Adoucissement, dont les Etrangers se rendent
bien tot capable. Get Addoucissement consiste, en partie, a ne
faire qu'un Son d' a'i, en sorte que ces deux Yoyelles ne sont pas
tout-a-fait distinctement prononcees." This expression seems to
point to that extreme brevity of the first element which still pre
vails, and makes the analysis of this English sound so difficult.
It must be also remembered that tbere is nothing approaching the
compactness of English diphthongs in French, where a looseness
prevails similar to that in our oy.
1701. JONES says in one place that the sound of short u
(a) is written o before i in boil, coil, coin, foil, moil, &c., and
in another place that the sound of * is written oi in those
words. It follows that he analyzed long i into (ai).
It appears therefore that the long i of the xvn th century
was the same as at present, and hence it must have been so
during the xvmth century, and indeed Franklin, 1768,
writes (ai), and Sheridan, 1780 analyzes long i into (Ai) with
very short (A), (p. 107,) and Walker into (aei) or (ai).
118 EI, AI — XVI TH CENTURY. CHAP. III. § 3.
El, AI — xvi TH CENTURY.
1530. PALSGRAVE says: " Ei vniversally through out all the
frenche tong shalbe souwded like as he is with vs in these wordes,
obey, a sley, a grey, that is to say, the e shall have his distinct
sounde, and the i to he souwded shortly and confusely, as conseil,
uermeil, and so of all suche other."
" Ai in the frenche tong is sounded lyke as we souwde ay in
these wordes in our tong rayne, payne, fayne, disdayne, that is to
say, a, distinctly and the i shortly & confusely."
The forms ey, ay, are mere varieties of ei, ai, and need
not be separately considered. Palsgrave's words ought to
imply that the English and French ei, ai, were pronounced
(ei, ai) or else (eei, aai). This is very different from the
present pronunciation in English, where they are generally
(ii, ee)j or in French, where they are generally (ee, ee) ;
hence some confirmation is required.
MEIGEET says : " Considerons si ai, se treuue tousiours raysoun-
ahlement escrit, de sorte que les deux voyelles soient en la pronon-
ciation comwe nous les voyows en aymawt, aydawt, hair. II n 'y a
point de douhte qu'en mais, maistre, aise, vous ny trouuerez aucunes
nouuelles de la diphthongue ay, mais tant seulement d'vng e qui
i'appelle e ouvert, conme ia i'ay diet. Parquoy telle maniere d'es-
criture est vicieuse en ceux la, et en tous autres semhlables, es quelz
la prononciation est autre que d' ai : comme vous pourrez cognoistre
si vous les paragonez a aydant, aymant, es quelz elle est veritable-
ment prononcee, le treuue d'auantage que nous faisons hien
souuent vsurper a la diphthongue ai la puissance de ei, comme en
ces vocables sainct, main, maintenir : es quelz sans point de doubte
nous pronongons la diphthongue ei tout ainsi qu'en ceint, ceinture,
peindre, peinture, meine, emmeine. De sorte que si tu te ioues de
vouloir prononcer ai en ceux la, tu seras trouue lourd, et de mau-
uaise grace, et auecq aussi bonne ray son q'est le menu peuple de
Paris quant il prononce ' main, pain ' par ai."
Again in his phonetic grammar, lie says —
" EU comEngawt donq a gElles qi ont a en tfite, nous En auons vn
En ai ou ay (car je ne fes point de differEng', Entre 1' i E y Grac)
comme payant gajant ^gayant?] ayawt .... Or comEng' En notre
lange la diphthonge, EI, par E ouvErt, sucgeder a gElle d' ai En
aocuns vocables : tEllement qe nou' n'oyons plus dire aymer, si
souuent q' Eymer. Ao regard d' ame, E amez dont no' Lettres de
comissions sont pleines, 1' uzaje de 1' eloqEnge FrangoEze IBS a ja do
si long tEJis cassez, qe ie ne pEnse pas q'il se puiss' aoiourdhuy
trouuer home qi IKS aye vu jamES En aothorite, pour Etre commune-
mEnt pronongez d'un bon courtizant."
These extracts establish a French diphthong (ei, EI), it is
impossible to say which ; and also a French diphthong (ai)
or (aai), entirely different from the former, but gliding into
CHAP. III. § 3.
El, AI XVI TH CENTURY.
it, so that the pronunciation was then beginning to change,
and that in several words as mais, maistre the diphthong (ai)
had become the simple vowel (BE).1
1547. SALESBURY in no place gives an English word which
he spells with ei, ey, but as he explains the word VAYNE
by the Welsh gwythen ne wac, i.e. vena vel vanus, it must be
held to include both the words vein and vain. He pronounces
them both vain = (vain), and hence makes no difference
between ei and ai. But he distinguishes both from long i,
as he had immediately before written VYNE, vein (vein) vitis.
The following are all Salesbury's words containing ai with
their pronunciation ; he has no special observations on the
combination. QUAYLE has no pronunciation assigned ; NAYLE
nayl (nae'l) unguis vel clavus, NAYLES nayh (nazlz) ; RAYLE
aryl (ra.il) cancellus, RAYLES rayls (ra/lz), VAYNE vain (vain)
1 The work of M. Livet, described
on p. 33, enables us to confirm this
view by the very objection which G.
des Autels opposed to it. "Aussi
triomphes-tu de dire," said he to
Meigret, according to p. 129 of M.
Livet's book, " que les diphthongues
gardent toujours en une syllabe le pro-
pre et entier son de deux voyelles con-
jointes ; et sont encore plus gaillards
tes exemples de pay ant et royal ... Je
te dy done qu'il n'y ha point de diph-
thongue en ces mots ayant, payant,
royal et loyal, mais seulement une con
traction, qui encore ne se fait la oil tu
prends la diphthongue, mais en la
syllabe suivante, car en ayant, a est
une syllabe et yant une autre par con
traction de deux." On which M.
Livet remarks : " Ce passage montre
assez la pronunciation de ayant, pay ant,
qui s'est conserve dans le centre de la
France et en Anjou. En Picardie, on
dit gayole pour geole (di6resse de geole),
et le colosse d' osier qu'on promene
dans les rues de Douai sous le nom de
Gay an, a 1' epoque de la Ducasse, n'est
autre que le Geant, pris absolument.
Cf. Escalier. Remarques sur le patois,
1 vol. in-8o, 1856, p. 22." And Pierre
Eamus (Livet p. 205) gives for ai the
examples, (in his orthography, using
E, e for his broad and mute e respec
tively) ' paiant gaiant, aidant,' and for
ei, 'fsindre, pEindre, crEindr^, pEine,
fontEine,' where the two last words
have no suspicion of a nasal vowel.
On payer in the xvth century, see
supra, p. 76. There is a fight between
Meigret and his opponents respecting
the mute e. Meigret only admits his
E, e = (E, e ?) long and short, and
identifies what G. des Autels, Pelletier,
Eamus, and others, according to Livet's
language, call the ' mute e,' with his
'short e' (e). Livet (p. 133) con
cludes : " d'une part que les differents
sons de \'e etaient alors ce qu'ils sont
maintenant, et d' autre part qu'on ne
s'entendait pas sur la maniere de les
noter ou de les nommer." But my
German experience leads me to a dif
ferent conclusion. In the words : eine
gute Gabe, the final e is pronounced in
the greater part of Germany very ob
scurely and more like (B), as most
Englishmen pronounce their final a in
China, idea, and some their final -er in
gaiter (which word they then speak
like a common mid-German mispro
nunciation of Goethe), than like («).
Yet theoretically (e) is held to be the
sound uttered, and in some parts of the
Austrian dominions I have heard this
distinct short final (e), which of course
had an unpleasant effect on my un
accustomed ears. Now it is quite pos
sible that Meigret may have, as an
older and provincial man, retained the
clear («), that his younger opponents
may have used the obscurer (B), which
in course of time sank to the present (9)
or entirely disappeared. This theory
at least accounts for the conflict of
opinion, the decided retention of the
final e in the phonetic writing of Pelle
tier and Eamus as well as of Meigret
and hence its continued use in the
poetry of the xvn th century which set
the rule for French versification.
120
EI, AI XVI TH CENTURY.
CHAP. III. § 3.
vena vel vanus. But it is to be observed that he pronounces
ORANGES oreintsys (oreindzlm), and that he says that before
ge, sh, tch the sound of " a is thought to decline toward the
sound of the diphthong at, and the wordes" damage, heritage,
language, ashe, lashe, icatch are " to be read in thys wyse,
domaige, heritaige, languaige,1 aishe, waitche" We have very
little trace of this custom left. The unaccented syllables are
apt to be pronounced with (i) or perhaps (y], as (ormdzhaz)
daenr/dzh, Her«t/dzh, laeq'gw«dzh,) but ash, watch have be
come (sesh, WAtsh), instead of (eesh, weetsh) as might have
been expected. Salesbury therefore only recognizes the
diphthong (ai) and does not acknowledge a diphthong (ei)
as distinct from the representations of long i. Yet long
^ ei, ai have in subsequent times traversed with different
velocities three distinct paths ending in (ai, ii, ee) respectively.
1568. SIB, T. SMITH says : " Inter Ai & Ei diphthongos minima
differentia est, praesertim apud nostrates, apud nos tamen audiuntur
hi soni. (Fein) fingere, (deinti) delicatus, (peint) pingere, (feint)
languidus. Sed non hcec tantum verba per ei pronuntiantur, sed
caetera omnia per ai scripta mulierculae qusedam delicatiores, et non-
nulli qui volunt isto modo videri loqui vrbanius per ei (ei, eei) sonant,
1 Compare Palsgrave : " Also all
wordes in the frenche tong whiche in
writtyng ende in age shall in redyng
and spekyng sounde an i between a and
ff, as though that a were this diphthong
ai : as for laitgdge, heretdge, sage, dam-
mage, bocqudge, apprentissdge, they
sounde languaige, heritaige, saige, dam-
maige, bocquaige, apprentismige, and so
of all suche lyke excepte rage. And
note that many tymes I fynde suche
nownes whiche have the i m writting
betwene the a and g, but, whether he be
written or nat, in redyng or spekyng he
shalbe sounded, accordyng as I have
here shewed by example." M. Ed. Le
Hericher (Histoire et Glossaire du
Normand, de 1' Anglais, et de la langue
Fra^aise, d' apres la methode histo-
rique natnrelle et etymologique, 1862,
vol. i. p. 24) entirely misunderstands
this passage, when he says : " C'etait
une regie du francjais, formulee d' ail-
leurs par Palsgrave dans ses Eclair-
cissemem de la langue franqaise, que la
premiere lettre de 1' Alphabet se pro-
nonc,ait A et Ai." That M. Le H6ri-
cher means that Palsgrave asserted
French A to be (a) or (E), and that
generally, instead of generally (a), but
(ai) in a very limited class of words,
appears by his next remark : " Ce der
nier son prevaut en anglais : il etait
aussi predominant en normand." The
very few examples which he cites for
such an extraordinary assertion as the
last, are far from establishing the fact.
They are an assertion by Thierry that
Granville was pronounced Grainville
by the Normans : that in a MS. of the
xiv th century at Avranches fairs des-
clare rhyme, whereas they may be only
an assonance as in modern Spanish :
that in the xv th century a Caen farce
has consecutive lines ending in lusage
griefve glaive, and that aige, usaige, etc.
were finally written and printed, So
that a sea song of 01. Basselin has a
set of rhymes in -aige, the termination
pointed out by Palsgrave. " C'est
cette prononciation de 1' A qui fait une
des principales differences entre la
langue des troubadours et celle des
trouvdres." This assertion must be
received with due caution. Mr. W.
Babington has kindly made inquiries
for me of inhabitants of various depart
ments in Normandy, and none were
acquainted with an existing pronuncia
tion of a as at in any part of the country.
Hence it must be very limited in ex
tent, and probably comparable to the
cases mentioned above p. 76.
CHAP. III. § 3. El, AI XVI TH. CENTURY. 121
vt hgec ipsa quse nos per ei (ei) scribimus, alij sonant et promwtiant
per ai, tarn aSidfopoi sumus in his duntaxat duabus diphthongis
Angli."
' ' Est diphthongus omnis sonus e duabus vocalibus conflatus ut :
AI, (pai) solvere, (dai) dies, (wai) via, (mai) possum, (lai) ponere,
(sai) dicere, (esai) tentare, (tail) cauda, (fail) deficere, (faain) libens
ac volens, (pain) poena, (disdain) dedignor, (claim) vendico, (plai)
ludere, (arai) vestire seu ornare. In his est utraque litera brevis 1
apud vrbanius pronunciantes. Rustici utranque aut extremam2
saltern literam longam sonantes, pinguem quendam odiosum, et nimis
adipatum sonum redduwt. (Paai) solvere, (daai) dies, (waai) via,
(maai) possum, (laai) ponere. Sicut qui valde delicate voces has
pronuntiant, mulierculae prsesertim, explicant planfc Romanam diph
thongum ae. AE diphthongus Latina. Pae solvere, dae dies, wae
via, mae possum, lae ponere" = (pee, dee, wee, mee, lee) I suppose,
since the Latin ae had long been pronounced (ee), as we know,
among other reasons from the frequency with which it is written e
in works before this time. " Scoti et Transtrentani quidam Angli
voces has per impropriam diphthongum Grsecam a proferunt ut nee
i nee e nisi obscurissime3 audiatur. A diphthongus improprie Grasca
(paa,4 daa, waa, maa, laa)."
Again, in his De recta et emendata lingvae Grsecae pronuntiatione
.... ad Yintoniensem Episcopum Epistola, Paris, 1568: "Diph-
thongi quo modo sonarttur dicere in prowptu est : Nam si duas
vocales recte prius extuleris, & easdem coniunxeris, diphthongum
habes, hoc est sonum quendam duplicem ex duobus commixtis inter
se factum. Yt si nesciam mulsum quid sit, & audiam ex aqua &
melle factum esse, potero fortassis commiscewdo tale quid efficere,
mel vt sentiatur & aqua ne dispareat. Aut si talem colorem habu-
isse veteres, qualew viridem appellant, & hunc ex flauo luteove &
ceruleo fuisse cowfectum, potero credo commiscendo videre, cuius-
modi sit illud quod imitari cupiam, vt nee alterum ab altero colorem
prorsus extinctum & obliteratum relinquam, & tamen vtrunque
pariter in tertio conspici ac relucere faciam. Sed, diphthongi quo
modo. sonari debent, quivis etiam ex triuio puer qui literas didicerit
explicabit. Heus tu die sodes, a, & i quid faciunt ? dicet cert& at,
at. Si p pra3ponas, facit pai, Trot, solue. sin m, mai, pal, Ma'ius
mensis : sin w, wai, oval, via ; neque nunc pa i dicit, nee ma
i, sed pai & mai, vt constituere diphthongos non dissoluere videatur.
Idem dicendum puto & de ei, quod nos exprimimus cum hinnire,
hoc est ney dicimus : & foeminae quaedam delicatiores cuncta fere
qua3 per ay dicuntur per ei exprimunt : vt wey, dey, pei, vt eadem
Eurosaxones populares mei rusticiores, nimis prngui et adipato
sono, way, day, pay : vt etiam tinnituw illud i reddat in fine. Scoti
& Borei quidem Angli per a, vix vt illud i audiatur, pa, da, wa, aut
1 In one case (faain) he has marked examples he shews that the sound was
the vowel as long ; perhaps a misprint. not heard at all. The present sound
2 Meaning the first element P is (aa'), see chapter XI.
3 An orthoepical safeguard. In his 4 Pay is now called (paa) in Norfolk.
122
EI, AI — XVI TH CENTURY.
CHAP. III. § 3.
potius per ae profemnt. Illud obseruandum ne nimis videamur
obese loqui propter exilissimae literae prope latissimas ex breuibus
nimium tinnientis sonum, cum ai & oi dictionem finiant, breuiter &
correpte proferendas esse : quod Graeci Grammatici notarunt, ne
alioqui crassum ilium & adipatum sonum rusticorum nostratium
imitemur, qui cum a gay, loy, ore pleno literis diductis in immen-
sum dicuwt, nimis profecto invrbane loqui ab elegantionibus iu-
dicemur."
It would seem that Smith's Cei) were precisely the same as
his long I, and that as a general rule, /, eye, aye were pro
nounced alike. Yet the two sounds (ei, ai) were recognized
also as different, and (ei) was considered to be a dainty
effeminate pronunciation of (ai), which when urged to excess,
through (eei), merged into (ee), but of this mincing sound he
decidedly disapproved. This change makes it probable that
eye and therefore long * was rather pronounced (ei) than (ai),
because although (ei) could easily become (eei) and thence
(ee), the course from (ai) to (ee) does not seem so straight.
The sound of (ai) has not yet disappeared in our provinces.
I have frequently heard (dai, wai) or even (daai, waai) used
by rustics. Smith seems decidedly to disapprove of this
lengthening of the first vowel, which however is not un
common in Gill.
1569. HART in the very next year after Smith had repro
bated the use of (ee) for (ai), published his treatise, in which
he invariably uses (ee), and does not even give (ai) in his
enumeration of diphthongs. In his French Lord's Prayer
he transcribes faite as (feetan), which agrees with Meigret's
(fEEte). It was Hart's English use of (ee) for (ai) that
especially excited the ire of Dr. Gill.
" Ille," says Dr. Gill speaking of Hart, " prseterquam quod
nonnullas literas ad vsum pernecessarias omisit, sermonem nostrum
characteribus suis non sequi, sed ducere meditabatur. Hulta
omitto. Neque enim bene facta maligne Detrectare, meum est:
tamen baec paucula adnoto, ne me homini probo falsum crime/a
affinxisse putes. Emendato nostro charactere vtrumque leges, quia
de sono tantum certamen est.1 Sic igitur ille, folio 66, b.
Pre
ue
se
dhe
bue
me
pro
prai
wai
sai
dhei
buoi
mai
sed
ei
ov
aunsuer
riiding
pro
said
iu \
JUU
ai
iuz2
yyz
of
uii > pro
wi
answer
uidb |
with
reeding
knoon/
knooun
Non nostras Me voces babes, sed Mopsarum fictitias."
1 For the same reason, and also for
greater ease to the reader, Gill's sym
bols are here replaced by palaeotype.
8 Gill has here mistaken Hart's sign
which was meant for (yyz), as will be
shewn under U below.
CHAP. III. § 3. El, AI — XVI TH CENTURY. 123
The withering character of this denunciation will be well
understood by referring to the passage quoted above, p. 91,
where he reproaches the " Mopseys" with saying (meedz,
plee) for (maidz, plai), although Gill himself writes (reseev,
deseev) in place of (reseiv, deseiv), receive, deceive, which is
a change in the same direction. After this expression of
opinion by Dr. Grill it is impossible to accept Hart's pro
nunciation as that generally used in his time, though it is
evidence of an existing pronunciation, then only patronized
by a few, but becoming ultimately dominant.
1580. BTJLLOKAE says: "that there be seuen diphthongs of
seuerall notes in voice, and differing from the notes of euery of the
eight vowels aforesaide,1 may appeere by the wordes following —
a hay or net : in Latine, Plaga, Italian, Rete da pig'iar animali
saluatichi, French, Boureettes a chasser.
hey : in Latine, fcenum, Italian, Fieno, French, Du foin.
a boy : in Latine, Puer, Italian, Garzone, French, Garson.
a tcay2 that is fastened to an anker with a rope to weigh the anker :
in Italian, Amoinare.
a ha,u,3 in the eie: in Latine, Vnguis, French, Faille^
(ta> he,u smaller : in Latine, Concidere, Italian, Tagliare minuta-
mente, French, Hacher menu.
a low : in Latine, Arcus, Italian, Arco da saetture, French, Arc."
These diphthongs I read (ai, ei, oi, uui, au, eu, oou) of
which the two last will be elsewhere considered, and (uui)
is only a variety of (oi). Bullokar consistently uses (ei,
ai) for ei, ai, thus (dhei konseiv) would be quite distinct
from (dhai konsaiv) which the modern English ear hears
as (dhai konsaiv).4
1621. GILL distinguishes (ei, eei, ai, aai), but he is not
very certain in the use of (ai, aai). I find the following
words in Gill's phonetic transcriptions.
ei (ei) eye, (eiz) eyes, (eidher) either, (valleiz)5 valleys, — (reseev)
receive, (deseev, deeseev) deceive. — (cLheei) they, (dheeir)
their, (reeineth) reigneth.
1 See p. 64. derstood. Few English observe the
2 The co is in Bullokar a new letter peculiar Scotch (ei) for (ai). They at
made hy the union of the two oo. most take it for a Scotch way of saying
3 The comma before u and inverted (ai), but recognize the latter diph-
apostrophe before t are printed under thong.
the letters in Bullokar, to indicate, 6 It is not to be supposed that
first that u has the sound (u) or («), (val'leiz) was meant, and not (val'eiz),
and secondly that ttta is the preposition. but in transcribing, I have thought it
* Palmeiro, Square at Brighton is al- best to give Gill's own forms, however
ways called (Pffilmeirra), and thus careless and irregular they may be at
confused with Palmyra, the original times. Corrections must be always
Portuguese (Palmei'ra) not being un- theoretical.
124 EI, AI — XVII TH CENTURY. CHAP. III. § 3.
ai (wai, waai) way, (mai, maai) may, (sai, saai) say, (praiz, praaiz)
praise, (alai) allay, (wait) wait, (slain) slain, (sudain) sodain
old form of sudden ; (daai) day, (klaai) clay, (retaain) retain.
1623. BUTLER says (using the common orthography) :
" The right sound of ai, au, ei, eu, oi, ou; is the mixed sound of
the two vowels, whereof they are made : as (hait, vaut, nei, neu,
koi, kou) : no otherwise than it is in the Greek."
This might lead to (ai, AA, ai, eu, oi, ou), but it is im
possible to say exactly how Butler pronounced Greek av, et.
Sir T. Smith's pronunciation of the Greek diphthongs at, et,
oi, av, ev, fjv, ov, (av, vi seems to have been decidedly (ai, ei,
oi, au, eu, eeu, ou, oou, wi wei).
" But ai in imitation of the French, is sometime corruptly sounded
like e : as in may, nay, play, pray, say, stay, fray, slay : specially
in words originally French, as in pay, baili, travail : though plaid
have lost his natural orthography, and we write as we speak plead
(pleed)."
This implies that though some speakers insisted on pre
serving (ai) in these words, (ee) was the most general pro
nunciation, — which may seem a curious interpretation of
" sometimes corruptly," but allowance must be made for the
mode in which orthoepists speak of common pronunciations
which differ from their own, or from what they recommend,
— by no means always the same thing.
EI, AI — xvn TH CENTURY.
1653. WALLIS tells us that ei, ey, were (ei) or even simply
(ee) without the (i), but adds " Nonnulli tamen plenius
efferunt, acsi per ai scripta essent." The diphthong ai he
upholds still as a diphthong, " Ai vel ay sonum exprimunt
compositum ex a Anglico (hoc est, exili) correpto, et y. Ut
in voce day dies, praise laus," which, if our interpretation
of "Wallis's a be correct is (daei, praeiz) very slightly different
from (daeaei, praeaeiz) and readily passing into (deei, preeiz)
which is almost the sound of the present day. But the real
transition was into (EE, ee), as we shall learn from Cooper.
1668. WILKINS writes, (daei) day, (dseile) daily, (agaeinst)
against, (saeints) saints, preserving the diphthong like Wallis,
but has (kAnseevd) conceived, dropping the (i) entirely. .
1668. PRICE in the same year apparently agrees with the
other two. He divides diphthongs, or, as he spells the word,
" dipthongs," into two classes, proper and improper :
" That is a proper dipthong wherein both vowels keep their
sound. There are twelve proper dipthongs, ay ey oy, ai ei, oi,
aw ew ow, au eu ou,"
CHAP. III. § 3. El, AI — XVII TH CENTURY. 125
which practically reduce to six, ai ei oi, au eu ou, and as we
know that in oi both vowels kept their sounds, we should
conclude that the vowels in the other two diphthongs did
so too.
" That is an improper dipthong that loseth the sound of one
vowel. There are eight improper dipthongs, ea ee ie eo, ea oo ui,
ou obscure as in cousin."
Then, after giving a list of words in ai, comes the question,
"Doth a-i always keep its sound?" the hyphen seeming to
imply separation. The answer is
" Ai soundes like e in bargain, chaplain, against, chamberlain,
curtain, plaited, raisin, travail, wainscot."
This is therefore an exceptional list of words in which ai
= (ee), and hence implies that generally, and in all other
words ai = (sei), with the (ae) of the period. Again he says :
" Ey sounds like, ay, in they, obey, convey, conveyance, oleysance,
prey (or spoil), survey, surveyor, ichey, but ey soundes i (ai) in eye,
eyes" and " Ei soundes like ay in heir, feign, weight, neighbour,
deign, eight, f6rein, inveigh, to neigh, streight, streighten, veins."
Now when it is remembered that these lists of words are
opposed to those in which ey, ei have the sounds of (ee, e, i)
it is evident that the general sound of ai was still (aei),
although it had become (ee) in a few words cited, and that
ey in the above lists was (sei).
" Ey soundes like ee (i) in valley, Turkey, larley, monkey, parsley,
talley, tansey." " Ey sounds e (e) in countrey, atturney, alley, alley,
Anglesey, causey, chimney, cockney, comfrey, Hackney, journey, a
Grey, key, kidney, lamprey, money, pulley."
It is doubtful for how long the short (e) in these words
kept its place, and whether the final unaccented (e) and (i) in
these two lists were ever kept very clearly separated. The
long key = (kee) remained for sometime, and should be con
sidered as belonging to the next list.
" Ei soundes e long (ee) in receive, carreir, conceit, deceit, deceive,
enterfeir, either, heifer, leisure, neighbour, purveigh, receipt, seize."
Many of these words are now spelt differently. Usage
differs in leisure (lezh'J, lii'zhi) and in either (irdhj, ardh-i).
1685. COOPER begins to recognizes ai as (ee) though he is
not quite consistent with himself. After describing (E) he
"Yera hujusce soni productio scribitur per a, a.tc\ue a longum
falsb denominatur, ut in cane canna .... hie sonus, quando pur&
sonatur," that is when it is not (EEO), "scribitur per ai vel ay;
ut pain dolor, day dies ; quse hoc modo in omnibus fere dictionibus
plerumqwe pronunciantur : per ey in convey deporto, obey obedio,
126 EI, AI — XVII TH CENTURY. CHAP. III. § 3.
purvey rebus neccssariis provideo, survey lustro, they illi, trey trulla,
whey serum lactis : quandoqwe raro autem per ea ; ut pearl margarita.
Corripitur in Producitur in
sell vendo sail navigo
sent missus saint sanctus
tell nuncio tail cauda
tent tentorium taint inficio."
This makes ai (EE) except in a few words. But afterwards
he says :
"Ai lenius prolata sonatur ut a in cane ; fortius, plenum assumit
sonum dipthongi ai ; ut brain cerebrum, frail fragilis ; ay finalis
ut a, sic day dies ; ai ante r scribitur pro a in affairs res, air-y
aereus, dairy lactarium, debonair candidus, despair despero, fair
pulcher, fairy lamia, hair crinis, pair par, repair reparo, stairs
scala; cetera cum are; ut are sunt,1 dare audeo Ai in
bargain pactum, captain dux, certain certus, chaplain capellanus,
curtain velum, forrain extraneus, fountain fons, mountain mons,
villain furcifer, & prior ai in maintain sonatur ut a correptum
sive e breve." Again he says : " Sonus a in I can possum ; I cast
jacio ; conjunctus cum i sonum liters ee exprimente; constituit
dipthongum in bait esca ; caitiff homo improbus ; ay pro / vel yea
imo ; & eight quam vulgariter pronunciamus ait. Plures haud scio."
This must be (aei) ; he seems to have thought of brain and frail
afterwards. Then he adds : " E in ken, vel a in Cane i praepositus
diphthongum (EI) priori (a3i) subtiliorem constituit; ut praise laus: in
paucis scribimus ei vel ey finalem ; ut height altitude ; weight pondus,
& convey deporto, aliaque quaB supra sub e ostendimus ; quibus
exceptis cetera scribuntur cum ai vel ay ut hainous detestabilis,
plerunqwe autem in colloquio familiari, negKgenter loquentes pro-
nunciant ai prout a simplicem (EE) in Cane."
Hence we may collect, that in the very few words bait,
caitiff, ay, eight, brain, frail, Cooper still admitted the diph
thong (sei), and that he also endeavoured to establish a
diphthong (EI) or (EEI), but that he was obliged to own that
the generality of words written ai or ei were then (EE)
or (ee).
1688. MIEGE, writing nearly at the same time as Cooper,
heard long a as French (ai}, supra p. 71, and of Ai he says
" cette diphthongize a le meme son en Anglois qu'en ces Mots
PranQois, faire, taire, &c. Exemple, fair, despair, hair, repair,
airy, dairy. J'en excepte, 1. Les Mots finissans en cm, ou Vai se
prononce a la Franchise, comme en ces Mots, villain, certain, &c.
2. Raisins, qu'il faut prononcer Rezins"
Although his French ai seemed in the first place to
imply English (aeae), it can be hardly other than (EE) in the
1 This is peculiar, but still heard, in the form (eei).
CHAP. III. § 3. ET, AI — XVII TH CENTURY. 127
present. Frenchmen do not generally distinguish, these two
related sounds, as they are unacquainted with English (sese).
Similarly Englishmen hear French (EE) as their own (ee).
The meaning of the first exception is not very clear, because
the French pronunciation of French final -ain is uncertain.
Nothing can be clearer than that Englishmen never pro
nounced their final -ain as (-eA). Did the French say (-ein) ?
Miege says that n final is pronounced, " d'une maniere plus
forte en Anglois qu'en Fra^ois," and this is his only allusion
to what is now the French nasal. "Was the English (v#"en,
sJ'fren), or (vil'yn, sj'tyn), as at present ? We cannot learn
from this passage, but it is probable that (vel'en, serten)
represent the sounds with sufficient exactness. The e mascu
line in rdzins, evidently implies (reez'inz) or (reez'inz). The
distinction here made between (EE) and (ee) or (ee), though
real enough in French, is probably due only to insufficient
observation or appreciation of the English sounds, and cannot
be insisted on.
"El. Cette Diphtongue se prononce en Anglois comme en
franc, ois. Exemple vein une veine, weight, un poids " (vein, weit ;
veein, weeit) ? " Excepte 1. ces Mots ou. elle soune comme un e
masculin, ou e. Savoir to conceive, deceive, perceive, receive, seize,
inveigh, leisure, & leurs Derivatifs" (konseev, deseev) &c. ? "2.
Ceux-ci, ou la Diphtongue prend le Son d'un e feminin. Savoir
forfeit, foreign, surfeit, heifer, either, neither," (for 'fat, for 'an, sarfat,
saf'ar, adlrar, nadh-ar)? "3. Ce Mot height, qui se prononce
ha'it," (sait). This should be (HAit) according to Miege' s custom
of confusing (A) with French a, and according to other authorities
it should be (sa3it). We have still a double pronunciation (neet,
nait).
1701. JONES seems not to have made up his mind entirely
that ai was to be pronounced as (ee). Thus he says that the
sound of ai (whatever it may be) is written ei in 12 words,
blein, conceit, deceit, distrein, heifer, heinous, heir, reins, their,
veil, vein, weif; and eign in 5 words, darreign, deign, feign,
reign, sovereign ("or soveraign"); and eigh in 12 words, con-
veigh, eight, freight, heigh ! height, inveigh, neigh, neighbour,
purveigh, straight, surveigh, weigh, and their derivatives, as
eighteen, weight, etc., and eip "in receipt sounded resait," and
es " in demesn sounded demain" and ey in 12 monosyllables
brey, Grey, grey, hey ! key, prey, Sey, sey, they, trey, Wey
(a River), whey, and their derivatives as breying, Weymouth,
etc. It is to be observed that he never asks when is the
sound of ai written e, that is (ee) ?
He next says the sound of e is written ai, " when it may
be sounded ai," which should imply that the sound of e was
128 EI, AI — XVII TH CENTURY. CHAP. III. § 3.
different from that of ai, "as in abigail, a/raid, again,
against, bargain, capstain, captain, certain, chamberlain, chap
lain, complaisant, curtain, debonair, hainous, mountain, mur
rain, Prestain, raisin, said, Suis (?),suddain, vervain, villain"
adding, " see a — ai." He also says the sound of e may be
written ay " when it may be sounded ay in the end of words
or before a vowel ; as decay, decaying, etc." These expres
sions ought to imply that Jones distinguished the sounds of
ai, e, but whether as (ei, ee) or (aei, ee) cannot be collected.
But the above conclusion is not certain, for he says that
the sound of e is written eig " in these six, darreign, deign,
feign, reign, Seignior (sounded senior), sovereign" five of
which darreign, deign, feign, reign, and sovereign are the five
in which the sound of ai is said to be spelled eign. This
would shew that these words were pronounced both ways, in
accordance with Jones's custom of giving both ways of
pronouncing. In reply to the question, when is the sound of
e written eigh ? he says, " see ai — eigh ; where you have all
such," so that these words had also both pronunciations.
Jones says the sound of e (e) is written ei in 30 words atheist,1
atheism? conceit, conceive, counterfeit, deceit, deceive, deity?
disseise, disseisin, either, forfeit, heifer, heinous, heir, inveigle,
leisure, Marseilles, *neigh, ^neighbour, neither, perceive, re
ceive, receipt, seise, seisin, seive, surfeit, teirce, their. Those
marked with * are in a previous list giving the sound of ai,
shewing again that the sounds of ai, e, if different, were at
least frequently confused. He also says that Leicester was
pronounced Lester, and gives a list of 32 proper names as
Anglesey, Awbrey, etc., in which ey final had the sound of
e (e), and of 39 other words with ey final having the same
sound (e), some of which are words in which eigh was said to
have the sound of ai, and others are words to which Price
gave the sound of (i) ; they are abbey, alley, atturney, barley,
brey, causey, chimney, cockney, coney, convey, cumfrey, grey,
hackney, hey-dey ! honey, journey, invey, key, kidney, lackey,
lamprey, medley, money, monkey, obey, parley, parsley, prey,
pulley, purvey, sey, survey, talley, tansey, they, trey, turkey,
valley, whey. In answer to the question when is the sound
of ee (ii) written ei? He replies, sternly, "Never." And
adds, " Note then that it is ie not ei, which often sounds ee ;
as in field, siege, etc." We may therefore conclude that ei,
ey were always (ee) and never (ii) ; although ai, being
generally (aei) or (ei) was sometimes (ee).
1 These must be meant to include " This diphthong ei is parted in atheist,
erroneous pronunciations. Price says : atheism, deitie, polytheism.
CHAP. III. § 3. El, AI — XVIII TH CENTURY. 129
El, AI — xvin TH CENTURY.
Ei, ai seem to have remained at (ee) during most of the
xvin th century ; at least ai was fixed in that sound and has
come down to us with the slight alteration into (ee), although,
in the south of England, (eei) is more commonly heard.
1704. The EXPERT ORTHOGRAPHIST says that " ai, ei, ay,
ey are much the same sound, in many words, as pail, pay,
eight, they" but gives a list of 11 words in which " the sound
of e is lengthened by ei" that is, in which ei is pronounced
(ii) contrary to the express "never" of Dr. Jones; they are
conceit s. and v., conceive, deceit, deceive, either, inveigle, re
ceipt, receive, weild now wield. It is curious that while he
gives (ii) to conceit spelled thus, he admits (ee), or rather,
" the sound of ai," as the sound of ei in " con, de, re, ceipt
or ceive, heir, leisure, neither,1 rein, reign, their, vein, height,
inveigh, neighbour, weight" He did not really distinguish ai
from a long (ee) as may be seen under A, p. 74.
1766. BUCHANAN writes (fsein) feign, (oobee') obey, (slee) sleigh,
(gree) grey, (leez'jar) leisure, (nee'bar) neighbour, (mvee') inveigh,
(parvee1) purvey ; — (persiiv) perceive, (diisiiv) deceive, (siiz) seize,
(mvii'g'l) inveigle; (aetorni) attorney, (kan'tn) countrey, (seH)
alley, (kAA-si) causey causeway, (taen'sz) tansey, (fo-rfzt) forfeit.
Also (reen) rain, (pee) pay, (segeenst') against, (ree'sin) raisin,
(ween'skot) wainscot, (baeaergm) bargain, (tshaeaBnrbzrl/n) chamber
lain, (kartm) curtain, (traevil) travail.
Except then in very few words the usages are those of the
present day.
1768. FRANKLIN has: (steens) stains, (reens) rains, (feer) fair,
(asarteen) ascertain, (ateen) attain, (ansarteen) uncertain.
Also (dher, dheer, dhaer), their, (dbee) tbey ; (aidher) either,
and (firenarz) foreigners.
1780. Sheridan in his remarks on the Irish pronunciation (diseet',
riseev) deceit, receive, which belongs to tbe xvuth century, notes
tbat "the Irish in attempting to pronounce like the English," and
to convert their ei, ey into (ii), often overstrained tbe rule, and said
(prii, kAnvii') prey, convey ; this was simply an error of tbe same
kind as tbat noticed above, p. 92.
Hence in the xvith century we may assume ei, ai, to be
(ei eei, ai aai) ; in the xvii th (ei eei ee, sei ee) and in
the xvinth (ee ii ei, ee). But in the xvuth century
both ei, ai were apt to be confused with one another
and with long e under the common sound of (ee). Also
1 Yet he writes (iidh-er). This re- son, do you say (niidh-er) or (naidh-er)?"
minds us of the question and answer " (NeedVer), sir."
(vraisemblable if not vrai), " Dr. John-
130 01 — XVI TH CENTURY. CHAP. III. § 3.
even in the xvi th century a large section of people
pronounced (ai) as (ee), but this, though adopted by
Hart, was thought effeminate by Sir T. Smith and Dr.
Gill. It however allowed Shakspere to pun on reasons
and raisins and on here, heir (supra p. 80 note).
01 — xvi TH CENTURY.
1530. PALSGEAVE says : "Oi in the frenche tonge hath .ii. diuerse
soundes, for sometyme it is sounded lyke as we sounde oy in these
words, a loye, a froyse, coye, and suche lyke, and somtyme they
sound the » of oy almost like an a."
1545. MEIGRET says: "En moins, royal, loyal, nous oyons eui-
demment en la prolation la diphthongue commencer par o & fmir
par i. Au contraire en moy, toy, soy, nous oyons la fin de la
diphthongue, non seulement en e, mais encore, en e ouuert, qui est
moien entre a & e olos, & par consequence Men estrange de la pro-
nonciation de 1'i, ou y grec. Nous escrirons doncq' Io4, ro6 et
loyal, royal." And 1550, in his Grammar he says that " ao regard
de I'o ouuErt il ne fot point de diphthonge pregedant 1'a, pas qe
j'aye decouuErt ; ne parelxement au9q 1'e clos : mE's ioint a !'E
ouuert il Est fort frequEnt En la prono^iaQfon FranQOEze, qoE qe la
plume n'En neyt jamEs fct conte, vzant qelqefoEs (come j'ey ja dit)
de la diphthonge, oy, es aocuns dss vocables : come, moy, toy, soy,
loy, foy : pour moE, toE, SOE, IOE, foE, qelqefoEs aosi pour fsr' Encor
pis, il' luy ont ajout6 vne s, ; come, cognoistre pour conoEtre. E
non contans de c,ete lourderie, qazi come tumbans de fieur' En 9hao'
mal, il' nous ont introduit oient pour OE', E' tierses pErsones plurieres
du preterit impErffit : ecriuans estoyent, disoient, venoyent, pour
etoE't, dizoE't, venoE't."
It was this broad (E) which Palsgrave apparently con
founded with (a), and indeed we are told that in Parisian pro
nunciation it was already sometimes (a).1 Even now the oi is
1 Mcigret's analysis of the French mant le son o, prononcent seulement
diphthong ai = (OE) is confirmed by ai : ainsi les Normands ecrivent et pro-
Pelletier, who writes (Livet, p. 174) noncent fai, pour foi, et le peuple
' FranqoES, disoEt, connoEtra,' hut parisien dit parlet, allet, venet pour
' point, voyEle.' Ramus (ih. 206) parloit, attoit, venoit ; les imitateurs de
writes 'moE, IOE' for moi, loi. Beza de 1' italien prononcent de meme
(ib. 622) is fuller and says : " cette Angles, Frances, JScosses pour Anglois,
dipthongue fait entendre a la fois, mais Francois, Ecossois. — Une faute tres-
rapidement, le son de I'o et de 1' i, grande des Parisiens c'est de prononcer
quand elle est suivie de «, comme loin, voirre (ou verre), foirre PALE A, trois,
besom, tesmoin, mots que quelquesuns comme voarre, foarre, troas ou meme
terminent, a tort, par un g. — Non suivie tras." This last passage may be com-
de n, la diphthongue oi prend uhe pro- pared with Gill's denunciation of the
nonciation voisine de celle de la trip- Mopseys, p. 90. The two passages
thongue oai ou de la diphthongue ai shew how careful we should be not to
ou e ouvert; il a le son oai dans loi, stigmatize a pronunciation as faulty,
mot, foi qu'on trouve souvent ecrit, a when it differs from what we hold best,
tort, avec un y : quelques-uns, suppri- aa the faults of one century become the
CHAP. III. § 3. OI — XVI TH CENTURY. 131
acknowledged to be (OE) or (UE) by eminent French orthoepists,
though it is generally admitted to be (ua, no). After a con
sonant the real effect of oi, at present, is generally to labialise
that consonant and subjoin (a, a), as roi, loi (rwa, \wa}, where
the ordinary Englishman is apt to hear (rwAA, IWAA), and in
the cry vive le roi, he often falls into (viiv la TAA). I have
elsewhere given my reasons for supposing that the original
diphthong from which the modern English (oi) descended,
was (ui).1 In the French language, the intention of insert
ing o before a Latin e, as in roi, -loi from rex, lex seems to
have been to indicate a thickening or labialisation of the pre
ceding consonant, as opposed to the thinning or palatisation,
which would have been naturally occasioned by the following
palatal vowel. Its use was much the same as the inserted
u after g in French and Spanish before i, to prevent the
palatisation of (g) into (zh) or (x), but whereas in the latter
case, as in the use of gh under similar circumstances in Italian,
the (g) was generally, not always, kept pure, in the former
case the labial effect became finally constant.
In Palsgrave's time the English oi must probably be as
sumed as (oi) or (oe), the latter being a diphthong still found
in Welsh oedd (oedh). The stress was, as usual, on the first
element, and the apparent stress on the second element in
modern French is due to the real absorption of the first
element by the labialized consonant.
1547. SALESBURY recognizes the diphthong oy solely by
transcribing IOYNT into tsioynt, meaning (dzhoint).
1568. SIR T. SMITH says: " 01 per o Ireuem (o) & i (i). Diph-
thongus Oi, vt Gallis frequentissima, ita nobis est rarissima : habemus
tamen & hanc somirn (Colt) iacere discum, (boi) puer, (toi) ludi-
crum, (toil, turmoil) laborare, (foil) bractea, (soil) solum, (koil)
verberare, (broil) assare in craticula, & (point) quse vox mucrone/w,
et indice mowstrare, et ligulam nobis notat, & (koi) quibus ineptum
et a familiaritate alienum significavimus. In his, propter breuitatem
received usages of another. Beza's Spanish ue were mutations of the Latin
reprobation of the Parisian oa for oai, o, p. 138, note. It is -worth noticing
that is, oi, explains the last words of in reference to Meigret's ou, considered
Palsgrave, hut his supposition that the as o clos, that Beza proceeds to say :
Norman fay resulted, like the usual " cette diphthongue ou a un son propre
French at in the words cited, from the qui tient de Yo et de l'«. II Knit se
rejection of the prefixed o, does not garder de prononcer comme a Lyon ou
seem historically correct, as this ortho- pour o (comme nous pour nos), et
graphy, or fey, is very old in Norman comme dans le Dauphine et la Savoie
French. We shall have to consider o pour ou : tels cop pour coup, oi pour
this point in Chap. V, § 1, No. 3, where oui etc."
the Norman ei and French of ='(ei, ue) J Transactions of the Philological
will he considered as mutations of the Society, 1867, Part I, On the Diph-
Latin e, precisely as the French eu and thong OY, p. 59, bottom.
132 01 — XVI TH CENTURY. CHAP. III. § 3.
soni, et quia breuis o non multuw ab u differt, et propterea fuit a
Graecis dicta o fuicpbv. Poterit1 fortasse a quibusdam iudicari haec
melius posse per vi describi. Videmus et veteres voltis & vostris per
o scripsisse, quae posteriores per vultis & vestris scripserunt. Certe
soni saepissimS variant. At sequum est scripturam sonos sequi vt
picturam corpus, testenturque scripturae sonum aetatis, vt aulaea
formas vestium. ep Diphihongm improprib Graca Apud nos in
cognita est. Scoti tamen quae nos per oi scribimus per §> pronun-
ciant, vix vt i audiatur."
And in his Greek pronunciation he says : " oi. Referimus nos
cum puerum a boy dicimus, & cum ludicrum a toy, & delicatiorem
hominem vocant Borei nostrates nyse & coy, frequentatur haec diph-
thongus a Gallis plurimum, quorum lingua cum elegantiarum
studiosis apud nostros vsqueadeo placeat, miror ab his qui hunc
sonum tam contewzptim aspernantur non invrbanissimam iudicari.
Hi cum volunt me, te, taciturn, fidem dicere moy, toy, coy, foy dicunt :
cumque Normani Scytbica Danorum gews partem occuparint Gallise,
& quod in Graecia Turci, iam in Gallia feceruwt, vt hnguam Galli-
cam vna discerewt, & peruerse commutarent nunquam tamen poterawt
effugere Normani, quin si nunc quisquaw eorum rusticior pro moy,
toy, coy, foy, quod non rarb euenit, my, ty, ky, fy, dicat, irri-
deatur a caeteris Gallis, & non vrbane ac civiliter, sed inscite ac
rustice loqui existimetur/'
We have therefore evidence that Sir T. Smith heard little
if any difference between (oi, ui), as he doubted which would
be the best orthography. In the next chapter further reasons
will be given for supposing (ui) to have been the older form.
1569. HART'S views of diphthongs are rather peculiar,
owing to his considering (j, w) as the pure vowels (i, u)
forming a diphthong with the following vowel, so that to
understand his account of oi it will be convenient to cite his
description of diphthongs at length. He says :
" Now will I shew you examples of the Diphthongs made of two
short vowels, and of others of one short and of another long. And
then of triphthongs. With short vowels, as thus, (ui uil reid bei
ionder uel*, nueer dhe uat uas uelneer taakn bei dhe iuq Hound)
which is written for [we wyll ride by yonder well where the "Wat
was wel neare taken by the yong hound] which 'doe come very
often in our speach. Of diphthongs whereof one vowell is short,
and the other long as (iuu ueer uaakiq in dhe fouurth touur, hueer
az dhe buee did pouur uaater upon* dhe nueet flouur) which I
write for [you were waking in the fowerth tower, when as the
boye did poure water vppon the wheate flower] which also doe
come verie often. And for triphthongs as (bi ueiz ov dhe Hueiz
buei) for, [be wise of the hoyes bowy]. And (nark dhe kat duuth
mieu Hueilz iuu milk dhe ieu) for [hark the Cat doth mewe, whiles
1 Evidently there is a mispunctuation here, it should be " o piKphv, potent."
CHAP. III. $3. 01 — XVII TH CENTURY. 133
you milke the yowe]. And a Basin and (eaur), for, [eawer], and
certaine others as will he seene hereafter. And for three vowels
comming togither, and making two sillables as in example (dhe
vyy,er seeth syy,er it is pyy,er) for [the vewer sayth sure it is
pure]" where, as will he explained hereafter, Hart writes (iu) for
(yy), " and as in these wordes (dhis hei,er iz nei,er ov pou,er dhen
dhe dei,er hei niz fei,er). For [this Her is higher of power, than
the dier hy his firej."
He seems therefore to write (buee, Hueiz, buei) for boy,
hoy's, buoy, though the precise value of the two last words
is not very clear, and may be (wheiz bwei). Nautical men
constantly call buoy (buui), and (bui, boi) are not uncommon
provincial forms of boy. Compare the Bavarian dialectic
(bua) for (buu'be) bube, which leads to the notion that boy is
a form of booby, a word of very doubtful origin. Although
Hart thus confirms Smith's (ui) in one word, he differs from
him in writing (vois'es).
1580. BULLOKAR, as we have seen, distinguishes boy, buoy
as (boi, buui), and he gives no examples of oy as (ui, uui).
1621. GILL has the varieties (oi, ui, uui), as in the words : soil
(soil, suuil), boil (boil, buuil), spoil (spoil, spuuil), toil (toil,
tu.uil), Joint (dzhuuint), disappoint (disappuuint), buoy (buui),
rejoice (redzhois), voice (vois), oil (oil). In these the double
tendency is clear, and as the (ui) sounds must have been the
more ancient, they were no doubt in existence, though dis
regarded, when older orthoepists wrote. Thus Salesbury's
(dzhoint) is really more modern than Gill's (dzhuuint).
1633. Butler says " 01 in loy we sound [as the French do]
(woe), for whereas they write lois, soit, droict they say (hwoes,
swoet, drwoet)."1
01 — xvii TH CENTURY.
1653. "WALLIS says : " In oi . . . vel oy . . . praeponitur aliquando
6 apertum (ut in Anglorum &6y puer, t6ys nugae ....), aliquando
d ohscurum, (ut in Anglorum bdil coqueo, tdil labor, 6il oleum . . .),
quanquam non negem etiam horum nonnulla a quihusdam per o
apertum pronunciari."
That is he said (bAi, tAi, bail, toil, oil) but admitted the
pronunciation (bAil, tAil, Ail). It will be seen that Wallis is
the first writer who acknowledges the vowel (a) and the
1 The (w) in the two words is merely that the sounds were (AMoo-ee1), the
a sound developed by Butler himself. syllables being lengthened out, yet I
Thus, when I was nearing Alloa in the could not divest myself of the feeling,
steamer, the name of the place was that (AHoo-wee-) was really said, so
called out in a slow measured tone by strongly was the sound of (w) developed
the boatman, and although I knew in the glide from oo to (ee).
134 OI — XVII TH CENTURY. CHAP. III. § 3.
diphthong (ai). It is quite in conformity with this that he
changes Gill's (buuil, tuuil) into (bail, tail), and his further
pronunciation (ail) should imply that (uuil) as well as (oil)
was prevalent in Gill's time.
1668. WILKINS writes (bA«) for boy.
1668. PRICE says :
" Oi never ends a word, but, oy, as boy, cloy.1' "Oy sounds
broader than, oi, as moyst, joiner, joint, boisterous, cloy, cloysters,
embroyder, emroides [hemorrhoids], employ, exploit, foyl, moyst,
noise, noysom, oyl, ointment, poise, quoif [coif], void."
It is possible that Price's broader oy may be (Ai) and the
other (ai), which would give (dzhaint, bai'staras, eksplait',
naiz, aint'ment, paiz, kaif, vaid,) of which some are confirmed
by subsequent writers.
1685. COOPER generally gives oi as (Ai), " o in loss, lost,
i praepositus ... semper Greece, ut TroXXot," but he admits (u\)
in boil, moil, point, poison, only, to which he says " oy in
Gallico buoy supporto, quod nos scriberemus bicoy" is equiva
lent, it is therefore to be presumed that he said (bwwi). The
most curious point is his remark that " boy puer dissyllabum
est, scilicet (bwAi)," which is not confirmed by others. He
likewise admits oi to be (ai) in in-join, joint, jointure, broil,
ointment, see supra p. 117, and also, " ut i diphthongus," in
anoint, moil, toil, point,
1701. JONES says that the sound of ooi was always written oi,
"in the middle of words or before a consonant, as boil, coil, join,
&c.," which were therefore occasionally called (buuil, kuuil,
dzhuuin), as in times past, and that the sound of * (ai) is written
oi, " when it may be sounded oi or ooi (oi, uui) in the beginning or
middle of words ; as in boil, broil, coil, foil, foist, froise, groin, hoise,
join, loin, moil, oilet, poise, poison, soil, spoil, tortois, which some
sound as with an i," i.e. as (bail, brail, kail, fail) etc. ; and that
(ai) is written oy " when it may be sounded oy in the end of words,
or before a vowel ; Chandois, decoy, &c. — loyal, royal, voyage ; some
times abusively sounded as with an i," ie, (Shaen'dais, dekar,
lai'asl, rai'ael, vaKdgh),1
1688. MIEGE says nothing of the pronunciation of the
English oi, but for the French oi he lays down rules some
what different from those now followed, saying :
"The diphthong oi is pronounced oai (OE) as foi, loi, foire, toile.
Except in some Cases, wherein 'tis pronounced ai (E). And 1. In
such Tenses of Verbs as these; viz. J 'aimois, tu aimois, il aimoit,
J'aimerois, tu aimerois, il aimeroit. 2. In those Verbs whose In
finitive ends in oitre ; as conoitre, paroitre. To which add the Verb
1 Compare the sailor's spelling wig is i, g = (ai, dzh), according to the
for (waidzh), i.e. voyage, where iy, that alphabetic names of the letters.
CHAP. III. § 3. OI — XVIII THCENTURY. UI 135
croire, and this tense of the Yerb Eire, Je sois, tu sois, il soit. 3. In
these National Names, Anglois, Frangois, JEcossois, Irlandois, Hol-
landois, Milanois, Polonois ; with all their feminities in oise, as
Angloise, Frangoise, &c. 4. In these Words, droit, (Adj.) endroit,
etroit, etroitement, foible, froid, and the Derivations of the two last.
But before n, the i keeps its proper Sound ; as foin, loin, joindre,
point. Oignon is pronounced, and begins to be spelt ognon. Oie is
a Triphthong, and is pronounced ai in such Tenses of Verbs as
these are, Us aimoient, Us aimeroient, Us soient, where the n is left
unpronounced. But it is no Triphthong, where it ends a "Word,
the last e making a distinct Syllable of it self, though almost mute.
As in these Words foie, joie, anchoie, where oi is pronounced oai ;
monoie, yvroie, where it is sounded ai"
01 — xvin TH CENTURY.
1704. The EXPERT ORTHOGRAPHIST admits (oi, AI) in choice,
exploit, froise, noise, poise, guoif, quoit, rejoice, voice, void, but
says that " in the middle of most other words oi sounds i long
(ai), as anoint, boil, broil, coin, loin, moil, toil, poison, point." Of
these (boil, lain, paiz'n, point) are still well-known vulgarisms.
1796. BUCHANAN admits (AI, oi) only, to the exclusion of
(ui, ei).
1768. FRANKLIN writes (distrAaid) destroyed, but unfor
tunately gives no other word in oi.
"We may conclude then that in the xvi th century (oi, ui,
uui) all prevailed, (oi) being most in favour ; in the
xvn th century, most words had (oi, AI) and a few words
(ui, oi) ; in the beginning of the xvin th century (oi,
AI, ai) were acknowledged, but at the latter end of that
century only (oi, AI) were admitted by orthoepists.
UI — xvi, xvn, xvin TH CENTURIES.
The combination ui belongs to the xvn th and later cen
turies, except perhaps in one or two words, in which French
spelling had an influence, as the following comparison of the
orthography of the Promptorium 1440, Palsgrave 1530,
Levins 1570, and Price 1668 will shew.
Price. Levins. Palsgrave. Promptorinm.
I. build beald beldyng beeldynge
circuit circuite
conduit condit ( condyte
< condayte
( conduycte
guild
guilt giltie gylte gylty
136
TJI.
EU, AU, OU.
CHAP. III. $ 3.
Price.
II. buy
guide
guile
guise
III. bruise
Levins.
bye
gyle
gyse
Palsgrave.
bye
I guyde
guyse
| broose
( brosyng
frute
Promptorium.
byyn
gyde
gyse
brosyn
fruit frute frute frute
juice juce juse (iuce
( iowce
suit sute sute
Hence we must consider the combination as an inorganic * or
u and it must follow the laws of those letters. In the above
table the first group had short i,1 the second long i, and the
third the u or oo of the period.
EU, AU, OU.
The forms ew, aw, oiv are identical in signification with eu,
au ou, and need not be separately considered.
The modern sounds of eu are (iu) or (ju, juu), and occa
sionally (oo), of au (A A), and of ou (au) or (a), occasionally
(oou, uu). But the diphthongal sound (au) runs through all
the varieties (ou, au, au, ahu, seu, eu, au), and Franklin gives
(AU), while even (ou) may be occasionally heard, and, owing
to the orthography, this analysis is very commonly accepted.
The Germans hear the diphthong always as their au = (au).
The pronunciation (eu), a diphthong acknowledged in the
Italian Europa = (euroo'pa), is heard in America for ou as
(deun teun) for down town, and is said to be a common cock-
neyism, although the cockney sound is, as Mr. M. Bell says,
more probably (seu) as (daeun taeun).2 Many words now
spelled with u were written with ew in the xvi th century.
As these, and some others still spelled with ew, were pro-
1 Dr. Gill stumbles over build, giving
the three sounds (baild, held, byyld).
The more ancient sound must have
been (beeld) or (beild) whenc«5 (b»ld)
descends easily. Mr. Melville Bell
says that built is often pronounced
(b?lt) in Scotland, a variety of (bylt),
2 In Mrs. Barney "Williams's Yankeq
song " Bobbing around," which was so
popular a few years ago, I seemed to
hear (uraeae.und') or (urEE.und-), the first
element being lengthened and some
what nasalized. The Kev. Mr. D'Orsey
informed me that he found the use of
(eu) for (au) very common among
Londoners, even of education, whose
pronunciation he had to correct. In
Norfolk ou is regularly pronounced
(EU, aeu).
CHAP. III. § 3. EU — XVI TH CENTURY. 137
nounced with the long u of that time,1 which requires special
consideration, it will be most convenient to postpone their
consideration till afterwards. The sounds attributed to au,
ou in the xvith century were also frequently attached to
simple a, o before / or //, and these will be considered under L.
EU — xvi TH CENTURY.
1530. Palsgrave says : "Ev in the frenche tong hath two dytterse
soundynges, for sometyme they sound hym lyke as we do in our
tonge, in these wordes a dewe, a shrewe, a fewe," this is the sound
which will he considered here, "and somtyme like as we do in
these wordes, trewe, glewe, rewe, a mewe," which will be considered
under II. "The soundyng of ev, whiche is most general in the
frenche tong, is suche as I haue shewed by example in these
wordes, a dewe, a shrewe, a fewe, that is to saye, lyke as the
Italians sound ev, or they with vs, that pronounce the latine tonge
aryght, as evrevx, irevx, liev, diev."
The reference to Italian completely establishes the sound,
which is as singular and curious in French as in English.
According to Meigret, however, the sound was (ey), for he says :
" CEt e clos fct Encores vn' aotre diphthong' auEC u, come En eur,
peu, veu, eureus. FinablemEnt il fet vne triphthowge se josrawt a
c,Elle de ao ; come En veao, beao, moreao. Dont je m' emErvELLe de
c,eus qui premiers ont termini gete triphthong' En u : vu qe la pro-
nongiagion ne tient rien de 1'une memes de 1' ou clos qi a qelq'
affinite auEq l'u."a
1 "We find in Levins 1570, dewe is indistinct, at least as cited, but
debitum, dewe, glewe, rewe, spewe, Ratnus (ib. p. 189) says : "Lasixiesme
bkwe, trewe, issew, reskew, reuenew, voyelle cest ung son que nous escripvons
valew [but vertue although inserted par deux voyelles, E et u, comme en ces
under "E ante W,"] endew, continew, motspeur, meur, seur," and he proposes
purseiv, sleuce, trewce, hewge, rewle, a simple sign for it. Beza (ib. 521) as
trewth [but vntruth although under analysed by Livet says : " Dans cette
the heading ewtK], Words still written diphthongue EU ou n'entend ni Ye ni
with ew, and pronounced then as long I'M, mais un son qui tient de 1'un et de
u according to Sir T. Smith 1568, are 1'autre : beuf, neuf, peu PAUCUM, seur
snew, slew, new, brew, blew. SOHOR, veu VOTUM, et un grand nombre
2 See the long extract from Meigret d' autres que les Picards prononcent
concerning ao, aou, on p. 141-2 below. souvent u simple, disant Diu, ju pour
G. des Autels objects strongly to Dieu,jeu. Les Franqais imitent quel-
Meigret's analysis (ey) of the French quefois les Picards, en ce qu' ils pro-
eu. Speaking of Meigret' s assertion that noncent par u simple les mots seur
both sounds were heard in a diphthong, SECURUS et ses derives .... meur MATU-
he asks (Livet, p. 130) : " Je luy de- HUB ... et en general tous les noms en
mande si la diphthongue fran^oise eu eure long [now -ure] derives des verbes
en ces mots j'eu et feu garde le son .... ; il en est de meme dans les parti-
entier de I'M ?" "II ne faut done pas cipes passes passifs, masculins ou fe'mi-
que les voyelles gardent aux diph- nins, termines en eu, eue [now -u, -ue]
thongues leur son propre et entier, comme beu, beue .... ; c'est a tort qu'
mais bien qu'elles servent toutes deux, a Chartres et a Orl6ans on prononce,
soit en leur son propre on en un autre avec une dierese, eu, et, d'autre part,
voisin, a faute de lettres plus idoines qu' on fait rimer, heuretdur, engraveure
(convenables)." Pelletier (ib. p. 138) et figure, heure et nature, faute qu'on
138 EU — XVI TH CENTURY. CHAP. III. § 3.
But Englishmen heard this (<?y) as (eu), as appears from
Hart, who in his French Lord's Prayer, gives (sieuz, seuz)
for deux, ceux. As to the combination eau, which Meigret
says was (eao), we have the word beauty, written bewte,
beawtye in the Promptorium, beautie in Palsgrave, and bewtye
in Levins. Hart gives (beairttfe), Gill pronounces (beu'ti)
and Butler (beau'tz) which may mean (beaa'te), though
some doubt attaches to the last pronunciation.1
1547. SALESBURY does not notice the combination eu, and
gives no English word in which it occurs.
1568. SMITH says : " Et Eu diphthongum Graecam habent Angli,
sed rarius, quae tamen apud Gallos est frequens : (feu) pauci, (deu)
ros, (meu) vox catorum, (sheu) monstrare, (streu) spargere." And
in his Greek pronunciation he adds, " eu, vt eu, ettye, euge. Angli
pauci few, <£eO, ros. dew, Set), ijv sonamus apertius, vt illud Galli-
cum beau, quod multi Angli beu : sonum etiam felium quidam mew,
alii mean, quasi p>ev, /j^iju exprimunt."
Observe that mew for hawks had the sound of long u.
1569. HART, as shewn by the citation on p. 132, distin
guishes mew (mieu), ewe (jeu), you (juu).
1580. BULLOKAR recognized the diphthong (eu) distinctly
by writing the word hew thus : he,u, the comma, which he
wrote under the u, meaning that it had the sound of (u).
In his list of synonymous signs he gives e,v e,u ew (where
the comma should be subscribed to the v, u) as identical, and
I find the word Hewed meaning (sheu'ed).
retrouve en Guyenne." These last (ib. p. 138) : " Bien de plus vague, de
examples point to a remnant of an (ey) plus indetermine, que la prononciation
diphthong, which is a real natural diph- de, u, eu, o, ou au moyen age et encore
thong, and was distinctly pronounced au xve si&cle. Nous ne pouvons mieux
to me every morning at Norwich hy a faire, au lieu de donner d' innomhrables
vender of fish monotoning under my exemples de cette confusion, que de
windows, (n«y bloo-tizs t'ti) = new renvoyer au Traite de Versification
bloaters here ! The real mutations of frattfoise de M. Quicherat pp. 354-359.
the Latin o, besides its natural change Cf. Observations etc. de Menage, t. i,
into (uu), were however two, closely re- p. 291, 324, 481. Glossaire picard par
lated, first (oe) falling into (ue), and 1'abbe Corblet, p. 131. Sur la confu-
secondly (eo) falling into (eu). The sion de eu et ou en particulier, Cf.
form (ue) appears in very early French, Quicherat, ouv. cit. p. 364-365."
where it was probably soon discon- 1 Ramus (Livet p. 207) makes the
tinned, since (ue) was also used as a combination eau a diphthong, the first
mutation of Latin e, but it remains the element being his mute e and the
regular Spanish mutation. The second second his simple vowel au. The dif-
form (eo, eu) gradually prevailed in ference of Meigret' s sound and his may
French, and became replaced by (ce) have been very slight (eao, BOO), but
tha
apparently just about the time that the latter prevailed. Beza (ib. p. 523)
Meigret wrote, so that he retained an analyses in the same way as Ramus.
old (ira) or («y) pronunciation (it is not These analyses at least shew the ex-
quite clear which) and his more youth- istence of an old e sound at the com-
ful opponents ignored the old sound mencement, and hence account for the
altogether. The subject requires much English translation of the combination
careful investigation. Livet observes into the familiar diphthong (eu).
CHAP. III. § 3. EU — XVII TH CENTURY. 139
1621. GILL, in his anxiety to give prominence to the first
element, lengthens it, thus : " E. saepius praecedit u, vt, in
(eeu) EAWE ovicula, (feeu) FEWE pauci, (seeirer) SEWER
dapifer."
1633. BUTLER distinctly recognizes (en) in dew, ewe, few,
hew, shew, rew, sew, strew, shew, shrew, pewter, see under U.
It will be seen in the next chapter that Chaucer distin
guished the two sounds of eu by an etymological rule, the
sound (eu) being reserved for those which were not of French
origin. This distinction was lost during the xv th century,
so that in the xvi th no general rule can be given, but each
word must rest on its own independent authority. For lists
of such words see Chapter IY, § 2, under EU.
EU — xvn TH CENTURY.
1653. WALLIS, says : " Eu, ew, eau sonantur per b clarum et w,
(eu). Ut in neuter neutralis, few pauci, beauty pulchritude. Qui-
dam tamen paulo acutius efferunt acsi scriberenter, niewter, fiew,
biewty, vel niwter, fiw, liwty ; prsesertim in vocibus new novus, knew
sciebam, snew ningebat. At prior pronunciatio rectior est."
That is "Wallis had heard some persons say (nieu'ter, fieu,
bieu'te) although many, perhaps most, at that time said dis
tinctly (niu'ter, fiu, biu'te) and he found this pronunciation
particularly prevalent in new, which in the next century
Franklin called (huu) and which is still frequently so called.1
The sound (eu) was undoubtedly beginning to be unfrequent.
The sound (iu) however cropped up chiefly in those words
previously pronounced as long u.
1668. WILKINS acknowledges (eu) in hew, and PRICE in
the same year allows (eu), that is, says " ew keeps its sound"
in' breivess, few, lewd, ewe, feud, neuter, pleurisie, but gives
(iu), that is, says " ew hath now obtained the sound of iw" in
blew, brew, chew, crew, drew, embrew, eschew, hew, gewgaws,
knew, sewer,* slew, stew, steward, vinewf monsieur, adieu, lieu.
1685. COOPER hears only (m), the same sound as long u.
The diphthong is in America more frequently (m) than (iu),
and even (eu) remains there in some parts.
1701. JONES seems still to have a lingering feeling of the
difference between (eu) and (iu). He asks when may the
sound of eu be written eu ? and answers : "In the beginning
1 In 1849 the present writer pub- newsvender, "we always call it (nuuz)."
lished a newspaper called the Phonetic 2 Probably in the sense of a waiter
News, printed phonetically, and there- at table,
fore bearing the title (Fonet-«k Niuz). * Probably, venue.
" "Why do you write (niuz) ?" asked a
140 EU — XVII TH CENTURY. CHAP. III. $ 3.
of all words, except ew, ewer, Ewin" and "in all foreign words
from the Latine, Greek &c as adieu, beuf, cavallieur, Deucalion,
Deuteronomy, feumet, geuls, grandeur, lieu, Meuse, Monsieur,
neuter, pardieu, pleurisy, purlieu, Reuben, rheubarb, rheum,
Theudas, Zeurin Sfc except view." And he allows the same
sound to be written ew " in all English words as crewet, dew,
pewter &c." But he never asks, when may the sound of eu
be written u ? On the other hand he does ask when may
the sound of u be written eu or ew ? And he answers, the
first " when it may be sounded eu in foraign words, as neuter
&c," referring to the list just given, and thus clearly dis
tinguishing the two sounds (eu) and (iu) ; and the second
" when it may be sounded ew in English words, that are
purely1 such, as in askew, crewel, dewberries, eschew, ewer, gew
gaws, Hewet, jewel, nephew, peicet, sinew, vinew, and in blew,
chew, clew, crew, Crew, drew, few, flew, Grew, grew, Jew, knew,
mew, new, screw, shew, skew, slew, spew, stew, stews, strew, threw."
Jones says that the sound of o and ou, evidently meaning
(oo, oou), is written ew when it may be sounded ew as in chew,
eschew, shew, shrew, shrewd, Shrewsbury, pronounced " cho,
shrode, Shrosbury &c." (Shoo, Shrooz'bera) are the only
sounds here remaining. But that (shroo) must have been
known in Shakspere's time appears from the last couplet of
Taming of the Shrew, fo. 1623, the preceding 14 lines being
in rhyming couplets :
JJbrten. Now goe thy wayes, thou hast tam'd a curst Shrow.
Luc. Tis a wonder, by your leaue, she wil be tam'd so.
Ewe has still a provincial pronunciation (JOG, JAA).
Eau as is seen by the quotation from Wallis, follows the
fortune of eu. Wallis has (beu'ti) admitting that some say
(bieu'tfl). Miege has (biu'tt). Jones says that beau is
" sounded beu in the beginning of all words," referring to
e-ea, which shews that he considers ea in eau to be the digraph
ea, that is, a mere representative of (ee), and satisfactorily
determines his pronunciation. Even the word " Beaw a
name" he writes beu. But he never allows the sound to be
long u, that is, (iu). On the other hand he also says the
sound of long o is written eau " in the sound of beau in the
beginning of all words," which should imply that (boo'to') was
heard as well as (beu't/). He also says that Bourdeaux is
" sounded jBoordo" (Buurdoo).
The conclusion seems to be that some speakers still said
(eu) and Jon.^s recognized it as an admissible and theo-
1 The following list would imply that Dr. Jones did not know much of
etymology.
CHAP. III. § 3. EU — XVIII TH. ATI XVI TH CENTURY. 141
retically the best sound, but that he frequently heard
and admitted without any word of blame, the newer
sound of (iu).
ETJ — xvin TH CENTURY.
1704. The EXPERT ORTHOGRAPHTST says: "it must be a very
critical ear, that can distinguish the sound of eu in eucharist from the
long u in unity, and the eu in rheubarb from the long u in rumour,
without an apparent and too affected constraint, contrary to the
usual pronunciation observed by the generality, which (in this case)
would sound very pedantick."
Here, the confusion of thought and consequent nebulosity
of expression, which makes it difficult for an ear to dis
tinguish sounds without a constraint which would sound
pedantick, and which is contrary to the general pronunciation,
is a good example of the darkness in which we have to grope
for our results. It is to be presumed that the writer did not
distinguish eu as (eu) from u as (iu), and found the utterance
of those who still attempted to do so, affected and constrained.
But did he pronounce all his 32 words having ew final, with
(iu), including " sew or did sow with a needle, seiver a drain,
shew or did show" ? This is more than doubtful, and the
distinctions here made between present sow, show, past sew,
shew, are entirely without corroboration.
1766. BUCHANAN generally makes eu, ew = long u or (iu),
but writes sewer (shoor), shew (shoo) sew (soo). His ewe,
monsieur, lieutenant are (iu, monsiur1, liuten'mt), chew (tshuu),
beauty (bnrte), beau, beaux (boo, booz).
1768. FRANKLIN writes (nuu) for new.
The usages of the xvin th century did not therefore sensi
bly differ from those of the xix th. But to shew how (eu)
st{ll lingers, it is enough to cite the pronunciation (sheu),
clearly a variety of (sheu), heard from a highly educated
speaker, during the preparation of these pages.
ATI — XVI TH CENTURY.
1530. PALSGRAVE says : "Av in the frenche tonge shalbe sounded
lyke as we sounded lyke as we sounde hym in these wordes in our
tonge, a dawe, a mawe, an hawe. Except where a frenche worde
begynneth with this diphthong av, as in these wordes, avlcun,
dvltre, av, avssi, avx, and auctevr, and all suche lyke : in whiche
they sounde the a, almost lyke an o, and as for in aimer, a and v be
distinct syllables, as shal appere by his writtyng in the frewche
vocabular."
Now Meigret says : " vn' aotr' En ao, come aotant, aos, loyaos :
142 ATI — XVI TH CENTURY. CHAP. III. § 3.
pour laqElle 1'ecritture FrangoEz' abuze de la diphthonge au, qe la
pronon9ia9ion ne conoEt point. Car com' aotrefoEs je vous ey dit,
la diphthowg' Et de tElle nature q'slle requiert la prolaQion En vne
mE'me syllabe de' deu' voyElles qi la compozet : come nou' le
fs'zons communemEnt : E einsi obsErve 1'Ecritture, En moindre,
peindre : E' qels nou' prononqons IE' diphthonges oi, E ei, En vne
mE'me syllabe. E pourtawt sont abuzes tous c,eus qi se persuadet qe
deu' voyEllEs conioinctes EnsEmble, caozet vn tiers son, qi ne tient
ne de 1'une, ne de 1'aotre : come qant vous ecriuez mais, pour HIE'S,
il dizet qe a, E, i, conjoins EnsEmble, forjet la prola9ion de E,
ouvErt : suyuawt leur rEgle donq ie direy qe ayant, aora En sa
pronon9ia9ion Eant ; payant, paye, pEant, pEe, je direy le sewblable
de toutes aotres diphthowges qe vou' pronow9ez com' Elles sont
ecrittes, q'Elles doEuet fs'r' vn son tiers, aotre qe 9eluy de' deu'
voyelles cowiointes EnsEmble : E qe conseqEmmEnt vous ecriuez mal
moiws, eureus, eaje (on dit bien aosi aje, E Et la diphthonge ea,
bien rar' En Fran90Es) vu qe vou' pronon9ez IE mE'mes voyElles qi
sont ecrittes, E q'Elles ne forjet point la vn tiers son. Voyez dowqes
q'Elle opiniatretl d'abus caoz' vn Erreur inuetere : tant Et diff 191!' a
1'home la reconoEssan9e d'une faote pour vne par trop grand' estim'
E prezompsion de sa suffizan9e cowioint' a vne meconoEssan9e de 1'im-
bE9ilite, E imperfec9fow de notr' EntEndemEnt : Ao regard d'aou
par ou clos je ne 1'ey point decouuErt, q'ao mot aout, qe vous
ecriuez Aoust, etant s, supErflue."
This long quotation will serve to shew that Meigret's
diphthongs must be accepted as such, with the exception
of ou, of which he says " aotrement ne 1'oze je noter," and
which was the vowel (u) simply. Hence as Meigret only
heard (au) in the one word aout, now (uu), and heard (ao) in
all other words, either the English must have been (ao), or,
if it were (au), Palsgrave misheard the unfamiliar (ao) as the
familiar (au). The latter is d priori more probable and agrees
with all the other indications we possess.1
1 G. des Autels was very vehement p. 133). It is evident then that Mei-
against Meigret for using the diph- gret used and was familiar with (ffo).
thong (ao). "Je lay demande," says Livet (ib. p. 122) remarks: "il est
he according to p. 130 of Livet, "oil certain qu'en Anjou 1'on prononce de
est le son, nori entier, mais demy ou la chaox, j'ai chaod, chevaox, en appuy-
encore moins, de I' a en la diphthongue ant sur 10 et glissant legerement sur
de sa nouvelle forge ao ?" To the I'o qui ne s'entend guere plus qu'un e
first objection he had raised Meigret muet;" but this must be a recent de-
had replied : " si vous n'avez le cerveau velopment, the unstable (ao) becoming
bien trouble d'opionastrete, vous trou- in this case (ao), while in the classical
verez qu'en introduisant la diphthongue French it must have passed through an
ao, je ne fais qu'accorder 1'ecriture a (ao) form. That the a was originally
la prononciation," (ib. p. 122), and to pronounced there can of course be ety-
the above question he answered : " le mologically no doubt, and the change
plus opiniatre sourdaud du monde ne of (ao) to (oo) is precisely similar to
saurait nier qu'il n' oye (entende) en the change of (au) into (AA), which will
aosi (aussi) un a puis un o qui luy est be seen to have taken place in English,
conjoint en une meme syllabe," (ib. In Welsh we find Salesbury's aw be-
CHAP. III. $3. AU — XVI TH CENTURY. 143
Palsgrave, speaking of French pronunciation, says :
"If m or n folowe next after a, in a frenche worde, all in one
syllable, than a shall be sounded lyke this diphthong av, and some-
thyng in the noose, as these wordes dmbre, chdmbre, mander, amdnt,
tant, quant, parldnt, regardant, shall in redynge and spekynge be
sownded number, chaumlre, maunder, amaunt, taunt, quaunt, parlaunt,
r eg ar daunt, soundyng the a like au, and somethynge in the noose."
Of this there is no trace in Meigret, but the observation is
important as explaining the English pronunciation of words
from the French, and the nasalisation of aun is remarkable
when compared with Jacob Grimm's observation that modern
English au, which = (AA), is pronounced " as a lengthened a,
something in the nose" (wie gedehntes a, ein wenig genaselt).1
1547. SALESBURY has no special article on au, but he says :
11 to English & w Welsh do not differ in sound, as WAWE, waw
unda, Also w is mute at the end of words in English, as in
the following AWE pronounced thus a (aa) terror." Also he
says that "sometimes a, has the sound of the diphthong aw (au)
especially when it precedes I or II, as may be more clearly seen in
these words BALDE, bawld (bauld) calvus, BALL, bawl (baul) pila,
WALL, wawl (waul) murus." Ana he writes "GALATTNT, galawnt
(galaunt)."
The word (aa) for (aau) awe is here singular, especially as
it is adduced as an instance of the omitted (u). Smith pro
nounces this word (au) and Gill (AAU). Salesbury is also incon
sistent with himself, for in his Welsh pronunciation he says :
" All thoughe the Germaynes vse vv yet in some wordes sounde
they it (to my hearing) as the forther u were a vowel, and the
latter o (sic) consonant, where we Britons sounde both uu wholy
together as one vowell, wythout anye seuerall distinction, but
beynge alwayes eyther the forther or the latter parte of a dyph-
thonge in Englyshe on thys wyse : wyth aw, and in Welshe as thus
wyth awen."
coming modern o. In Italian o aperto au ne differe pas sensiblement de la
has succeeded frequently to Latin au, voyelle o," to which he adds: "les
and so on. The question of importance Normands la prononcent en faisant en-
here however is, when did the change tendre distinctement a, o : disant a-o-tant
take place ? The testimony of Pals- pour autant : peut-etre est-ce la vraie
grave to (au) and Meigret to (ao), and et ancienne prononciation comme la
the objections of des Autels and Pelle- vraie orthographe de cette dipthongue"
tier — who says to Meigret (ih. p. 138) — seem to shew that the change took
" il t' cut autant valu mettre un o place in the first half of the xvi th
simple" — and the assertion of Ramus century; that is, that about this time
(ib. p. 186) that it is " le son que nous the simple vowel (00) prevailed over
escripvons par deux voyelles A et u, the diphthong (ao) or (au), although
comme en ces mots : aultres, aultel, ou the latter did not absolutely die out.
nous prononcons toutcsfois une voyelle l Deutsche Grammatik, vol. 1, 3rd
indivisible," together with the dictum ed., 1840, p. 394.
of Beza (ib. p. 520) "la diphthongue
144 AU — XVI TH CENTURY. CHAP. III. § 3.
It would seem impossible after the preceding remark to
suppose that w were mute in aw. Indeed wyth aw seems to
be rather a Welsh phonetic transcription than the usual
orthography, in which, as in the other passage quoted above,
we should expect awe.
1568. SMITH simply gives "ATI seu av. (Dau) monedula, (clau)
unguis auium, (rau) crudus, (naunt) nihil, (taunt) doctus, (laau)
lex, (mau) stomachus, (sau) serra, (au) terror, (lauater) risus,
(faunt)1 pugnavit, (strau) stramen." But in his Greek pronuncia
tion he adds : " av. ev. ijv. Eandem rationem sequuwtur, quam in
reliquis. Nam si fuisset apud veteres tanta soni commutatio, pro-
fectb Grammaticorum diligentia non hoc tarn insigne discrimen
praeteritum reliquisset. Itaque sic avBdco loquimur, vt audio nos-
trates vnguew, claw, & scabere claw." So that his au was cer
tainly (au).
1569. HAUT says : " The Dutch" that is the Germans, " doe vse
also au, ei, & ie, rightly as I do hereafter."
Now the German sounds are, and probably were, (au, ai,
jee) or (ii), but Hart clearly did not refer to this last sound.
When then Hart writes (autours, auluaiz, aulso, tshaundzh,
bikaus, radikaul) for authors^ always, also, change, because,
radical, he meant (au) to be sounded as in German.
1580. BULLOKAR distinctly writes ha,u, meaning (nau),
and uses (kaul, kau's«) for caul, causey = causeway. His
notation at1 am ah he explains as = (aul, aum, aun).^ ^This
agrees with the rest.
Up to this time therefore, when Shakspere was 16, the
pronunciation of au seems to have been indisputably (au)
the same as the modern German au. There can be little
doubt that Shakspere in his youthful days must have said
(au), but during his lifetime the general pronunciation seems
to have changed. Between Bullokar's and Gill's books, 41
years elapsed, and although Gill had an old pronunciation,
yet he seems to have followed the times somewhat in this
combination. In determining the pronunciation of Shak
spere, we must remember that he and Dr. Gill were born in
the same year, 1564, and that Shakspere died, 1616, eight
years after Gill had been made master of St. Paul's school,
and five years before the publication of Gill's book. Hence
Gill's pronunciation is the best authority which we have for
Shakspere's, and certainly gives us the pronunciation of
Shakspere's time. It is therefore singularly vexatious that
we cannot make out a very clear account either of long i,
(p. 114,) or of this diphthong au, from Gill.
1 In the original (foimt), which is clearly a misprint. Possibly (laau) for
(lau) was also a misprint.
CHAP. III. § 3. ATI — XVI TH CENTURY. 145
1621. GILL says: "A, est tenuis, aut lata; tennis, aut brevis est,
vt in (taloou) TALLOWE sebum ; aut deducta, ut in (taal) TALE fabula
aut computus : lata, vt in tdl TALLE procerus. Hunc sonum Germani
exprimunt per aa. vt in maal conuiuium, haar coma : nos vnico
charactere, circumflexo d, contenti erimus."
This ought to imply that a in tall was a simple vowel and
not a diphthong,1 and 'that it was (aa, ««h) or (AA). The
Germans perhaps really said (aa) or at most (adh), but (AA)
was the sound which appears certainly to have been heard
by the English in the xvn th century. But Gill, who is so
particular in his phonetics, absolutely confuses the diph
thong (au) with his d, in the following curious paragraph,
where I leave his symbols untranslated.
" A prseponitur e, ut in aerj AEEIE aereus. o nunquam; ssepius t,
et u, vt, in aid auxilium ; bait esca ; laun sindonis species ; & a paun
pignus : vbi aduerte au nihil differre ab d. Eodem enim sono pro-
ferimus a Idl, BALL pila ; et tu bdl, BATTLE, vociferari : at ubi vere
diphthongus est, a, deducitur in d, vt au AWE imperium ; auger
terebra."
Here he admits that au in his own phonetic writing is
sometimes the sound which he represents as a simple vowel,
his " broad a" and sometimes " truly a diphthong," but then
becomes du or d -\- u. I feel therefore bound to take his
au as = his d or (AA), and his au as = (AAU). In this point
then Gill must have given in to the xvn th century pronun
ciation. The pronunciation (AAU) is not recognised by
others. In Gill's first edition, 1619, he uses au instead of a,
for (A A) and in the case of "the true diphthong" to make
the u apparent, he considers the u and not the a to be
lengthened. The meaning is evidently the same.
1633. BUTLER is still less explicit, for after saying that
"the right sound is a mixed sound of two vowels whereof
they (diphthongs) are made," and referring to the Greek,
he merely tells us that " au in Paufs and his compounds,
Pauls- cross, Pauls-eyre-yard,2 the Londoners pronounce after
the French manner, as ow."
We are therefore driven to Ben Jonson's grammar 1640,
which was not published till two years after his death, and
which has probably been tampered with. Jonson was born
in 1574, ten years after Gill and Shakspere, and his pro-
1 But that it does not necessarily do with his admitting it afterwards to be
so, appears from his calling long *, "fere diphthongus au," and, as it will
which was " fere diphthongus ei" the be seen, he almost uses these very
"thick i," or "t crassa." So that his words.
assertion that a in tall is " a lata" or 2 The Greek e here represents a
"broad a" would not be inconsistent crossed e, much resembling it in form.
10
146 AU — XVI TH CENTURY. CHAP. III. § 3.
nunciation at best belongs to the very edge of the xvith
century. He says,
when a " comes before I. in the end of a Syllabe, it ohtaineth the
full French sound, and is utter' d with the mouth and throat wide
open'd, the tongue bent backe from the teeth, as in al. smal. gal.
fal. tal. cal. So in Syllabes, where a Consonant followeth the I. as
in salt. malt, balme. calme."
Bullokar writes (ba'l'm ka'l'm = baul'm kaul'm) for balm,
calm. Salesbury gives calme, call in his Welsh pronuncia
tion, as words in which " a is thought to decline toward the
sound of the diphthong au, and the wordes to be read in
thys wyse caul, caulme." Gill gives balm as (bAAm) accord
ing to our present interpretation of his d = au. Ben Jon-
son's explanation of his a before I will really apply better
to (aa) than to (AA), because he omits all mention of labial
action, but I suspect that (AA) was fully developed in England
at the latter end of his life, and that be intended to indicate
its sound, but had not noticed its labial character. It is
worthy of remark however that Jonson's account of this
sound is almost translated from the description of Latin A
in Terentianus Maurus whom he cites in a note :
A, prima locum littera sic ab ore sumit,
Immunia, rictu patulo, tenere labra ;
Linguamqwe necesse est ita pandulam reduci,
Ut nisus in illam valeat subire vocis,
Nee partibus ullis aliquos ferire dentes.
and this renders his description altogether suspicious, as if
it were the result of learning, not of observation.
The result is that in the earlier part and middle of the
xvi th century and at least to 1580 the sound of au was
(au) or (aau) ; that at tbe close it may have passed
into (aa) ready to fall positively into (AA) in the next
century. The modern contest between (aa) and (AA)
in such words as gaunt, haunt, jaunt = (gaant, naant,
dzhaant) or (gAAnt, HAAnt, dzhAAnt), while aunt bas
remained (aant), — seems to point to a time of (aa) or
(aa} before (AA) was evolved. In giving the pronun
ciation of Shakspere, however, having regard to the
archaic habits of the stage, I think it will be more cor
rect to write the full diphthong (au), see Chapter VIII.
§ 8. The change of (a) by tbe action of (u) would
naturally be to the round form (o), for which in French,
tbe narrower form (o) bas prevailed. But if the (a) fell
first into (a), the (u) would labialize it into (o), for
which the narrower form (A) is frequently substituted.
CHAP. III. § 3. ATI — XVII TH CENTURY. 147
The distinction between primary ^ or narrow, and wide
forms, is seldom, upheld in its purity, and the sound
varies frequently, unnoticed, from narrow to wide in
different individuals, who believe themselves to be
speaking alike.
AU — xvii TH CENTURY.
1653. WAILIS says: " Au vel aw, recte prommciatum, sonum
exhiberet composition ex Anglorum 6 brevi et w, (aeu). Sed a
plerisque mine dierum effertur simpliciter ut Germanorum d pingue
(AA) ; sono nempe literae d dilatato, et sono litterae w prorsus sup-
presso. Eodem nempe sono efferunt dtt omnes, awl subula ; cdll
voco, caul, caivl, omentum, vel etiam tiara muliebris."
This is just the conclusion that Dr. Gill had arrived at,
but he does not acknowledge the pair, fall folly, of Wallis =
(fAAl fAli).
1668, WILKINS entirely agrees with Wallis. PRICE only
says that " aw soundes broader then au as dawk, haunt," the
meaning of which is not clear.
1685. COOPER, as usual, is rather peculiar. He says :
"A in can, cast, cum u coalescens (seu) . . . nunquam occurrit in
nostra lingua. Lance hasta, lancet scalprum chirurgicum, a lanceola ;
lanch navem solvere a G. lancer, Jaculari, Ganch in sudes acutas
prsecipitem dare, hant a G. kanter frequento • hanch a G. hanche
femur; Gant, macer quasi want ab A.S. wana carens, gantlet cbi-
rotheca ferrea, landress a lavando, nullo modo scribi debent cum u ;
contra enim suadent sonus et derivatio j1 falsb itaqwe seribuntur
launce &c. Quondam vocabula a latinis praecipue derivata scribimus
per au pronunciamus prout au vel a (AA) audacious audax ; maunder
murmurare ; a G. maudire maledicere 0 in loss, lost con-
junctus cum u semper scribimus per au (AU), ut audible audibilis,
audience audientia ; audit-or-y auditorium, augment augeo, augury
augurium, august augustus, auricular auricularis, austerity austeritas,
authentick authenticus, authority authoritas, cautious cautus, fraudu
lent dolosus, laudable laudabilis, laurel laurus, plausible plausibilis,
negligenter loquentes pronunciant prout a (AA) ; in cseteris vocibus
au & aw semper prout a (AA) pronunciamus."
This fancy for pronouncing au as (AU) or (ou) in certain
words, seems peculiar to Cooper ; it may, however, have
represented one of the transitional stages (au, au, AU, AA) or
(au, au, a, aa, AA). "We can readily conceive that the sound
had passed through all these stages ; the (aa) often heard at
1 As to sound, many even now say (m, n) when they represented what are
(lAAntsh lAAnsh, HAAnt, HAAntsh now the French nasals, was a regular
HAAnsh, gAAnt-let, lAAn'dres). As to indication of their origin, see supra p.
derivation, the insertion of (u) before 143, and M, N below.
148 AU — XVII TH CENTURY. CHAP. III. § 3.
present in haunt, gaunt, jaunt, favours the notion that (aa)
once existed. Cooper's " negligenter loquentes" refers of
course to the general pronunciation, which was opposed to
his ideas of correctness. Whenever an orthoepist talks of a
" careless" pronunciation, he means that which is most pre
valent, and which is therefore most valuable to the student
of changes, while his "careful" pronunciation is that of
Dr. Gills "docti interdum," seldom or never heard when
speakers are thinking of the meaning, rather than the sound,
of what they say.
1686. MIEGE says: "La diphthonge au en Anglois se prononce
comme notre a en Francois, Example, Cause, Author. II en faut
excepter Auncient, & ses Derivatifs, ou la Diphthongue se prononce
comme Va simple en Anglais. De meme en est il des mots finissans
en aunt, comme aunt, to daunt, qu'il faut prononcer aint, tou daint.
To lauf/h, se prononce laiff. Paul suit la Regie, hormis quand on
parle de 1' Eglise Cathedrale de 8. Paul a Londres. Alors on
1' appelle P6h .... La Dipththongue aw sonne comme un a long
en Frangois. Exemple, Law, flaw qu'il faut prononce la, fla.
Mais il se prononce bref, dans awry.'1
The difficulty experienced by the French in distinguishing
(BB) from (E), and (a) or («) from (A) has been noticed on
S>. 71-2. The preceding indications lead me to suppose that
iege meant to express the sounds, (kAAz, AA'thar, sen'shent
sesen'shent, seaent, daeaent, laeaef, PAA! Pooulz, IAA SAA). The
sound of ancient is doubtful. The use of (aeae) in aunt, daunt
is rather a thin pronunciation at the present day, which
some ladies even still further thin to (aent, dsent). The
sound (Pooulz) is not now heard, but as Chaucer writes
Powles, and as Butler gives the pronunciation (Pooulz) " in
the French manner/' we see that this pronunciation was
very old, and was probably confined to this single word.
1701. JONES simply identifies a, au, aw in all, Paul, awl.
But he gives the following list of
words in au, "which many sound as with an o. Auburn, auction,
audacious, audible, audience, audit, auditor, auf awf, augment,
augre, August, aumber, aumelet, aunt, auspicious, austere, authen-
tick, author, Autumn, auxiliary, because, cautious, centaury, daunt,
Dauphin, debauch, fault, flaunt, fraud, herauld, Henault, jaundice,
laudable, maudlin, maugre, nauseous, Pauls, plausible, restauration,
sausage, ribauldry, vault."
He does not say whether the o is long (00} or short (o). In
sausage we now use (A), and frequently in because (bikAz*,
bikoz*), but auf awf is now written oaf (oof). Dauphin is
frequently pronounced as French (DoofeA). The cases in
which Jones finds al written for au will be considered under
CHAP. III. §3. AU — XVIII TH OU — XVI TH CENTURY. 149
L ; and those in which au is written as a written before M.
N, R will be considered under those letters.
In the xvn th century, then, au was almost universally
pronounced (AA), but there were a few exceptions, so
that on the whole the rules resembled those now in use,
AU — xvni TH CENTURY.
1704. The EXPERT ORTHOGRAPHIST take the sound of au
for granted, and must have pronounced (AA). The following
with the sound of (AA) are noteworthy, sausage, taunt, vaunt,
launcet, launch.
1766. BUCHANAN has (A A) in daw, maw, awe, vault, daunt,
fault, taunt, but has (seae) in aunt, laugh, where Sheridan
has (ae).
1768. FRANKLIN has (!AZ) meaning probably (!AAZ) laws.
The usages with regard to au seem to have been nearly
the same in the xvni th century as in the xix th century, but
the orthoepists of the xvinth ignore the sound (aa) alto
gether, and consequently do not notice the sounds (aant,
laaf), which are now extremely prevalent, and probably were
frequently heard during the preceding century. Our pre
sent orthoepists reject the sounds also.
OU — xvi TH CENTURY.
1530. PALSGRAVE says : " Ov in the frenche tong shalbe sounded
lyke as the Italians sounde this vowel v, or they with, vs that
sounde the latine tong aright, that is to say, almost as we sounde
hym in these wordes, a cowe, a mowe, a sowe, as evltre, sovdayn,
ovblter, and so ofsuche other."
The ou in French is called " ou clos" and sometimes " o
clos" by Meigret, which would lead to suppose it rather (wh)
than (u), see p, 131, note. There can be no doubt of the
Italian u, which was certainly (uu). But it seems from
other writers that this pronunciation of (kuu, muu, suu),
although still heard in the North of England, was going out.
Palsgrave's pronunciation is probably of the xvth century
in this point. We shall see that these words were so pro
nounced in the xiv th century, and it will hence be most con
venient to defer the consideration of the change of (uu) into
(ou) to the next chapter. We are not to suppose that ou
was universally pronounced as (uu), even by Palsgrave and
older writers. In many words, ow derived from ags. aw, was
called (oou). Palsgrave says in another place :
" If m or n followe next after o in a frenche worde both in one
syllable, than shall the o be sounded almost lyke this diphthonge
150 OU — XVI TH CENTURY. CHAP. III. § 3.
ov, and somethyng in the noose : as these wordes mon, ton, son,
rendm, shalbe sownded movn, tovn, sovn, renovm and so of all suche
other, and in like wyse shall o be sownded though the next syllable
folowynge begynne with an other m or n, as in these wordes h6me,
$6mme, bonne, tdne-rre, whiche they souwde houme, boune, soumme,
tounner, and so of suche other."
Meigret knows nothing of this, but the effect on English
ears is important in the transference of French words to
English, where on, when, at present, nasal, became oun,
meaning (uun), which afterwards, as we shall see, fell into
(oun). Thus Hart in giving the pronunciation of the
French Lord's prayer, writes (tun, num, volunte', kunvau,
dun'e, pardmran, pardun'unz, unt), for, ton, nom, volont£,
comme, donnez, pardonne, pardonnons, ont.
1547. SALESBURY gives no special article on ou, but he has
the following words, involving this combination, which may
be classified as follows,
(oo) BOWE, bo (boo) arcus ; CEOWE Icro (kroo) comix ; TEOWE tro
(troo) opinor.
(o) HOITOUHE onor (on-or) honos ; — probably a mistake for onwr
(on'ur).
(uu) WOWE, w (uu) petere ut procus ; — a "Welshism for (wuu) now
written woo.
(u) NAEEOWE, narrw (naru) angustus; SPAEOWE, sparw (sparu)
passer ; GEACTOTJSE, grasiws (graa-si,us) comis ; EMPEEOTTEE, em-
perwr (enrperur) imperator; DOUBLE, dwlyl (dub'^1), see also
under (ou).
(on) LOW low (lou) nragire ; NOWE now (nou) nunc ; THOTT ddow
(dhou) ; DOUBLE TJ dowbyl uw (dou'bzl yy), see also under (u).
It is evident that " the (uuz) have it," but the (ouz) are
in force. Those words marked (oo) by Salesbury were pro
bably (oou), as at present, but the (u) was possibly faint and
disregarded.
1555. CHEKE says : "foule, boule, houle (f)ov\ /3oiA 6v\ ful bul
hul latinuwi u est. nam lumew nuwtij acute argute \y/x,ev VOVVTU
afctire apyovre sic Grace transferuntur."
Since Mekerch in taking the passage transfers it thus
"moule concha, douken pawni, /i«X, S«/c mul duk u Lati-
nu;w est," and we know that in the old Dutch words1 cited
ou was (ou) or (ou), we see at once that these scholars were
led away by +heir interpretation of the Greek ov as = (ou),
to imagine that the Latin u had the same sound, instead of,
conversely, from the known (uu) sound of Latin u conclud
ing the (uu) sound of Greek ov. In Cheke's time then the
English "foule, bouie, houle" were (foul, boul, Houl).
1 The modern forms are mouw, moud, molle, (mou, moud, mol-e), and dock (duuk).
CHAP. III. $3. QU XVI TH CENTURY. 151
1568. SIR T. SMITH fully endorses Cheke's inference that
the Latin long u was pronounced as he pronounced Greek
ov, that is, (ou) , saying :
" OT diphthongus Grceca, (ou) et wv, (oou). Ex (o) breui & (u),
diphthongum habebant Latini, quae si non eadem, vicinissima cert6
est ov Graecae diphthongo, & proximo accedit ad sonum u Latinae.
Ita quae Latine per u longum scribebant, Graeci exprimebawt per ov.
quae per u breuem, per v, quasi sonos vicinissimos. At ex (oo)
longa & (u) diphthongus apud nos frequews est, apud Graecos rara,
nisi apud lonas : apud Latinos haud scio an fuit vnquam in vsu.
(ou), (bou) flectere, (boul) sphaera, (kould) poteram, (mou) meta
foeni, (sou) sus faemina.
Q>v. (boou) arcus, (booul) sinum aut scaphium, (koould) frigidus,
(moou) metere, aut irridere os distorquewdo, (soou) seminare,
aut suere."1
And again in his Greek pronunciation, he adds : " ov ab omnibus
recte sonatur, & u facit Latinum quando producitur, vt aduertit
Terentianus : differt wv granditate vocis, vt etiam rjv ab et/ dis-
tinguimus.
ov. bow, ftov, flectere. a hay mow, JAOV, foeni congeries, a gowne,
<yovv, toga. ,
(ov. a bow, /3&)0, arcus. to mow, fj,wv, metere, vel os torquere. gow,
<ywv, abeamus.
v. v breue Latinuw. a bull taurus. u longum vel ov, a bowl,
ftov\, globus. (nv, a bowle /SwOX, Sinum ligneum, vas in quo
lac seruatur, vel vnde ruri bibitur.
Here Smith agrees with Salesbury in the close diphthong
(ou), but distinguishes an (oou) where Salesbury only heard
(oo) as in bowe, arcus. In the same way at the present day,
very few of those who say (boou) acknowledge the final (u),
because most of them insert it in no, go, etc., saying (noou,
goou) for (noo, goo), and hence consider that they pronounce
simple (oo) in both cases. Yery few would say (ai noou noo
boou soo loou) for / know no bow so low, or would distinguish
no beau as (noo boo) from know boiv (noou boou). Smith at
the same time absolutely disagrees with Palsgrave in mow,
sow, saying (mou, sou) where the latter says (muu, suu). It
is singular that this difference, to which we shall have to
allude again presently, turns upon precisely the error con-
1 At present it is usual to distinguish clothys or o]>er sedys ' in Promptorium,
sow seminare, sew suere, which would ' I sowe with a nedell ' in Palsgrave,
lead to saying (soou, seu). We find while Levins gives hoth sewe and sowe
for sow seminare ' sowyw corne, or any for suere, and does not appear to give
o)>er sedys' in the Promptorium, ' I the English for seminare at all. Pro-
sowe corne, or any other seedes' in bably Levins' s sowe should have been
Palsgrave ; and for sew suere, ' sowe explained seminare.
152 OU — XVI TH CENTURY. CHAP. III. § 3.
cerning Greek ov. Although there were then living persons
who pronounced (uu) for ou, yet Cheke and Smith both refer
their sound (ou) to the Greek ov, and then infer the mon
strous conclusion that the Latins pronounced their long u in
the same way.
1569. HART, in the passage already quoted, p. 132, writes
fotverth, (fouurth) tower (touur), poure (pouur) , flower (flouur),
marking the second element of the diphthong as long.
There is no doubt that in prolonging a diphthong the second
element must be lengthened, because the first and the glide
must pass in the usual time in order to preserve the character
of the diphthong. As however the lengthening of the
second element is accidental, it is not usually marked in
palaeotype. In the course of his work, however, Hart does
not mark the second element as long ; for example I find,
(nou, sound). Hart also leaves out the (u) occasionally as
(vo,elz, knoon, thon't, knoledzh,) for vowels, known, thought,
knowledge. Hart also writes (dub'l) for double, thus agreeing
with one of Salesbury's notations for this word.
1580. BULLOKAR in writing of the sounds of o (supra
p. 93) says that the third sound is " as, v, flat and short, that
is to say, as this sillable ou, short sounded." Again, under
u he talks of one of the vowel sounds of u being " of flat
sound, agreeing to the olde and continued sound of the diph
thong : ou : but always of short sounde." This he distin
guishes by writing a hook, like a comma below, which will
be here, for convenience, printed as a comma before. He
then identifies in his notation o,v o,u ,ow ,oow ,v ,u ,o ,00,
where the two o's are united into one sign like Greek to,
observing " that no diphthong is of so short sounde as any
short vowell, and that as well short vowels, as diphthongs
ending a sillable, are of meane time, that is, betweene short
and long, their time before shewed notwithstanding." The
following are some of the words in the ordinary spelling in
which he uses these notations sum, sound, doubt, other, fully,
some, such, without, precious, youth, good, much, under, colour,
unwilling, comfort, double, vowels, come, but, word, our. With
the exception of sound, doubt, without, vowels, our, which
have now (au) and youth which has (uu), all the above words
have now (9), and it will be shewn under U that we may infer
an elder (u) or (u) from a modern (a). There is therefore
no doubt that Bullokar pronounced ou as (u) at times; at
other times I think it must have been (uu), for he would not
have used the phrase " ou short sounded" unless there had
been an "ou long sounded." Thus it is probable that the word
CHAP. III. § 3. OU — XVI TH CENTUKY. 153
vowels was called by him (vuirelz) rather than (vu'elz). "We
have here then a direct confirmation of Palsgrave and con
tradiction to Smith. Thus bow flectere = (bou) in Smith,
and (bun) in Bullokar, both giving boiv arc us as (boou).
We are reminded here of the distinction between the Eng
lish (bau) and the Scotch (buu). Again boivl sinum is (booul)
in Salisbury, Smith, Bullokar ; but bowl sphaera, is (boul) in
Smith and (buul) in Bullokar. The celebrated bowling
greens at Nottingham are commonly called (bau'Kq) or
(bou'b'q griinz) to this day. Walker says on the word bowl
sphaera, which he calls (b001) meaning (b#0ul) :
"Many respectable speakers pronounce this word so as to rhyme
with howl (naul) the noise made by a dog. Dr. Johnson, Mr. Elphin-
stone and Mr. Perry declare for it; but Mr. Sheridan, Mr. Scott,
Dr. Kenxick and Mr. Smith, pronounce it as the vessel to hold
liquor, rhyming with hole (bool, booul). I remember having been
corrected by Mr. Garrick for pronouncing it like howl; and am
upon the whole of opinion, that pronouncing it as I have marked
it, (bool), is the preferable mode, though the least analogical."
Walker derived his knowledge entirely from observing
the spelling and custom of his time. Hence his argument is
perfectly groundless. Bowl, the cup, is connected with boll,
bole, and the sound of (oo) is to be expected, the additional
(u) arising merely from the following /, as will be shewn
under L. But bowl, the ball, was the French boule, correctly
written boul or bowl in older English, not only as we see
from Bullokar, who calls this sound of on its " old and con
tinued sound/' but as will appear from the study of Chaucer's
orthography. The change of (uu) into (ou) in English,
which occurred partly perhaps in the xvth century, but
which we see by Palsgrave and Bullokar, was not fully com
pleted in the xvith, and which the words through, youth,
you, a wound some say (a waund), could, would, should, flowk
(a flounder), soup, group, rouge, route, occasionally called
(raut) like rout, Cowper, only called (kau'per) by those who
do not know the family, Brougham, (Bruum) as spoken
by Lord Brougham, though the carriage is often called
(Bnwam), will convince us that the change is not yet com
plete. The nature and laws of this change will best be
considered hereafter.1
1 Walker continues as follows, and ties of observing. " But as the vessel
it is worth while, perhaps, in a note, bowl has indisputably this sound it is
to draw attention to the extreme con- rendering the language still more irre-
fusion of ideas concerning language gular to give the ball bowl a different
that possessed this respectable ortho- one." That is, because in early times
epist, because it is still widely preva- of our orthography, when the writer
lent, as I have had frequent opportuni- did not know exactly how to represent
154
OU — XVI TH CENTURY.
CHAP. III. $ 3.
1621. GILL agrees with Smith, and writes : (bound) bound,
(sound) sound, (blooun) blown, (throoun) thrown, (bou)
bough, (boou) arcus, (boul) bowl a ball, (booul) bowl a cup.
the sound of (uu), but wandered be
tween o and ou, ow, which last hap
pened to be also appropriated to sounds
which were distinctly (oou), — and be
cause people following the tendencies
of sound, quite independently of spell
ing, altered the sound of (uu) in many
wordes to (ou, au), so as still to keep
up a distinction in speech between
words previously distinguished though
in a different way, — all these tendencies
are to be given up for the sake of a
casual similarity of spelling ; and it is
to be deemed less irregular, because the
spelling is alike, to change the sound
of one of the words, than to give a dif
ferent sound to two words spelled alike,
or to change the spelling of one of
them. Of course, then, know now should
be pronounced alike, as also the latter
parts of shoe, hoe, changed hanged. The
irregularity was not in the sound but
in the clumsy orthography. Walker
proceeds thus, " The inconvenience of
this irregularity is often perceived in the
word bow," the irregularity was spelling
two words, i.e. two collections of sound
in the same way ; "Walker assumes it
to be, pronouncing one word, i.e. one
collection of letters, in two ways.
The confusion of writing and sound
could not be more complete. "To
have the same word" i.e. sound, "sig
nify different things, is the fate of all
languages; but pronouncing the same
word" i.e. written symbol, "differently
to signify different things, is multiply
ing difficulties without necessity" to
the reader, not the listener, and the
remedy is with the writer, not the
speaker, " for though it may be alleged
that a different pronunciation of the
same word" i.e. written symbol, "to
signify a different thing, is in some
measure remedying the poverty and
ambiguity of language" i.e. written
symbols, "it may be answered, that it
is in reality increasing the ambiguity"
of orthography, not of language, " by
setting the eye and ear at variance,
and obliging the reader to understand
the context before he can pronounce
the word." A good argument against
unphonetic spelling. But to conclude
that pronunciation must follow the un
phonetic spelling, is to determine that
every baby should learn to read before
it speaks. This would almost beat
those celebrated Irish infants of whom
a native preacher is said, by Sir Jonah
Barrington in his Memoirs, to have
declared, inveighing against the pre
cocious wickedness of his times, that,
' little children who could neither walk
nor talk, ran about the streets blas
pheming.' Walker continues : " It
may be urged that the Greek and Latin
languages had these ambiguities in
words" written symbols, " which were
only distinguished by their quantity or
accent." That is, words differing in
the accent given to the syllables, or in
the length of vowel sounds were written
alike — a defect in orthography, but
certainly not in the language which
distinguished the sounds. "But it is
highly probable that the Greek lan
guage had a written accent to distin
guish such words as were pronounced
differently to signify different things,"
as the Greek accents were an invention
of later grammarians chiefly to assist
foreigners, it would have been more
satisfactory if Walker had mentioned
the grounds of this ' high probability,'
" and this is equivalent to a different
spelling," of course, when the accent
points to a difference of sound, and is
not merely, as old Bullokar often used
it, and as we find in French a, a, ' for
the sake of equivocy,' just as we may
imagine Walker would have looked on
the diverse spellings rite, write, right,
wright, or air, heir, eyre, ere, e'er.
Walker continues, "and though the
Latin word lego signified either to read
or to send, according to the quantity
with which the first syllable was pro
nounced," that is, the word (leg'oo)
meant / gather or read, and the word
(leeg'oo) meant I send, and the two
words were in this particular inflection
written alike, " it was certainly an im
perfection in that language," read, or
thography, "which ought not to be
imitated. Ideas and combinations of
ideas will always be more numerous
than words ; and therefore the same
word will often stand for very different
ideas ;" and Walker has in this note
strangely illustrated the danger of such
results in bad writers and loose thinkers,
CHAP. III. §3. OU — XVI TH CENTURY. 155
He has however some remnants of the (uu, u) sounds, as
(kuurts) courts, (kuuld) could, where Smith has (kould), and
admits (wound) as a Northern pronunciation of wound.
1653. BUTLER says (translating his symbols,) : "ou in the substan
tive termination our, as honour, labour, succour, and in the adjective
termination ous, as glorious, gracious, prosperous is sound as oo or u
short" that is (u) or (u). "This being general, may be suffered
as an Idiom : but in other syllables of some few words, whereof
there is no certain rule to be given, it is not so excusable : as when
we write bloud, Jloud, courage, scourge, flourish, nourish, young, youth,
iooulf, double, trouble, &c., for blood, flood, coorage, scurge, floorish,
nurrish, yung, yuth, wulf, dubble, trubble, &c.," meaning (blwd, flwd,
kwradzh, skwrdzh, flwr^'sh, nwr^'sh, JMq, jwth?, wwlf, dwb'l, trwb'l),
" for the same writing hath another sound in loud, proud, cour,1 scour,
mound, mouth, coul, scoul, doubt, trout, and the same sound hath an
other writing in good, stood, bud, mud, burge,2 purge, furrow, murrain,
bung, gulf, bubble, stubble, &c.," which had («). "Neither is there
any more reason why in would, could, should, roum, wouf* wound, ou
should be written for oo long; than that for cool, pool, fool, tool,
school, stool, hoof, boom, moon, doom; we should write coul, poul,
foul, toul, skoul, stoul, houf, bourn, moun, doum. The cause of this
cacography which causeth such difficulty is a causeless affectation
of the French dialect ; who for the sound of oo (which in their
language is frequent) do sometimes write o and oftentimes ou ; as
they write i, ai, oi, and sound (ii, e, woee)/ or as they write en, an,
aw, and sound an, aun, oiv for entend, command, costeau, saying
antand, coomaund, coteow. But that they speak otherwise than they
by confusing a spoken and a written necked, pedantic, unphilosophical, mi-
word, language and orthography ; "but serably- informed, and therefore su-
altering the sound of a word, without premely certain, self-confident, and
altering the spelling, is forming an self-conceited orthographers who make
unwritten language." The orthoepist default, when they will not alter the
the orthographer, the word-pedlar, is spelling after the sound has changed,
here shewn to the life. It is a horror and maintain that though their rules
to him, a monstrosity, this formation must be right, it is only the exceptions
of an "unwritten language." As if which prove them, — forgetting that as
all languages were not formed un- some foreigner pithily said, "English
written, were not to the great majority orthographical rules are all exceptions."
of present speakers, unwritten. As if 1 Meaning cower, written cowryn in
all those who made languages, who the Promptorium, cowre in Palsgrave,
altered their sounds, who brought them and coure in Levins,
to their present speech-form, knew or 2 Query, borage, as written in the
cared about writing ; as if even the Promptorium, the bourage of Palsgrave
majority of those who speak, pause to and burr age of Levins, exhibiting the
consider in the rapidity of discourse, three common spellings for the same
how the printers of the day choose to sound.
print, and the writing-masters choose 3 Room, woof "of woven, as warp
to order their pupils to write ! No, it becanse warped or wrapped round the
is not the language, or the speakers beam" adds Butler,
that are in fault in obeying and carry- 4 Butler belongs to the latter part of
ing out the organic laws of speech and the xvi th or to the xvn th century, in
word formation. It is those word- his French, when the change of the
pedlars, those letter-drivers, those stiff- French at from (ai) to (E) was complete.
156 OU — XVII TH CENTURY. CHAP. III. § 3.
write, is no reason why we should write otherwise than we speak ;
considering what an ease and certainty it would be both to readers
and writers, that every letter were content with its own sound, and
none did intrude upon the right of another. The termination our
accented, is sounded in two syllables : as in devour, deflour ; and in
all monosyllables, as our, hour, lour, flour, tour, sour, lour, scour,
pour Verb fundo : the Noun is, for difference, written in two
syllables pouer potestar, and so are all the substantives in the
plural number ; as flouers, touers, Shouers : and sometime in the
singular not only in verse : but in prose also."
OU — xvn TH CENTURY.
1653. "WALLIS says: " Ou et ow duplicem sonum obtinent ;
alterum clariorem, alterum obscuriorem. In quibusdam vocabulis
effertur sono clarion per o apertum,1 et w. Tit in s6ul anima, s6uld
vendebam, venditum, sn6w nix, kn6w scio, s6w sero, suo, 6we debeo,
total poculum, etc., quo etiam sono et 6 simplex nonnunquam
effertur nempe ante Id ut in gold aurum, scold rixor, hdld teneo,
cold frigidus, 6ld senex, antiquus, etc., et ante II in p6ll caput,
r6ll volvo, toll v-ectigal, etc. Sed et hsec omnia ab aliis efferuntur
simpliciter per 6 rotundum acsi scripta essent sole, s6ld, snd &c. In
aliis vocabulis obscuriori sono efferuntur ; sono nempe composite ex
6 vel u obscuris (a), et w (ou). Ut in hduse domus, mduse mus,
lowse pediculus, Idul globulus, our noster, out ex, owl bubo, town
oppidum, foul immundus, fowl volucris, bdw flecto, bough ramus,
sow sus, etc. At would vellem, should deberem, could possem, course
cursus, court aula, curia, et pauca forsan alia, quamvis (ut proxime
praecedentia) per 6u pronunciari debeant, vulgo tamen negHgentius
efferri solent per oo (uu)."
Wallis seems to say that (soul, s0uld, snou) as well as (sool,
soold, snoo) were heard, and that (gtfuld, sk0uld, b0uld, k0uld,
0uld) were used, although he did not approve of them. This
effect of L will be considered hereafter. The sound (naus,
maus) &c. is the same as the modern English, and must be
distinguished from the former. Wallis's dictum concerning
would, etc., is only borne out by Smith's very peculiar
(kould) could, supra p. 151. We have seen that Gill said
(kuurt) ; (kuurs) is still common in the North. Wallis
wishes that the two sounds were distinguished in writing,
1 This must mean "# apertum," I suspect that this is a theoretical pro-
that is (A), giving the diphthong (AU) ; mmciation, arising from "Wallis's con-
although it is certainly very singular, sidering the vowel o short in the diph-
as the words given were pronounced thong and his having no notation for
with (oou) in the xvi th century, and (o) The u apertum he usually marks o,
he makes some of them have (oo). but here he has employed o, apparently
This (AU) is the diphthong recognized to connect the sound with his 6 = (oo),
in a few words hy Cooper, supra p. 147. so that he may really mean (ou).
CHAP. III. § 3. OU — XVII TH CENTURY. 157
using on 6w or 6u 6w or simply ow for (0u, oo) and du bw or
simply ou for (au). Yet how many would feel their eyes
offended by seeing know, nou, hou, loiv, sou, sow, roiv, rou,
notwithstanding the infinitesimal nature of the change.
1668. WILKINS speaks of (au) only as the sound of ow in
" owr, owle." It is curious that, though (eeu) is the common
Norfolkism now, Wilkins says that (ae) before (u) " will not
coalesce into a plain sound." "Writers on phonetics are too
apt to measure the pronouncing powers of others by their
own, although the extreme difficulty with which unfamiliar
combinations of familiar elements become current to their
organs, and the mistakes they make in hearing and imitating
unfamiliar sounds and slight variations of familiar sounds,
should teach them to be less confident.
1668. Price makes several categories of ou, ow.
1) ow, ou sound "like o," that is, either (oo) or (o) in bestow,
know, a bow, flow, low, window, throw, grow, glow ; succour,
brought, endeavour, although, armour, behaviour, clamour, colour,
embassadour, emperour, errour, gourd, harbour, mannour, nought,
odour, ought, rigour, solicitour, soul, though, tbougbt, wrought ; in
some of which we bave now (9, AA).
2) Ow, ou keep tbeir " full sound" (au) in how, to bow, froward,
allow, cow, coward, now, toward, devout, flout, fourth, our Saviour,
stout. Although (tau'jd) may be occasionally heard, it is un-
frequent ; (frou'-id) I do not remember to bave heard ; (fourth) is
also strange, and (saeae'vi,ou.i) tbe strangest of all.
3) Ou sounds "like short «," that is (9), in cousin, double,
courage, adjourn, bloud, couple, courtesey, discourage, doubled,
encourage, floud, flourish, journey, journal, nourish, ougly, scourge,
touchstone, touchy, young. All these pronunciations remain in use
although we no longer write bloud., floud, ougly.
4) Ow, ou sound " like woo" that is (uu) in arrow, pillow,
barrow, borrow, fallow, follow, hallow, morrow, shaddow, sorrow,
swallow, widdow, willow, winnow, coucb, course, discourse, court,
courtier.
5) " Ou soundes like iw in youth," meaning (jiuth) ? Tbis
certainly ougbt to have formed part of the preceding list.
1685. COOPER says " 0 in full, fole (u, oo) cum u (u) conjunctus
constituit dipbtbongum in coulter vomis, four quatuor, mould paniflco,
mucesco, typus in quo res formatur ; moulter plumas exuere, poulterer
avicularius, poultry alites villatici, shoulder humerus, soul anima;
in caeteris hunc sonum scribimus per o ante II flnalem, vel I, quando
praecedit aliam consonantem ; ut bold audax ; quidam boc modo
pronunciant ow."
" £7 gutturalem (a), ante u Germanicum oo anglic6 exprimentem
(u) semper scribimus per ou ; ut out ex ; about circa ; ou tamen
aliquando, praeter sonum priorem, sonatur ut oo (uu) ; ut I could
possem ; ut u gutturalis (a), couple copulo ; ut a (AA) bought emptus."
158 OU — XVII TH CENTUKY. CHAP. III. § 3.
The first diphthong must be written theoretically (wu), but
it was probably meant to be the same as (ou), coinciding
with Wallis's diphthong, because Cooper does not distinguish
(u, o). The second diphthong was of course the modern (au).
The words in ou which Cooper pronounces with the first
diphthong (wu) or (ou), as above mentioned, all contain out,
and to these he adds the following with a simple o before /,
behold, bold, bolster, bolt, cold, colt, dolt, droll, enroll, fold,
gold, hold, inholder hospes, jolt, knoll, manifold, molten,
poll, roller, rolls, scold, sold, told, vpholster plumarius. He
also says: " Quidem scribunt troll vel trowl Iseviter eo, ita
controll controul, redargue, joll jole caput," jowl is common
now, with the sound (dzhaul), " toll tole vectigal &c, mold
vel mowld humus, at mould typus," a distinction now lost, if
it were ever made by others beside Cooper, "bowl bole
patera."
The sound of the second diphthong (9u) is given by Cooper
to all other words in ou, as " boul globulus, gout podagra,
&c," some of which he allows to be written ow, as: ad-
voicson, allow, avow, boiv torqueo, bowels, bower, brow, brown,
browze, carowze, cow, coward, comer, crown, down, dowry,
droivn, frown, gown, how, howl, lower frontem capero, mow
fsenile, now, owl, plow aro, rowel, rowin fcenum serotinum,
shower, sow s., towel, tower, trowel, vow, vowel. He adds,
" bounce crepo, bouser thesaurarius, clown colonus, drousie
somnolentus, loud sonorous, louse pedicular, renoun gloria,
rouze excito, souse omasum, touze plurimum vello ; etc., scri-
buntur item cum ow. W quiescens adjungitur post o finale,
(praeter in do facio, go eo, no non, so sic, to ad) ut boive
arcus, dowe farina subacta" i.e. dough, " owe debeo, sowe sero,
towe lini floccus, &c, & in own assero, disown denego, bellows
follis, gallows patibulum, towardness indoles."
Hence Cooper admits (0u) but not (oou) making the latter
purely (oo) . He gives no list of words with ou pronounced
as (a) or (u, uu).
1686. MIEGE'S lists are as follows : ou generally = aou,
meaning (au), not (AU), although Miege confuses French a
with English (AA).
1) ou = o, meaning (a), in adjourn, bloud, floud, country, couple,
courage, courtesey, double, doublet, flourish, gournet, journey,
Journal, nourish, scourge, scoundrel, touch, trouble, young, in which
(skon-drel) is new.
2) ou = " o un peu long," meaning (o) or (oo), or sometimes one
and sometimes the other, or else (ou) which he was unable to ex
press in French letters : in coulter, moulter, poultice, poultry, four,
CHAP. III. § 3. OTJ — XVII TH CENTURY. 159
course, concourse, discourse, soul, souldier, shoulder, mould, trough,
dough, though, although.
3) ou, value not named, and hence prohably French ou (u), see
Jones, just below, in substantives ending in our as Saviour, factour,
neighbour.
4) ou, value not named, probably French ou (u), in adjectives ending
in ous, as vicious, malicious, righteous, monstrous, treacherous.
5) ouffh = a long, that is (AA) in ought, nought, brought, bought,
sought, thought, wrought = at, nat, brat, bat, &c., (AAt, nAAt) &c.
except drought, doughty = draout, daouty (draut, dau'ta) ; borough,
thorough = boro, thoro (bora, thara) ; cough = cd^(kAAf); rough,
tough, enough = roff, toff", enoff (rof, taf, enaf-).
6) ou — ou French (uu) in would, could, should, you, your,
source, youth, — Portsmouth, Plimouth, Yarmouth, Weymouth,
Monmouth.
1701. JONES says "that ou and ow have two very different sounds ;
(1) that in soul, bowl, old, told, &c., which is the true sound of o
and oo join'd together in one syllable (ou, oou) ; (2) that in lough,
cow, now, &c., which is the true sound of u short, in but, cut, &c.,
and oo join'd together in one syllable (au)."
But he characteristically seldom distinguishes which he
means when he talks of the sound of ou, ow. He also says
that ou is pronounced o, meaning either (oo) or (o), or even
(AA) in " Gloucester, sounded Gloster ; although, besought,
borough, bough?- bought, brought, cough, dough, doughty?
drought, enough? fought, hiccough, hough, lough, Lougher,
mought, nought, ought, plough? rough, slough? sought, though,
thought, through, tough? trough, whough, wrought; and "in
souldier , sounded sodier," the parent of the "sojer" of our
plays and jest books.
The sound of o is also written ow, Jones says : " When it
may be sounded ow in the End of words, or before a vowel,
as ow, owing; follow, following, &c., otherwise it is always
o, when it cannot be sounded ow (au ?), unless it be one of
those above, that are written ough."
Ou = (uu) is much more extended by Jones than by the
preceding authorities, first to the terminations -our, -ous
"when it may be sounded ou," which seems very questionable,
and then in the following words : couch, could, course, court,
courtship, courteous, crouch, fourth, gouge, gourd, mouch,
mourn, should, slouch, souse, touch, would ; accoutre, amour,
1 Surely a mistake. 4, 8, etc., which from this insertion by
2 (Dau-ti) not (doo'ti) according to Jones would seem to imply a pronun-
Miege, and present use. ciation (ploou). But Cooper, supra p.
3 Meaning (enoo-) if 158, spells plow, and yet pronounces
4 The Authorized Version has plow, (plau).
Deut. 22, 10. 1 Sam. 14, 14. Job 6 Now (raf, slaf slau, taf).
160 OU — XV1IITH CENTURY. U CHAP. III. $ 3.
boutefeu, Bourdeaux, capouch, capouchlne, coupee, courier,
Courtney, courtrey, courvee, enamour' d, gourmandise, Louvain,
Louvre, rendezvous, rencountre, Toulon. For ou = (o), see p. 183.
Hence in the xvnth century ou, or ow had two sounds,
the first (0u) or (00u) corresponding to our present
theoretical (00} and secondly (au) where it is still so
called. The sound of ou as (uu) was exceptional, and
seems to have been used in a few more words than at
present.
OU — XVTII TH CENTURY.
1704. The EXPERT ORTHOGRAPHIST seems to pronounce ou
as (eu) in touch, Souch, gouge, rouge, coulter, boulter, poultry,
moulter, shoulder, poultice, wound, pour, bowl, cowcumber.
But to distinguish bow flecto as (bau) from boiv arcus as
(boou), and says that "All polysyllables ending in obscure o
have w added for ornament's sake as arrow, bellows, &c."
1766. BUCHANAN writes, (nAAt) nought, (mous) mouse,
(foul) foul, (bou) bow flectere, (koun't/) county, (koutsh)
couch, (vou'il) vowel, (sou) sow sus, (boul) bowl globus et
crater ; (dho0) though, (koors) course, (k00rt) court, (n<?0)
know, (bloo) blow, (bist0<r) bestow, (sool) soul, (naeroo) nar
row, (se 100u) a low ; (suup) soup, (wud) would, (kud) could,
(juu) you ; (jaq) young, (trab'l) trouble, (kap'l) couple,
(kaHdzh) courage, (kan'tn) country, (nare'sh) nourish ;
(thAAt) thought, (bAAt) bought.
1768. FRANKLIN writes (fAul, Aur, dAun, thAuz'and, plAu'-
maen ; k<?0rs) for foul, our, down, thousand, ploughman, course,
where if (AU) is not a mistake, it is a singular form of the
diphthong, agreeing however with the analysis of Sheridan
and Knowles.
Among the Irish uses noted by SHERIDAN, 1780, we find
(kuurt) court, (suurs) source, and (kAuld, bAuld) cold, bold,
all of which clearly belong to the xvn th century. Sheridan
pronounces (koort, soors, koold, boold). The Irish (druuth)
drought, English (drAut) according to Sheridan, is very
singular.
U — ROUND OR LABIALISED TOWELS.
TJ has been reserved to the last, as in order to understand
the relations of the various sounds which have been ex
pressed by u in our own and other languages, especial attention
must be directed to the twofold manner in which the aper
ture of the mouth is varied. Speech sounds are essentially
produced in the same manner as those in organ reed pipes.
CHAP. III. § 3. U — ROUND OE LABIALISED VOWELS. 161
In the larynx two highly elastic vocal ligaments, stretched
to various degrees of tension at will, are put into vibration
by the rushing of wind from the lungs through the wind
pipe. The sound thus produced is highly complicated,
consisting, as Helmholtz has shewn,1 of a great number of
simple tones, producing on the whole a buzzing, droning,
imperfect effect, which would not be well heard. To make
it penetrate as a clear distinct sound, a resonance tube must
be added. This tube, according to its shape or length, will
reinforce a greater or less number of simple tones, which it
selects out of the confused number produced by the unarmed
elastic ligaments, thus generating, by the mere change of
its shape and size a marked change in the sound heard, even
when the original mode of vibration remains unaltered.
Now above the larynx is situated a highly variable fleshy
bag, the pharynx, communicating with two external aper
tures, the nose and the mouth, either or both of which can
be opened or closed at will. The back nostrils are the
entrance and the external nostrils the exit from the upper
passage, where the sound passes through various galleries
and encounters various membranes, which produce the well-
known nasal modifications. The lower passage or mouth is
principally modified by the tongue, which acts as a variable
plug, and the lips, which form a variable diaphragm. By
this means the volume of the mouth is divided into two bent
tubes of which the first may be termed the lingual passage
as its front extremity is formed by the tongue, and the
second, the labial passage. When the labial passage is large
and unconstrained by rounding or narrowing of the labial
orifice, the effects may be called simply lingual, and when
the tongue is brought so low as to remove the separation
between the lingual and labial passages, the effects might
be termed labial. Mr. Melville Bell has acutely preferred,
however, to consider as lingual all positions in which the
labial aperture produces no sensible effect, and then to con
sider the labial effect to be superadded to the lingual, by
more or less rounding the lips while the lingual position is
held. It was not generally noticed before the publication
of his Visible Speech, that the two labial vowels, as they have
been called, (uu, 06} really required a distinct position of the
tongue in order to produce them.2 This however may be
1 The only satisfactory account of edition 1863, 2nd ed. 1865. It has
musical and vocal tones which has yet been translated into French, hut, un-
been published will be found in Helm- fortunately, not yet into English,
holtz's Lehre von den Tonempfindun- a See however the subsequent re-
gen, Brunswick, 8vo, pp. 600 first ference to Holder, 1669, p. 178.
11
162 U — ROUND OR LABIALISED VOWELS. CHAP. III. § 3.
practically felt by producing these sounds, and, while utter
ing them, seizing the upper and lower lips with the two
hands and rapidly separating them. Two new sounds will be
produced, of which the first (cece) is a Gaelic vowel, which is
the despair of most Englishmen, and the second is a sound
(a) often given to our short u in but, and considered by Mr.
M. Bell as its normal sound. On producing the effect, which
after a little practice can be obtained without the use of the
fingers, it will be found that the back of the tongue is much
higher for (os) than it is for (a).1 Although both effects
are different, and also different from the sound with which
I pronounce u in but, namely (a), few English ears would
readily distinguish (a? a a) in conversation. Hence we
have this relation between (u) and (a), that (u) is almost (e)
labialized or rounded.2
Again, for the common vowels (ii, ee) the lingual passage
is greatly reduced by means of the front of the tongue which
for (ii) is brought very near the palate, and very forward
but not quite so forward for (ee), the lips being wide open.
Now round the lips upon (ii, ee) and the effect is (i, &), one
a sound often heard in Germany for u and in Sweden for
y, and the other heard for the so-called French e mute when
sounded and prolonged in singing, as heard in heur and the
first syllable of heureux.3
It is now necessary to attend to a third modification,
principally in the pharynx. This consists in widening the
bag of the pharynx and all the lingual passage behind the
narrowest aperture, and also increasing the volume of the
labial passage. We are familiar with this in English in
the passage from (i) to (0, and from (e) to (e). Applied to
the rounded or labialised forms of these vowels, (i, d) it con-
1 In reading this discussion the dia- labialisation of (e) and assigns the latter
grams of the vowel positions in the In- value to the French eu, which I have
troduction, p. 14, should he frequently been in the habit of pronouncing as the
consulted. wide of (0). Thus heureux according
2 The true sound of (9) has the back to Feline has the first syllable as in je
of the tongue lower and the front and the second as in Jeu. These I
higher than for (a) ; the tongue is pronounce (zh», zhce), but M. Favarger
altogether raised, but is nearly parallel considers they should he (zhah, zhsj.
to the palate throughout. The labial Undoubtedly the sounds vary from indi-
or 'round' form of (a) is (oh), scarcely vidual to individual, and hence the
distinguishable from (o) by unpractised necessity of a diagrammatic vowel scale
ears. like Mr. Melville Bell's, which is inde-
3 Mr. M. Bell gives it as the French pendent of key words. The Swedish u
v in une, but this is not my own pro- or (u) which is very peculiar is closely
nunciation, nor does it agree with my related to (i), being produced in the
own observations. M. Favarger con- same way, with rather a greater sepa-
siders the French e muet to be (yh) the ration between the tongue and the
labialisation of (E), rather than (a) the palate.
CHAP. III. § 3. U — XVI TH CENTURY. 163
verts them into (y, co)r which are the common forms, as I
hear them, of the French u in une and ett \T\jeu. Hence (y)
is the * wide' form of (i), and the ' round* or labialised form
of (i). If we apply the widening to (u, o) we produce (u, o),
and the Italian o chiuso or (wh) appears to be the ' wide'
form of the Swedish (u) already described.
We can then understand that (u, u) may be readily con
fused, for no modification is so subtle as that produced by
the backward widening. Again, by merely neglecting to
labialise, (u, «) are converted into («?r -e), both of which are
confused with (a) by Englishmen. The last, («), is indeed
a very common sound in English, but it is only looked upon
as unaccented or indistinct (a), in motion, ocean, etc.
Again, if when we are pronouncing (u) or (u) we suddenly
throw the front of the tongue up to the (i) position without
altering the form of the lips, we obtain (i) or (y). There
are some persons so used thus to throw up the front of the
tongue that they have great difficulty in pronouncing (u) at
all. To succeed they must exercise themselves in keeping
down the front of the tongue by a muscular effort.
Roughly, we may say that (a) is (u) deprived of its labial
character, and that (y) is (u) with a palatal character,
or that (y) is an attempt to pronounce both (i) and (u)
at the same instant. The further step, then, to pro
nouncing first (i) and then (u), producing (iu), is easy,
and since the (i) character predominates and gives the
key to the sound, it would be natural in the absence of
a proper sign for (y) to represent that sound by (iu).
U — XVTTH CENTURY.
1530. Palsgrave says : " J7, in the frenche tong, wheresoeuer he
is a vowel by hymselfe, shall be sownded like as we sownde ew in
these wordes in our tong, rewe an herbe, a mew for a hauke, a clew
of threde, and such lyke restyng apon ' the pronounsyng of hym :
as for these wordes plus, nul, fus, user, humble, uertu, they sound
plevus, nevul, fevus, evuser, hevumble, uertevu, and so in all other
wordes, where v is a vowel by hymselfe alone ; so that in the
soundynge of this vowel, they differe both from the Latin tong and
from vs."
On referring to EU, p. 137, it will be seen that Palsgrave
divided the English eu into two categories, trewe, gtewe, rewe,
meive and clew having the sound of the French u, and dewe,
shrewe, feive having the sound of the Italian eu. The latter
we have identified with (eu). There can be but little doubt
1 Misprint for vpon.
TJ — XVI TH CENTURY. CHAP. III. § 3.
that the former was (y), because we know from Meigret that
it was not (o) or (u).
When Palsgrave here says that the sound of French u
was different from that of Latin or English u, he must mean
by the latter, English u short, because English u long was
certainly not the same as the real Latin u long, even at a
much earlier period than the xvith century. Hence cor-
roboration, and contemporary explanations, are necessary.
1547. Salesbury says: "IT vowel, answers to the power of the
two "Welsh letters u, w and its usual power is uw, as shewn in the
following words TKTTE truw verus, VEBTTJE vertuw probitas. And
sometimes they give it its own proper sound and pronounce it like
the Latins or like our own w (u), as in the words BTJCKE bwck (buk)
dama mas, LTJST Iwst (lust) libido. But it is seldom this vowel
sound corresponds with the sound we give the same letter, but it
does in some cases, as in BUSY busi, occupatus aut se immiscens."
Again in his pronunciation of Welsh he says: " u written after
this manner w," that is, not as v which was at that time inter
changeable with u in English and French but not in Welsh, "is a
vowel and soundeth as the vulgar English trust, bury, busy, Huber-
den. But know well that it is neuer sounded in Welsh, as it is
done in any of these two Englyshe wordes (notwithstanding the
diuersitie of their sound) sure, lucke. Also the sound of u in
French, or u with two pricks over the heade in Duch, or the
Scottish pronunciation of u alludeth somwhat nere vnto the sound
of it in Welshe, thoughe yet none of them all, doeth so exactly (as
I tbynk) expresse it, as the Hebraick Kubuts doeth. For the
Welsh, u is none other thing, but a meane sounde betwyxte u and y
beyng Latin vowels."
The precise value of the Welsh u is considered in a note
on the above passage, chapter VIII, § 1, where it is shewn
that it must be considered as the Welsh representative of (y),
and that (i) or (y) is practically the sound it receives. If
then Salesbury had to represent the sound (yy), he could not
have selected any more suggestive Welsh combination than
uw. To have written mi would have been to give too much of
the (i) or (i) character, for when u was short he did not dis
tinguish the sound from (i), as shewn by BUSY which he writes
busi, meaning (bz'z'i).1 If he had written ww he would have
conveyed a completely false notion, and iw would have led to
the diphthong (iu) which he wished to distinguish from uw.
1 Germans who distinguish their « and often so pronounced by the "Welsh
from (ii) very clearly when it is long, in familiar conversation. In the same
readily pronounce short « as (i) es- way Stiele handles and Stiihle chairs,
?ecially when r follows, as (bhrrde) for are identified in the common Dresden
bhyrde, bhirde) wiirde. The "Welsh pronunciation of German.
« long is heard hy Englishmen as (ii)
CHAP. III. § 3. U — XVI TH CENTURY. 165
Now my own Welsh master at Beaumaris told me that
Welsh Duw and English due, dew were so distinct to a
Welshman that he could tell an Englishman immediately
by his faulty pronunciation. The difference may be (dm)
Welsh and (diu) English. It is very difficult to seize, and
some Welshmen themselves deny the difference.1
Adopting then the hypothesis that Salesbury's uw meant
(yy), but his u short meant (i), so far as the English sounds
which he wished to imitate are concerned, — an hypothesis
which agrees with Palsgrave^s remarks and will be confirmed
shortly — we may represent all the English words containing
u, (or ew pronounced as u, according to Palsgrave's intima
tion,) which are transcribed by Salesbury, as follows.
CHURCHE tsurts tsiurts (tslurtsh) ecclesia; DUKE duwJc (dyyk)
dux, SUFFRE swffffer (suf*er) sinere, GUTTE gwt (gut) viscera ; JESU
tsiesuw (Dzhee'zyy) ; BUCKE bwck (buk) dama mas ; BULL lw (bun)
a rustic pronunciation, QUENE Icwin (kwiin) regina ; QUARTER Jcwarter
(kwarter) quarta pars ; MUSE muwws (myyz) meditari ; TRESURE
tresuwr (trez'yyr) thesaurus ; TRUE truw (tryy) verus, this is one of
the words cited by Palsgrave, under the form trewe, as containing
the sound of the French u (y) ; VERTUE vertuw (ver'tyy) probitas ;
LUST Iwst (lust) libido; BUST bust (b«fz-i), MUCH GOOD DO rr YOU mych
goditio (nw'tsh god'itro). This much contracted phrase is also given
by Cotgrave, 1611, wbo writes it muskiditti, meaning perhaps
(mws'k&Ut'*), and translates much good may doe unto you?
1555. CHEKE says : " Cum duke tuke lute rebuke BVK TVK
\vr peftvtc dicimus, Grsecum v sonaremus." Of this Greek v
he says " simplex est, nihil admixtum, nihil adjunctum
habet," and it was therefore a pure vowel, with which he
identifies the English long u. Mekerch in adopting Cheke's
words changes his examples thus, "quum Gallice mule, id
est mula, Belgice duken, id est abscondere, fiv\ BVK dicimus,
Grsecum v sonamus." Mekerch, therefore, intending to give
the same sound to Greek v as Cheke did, makes it (yy).
This was the sound which Cheke identified with English
long u and declared to be a simple sound, that is, not a
diphthong.
1 Dr. Benjamin Davies could see no Nur. I speake no treason,
difference in ordinary conversation, but Father, 0 Godigoden,
admitted that one was attempted to be which is transliterated in the Globe
made in " stilted utterance," and then edition, act iii, sc. 5, v. 173,
it seemed to me to be like (diu). Nur. I speak no treason.
8 The same writer gives as the con- Cap. O, God ye god-den,
traction for God give you good evening, an evident mistake, as Godi- is a con-
Godigodin, meaning perhaps (God'i- traction for God gi'you. The sentence
gudiin-). In Romeo and Juliet, Folio should be as much wrapped up into
1623, Tragedies p. 70 col. 1. we find one word, as the ordinary good lye.
166 TJ — XVI TH CENTURY. CHAP. III. § 3.
1568. SIR THOMAS SMITH is still more precise and circum
stantial. He says :
"Y vel v Grraecum aut Gallicum, quod per se apud nos taxum
arborem significat. taxus u" meaning that yew = sound of Greek v ;
i.e. as he immediately proceeds to shew, and as I shall assume in
transcribing his characters, yew = (yy), though perhaps this par
ticular word was (jyy). The following are his examples : " (snyy)
ningebat, (slyy) occidit, (tryy) verum, (tyyn) tonus, (kyy) q. litera,
(ryy) ruta, (myy) cavea in qua tenewtur accipitres, (nyy) novum ;
(tyyl*)1 valetudinarius, (dyyk) dux, (myyl) mula, (flyyt) tibia
Germanorum, (dyy) debitum, (lyyt) testudo, (bryy) cemisia facere,
(myylet) mulus, (blyy) cseruleum, (akkyyz)2 accusare."
In this list we have true, rue, mew, which are the same as
Palsgrave's examples of ew sounded as French u ; and duke,
tru,e, the same as Salesbury's examples of u sounded as
Welsh uw. This would identify both sounds with (yy) if
we could be satisfied of Smith's pronunciation. Now he says
explicitly : —
"Quod genus pronunciationis nos a Gallis accepisse argait, quod
rarius quidem nos Angli in pronuntiando hac utimur litera. Scoti
autem qui Gallica lingua suam veterem quasi oblitcrarant, et qui
trans Trentam fluvium habitant, vicinioresque sunt Scotis, frequen-
tissime, adeo vt quod nos per V Romanum sonamus (u), illi libenter
proferunt per v Grsecum aut Gallicum (yy) ; nam et hie sonus tarn
Gallis est peculiaris, ut omnia fere Romane scripta per « et v pro
ferunt, vt pro Pom in us (Dominyys) et lesvs (Jes'yys),3 intantum
vt quae brevia sint natara, vt illud macrum p expriniant melius,
sua pronunciatione longa faciunt. Hunc sonum Anglosaxones, de
quibus postea mentionem faciemus, per y exprimebant, ut verus
Anglosaxonice tny. Angli (HUUT) meretrix, (kuuk) coquus, (guud)
bonum, (bluud) sanguis, (nuud) eucullus, (fluud) fluvius, (buuk)
liber, (tuuk) cepit; Scoti (BJJT, kyyk, gyyd, blyyd, nyyd, flyyd,
byyk, tyyk)." And again, " 0 rotundo ore et robustius quam
priores effertur, « angustiore, caetera similis ra> o. Sed v (yy) com-
pressia propemodum labris, multo exilius tenuiusque resonat quam
1 " TULY, Poorly. ' Tw/y-stomached.' been in consequence often misled to
' A well naaba, how de yeow fare ?' write (tsh) for (k), thus he here prints
4 Wa' naaba, but tuly.' ... Twaly, vexed, accvz, which should mean (atshtshyyz-)
ill-tempered, Salop. ... twily, restless, an almost impossible combination, but
wearisome, Somerset ; tewly, small really means (akyyz-), though I have
and weakly, Dorset. Tewly, qualmish, kept the incorrectly doubled (k) in the
in delicate health, Essex, [Sir T. text.
Smith's county] and Camb. Twall, a 8 The initial consonant must have
whim, Suff." John Greaves Nail, Chap- been (dzh) or (zh). Probably it was
ters on the East Anglian Coast, 2 vols., mere carelessness on Smith's part to
8vo, 1866, vol. 2. Etymological and use (J), as when he wrote c for k. The
Comparative Glossary of the Dialect first vowel, too, is accidentally short, so
and Provincialisms of East Anglia. that (Dzhee-syys) or (Dyhee-zyys), rc-
2 Smith uses c for (tsh), but he has presents the real sound he intended.
CHAP. III. § 3. TJ — XVI TH CENTURY. 167
0 aut u, (boot) scapha, (buut) ocrea, (byyt) Scotica pronunciation,
ocrea" And again in his Greek Pronunciation : "v Graecum Scoti
& Borei Angli turn exprimuwt cum taurum sonant, & pro bul,
dicunt exiliter contractioribus labiis sono suppresso & quasi prsefo-
cato inter i & u bul (byl)."
It is scarcely possible to indicate the sound of (yy) more
clearly and precisely in common language.
Respecting u short, Smith says :
"VLatinam, apertissimam habemus Angli, quamvis illam non
agnoscimus, jam longo tempore a Gallis magistris decepti : at pro-
nunciatio sonusque noster non potest non agnoscere. Brevis (but) sed,
(luk) fortuna, (buk) dama mas, (mud) limus, (ful) plenus, (pul)
deplumare, (tu) ad; longa (buut) ocrea, (luuk) aspicere, (buuk)
liber, (muud) ira aut affictus, (fuul) stultus, (puul) piscina, (tuu)
duo, etiam."
(Buk) being in Salesbury's list serves to identify the two
methods of symbolisation. Of course no such fine distinc
tions as (u, u) are to be expected, nor indeed are they gene
rally necessary to be insisted on. An attentive examination
of the sounds of fool full in our present pronunciation will
however shew that they contain different vowels (fuul, fzdl),
each of which can be pronounced long or short (fuul ful, fuul
ful) and that these differ as (i, i) by the pharyngal action
already explained. As however short (u) rarely if ever
occurs in closed syllables, and (uu) long never occurs in ac
cented syllables, except before r (a), it would be generally
intelligible to make no distinction between (u) and (u) except
in rare instances. One marked difference between the
sounds (i, u) and (i, u) is that (i) may be easily sung to a deep
note, but (i) cannot ; and on the contrary (u) may be sung to
a very high note, but (u) cannot.
1569. HART calls u long a diphthong, but in his explana
tion he makes it arise from the attempt to pronounce (i) and
(u) simultaneously, and he clearly points out that both the
lingual position of (i) and the labial position of (u) are held
on steadily during the sound of long u, so that if the (i)
position be relaxed, the sound of (u) results, and if the (u)
position be relaxed the sound of (i) results. This, as we
have seen, amounts to a very accurate description of the
simple sound (yy), which is therefore the sound which he
means by the inaccurate title and notation of " the diphthong
iu." His words are :
"Now to come to the u. I sayde the French, Spanish, & Brutes,1
1 maye adde the Scottish, doe abuse it with vs in sounde and for
1 That is, Welsh.
168 U — XVI TH CENTURY. CHAP. III. $ 3.
consonant, except the Brutes as is sayd : the French doe neuer
sound it right, but vsurpe ou, for it, the Spanyard doth often vse it
right as we doe, but often also abuse it with vs ; i the French and
the Scottish in the sounde of a Diphthong : which keeping the
vowels in their due sounds, commeth of i & u, (or verie neare it) is
made and put togither vnder one breath, confounding the soundes of
i, & u, togither: which you may perceyue in shaping thereof, if you
take away the inner part of the tongue, from the upper teeth or
Gummes, then shall you sound the u right, or in sounding the
French and Scottish u, holding still your tongue to the vpper teeth
or gums, & opening your lippes somewhat, you shall perceyue the
right sounde of «'." Thus Hart writes : (ui did not mutsh abiuz
dhem), meaning (wi did not mutsh abyyz dhem) as I shall here
after transliterate his iu,
1573. BARET says, after speaking of the sound of v con
sonant :
"And as for the sound of Y consonant2 whether it be to be
sounded more sharply as in spelling blue or more grosly like oo, as
we sound Boolce, it were long here to discusse. Some therefore think
that this sharpe Scottish V is rather a diphthong than a vowell,
being compounded of our English e and w, as indeed we may partly
perceyue in pronouncing it, our tongue at the beginning lying flat
in our mouth, and at the ende rising up with the lips also there-
withall somewhat more drawen togither."
This would certainly make a diphthong because there
would be a change of position, but what is the initial sound ?
The tongue does not certainly " lie flat in our mouth for e"
The nearest sounds answering to this description are ((E a, A
o) and it is impossible to suppose any of these to be the
initial of such a diphthong. The only interpretation I can
put on this somewhat confused description is, that Baret was
speaking of the position of the tongue before commencing to
utter any sound, and that when the sound was uttering, the
tongue rose and the lips rounded simultaneously, and this
agrees with the other descriptions, making the sound (yy).
1580. BTJLLOKAB says : "TJ also hath three soundes: The one of
them a meere consonant, the other two soundes, are both vowels: the
one of these vowels hath a sharpe sound, agreeing to his olde and
continued name : the other is of flat sound, agreeing to the olde
and continued sound of the diphthong :ou: but alwaies of short
sounde." And further, translating his phonetic into ordinary spel
ling : " and for our three sounds used in, v, the French do at this
day use only two unto it : that is, the sound agreeing to his old
and continued name, and the sound of the consonant, v."
1 That is, sometimes say (u), and * Evidently a misprint for vowel,
sometimes (yy), but this is not the I quote from the edition of 1680.
case certainly in modern Castillian.
CHAP. III. § 3. U — XVI TH CENTURY. 169
From these two passages it is clear that the " old and con
tinued name" of long u in English was the sound of the
French u, that is (yy). The flat sound we shewed in treating
of ou (p. 152), was probably (it). Bullokar adds, where I
translate his phonetic examples into palaeotype :
" U. sharpe, agreeing to the sound of his olde and continued
name, is so sounded when it is a sillable by itself, or when it is tbe
last letter in a sillable, or when it commeth before one consonant,
& : e : ending next after tbe consonant, in one syllable thus : vnity,
vniuersally procuretb vse to be occupied, and leisure alluretb the
vnruly to the lute : which I write, thus : (yym't* yymVersauLU'
prokyyreth yys tuu bii okkvypwed and leizyyr allyyreth tbe
un-ryyle tuu dbe lyyt).
" £7 flat is used alwaies after :a: e: oro: in diphthongs, or
next before a single consonant in one sillable, bauing no : e : after
tbat consonant, or before a double consonant, or two consonants
next after it : though : e : followe that double consonant, or two
consonants all in one or diuerse sillables, thus : the vniust are
vnlucky, not worth a button or rush, vntrusty, vpbolding trumpery
at their full lust : which I write, thus : (dhe un-dzhust aar un-luki,
not worth a but'n or rush up-Hoouldiq trumper* at dbeir ful lust).
The word full is the same as one of Smith's examples of u
short, and hence fixes the sound of Bullokar's u flat, which
he does not otherwise explain.
1611. COTGRAVE says : " V is sounded as if you whistle it
out, as in the word a lute." Now the French u (yy) has a
very whistling effect, both tongue and lip being disposed in
a favourable position for the purpose.
1621. GILL is again not so distinct as could be wished, he
merely says, preserving his notation, and his italics :
" V, est tennis, aut crassa: tennis v, est in Verbo tu vz VSE utor ;
crassa Ireuis est u. vt in pronomine us not1; aut longa ii : vt in verlo
tu iiz'oosE scaturio, aut sensum exeo mori aqua vi expresses."
Gill never alludes to any diphthong (iu). He uniformly
uses a single sign, the Roman v, for the sound of long u,
employing the Italic v for (v). He also uses a single cha
racter for the diphthong long i, but then he admits that it
is only slightly different from the diphthong (ei). There
are very few indications of the sound he really meant to
express by his v. First we must assume that it was a simple
sound and " thinner" than (uu). This should mean that the
entrance to the lingual aperture was diminished by bringing
the tongue more into the (i) position. But this converts (u)
into (y), and hence leads us to Gill's v = (yy), as the sound
1 Misprinted uos.
170 TJ — XVI TH CENTURY. CHAP. III. $ 3.
is always long. Next in his alphabet he calls it v\Jri\ov,
which should imply that it had the theoretical sound assigned
to the Greek v. This we have seen from Cheke and Smith
was (yy). But then the example in the alphabet is "sur SURE
certus," and Salesbury says that Welsh u is unlike the sound
of English sure. This may mean that sure must have been
written suwr in the nearest Welsh characters, because sttr
would have sounded too like (SOT). Hart and Bullokar both
give (syyer). Lastly, in mentioning the words taken from
the French he says : " Redvite nupera vox est a reduco,1
munimentum pro tempore aut occasione factum." This should
be the French rtduit, with a wrong e added, and hence ought
to establish the value (yy) for Gill's v. This therefore is
the result to which all parts of the investigation tend, so
that we must assume it to be correct. On the other hand
there can be no doubt that the ii, u of Gill were (uu, u).
1633. BUTLER is unsatisfactory, when he says that :
" a, i, u differing from themselves in quantity differ also in
sound: having one sound when they are long, and another when
they are short, as in mane and man, shine and shin, tune and tun
appeareth . . . Likewise oo and u long differ much in sound : as in
fool and fule, rood and rude, moot and mute, but when they are
short, they are all one ; for good and gud, blood and blud, woolf and
wulflaave the same sound."
From this we learn with certainty that short u was (u) or
(w), and that long u was not (uu), but we cannot tell whether
it was (yy) or (iu). As long * was (ai) at that time, and no
allusion is made by Butler to its being a diphthong, we are
unable to assume that long u was a simple sound. We
might indeed be led by the following passage to suspect that
Butler had begun to embrace the (iu) sound which must
certainly have widely prevailed, when his work was pub
lished, although it is not distinctly acknowledged :
"/and u short have a manifest difference from the same long;
as in ride rid, rude rud, dine din, dune dun, tine tin, tune tun ; for
as * short hath the sound of ee short ; so has u short the sound of oo
short. ... E and i short with w have the very sound of u long :
as in hiw, Icneew, true appeareth. But because u is the more simple
and ready way ; and therefore is this sound rather to be expressed
by it:" but he prefers eew for etymological reasons in " Ireew,
Icneew, lleew, greew, treew, sneew," where breew, treew, sneew are in
Smith's list of words having the sound (yy). Butler finally asks
"But why are some of these written with the diphthong ew f
whose sound is manifestly different, as in dew, etve, few, hew, chew,
rew, seic, strew, shew, shretc, pewter."
1 Misprinted redttco.
CHAP. III. § 3. U — XVII TH CENTURY.
Now dew, few, shrew are in Palsgrave's list of (eu) sounds ;
and the same, together with strew, are in Smith's (eu) list.
Hence it is clear that Butler distinguished (eu) from the
other sound of n long, and it is possible that his u long may
have been (iu), but as Hart called (yy) a diphthong and
represented it by (iu), while his careful description deter
mined it to be (yy), so Butler may have said (yy).
At any rate it is clear that quite to the close of the xvi TH
century, (yy) was the universal pronunciation of long
u in the best circles of English life, and that it remained
into the xvn th century we shall shortly have further
evidence. Provincially it is still common. In East
Anglia, in Devonshire, in Cumberland, as well as in
Scotland, (yy) and its related sounds are quite at home.
The southerns are apt to look upon these dialectic forms
as mispronunciations, as mistakes on the part of rustics
or provincials. They are now seen to be remnants of
an older pronunciation which was once general, or of a
peculiar dialectic form of our language of at least equal
antiquity. The sound of short u was also always (u) or
(u). There is no hint or allusion of any kind to such a
sound as (a). The (u), still common in the provinces,
was then universal.
U — xvii TH CENTURY.
1640. BEN JOSTSOK says: "V is sounded with a narrower, and
meane compasse, and some depression of the middle of the tongue,
and is, like our letter i. a letter of double power,"
By this he probably only means that it was both a vowel and
a consonant (v). In his notes he gives quotations concern-
Greek v, ov, the latter of which he identifies with (uu),
though the cry of the owl, which is rendered tu tu in
Plautus, Menechmi, act iv, sc. 2, v. 90.
Me. Egon' dedi ? Pe. Tu, tu istic, inquam. via' afferri noctuam,
Quae, Tu, Tu, usque dicat tibi? nam nos, jam nos defessi sumus.
From these notes Jonson may have possibly distinguished
long and short u as (yy, u).
1653. WALLIS clearly recognizes (yy) as long u and dis
tinguishes it carefully from the diphthong (iu). He says :
" Ibidem etiam," that is, in labiis, " sed Minori adhuc apertura"
than (uu), " formatur u exile ; Anglis simul et Gallis notissimum.
Hoc sono Angli suum u longum ubique proferunt (nonnunquam
etiam eu et ew quae tamen rectius pronunciantur retento etiam sono
e masculi1) : Ut muse, musa ; tune, modulatio ; lute, barbitum ;
1 That is, as (eu).
172 r — XVII TH CENTURY. CHAP. III. { 3.
dure, duro ; mute, mutus ; new, novus ; brew, misceo (cerevisiam
coquo) ; knew, novi ; view, aspicio ; lieu, vice, etc. Hunc sonum
extranei fere assequentur, si diphthongum iu conentur pronunciare ;
nempe I exile littera? u vel to pra?ponentes, (ut in Hispanorum
ciudad civitas,1) non tamen idem est omnino sonus, quamvis ad
ilium proximo accedat ; est enim iu sonus compositus, at Anglorum
et Gallorum u sonus simplex. Cambro-Britanni hunc fere sonum
utcunque per iw, yw, uw describunt, ut in ttiw color ; llyw guber-
naculum navis; Duw Deus, aliisque innumeris."
Wallis therefore distinctly recognized the identity of the
English and French sounds, and says that they are different
from the diphthong (iu) because they are simple and not
compound sounds, but approach nearly to that diphthong,
evidently because (yy) unites the lingual position of (i) with
the labial position of (u). He also notices the proximity of
the Welsh iw, yw, uw to the sound of (yy), and thus explains
how Salesbury came to hit upon uw as the best combination
of Welsh letters to convey an approximate idea of the sound
to his countrymen. Further on he says :
" U longum effertur ut Grallorum u exile. Ut in lute barbitum,
mute mutus, muse musa, cure cura, etc. Sono nempe quasi com
posite ex 2 et w,"
where he saves himself from the diphthong by a "quasi."
As regards short u he says :
" £7" vocalis quando corripitur effertur sono obscuro. Ut in but
sed, cut seco, bur lappa, burst raptus, curst maledictus, etc. Sonum
hunc Gfalli proferunt in ultima syllaba vocis serviteur. Differt a
Gallorum e feminino, non aliter quam quod ore minus aperto
efferatur. Discrimen hoc animadvertent Angli dum pronunciant
voces Latinas tier, itur ; ter ter, turtur; cerdo surdo; ternus Tur-
nus ; terris turris; refertum, fur turn, &c."
In his theoretical part he gives the following further
particulars of the French e faemimnum and the u obscurum.
" Eodem loco," that is, in summo gutture, " sed apertura faucium
mediocri," i.e. less than for (AA), "formatur Gallorum e foemininum;
sono nempe obscuro. Non aliter ipsius formatio differt a formatione
prsecedentis d aperti (AA), quam quod magis contrahantur fauces,
minus autem quam in formatione Vocalis sequentis (a). Hunc
sonum Angli vix uspiam agnoscunt ; nisi cum vocalis e brevis im
mediate prsecedat literam r (atque hoc quidem non tarn quia debeat
sic efferri, sed quia vix commode possit aliter; licet enim, si citra
molestiam fieri possit, etiam illic sono vivido, hoc est, masculo,
efferre ;) ut vertue virtus, liberty libertas &c.
" Ibidem etiam, sed Minori adhuc faucium apertura, sonatur d
vel u obscurum. Differt a Gallorum e foeminino non aliter quam
1 The English usually call this word s f-iuz f-aaz [••); the iu represents the pure
(thiudaad-), it is probably (ciueaac- = (iu) diphthong.
CHAP. III. § 3. U — XVII TH CENTURY. 173
quod ore minus aperto, labia proprius accedant. Eundera sonum
fer£ efferunt Galli in postrema syllaba vocum serviteur, sacrificateur,
etc. Angli plerumque exprimunt per ti, breue, in turn, verto ; burn,
uro ; dull, signis, obtusus ; cut, seco, etc. Nonnunquam o et ou
negligentius pronuntiantes eodem sono efferunt, ut in cdme, venio ;
sdme, aliquis ; ddne, actum ; c6mpany, consortium ; country, rus ;
couple, par ; cdvet, concupisco ; Idve, amo, aliisque aliquot ; quae
alio tamen sono rectius efferri deberent. Cambro-Britanni ubique
per y scribunt ; nisi quod hanc literam in ultimis syllabis plerumque
ut i efferant."
Wallis therefore heard the French feminine e in the last
syllable of serviteur, sacrificateur. In this he agrees with
Feline, who draws a distinction between the first and second
syllable of heureux, making the first the same as the sound
now considered.1 But Wallis makes the aperture of the
lingual passage grow smaller at the back for d, e feminine, ti,
the first being (AA) with the greatest depression, and he has
an action of the lips for ti. This ought to give (AA, a, u)
for the three sounds. But this cannot be right for u, because
Wallis distinguished it from (u). Hence we must disregard
the lip action of the last, and write (AA, a, ce). This how
ever, is scarcely probable. There is another difficulty. The
sound of e in ternus is not at present formed with a wider
opening of the mouth than the sound of u in Turnus. When
any distinction at all is made it is rather the reverse.2 The
1 See supra, p. 162, note 3. Tarver deux sons des premieres voyelles a et a,
gives the same vowel sound to le, feu, 4 et e, o et 6. Ce rapport est en effet si
.Ewrope, ncewd, peut, ail, autewr, bonhewr. Men marque, que, dans une foule de
Feline makes the vowel sound in mots, comme jeune, pecheur, on fait
le, J?wrope, pewt, ceil, autewr, bonhewr entendre le son de Ye sourd et non
the same ; hut distinguishes it from celui de I'eu tel qu'il est donne par les
that in feu, nceitd. In M. Feline's Me- mots jeune, pecheuse." Now to my ears
moire sur laReforme de V Alphabet pre- a d, e e, o 6 are (a a, e E, o 0). In the
fixed to his Dictionnaire de la pronon- first two pairs the circumflexed vowel
ciation -de la langue Franqaise, giving expresses a deeper sound, formed hy
an account of the deliberations of a depressing the tongue ; in the last pair
committee on French pronunciation, the uncircumflexed vowel is the wide
formed at his request, he says : " La sound of the circumflexed. The re-
conclusion fut que Ye muet proprement lations then being different do not lead
dit existe dans 1'orthographe, mais non to the discovery of the relations be-
pas dans la langue ; que, dans tous les tween e, eu. These may be, that for
mots ou il est necessaire de le pro- eu the tongue is more depressed than
noncer, il exprime un son reel comme for e, which would suit for e, eu = (9,
tous les autres signes, et que ce son (E) ; or it may be that eu is the wide of
devrait etre appele sourd et non pas e, this would suit e, eu = (», 03), which
muet, cette derniere denomination n' agrees with my own pronunciation,
etant qu'un non-sens. Apres Ve on 2 Mr. M. Bell who says (ao, a) in
passa au son eu. On recounut qu'il ternus, Turnus respectively, makes the
existe bien dans la langue fra^aise, et opening for (a) wider than for (a)).. I
Ton remarqua qu'il presente avec Ye would rather write (trnas, Truss) re-
que je viens d'appeler sourd le meme spectively, if any difference at all has
rapport qu'on avait trouve entre les to be recognized.
174 U XVII TH CENTURY. CHAP. III. { 3.
peculiarity of the smaller lingual aperture and the action of
the lips may however bring us to (wh) as the last sound, and
induce us to consider the three sounds as (AA, a, wh). So far
as the English passage of short u from (u) or (w) to (a), the
present sound, is concerned (wh) forms a very appropriate
link, because Englishmen find it difficult to distinguish the
Italian somma (sMhnrma) from (sunra) on the one hand and
(sanra) on the other. And we have seen (p. 94) that in 1611,
the Italian Florio actually identified English (u} with Italian
(wh), just as 1685, Cooper identified (u, o), p. 101. But this
sound hardly agrees with Wallis's identification of & with
the Welsh y. On this sound, see the footnote on Y, in
Chapter VIII, § 1, when it appears that the Welsh sound
represents the vowel (?) but that in common discourse it
passes into (a) on the one hand, and (i) on the other, and
may be always sounded (i). Wallis no doubt referred to the
sound (a).
Lastly, if we reflect that (ce) is the de-labialized (u), and
that this would be a natural transition from (u) to (a), we
might revert to the original deduction from Wallis's descrip
tion, and make his u = (as).
On the whole I am inclined to think that the three sounds
he meant were (AA, a, a). Many English consider the
French e muet, or sourd, to be deeper than (a), but of the
same nature. The question however is impossible to decide,
and I think it safest to transliterate d, e feminine, u by (AA,
eo, a), which indicates the modern pronunciation of the
English vowels.
The great peculiarity, the marked singularity, of Wallis's
account, is the recognition and introduction of a sound re
sembling (a) into the English language in place of (u). Of
this sound no trace appears in any former writer that I have
consulted.1 But from this time forth it becomes the common
sound. Wallis in this respect marks an era in English pro-
1 In the passage cited from Gill to indicate the sounds (ja, aar skalarz,
supra p. 90, in which he inveighs ta), for which he had no symbols. This
against the thin utterance of affected is the closest allusion to the sound that
women, we find (hi'tsherz) for (butsherz). I have discovered. For though the
This is quite comparable to the Eastern account given by Florio, 1611, p. 94,
English (k»'ver) for (kuver), which which identifies short (u) with (wh),
Gill had just mentioned, and appears might seem to indicate (a) as well as
to have no connection with the sound («<), yet as the Italians confuse (a)
(batsh-er) which is only heard from a rather with (a), which is nearly its
small number of people at the present wide form, than with (wh), and as («,
day. But when he says that these «h) would probably be indistinguishable
affected dames said (ja, jar skalerz, ta) to an Italian ear, the inference is rather
for (JGU, JUUT skolars, tu), it is just that the sound really uttered before
possible that he might have intended Florio was (M) and not (a).
CHAP. III. § 3. u — XVII TH CENTURY. 175
nunciation, the transition between the old and the new.
This is more striking, because as he is the first to give u
short as (a), so is he practically the last to give u long as
(yy) except dialectically.
At the present day (yy) has vanished from polite society,
and is only heard as a provincialism, from Norfolk, Devon,
or Cumberland, or as a Scotticism. No pronouncing dic
tionary admits the sound under any pretence. Indeed most
English people find it very difficult to pronounce, either long
or short, and consequently play sad tricks with French. But
the case is different with (u, a). The two sounds coexist in
many words. Several careful speakers say (tu pet, batslrer),
though the majority say (tu put, bwtsh'er). All talk of a
put (pat). Walker gives the following as the complete list
of words in which u short is still (u}.
lull, putt, full, and words compounded with -ful • bullock, bully,
bullet, bulwark, fuller, fullingmill, pulley, pullet, push, bush, bushel,
pulpit, puss, bullion, butcher, cushion, cuckoo, pudding, sugar, [he
makes sure = (shim)], hussar, huzza, and to put, with Fulham,1 but
says that " some speakers, indeed, have attempted to give bulk and
punish this obtuse sound of u, but luckily have not been followed.
The words which have already adopted it are sufficiently numerous ;
and we cannot be too careful to check the growth of so unmeaning
an irregularity."
Here the orthoepist unfortunately reverses the order of
things, and esteems "the old and continued" sound of (u) an
irregularity, and what is more, an "unmeaning irregularity,"
and is not aware that every change of (u) to (a) has been
a modern encroachment. But if the territories of (u) and
(a) can be so strictly defined in the south of England, in the
middle2 and north the war is still raging, and though educa
tion has imported large quantities of (a) from the south, even
magnates in the north often delight to use their old (u).3
1 Smart adds, buttace,f ullage, futtery, nwlk) they are not common, but may
cushat, hurrah ! to the above list. It is be heard ; (pwn-tsh) was heard lately
curious that "Walker (art. 177) speaks from an educated gentleman in Cornwall.
of fulsome as a "pure English word," 2 In the Midland counties the South-
and Smart (art. 117) calls it a word " of ern usage is almost reversed, (pat, fat)
classical derivation." Orthoepists are standing beside (kwt, k«m).
not always good in etymology, but 3 A Yorkshire country gentleman
"Walker appears to have the best of it who wrote his name Hutton, and whom
here, and if, as seems more than pro- all his friends called (nat-n), always
bable, fulsome is a derivative of full, spoke of himself as (iiwt-n), and on
(the Promptorium has fulsunness of one occasion spelled his name so to me
mete, sacietas,) there would be a reason with phonetic letters. He would have
for retaining the sound (f«l) in the first been about 90 years old now, were he
syllable. At any rate the usage of still alive. All the Yorkshire and Mid-
speakers with regard to (fwl'smnY and land peasantry use (u] as a matter of
(fal-SBm) varies greatly. As to (bwlk, course.
176 U — XVIt TH CENTURY. CHAP. III. § 3.
That there is nothing intrinsically pleasing in the sound
of (a), may be seen at once by calling good, stood (gad stad),
to rhyme with blood, flood, (blad, flad). Those speakers,
to whom (ww) presents a difficulty are apt to change it into
(wa) as (wad, wanrtm) for (wwd, w««m"en), and the effect is
anything but pleasing. In general the long Saxon (oo),
which first 'became (uu) and then fell into (u) or (u), has
resisted the further change into (a). This difference of
evolution is similar to that which has befallen i, ei, ai,
which Shakspere pronounced sufficiently alike to introduce
a conceit upon them in one of his most tragic speeches,
already cited (p. 112), but which have become three quite
distinct sounds (ai, ii, ee\), (p. 120). Both changes have
occurred rather among the reading than the merely speaking
section of our population.
1668. WILKINS and Wallis were contemporaries ; although
the latter was the elder, and born in Kent, and the
former was born in Oxford, they lived as fellow collegians
for some time in Oxford, and they mixed in the same society.
Yet we have a striking difference in their pronunciation of
long u. We have seen how Wallis identified the French
and English u, how he considered the (yy) sound to be
familiar to all Englishmen, and especially distinguished it
from the diphthong (iu), and this he continued to do through
all the editions of his grammar. Wilkins at the same
moment can scarcely pronounce (yy) at all, denies that
Englishmen use it, and makes every long u into (iu).
"As for the u Gallicum or ichistling u" says he, p. 363, "though
it cannot be denied to be a distinct simple vowel ; yet it is of so
laborious and difficult pronunciation to all those Nations amongst
whom it is not used, (as to the English) especially in the distinction
of long and short, and framing of Dipthongs, that though I have
enumerated it with the rest, and shall make provision for the ex
pression of it, yet shall I make less use of it, than of the others ;
and for that reason, not proceed to any further explication of it."
And again, p. 382, "u," which is his character for (yy), "is I think
proper to the French and used by none else."
This is a strong contradiction to Wallis, whose treatise
Wilkins had read, and apparently studied.1 The only word
which contains long u that Wilkins transliterates, is commit-
nioh, and this he writes (kAmmiuuniAn), using (iuu) and not
(yy) in the accented syllable.
1 He says, p. 357, " Dr. "Wallis .... and subtlety to have considered the
amongst all that I have seen published, Philosophy of Articulate sounds."
seems to me, •with greatest Accurateness
CHAP. III. § 3. U — XVII TH CENTURY. 177
Short u is thus exemplified by Wilkins and distinguished
from (uu, u), meaning (uu, u) most probably:
(u) short full fat pul
(uu) long boote foole foote moote poole roode
(o) short but full1 futt1 nmtt-on pull1 rudd-er
(oa) long amongst
The sound, which he represents by y with a peculiar
flourish added to its tail, and which I have translated into
my (a), he describes as " a simple letter, apert, sonorous,
guttural; being framed by a free emission of the breath
from the throat."2 Again, p. 364, he says "the vowel (a)
is wholly Guttural, being an emission of the breath from the
throat without any particular motion of the tongue or lips.
'Tis expressed by this character," a variety of y, "which is
already appropriated by the Welsh for the picture of this
sound." As he here rejects both tongue and lips in the
formation of (a) he differs considerably from Wallis in ex
plaining its formation. In another place he says that the
Hebrew " Schevah" is rapidly pronounced " probably as our
short (a)." He gives (ai, au) as the analysis of "our
English i in bite," and of the sound in " otvr, ottAe." And
finally he says: "y" meaning (a) "is scarce acknowledged
by any nation except the Welsh." The words in which he
employs this sign, omitting the combinations (ai, au) are :
kingdom, come, done, but, Jesus, son, under, Pontius, buried,
third, judge, church, resurrection, which he writes (k«j'dam,
kam, dan, bat, Dzhesas, san, ander, PAns^'^s, barbed, thard,
dzhadzh, tshartsh, resarreksioon), in which I give all his
errors. I assume this sound to be (a) both in Wallis and
Wilkins, but what particular shade of this sound they pro
nounced, and whether they both used the same shade, it
would be rash to assert.
1668. PRICE does not help us to the sound of short u
when he says :
"The u is twofold, 1. short, as in but, must, burst, 2. long as in
lute, muse, refuse as if it were the compound of iw."
This iw may mean (iu), agreeing with Wilkins, but it
may also mean (yy) agreeing with Wallis. I am inclined to
treat it as (iu). The short u I have, on the combined
1 These words judging from futt, are viously written with one final consonant
all fancy words, (fal, fat, pal), intro- to indicate the sound («). If this
duced to contrast with the (fwl, fz<t, theory be correct, the word, full in the
pwl), in a preceding line, and most first line, was a misprint for ful.
probably the doubling of the final con- 2 This description is made up from
sonant was intended to indicate the the different headings of the table
sound (a), whereas fut, pul were pre- p. 360.
12
178 U — XVII TH CENTURY. CHAP. III. § 3.
authority of Wallis and Wilkins, been in the habit of con
sidering to be (a). The following notices agree with this :
"0 after w soundes like short u as world, sword, woman, won. . . .
0 before m or n in the last syllable soundes like short u as freedom,
reckon, lacon. ... Ou soundes like short u in cousin, double,
courage"
But there is one notice which, thus interpreted, has a
singular effect : " Oo soundes like short u in good, wool, hood,
wood, stood." The general use of (gad, wal, Had, wad, stad)
is difficult to believe in, though it is well known provincially,
and is also mentioned by Jones, (p. 183).
1669. Though HOLDER'S work was not published till this
year, Wilkins had seen it in manuscript, and speaks highly
of it.1 Yet in the letter u, both long and short, Holder
differs from Wilkins. Holder has very acutely anticipated
Mr. M. Bell's separation of the lingual and labial passages,
and the possibility of adding a labial passage to every lingual
one. He says :
In o the larynx is depressed, or rather drawn back by contraction
of the aspera arteria. And the tongue likewise is drawn back and
curved ; and the throat more open to make a round passage : and
though the lips be not of necessity, yet the drawing them a little
rounder, helps to accomplish the pronunciation of it, which is not
enough to denominate it a labial vowel, because it receives not
its articulation from the lips. Oo seems to be made by a like
posture of the tongue and throat with o but the larynx somewhat
more depressed. And if at the same time the lips be contracted,
and borne stiffly near together, then is made 8 ; u with the tongue
in the posture of i but not so stiff, and the lip borne near the upper
lip by a strong tension of the muscles, and bearing upon it at either
corner of the mouth."
" 8 is made by the throat and tongue and lip ; in 8 the tongue
being in the posture, which makes oo ; and in u in the same posture,
which makes *, and in this 8 and u are peculiar, that they are
framed by a double motion of organs, that of the lip, added to that of
the tongue ; and yet either of them is a single letter, and not two,
because the motions are at the same time, and not successive, as are
1 He says: "But besides such," have had to peruse from their privatt
namely, " in later times .... Erasmus, papers the distinct Theories of some
both the Scaligers, Lipsius, Salmasius, other Learned and Ingenious persons,"
Vossius, Jacobus Mathias, Adolphus Dr. William Holder and Mr. Lodowick
Metkerchus, Bernardus Malinchot, etc., are named in the margin, " who have
besides several of our countrymen, Sir with great judgment applyed their
Thomas Smith, Bullokar, Alexander thoughts to this enquiry ; in each of
Gill, and Doctor Wallis," "(whose con- whose Papers, there are several sug-
siderations upon this subject are made gestions that are new, out of the com-
publick) I must not forget to acknow- mon rode, and very considerable."
ledge the favour and good hap I have
CHAP. III. § 3. TJ XVII TH CENTURY. 179
eu, pla &c. Yet for this reason they seem not to be absolutely so
simple vowels as the rest, because the voice passeth successively
from the throat to the lips in 8 and from the palate to the lips in M,
being there first moulded into the figures of oo and i, before it be
fully articulated by the lips. And yet either these two, 8 and «,
are to be admitted for single vowels, or else we must exclude the
lips from being the organs of any single vowel since that the mouth
being necessary to conduct the voice to the lips, will, according to
the shape of its cavity, necessarily give the voice some particular
affection of sound in its passage, before it come to the lips ; which
will seem to make some such composition in any vowel which is
labial. I have been inclined to think, that there is no labial vowel,
but that the same affection from the lips may, somewhat in the nature
of a consonant, be added to every of the vowels, but most subtlely
and aptly to two of them, whose figures are in the extremes of
aperture and situation, one being the closest and forwardest, which
is i, and the other most open and backward ; there being reason to
allow a vowel of like sound in the throat with 8, but distinct from
it as not being labial, which will be more familiar to our eye if it
be written oo ; as in cut coot, full fool, tut toot, in which the lip
does not concur ; and this is that other. Thus u will be only i
labial, and 8 will be oo labial, that is, by adding that motion of the
under-lip, i will become u, and oo will become 8." He proceeds to
use his i, u, 8 in the formation of diphthongs and concludes thus :
"Concerning 8 and u, this may be observed, that in subjoining
them to another vowel, 8 is apter to follow a and o, because of
their resemblance in the posture of the tongue, as hath been said ;
and for the like reason u is apter to follow a and e, as 8ct8^ wawl;
euge etc. But generally if the vowels follow, then it is 8 precedes
and not «,"
No doubt the descriptions give very accurately oo = (020?),
H = (uu), u = (i) or (y). And the short (03) would then be
Holder's sound in full. Now it is impossible to believe that
fool was ever pronounced (fcecel), the sound being extremely
difficult to any one but a Highlander (in whose word laogh it
occurs), until the trick of removing the labial action from
(uu) has been acquired. But if we remember that now full
is rather (ful) than (ful) ; and that the widening of the back
of the throat, by which (u) differs from (u) is so much the
most essential part of the sound, that a very good imitation
of it can be produced with the mouth wide open, it is very
probable that Holder called fool full at least when theorizing
(fuul ful). The pairs of examples he gives are cut coot, full
foolt tut toot, of which cut, tut would have been (kat, tat)
according to Wallis and Wilkins, who would have perhaps
preserved the old pronunciation (fwl) or (ful). Did Holder
say or intend to say (kztt kuut, ful fuul, tut tuut) ? In this
case he must have altogether ignored the vowel (a). Or did
180 U — XVII TH CENTURY, CHAP. III. § 3.
he mean to say (kat kaat, fal faal, tat ta»t) ? or did lie mean
— what he has written — (k<et kcecet, feel f&cel, tcet tceoet) ?
sounds which he may have imagined he said, but which other
people are scarcely likely to have really pronounced. The
distinction which Holder makes between the vowels in fool,
two is peculiar to himself. Wilkins gives fool as an example
of the long (uu), and full as an example of both the short
(u) or (u) and of (e), supra p. 177, note 1. This throws a
doubt over the pronunciation of this particular word full, and
renders Holder's explanations still more mysterious. Can
it be that Holder's pronunciation was very peculiar so that
he actually confused (u, a) at a time when the transition
from old (M) to (a) was coming into vogue ? His (oe) would
not be a bad middle between the extremes of (u, 8). His long
u in rule, which is usually now (uu), was manifestly (yy), if
his explanation of superadding the labial to the lingual effect
is to be trusted. His only notice of a diphthongal u is in the
word euffe, just cited, which must have been (eydzhe), if his
explanation is to be relied on, but this is very doubtful.
1685. COOPER pairs the vowels in full, fole, or as he some
times writes foale,1 that is, in full he takes the vowel to be
short (0). He may however have used (u) or (wh). See
the discussion on p. 84, and the passage quoted on p. 101.
The observations in that passage serve to shew that u in
full had at that time much of the (o) element in it ; that
some persons may have pronounced it quite as (0) ; and
others as (u) the usual sound into which (0) degenerates,
or (u), which is the more common English sound ; the true
short (u) is so unusual to our organs, that when we hear it
we take it for the long (uu), and we can hardly pronounce
it except when long. The English (uu, u) as has been
already mentioned, are related precisely like the English
(ii, «). I shall, as already stated, p. 84, consider that Cooper
pairs (00, u}. But Cooper also distinguished (uu, u) in food
foot, see supra p. 101. He illustrates this sound by German
zufluch (misprint for zuflucht as shewn by the meaning re-
fugium) and Drench coupe poculum, now (tsuu'flukht, kup).
Cooper is very copious upon short u which he clearly
means to be (a) or one of those vowels, as (a, OB), which he
would scarcely distinguish from (a). The long u he makes
(iu) and seems to have great difficulty in understanding the
French u (yy). His words are :
" U formatur tantum in gutture, a larynge spiritum vibrante,
1 As fool used to be written fole, the more common spelling foale could
nothing but Cooper's having once used have shewn us what word he meant.
CHAP. III. § 3.
TJ XVII TH CENTURY.
181
nudum efficiente murmur, quod idem est cum gemitu hominis eegritu-
dine vel dolore excruciati ; qnodque infantes (priusquam loqui
valeant) primum edunt : Et fundamentum est, a quo omnes catera
vocales, varia modificatione constituuntur1 .... Hunc sonum cor-
reptum vix unquam aliter pronunciant Angli quam in nut nux ;
prout etiam in lingua latina, ni ubi consonans praecedens sit labialis,
ut prius dixi, et labiis dat formam qua sonus plenior effertur, ut in
pull vello, inter hos minima2 datur, datur tamen specifica, diffe-
rentia ; ille etenim sonus dilutior est, hie plenior, ille formatur a
larynge tantum in gutture, hie a labiis contractis ; dum itaque o
labiis formatur in sono continuato, si recedant labia in oblongam
formam formatur u gutturalis;3 in quibusdam scribitur per o ut,
to come* venire ; Galli hoc modo, vel saltern persimili,5 olim sonarunt
1 The natural vowel, should be the
sound of the voice, that is of the vocal
ligaments or glottal reed, without any
resonance tube, p. 161. This it is of
course impossible to hear. But it must
resemble the reed sound of the clarionet
or hautboy, or the whistle of the flute
or flageolet, and contain in itself all
the tones which the variously formed
resonance tubes prefixed to it in speak
ing, by means of the pharynx, nose,
tongue, mouth and lipSj develop or
render audible. It is as the resonance
tubes clearly separate the tones, or allow
many nearly coincident to be heard to
gether, that we obtain distinct or con
fused, coloured or colourless, vowel
qualities of tone.
2 This remark is important as shew
ing the ease with which (u, 9) were
confused by speakers at the time of the
transition of short u from (u) to (a).
3 If the lips be mechanically opened
by the hands while we are pronouncing
(oo) we shall pronounce (aa), which is
the form that Mr. M. Bell adopts for
the long sound of u in up. Hence
Cooper is quite consistent when he
makes u in full the short (o), and u
in nut the delabialised short (o) or (a).
This is the most accurate description
of the sound that I have met with in
any old book, and may be advantage
ously compared with Holder's, given
above p. 178.
4 Probably to is not intended as an
example, but only come. Both are
italicized in the original.
• As Mr. M. Bell hears (a) in
English up and (a) in French que, and
(a, a) only differ as back and mixed
vowels of the same class, Cooper's ear
was not far out. To me however now,
the French e in que sounds (0), which
is a ' round' vowel. English ears,
however, readily confound (cc, a, CE ;
0, 03, 0h) with one another and with
(e), and (i). "What was however the
old pronunciation of the present French
mute e ? Meigret, 1550, writes the
same vowel in the first and last syllables
of "merite, benite, perir, mere, pere,"
which Feline writes (merit, benit, pmr,
meer, peer) with two different vowels.
I understand Meigret to mean (e) in
both cases. But the lightly spoken
unaccented (e) drifts very easily into
(B, a, 0), From (e) therefore (») could
have easily descended. In fact (9) is
only the 'round' or labialized (e). This
recalls an apparently inexplicable re
mark by Palsgrave, 1530, who says:
"If e be the laste vowell in a frenche
worde beynge of many syllables, eyther
alone or with an s folowynge him, the
worde nat havyng his accent upon the
same e, then shall he in that place be
sounded almost like an, o and very moche
in the noose, as these words homme,
f&nme, honeste, pdrle. kommes, femmea,
honestes, avecques, shall have theyr laste
e sounded in maner lyke an o, as hommo,
femmo, honesto, parlo. hommos, femmos,
honestos, avecquos ; so that, if the reder
lyft up his voyce upon the syllable that
commeth nexte before the same e, and
sodaynly depresse his voyce whan he
cometh to the soundynge of hym, and
also sound hym very moche in the noose,
he shall sounde e beyng written in this
place accordyng as the Frenchmen do.
Which upon this warnynge if the lerner
wyll observe by the frenche mens
spekynge, he shall easily perceyue."
The nasality may be an erroneous
observation, and the whole history may
be a clumsy expression of the sound of
(»), for which the rounding of the lips
suggested (o). See supra, p. 119, note,
col. 2.
182 U — XVII TH CENTURY. CHAP. III. § 3.
fsemininum e, ut in providence. German! syllabus ham1 & berg* in
propriis nominibus. Nunquam in proprio sono apud nos productum
audivi, ni in musica modulatione,3 vel inter populos, pracipufe
pueros cunctanter pronuaciantes ; pro longa enim vocali assumit
dipthongum eu (tu) ; unde etiam denominatur ; ut mute mutus ;
prout in Neuter, i/reu8o9, idem fere cum Gallorum u de quo inter
dipthongos dicetur."
11 £ in will, weal (i, ei] cum u (u) coalescens nobis familiarissimus
est, quern vocamus u Ion gum; ut funeral funus, huge inus;* juice
succus, scribimus per ew ; ut chew mastico ; Itmw cognovi ; aliisqwe
temporibus verborum prseteritis ; quando syllabam finalem claudit,
additur e, true verus ; rare- per eu, rheum rheuma ; sic semper pro-
nunciamus eu latinum, & eu Graecum : et Galli pleruniqwe illorum
«, quandoqwe autem subtilius quasi sonus esset simplex, sed hsec
difficilis & Gallis propria."
The last words shew that his confusion of (yy) with (iu)
in French pronunciation was really fault of ear, and that he
was quite ignorant of (yy) as an English sound. Cooper is
very particular in shewing how all vowels fall into (a) in un
accented syllables before r. These will be considered under R.
1688. MIEGE of course hears the English long u as the
French, but as the diphthong (iu) does not occur in French,
this only shews the same defect of ear which makes him
identify short u in cut with French o (o), and short u in us
with French eu (oe). He says :
"La Prononciation commune de 1'TJ Voyelle en Anglois est la
meme qu'en FranQois, Mais, entre deux Consonnes dans une meme
Syllabe, elle se prononce ordinairement en o ; Comme but, cut, rub,
up, humble, under, run. Quequefois en ou ; Exemple chuse, puss,
bull, pull, full. En eu, comme us, faculty, difficult, difficulty. Bury
& busy se prononcent bery, bisy, Et dans les Mots qui finissent en
ure, l'« semble revetir le Son d'un e feminin, sur tout quand on
parle vite. Comme nature, picture, fracture, qui se prononcent
familierement naiter, picter, frecter." And again: "U vowel, by
it self, is pronounced in French according to the Sound it has in the
"Word Abuse in English,
1701. JONES says : " the Sound of u in but, cut, &c. is the Sound
1 Dr. Froembling, in his Elements of Froembling (who speaks English ex-
the German Language, 2nd edit. 1865, cellently) hit upon this contrivance.
p. 2, says that the German a " is pro- Cooper having heard ham as (nam) in
nounced like « in father, if long ; and proper names only, must have heen
like u in hut if short." This is the mistaken; German proper names do
only other instance I knovr in which not end in ham but in heim.
German short « has been identified with a This must have been a mere
English (3) ; it is usually confused with Anglicism.
English (A), which however would give 3 One of the best means of observ-
a very broad Austrian pronunciation, ing the prolonged effect of short vowel
and it was to avoid this on the one sounds,
hand, and (se) on the other, that Dr. * Misprint for ingens or immensus ?
CHAP. III. § 3. U — XVII TH CENTURY. 183
of the natural humane Voice, and therefore the easiest of all the
Sounds that are made by the humane Voice."
And yet this easy sound is a stumbling block to all Eu
ropean nations, and is rarely heard except among Asiatics.
It may be doubtful indeed whether the Asiatics pronounce
the same variety of (a) as we do. Many "Welshmen do not
admit it as a proper "Welsh sound, though their language is
supposed to have an appropriate letter y to represent it. As,
however, y in Welsh also represents another sound, it cannot
be more properly considered the special representative of (Q)
than the English u, so that there is really no European means
of representing the sound, although, owing to its supposed
relation to the French e mute, (0), so many writers hav.e em
ployed an inverted e, that this has been adopted as the best
understood form in palaeotype. The sound of long u, Jones
says, is compound, but he does not analyze it.
Jones gives many lists for the representation of the sound
of short u by various vowel forms, which need not be cited at
length as they agree generally with modern use. In the fol
lowing words the italic letter might be, or occasionally was
sounded as (a) according to Jones.
Christmas, William, &c ; centawry, restawration, &c ; fasten,
listen, &c ; aspen, burden, chicken, cozen, &c ; yeoman ; beztl, civel,
devel, &c ; basm, cabm, coflVn, &c ; "Westminster "sounded West-
muster;'1'' boil, coil &c = (bail, kail) &c ; another, mother, pother
&c ; houl, bout, fout, lout, out, &c = (haul, baut, faut) &c ; dove,
love, move — this is peculiar, shove &c ; cowl, howl, &c = (kaul,
Haul) &c, voyage, &c ; = (varedzh) ; vouch, &c ; word, work,
worth, &c ; yonder, yonker, &c ; colonel, colour, &c ; comfort, &c ;
coney, conjure, &c ; money, monkey, &c ; mongcorn, monger, &c ;
cwlly, &c; blomary, &c; (see under 0, p. 102), come, some, &c;
bucksom, fulsom, &c ; kingdom, &c ; chibol, gambol, symbol ;
son, does, recognisance "sounded recunnisance ;" foot, forsooth,
good, hood, look, soot, stood, took, "when it may be sounded oo
rather than #;" wood, woof, wool "which some sound as with
u viz. wud wull &c" — adjowrn, attowrnment, attowrney, \)\oud,
Bourdeaux,1 country, cowrage, cowrlass, cowrteous, cowrtesan, cowrtesy,
cowsin, dowble, dowblet, floM, flourish, housewife, journey, mowrn,
nowrish, scowrge, sojowrn, Sowthwark, touch, trouble, uncouth, yowng,
yowr, yowth "and all the Names of Seaport Towns as Palmowth
Portsmouth Yarmouth" &c ; athwart, thwart "sounded athurt,
thurt" answer, twopence " sounded tuppence," myrrh, pyramide
&c; camerade "sounded cumrade" hiccough "sounded hiccup,1''
frwmenty " sounded furmety," construe " sounded constur," Catha
rine "sounded Catturn"
1 There is a place near Edinburgh Bourdeaux House. Jones also writes
called (Bar-dt nails) from the old (Buurdoo), supra p. 140.
184 U XVIII TH CENTURY. Y, W, WH CHAP. III. § 4.
In almost every instance (a) is seen to be a substitute for
an older (u), or («) as (au) was of an older (uu).
U — xvin TH CENTURY.
1704. The EXPERT ORTHOGRAPHIST gives us no informa
tion on the nature of the sounds of u long and u short.
1710. The Anonymous instructor of the Palatines says that
u at the beginning is like the German ju, meaning that long
w=(iu). He also gives the pronunciation of the English
words church, much, in German letters as tschurtsch, mutsch
= (tshurtsh, mutsh), so that he does not acknowledge (a) at
all. This may have been designedly, because (a) would have
been so difficult to the Palatines, and because (u) would be
intelligible to the English.
1766. The following are a few words from Buchanan :
(ful, push, shug'a'r) sugar; (put; batsh'«r, pas) butcher, puss ;
(tu pat) to put ; (ber*z, \>iz'i) bury, busy ; (triu, fhrnas, Hut,
miuz) true, furious, lute, muse.
1768. Franklin has (satsh, ranz, matsh) such, runs, much;
(fiu'nas, iu'sedzh, truu, ruulz, iuz'ed) furious, usage, true,
rules, used.
1780. Sheridan gives as peculiar Irish faults, (bal, bash,
pash, pal, pal'pzt, pad'm, kaslran, fat, pat) for (bwl, bwsh,
p#sh, -pid, -pul'pit, pwd'i'q, kwslran, fut, put), all of which, as
well as (drav, strav) for (droov, stroov) are, as is now mani
fest, remnants of the xvnth century. The other cases of
Irish mispronunciations which he cites, and which have been
already noticed, (pp. 76, 92, 103, 129, 160), shew very
clearly that the so-called Irish mispronunciations are merely
fossil relics of the xvnth century, preserved in a com
munity separated by the sea from the mother country, see
supra p. 20.
§ 4. The Consonants.
Y, W, WH.
According to the present usages of English speech, Y and
W are the consonants (j, w) when preceding a vowel, as in
ye woo (ji wu), and those who can pronounce these words
differently from (ii uu) can generally pronounce these conso
nants. But there has been a great dispute among orthoepists
whether y, w should be considered as vowels or consonants,
CHAP. III. $ 4. Y, W, WH XVI TH TO XVIII TH CENTURY. 185
and various terms have been invented to suit the case. As they
do not occur in French, PALSGRAVE of course does not notice
them. SALESBURY, with his Welsh habits always regards
y, w as the vowels (i, u), and consequently writes (und'er,
uu) for (wun'der, wuu). SMITH has -.the same opinion, but
writes (i-is, i-it, u-ul, u-ud) for (jis, jit, wul, wud), although
these sounds cannot be distinguished from (iis, iit, uul, uud)
unless either a distinction in the vowels be made, which he
does not allow, as (its, iit, uwl, uwd), or else the vowel be
repeated as (i,is i,it u,ul u,ud). HART carries the same
principle to the extent of writing (iild uuld) for (jiild, wuuld)
and even (ureit) for (wreit) meaning (rweit) making that
word therefore dissyllabic. GILL has distinct alphabetical
characters for (j, w), and says :
" Si quis sonorum aequus sestimator vsum earum apud nos per-
pendat, inveniet esse consonas,"
but seems to consider that the principal test (" lapis Lydius")
of the fact is that the indefinite article assumes the form a
and not an before y, w. He adds :
" W, aspiratum, consona est, quam scribunt per wh et tamen
aspiratio praecedit. Illae1 namqwe voces quae per wh scribuntur;
possunt atqwg etiam ad exempla maiorum scribi debent per (HW)
aut (HU) ; ita enim, nihil aliud inde colligi queat, quam quod ex
ipso wh, intelligimus ; vt (will) sive (uiil) WEELE nassa,2 (nwiil) sive
(Huiil) WHEELE rota. Tamen quia nostra experientia docet, (w) et
(wh) veras esse simplicesqwe consonas, in quarum elatione (u) sug-
grunnit tantum, non clara vocalis auditur ; ideo illud (w) ante
vocales aut diphthongos ius assignatum obtinebit; at (wh) mala
tantum consuetudine3 valebit in (what) quid, (whedher) uter &
similibus."
We have here the first distinct recognition of a consonant
peculiar to the English language, which is seldom acknow
ledged even by recent orthoepists, most of whom consider
(wh) as = (HW) or (HU). The preceding writers had all
used (HU). It is to be observed that Gill had no (jh) ; this
must have been because, as he used (yy) in place of (juu)
initial, he said (Hyynrur) and not (jhuunrur), for which
most recent orthoepists have (HJuu'nm), a combination as
objectionable as (nwiil) for (whiil).
GATAKER 1646, goes to the extreme of making y, w always
consonants, considering ei, ew to be (ej, ew). This, however,
1 Misprinted ille. meant one (wh). This "bad custom"
2 Narrow necked basket for catch- is evaded by the palaeotypic use of
ing fish. (H) for the aspirate and (h) for the
3 The fault in Gill was that he wrote diacritic,
two consonants (WH) when he only
186 Y, W, WH — XVI TH TO XVIII TH CENTURY. CHAP. III. $ 4.
depends upon a diphthongal theory, to which writers have
been led by observing that (ai) is not merely (a, i), see
p. 51. WALLIS inclines to Gataker's opinion, and says :
" Diphthong! ai, ei, oi, au, eu, ou, &c, recte pronunciatae com-
ponuntur ex vocalibus praepositivis et consonantibus y et w quae
tamen pro vocalibus subjunctivis vulgo habentur."
His contemporary WILKINS, alluding to the opinion of
Gataker and others says on his p. 370, that they
"do earnestly contend that there are no such things as dipthongs.
Their principal Arguments" he goes on to say, "depend upon this
Supposition that (i) and (u), which are necessary Ingredients to the
framing of all usual Dipthongs, are Consonants the same with (j)
and (w). Others would have them to be of a middle nature, be
twixt Vowels and Consonants; according to which opinion I have
already described them : Prom whence the Reason is clear, why
these Vowels concur to the making of Diptbongs because being the
most contract of Vowels, as is also the vowel (a) of which more
hereafter, They do therefore approach very near to the nature of
Litera clauses, or Consonants ; there being no Transition amongst
these, either from one another, or to the intermediate sounds, with
out such a kind of motion amongst the Instruments of speech, by
reason of these different Apertiom, as doth somewhat resemble that
kind of Collision required to the framing of Consonants."
COOPER recognizes (j, w) as consonants and also (jh, wh)
under the form, (HJ, HW), at the same time that he defines a
diphthong as the " conglutinatio duarum vocalium in eadem
syllaba."
This theory of " conglutination," effected by the " glide,"
is that which I have adopted (p. 51), and, consequently, be
lieving that the sounds were in all cases the same, I shall, in
transcribing the pronunciation of others, when they use (ia)
or (aj) consistently write (ja, ai), having precisely the same
intention, and representing the same sound, on different
theoretical principles. I consider the sounds of (j, w) to
have been the same throughout the period now considered.
Whether there may not be or have been a sound (bh), lead
ing to the confusion between (v) and (w), well marked in the
South East of England, I leave unsettled. In Chapter V, § 4,
No. 1,1 shall adduce reasons for believing that the Anglosaxon
w was not (bh). Although (wrait) can be pronounced, yet
(vrait) or (bhrait) is much easier for the lips, and in Mr.
Melville Bell's Scotch specimen Chapter XI, § 4, the initial
(vr) will be found in (vraq) wrong, which may however pos
sibly have been (bhraq). As qu is now, and probably always
was, (kw ), the labial modification of (k), produced by rounding
the lips at the same time that the (k) contact is made, and
CHAP. III. { 4. Y, w, WH — XVI TH TO XVIII TH CENTURY. 187
releasing both, contacts simultaneously, so (wr) probably
always was (rw), the labial modification of (r), produced by
keeping the lips rounded during the whole time that (r) is
trilled. It is similar to the sound in French roi, which
Feline writes (rua), and which English now call (rwAA), the
true sound being (rz#a), which produces a species of evanes
cent (u), but whether before (r) as Hart wrote (ureit), or
after (rj as Feline writes, appears doubtful to the ear, simply
because it is during (r), p, 131. Similarly (yy) is (iiw) or (ii)
with a labial modification, and all the " round " vowels might
be written as ordinary vowels followed by the labial modi
fication (w), p. 161. At the same time, in transcribing the
notation of others, I shall generally use (wr), although this
is probably as incorrect as (rw) would be, and is very difficult
to pronounce. The notation (wr) is similar to the notations
(HW, HJ) ; in all three cases succession (w + r, H + w, H + j)
is written where simultaneity (w*r = rw, H'*W = wh, H'*J
= jh,) is intended. See civ, wl, wr in Anglosaxon, Chapter
Y, § 4, No. 1.
The interchange of the vowel (i) with the consonant (j),
and the vowel (u) with one of the three consonants (w, bh,
v) is an interesting phenomenon in all languages. In Europe
(w) is thought to be peculiar to England ; Wales also claims
it, but the claim is doubtful, as its (w), if it exists, is con
fused by its writers with (u). In Arabic however (w) is
quite at home, and also serves to mark the vowels (o, u). In
Sanscrit, if the native grammarians are correct, the (i)
between two other vowels fell into (j) and the (u) into (v),
and not (w) or (bh). In Germany (u) generates (bh) not
(w). Similarly in modern Greek (ev, av) generated (ebh,
abh) becoming (eph, aph) before mutes as (aphtos'), although
modern theory makes v a (v) or an (f) as (evris'koo, aftos'),
evpta-Kw, ai/Vo<?. It seems probable that in precisely the same
way, the original transition of the Sanscrit (u) was into (bh),
and that the pronunciation (v), distinctly pointed out by the
native grammarians, is a comparatively modern alteration,
comparable with the change of (k, kn, g, gn, q) into (tsh,
tshH, dzh, dzhn, nj) and of (kh) into (sh). The immediate
change of (u) into (v) is difficult to conceive.
The letter (w), or (u) forming a diphthong with a follow
ing (a), formerly kept the sound of (a) pure. Thus Bullokar
writes (waar, war'm, waar'n, waren, war, waa'ter) for ware,
warm, warn, warren, war, water. As late as "Wilkins we have
(waez) for was. Price says that a is never sounded (AA)
except before /, and hence he excludes the action of w.
188 M, N, NG — XVI TH TO XVIII TH CENTURY. CHAP. III. $ 4.
Cooper does not mention the effect of w, and Jones 1701
only instances the word " water, sounded wauter." But the
Expert Orthographist, 1704, says that a has its broad sound
(AA) "between w and r as war, ward-en, warm, warn-er,
warren, watch, water, wrath." It would appear then that this
effect of w on a following a became prevalent at the begin
ning of the xvin th century. It is by no means general in the
provinces, where (wat'er, wajm, warm, war'm,) etc. still exist.
I have heard (waa'ti, ktoael'ft*, kwsen'te't?,) from even educated
speakers. Of course the effect of the (w) on the subsequent
vowel arises from beginning to pronounce it before the lips are
sufficiently opened, so that the vowel becomes round, as (wat/>
= wo), for which however either (WA), or (_wo) has obtained
in practise. Although in London and the South of England
(wh) is seldom pronounced, so that (wAt) is the usual sound
for both Wat and what, yet to write wot for what is thought
to indicate a bad vulgar pronunciation. In the North of
England (wh) is very well marked, and in Scotland it is
often labialized to (kwh), owing probably to the intimate
relation between (u) and (k).
M, N, NG.
These nasal sounds frequently disturb the pure sound of
the preceding vowel, giving it more or less of a nasal twang,
occasioned by allowing some of the breath to pass with more
or less force through the nasal passages. We know that in
modern French in, an, on, un, represent four distinct ori
nasal vowels, palaeo typically written (eA, aA, OA, OA) although
their exact relation to the oral vowels is not pretended to
be accurately determined.1 It is very difficult to determine
how soon this change occurred. Palsgrave, who, it must be
remembered, finds the French e feminine to be "sounded
almoste like an o and very moche in the noose,"2 tells us that
" if m or n folowe nexte after a in a frenche worde, all in
one syllable, than a shall be sounded lyke this diphthong au
and somethyng in the noose," so that the nasality was not
"very moche" as in the other case where no other writer
recognizes any nasality at all, but only " somethyng." This
would lead to am, an = (a^um a,un). Palsgrave notes the
exception when "the syllable next folowynge of any suche
wordes begynne also with a lyke consonant," such as flamnie,
where the sound of a is not changed — and we are left to
1 See above, p. 67, for a discussion 2 See p. 181, note, col. 2.
of these sounds.
CHAP. III. § 4. M, N, NG — XVI TH TO XVIII TH CENTURY. 189
suppose that the m and n have their normal sounds. As
regards French e before m and n Palsgrave says it " shall
be sounded lyke an italian a and some thynge in the noose,"
with a similar exception. See the passages cited for a on
p. 143, near the top, and for o, on p. 149, near the bottom.
In the latter place, no distinction is made (except as regards
the final e} between bon, bonne, which must be (bun, biure)
putting (e) for Palsgrave e feminine, at a venture. He makes
no mention of in, un, but in his transcription he writes " im-
bevo, depainz, poant, insasiablo, inconsidere, uoazins, mayn,
evmblo, evnshemyn " for imbue, depainctz, poynt, insatiable,
inconsidere, voisins, maynt, humble, ung chemin, in which there
is no apparent trace of nasality.
On examining Meigret there is not so much evidence of
nasality as in Palsgrave. From Meigret's notation, as may
be seen in the numerous citations already given, there is no
appearance of any nasal vowel. Indeed the following remark
would seem to exclude the idea of any such nasals as now
exist. He says :
"Je ne veu' pas aosi oublier qe la prolagfon FrawgoE'ze n'uze
pas fort souuEnt de dens mm, ne de dens nn, ensEmble, combierc qe
1'ecritture ne les epansre pas : come, EH homme, comme, sommEt,
commEnt, commandemEnt, honneur, donner, sonner, angienne. II
Et vrey qe IES mm se rEncontret aos AuErbes qi se tErminet En
mEnt qant a, ou E ouuErt pregedet : come prudEmmEnt, suffizaw-
mEnt. Notez aosi qe n flnall' ayant En suyte, vn vocable comEn-
gant par voyElle (si 96 ne sont qelqes aspirez) double sa puissange :
come En allant, En etant, qe nou' pronongons come En nallant, En
netant: tellement q'aotant sone I'un qe 1'aotre; E ny trouuons
aocune diffErenge."
That is Meigret heard no difference between the final n in
" En " and the initial n in " nallant," he must therefore be
understood to have said (En nalant) in lieu of the modern (aA
nalaA). See also John Hart's transcription of French,
Chapter VIII, § 3, and supr& p. 150. There seems to be no
intimation of the French nasal in Cotgrave, and Miege only
says that English final m and n are sounded " d'une maniere
plus forte en Anglais qu'en Frangais," which may mean
almost anything. In his French part, he says nothing about
an, on, but informs us that
"em in the same Syllable is pronounced am, the e taking the
sound of a French a ; as embleme, ensemble. Except where the
word ends in em, or emme ; as item, dilemme. And yet femme is
pronounced famme. ... So is en sounded an. Except 1. after i or
y, in which case the e retains its proper Pronunciation, but that it
takes somewhat of the sound of an *; as in these "Words lien, chien
190 M, N, NG XVI TH TO XVIII TH CENTURY. CHAP. III. § 4.
&c." with other exceptions, thus antenne has "e open" or ai, but
tienne has "e masculine." " In, making the first syllable of a
"Word is pronounced in French as in English, except the n, which
is but gently sounded ; as incapable, indivisible. The same is to be
understood of in at the end of a Word; 0,3 fin, vin, venin," very
unlike the modern (CA, EA, SBA). "Before m and n in the same
Syllable, it (u} takes the sound of the Dipthong eu ; as humble,
few*'."1
The investigation of the time of commencement, and the
origin of the French and Portuguese nasality, would be ex
tremely curious ; at present, however, we are only concerned
with the effect of the French sound upon English ears.
First then as regards aim, ain ; im, in ; urn, un, the English
seem to have heard in the xvi th century and previously (aim,
ain ; mi, in ; um, un), and to have pronounced accordingly.
Thus Hart in his French Lord's prayer writes (indui, point,
peen) for indui, point, pain, where Hart's (ee) represents the
contemporary English (ai).
Next as to am, an the English generally heard an inserted
(u), thus (aum, aun). This does not however appear in Hart,
who writes (an, kotidian, ofanses, tantasion, pyysanse, aman)
for en, quotidien, offenses, tentation, puissance, Amen. The
omission of the (u) may perhaps be due to his usual mincing
utterance. Palsgrave however distinctly notices it, and to
this must «be due the orthographies aum, aun, which are fre
quent at this and an earlier date in English words taken
from the French. In Salesbury we have the example
GALAUNT, galawnt (gal'aunt), and he particularly says that
" A in the British .... is never souwded like the diphthong
au as the Frenchmen sounde it in commyng before m or n in
their tongue." Levins, 1570, spells daunce, glaunce, launce,
praunce, vaunt, but he is not fond of the orthography, which
seldom occurs. The pronunciation of such words is still marked
by many speakers, (p. 147,) and although some, especially
ladies, say (dams, glaens, leens, praens, vaent), others lengthen
the vowel at least to (daeaens) etc., while many say (dans,
glans, lans, prans, vant), and others lengthening this vowel
say (daans) etc., and the intermediate sounds (dahns, daahns,)
are not unfrequent ; but although some say (vAAnt), no one
perhaps will now be heard to say (dAAns, prAAns).
In the combination -nge, although we have the u inserted
in Chaucer's time, a peculiar thinness seems to have been in
troduced by the -gc, for Salesbury gives ORANGES, oreintsys
(oraindzbj'z), (p. 120,) and Butler says that before -nge, a is
1 See also the passage quoted supra p. 126, and the observations upon it.
CHAP. III. § 4. M, N, NG — XVI TH TO XVIII TH CENTURY. 191
pronounced as ai, (ai) or occasionally (ee), as in change, range,
danger, stranger, words which retain the evidence of this pro
nunciation in the modern form (tshmndzh, radndzh, deein-
dzh'J, strmndzh'-i). The last word is said to exist in America
under the form (stratitndzh'j) .
As to om, on, the English as we have seen, p. 150, heard (um,
un). In the older English, in which, as we see from Palsgrave
and Bullokar, ou was pronounced (uu), we consequently find
oum, oun = (uum, uun) for these sounds, and these became
(oum, oun) in accented and (um, un) in unaccented syllables
in the xvi th century. Hence the final (un) of Salesbury in
CONBICYON, condisywn (kondismn) ; EXHIBITION, ecsibisiwn
(eksibisi,un) ; PROHIBITION, proibisiicn (proo,ibisi,un). To the
way in which Palsgrave heard o pronounced in French even
before ne, we may attribute Salesbury 's (truun) for throne.
We have also in the xvi th century a distinct recognition of
the vocal ('m, 'n) constituting a syllable. Bullokar has even
separate signs for them, an accented m, n.
The guttural nasal (q) seems to have been the regular pro
nunciation of ng in English, but it was not recognized as a
simple sound by the older writers. There is a difficulty in
pronouncing the true dental (n) before (k, g) so that nk was
commonly written for (qk) or (qhk) as Mr. Melville Bell,
among others, thinks the sound should be more correctly
written, and ng for either (q) or (qg), as in singer, linger
(se'q'J, 1/q'gj). This was observed by the Latin Grammarians.
Nigidius, quoted by Aulus Gellius, lib. xix. cap. 14, says :
"Inter literam N et G est alia vis ; ut in nomine anguis et angaria
et ancorce et increpat et incurrit et ingenuus. In omnibus enim his
non verum N, sed adulterinum ponitur. Nam K non esse, lingua
indicio est. Nam si ea litera esset; lingua palatum tangeret."
Nigidius appears to have considered this n to be g, or
perhaps only related to g. The Greeks wrote 77, <ytc, yx for
(qg, qk, qkh) and we find gg in Gothic, but it is not easy to
separate (q) from (qg) and we may perhaps assume that
(qg) was the older form in all cases. This would at any
rate account for no special symbol having been assigned to
(q), in most languages. It exists in Sanscrit ^ but few
Sanscrit transliterators think it necessary to provide a sepa
rate symbol for it. In recent English (q) occurs frequently
as a final, did it so occur in early English ? This is a
difficult question to answer, when we consider the practice
of modern Germany, because the present pronunciation of
German and Dutch being less altered than English, repre
sents an earlier stage of English pronunciation. Now
192 M, N, NG — XVI TH TO XVIII TH CENTURY. CHAP. III. § 4.
according to Rapp ng is (qg) when final, and (q) when
medial over the greater part, especially the North, of Ger
many. Hence Stinger Gesang would be (szeq'er gezaqg').
Practically, however, as final (g) is very difficult for Germans
to pronounce, they use (qk) so that Gesang Dank rhyme as
(gezaqk* daqk).1 This is not the case in central Germany,
where (q) final is common, and where therefore (gezaq*
daqk) do not rhyme. Even in England many speakers con
fuse thing, think under (tht'qk), but this seems to be an
exceptional word.
Gill appears to be the first writer who recognises (q) as a
separate element. He says, leaving his notation unaltered :
"N in illis fliteris] est quas nihil mutare diximus : at si k, aut g,
sequatur paulum mimienda est nostra sententia : neqwe enim (si
accurate expendas) plane ita profertur in thank et think quemad-
modum pronunciatur in hand manus, et non NONE nullus. Sed
ne adeo nasutuli videamur ut nihil vetustate rancidum ferre possi-
mus : quia k, ibi clare auditur, nee congruum esse reor quicquam
veritati propinquum immutare ; monuisse tantum volui, sed te in-
vito non monuisse tamen. At si g subsequatur vt in thing res et
song canticum; quia sonus literae g ibi nullus est, at semivocalis
plane alia quae ab n non minus distat quam m ; literae ng. una erit
ex illis compositis, quibus fas esse volui sonum simpKcem indi-
care, ut in sing canta, et among inter, hue etiam refer ilia in quibus
g, ab n, ratione sequentis liquidae quodammodo distrahitur, a spangl
nitella, tu intangl implicare."
Hence he said (sz'q, amoq', a spaq'g'l, tu mtaq'g'l) according
to the present usage of ng. It would appear therefore that
we are justified in adopting this usage from at least the
xvi th century, and, in the uncertainty which cannot be
dispelled, it will be safest to adopt it also from the earliest
times that English became distinct from Anglosaxon, although
the North German custom may have been that of Anglo-
Saxon itself, namely to call ng = (qg) when final, and (q)
when medial.
Gill names (q) as a bad pronunciation of the Hebrew #,
which is still heard, being replaced by (gn) when initial, as
Europeans generally find a difficulty in initial (q), although
it is not unfrequent in extra-European languages.1 Sales-
1 Thus Voss in his Minnelied has " Sie trankte dich mit "Rebentrank ;
" Der Holdseligen Und freudig tonte dein Gesang."
Bonder Wank I have not noticed such rhymes in
Sing' ich frohlichen Schiller and Goethe.
Denn die Reine, 2 The vulgar Parisian, however, sap
Die ich meine, (qja pa) for it ny a pns, and the Vien-
Winkt mir lieblichen Haberf«w£." nese porters will call a gentleman (<ri
And again in his address to Luther q««d-n) or (ai qaahd-n) for ever Gnaden.
CHAP. III. §4. L — XVI TH TO XVIII TH CENTURY. 193
bury speaks of the " Latine vocables agnus, magnm, ignis, at
what time they were thus barbarously sounded angnus,
mangnus, ingnis" meaning (aq*nus, maq'nus, e'q'n/s). This
nasalisation of (g) into (q) before the following nasal (n)
seems to have been common in the middle ages, and has
crept into the Latin orthography of the period. Grill in
English gives both (bem'g'n) and (bem'q'n) for benign,1
This (qn) is the regular pronunciation of gn in Modern
Swedish, the poet Tegner being (Teqneer).2
The (qg, qk) are heard in Italian and Spanish, but they
are unknown in French. The older orthography of French
had ng in many cases where the nasal (A) is now heard.
But Meigret does not recognise this, writing n simply in
such cases. The French confuse our (q) with their gn =
(nj) and some Englishmen seem to have fallen into the con
verse error. The Spanish n,3 Portuguese nh, Italian and
French gn, are all (nj), or nearly (nj).
The great opening for the passage of the voice while L is
pronounced and the very slight nature of the vibration of
the sides of the tongue, tend to give it a strongly vocal
character, and not unfrequently the L has been entirely lost
in a vowel sound, produced simply by not bringing the tip
of the tongue close enough to the palate to form a division
of the passage and throw the voice out on both sides. Both
French and English seem to have had a tendency to labialise
(1) into (1«0) after (a, o), that is they rounded the lips either
during the vowel or just as it glided into the consonant.
The Latin alter thus became (al^ter) or (awlwter) felt as
(aolwtre), till the (1) became absorbed, that is, neglected for
convenience, of utterance, thus (aotre), which is Meigret's
1 Strange as the final combination modern Spanish for (Ij). The tilda
(q'n) may seem, there is a well known over the n was merely the usual ab-
London vulgarism in which it is very breviation for the second n. "En los
familiar (zq/'nz) for (gn'raiz) onions. tiempos mas antiguos de nuestra lengua
2 InSjoborg'sSwediseheSprachlehre, se explico con dos nn juntas esta pro-
p. 10, this is the rule laid down, but nunciacion, y algunos se ban persuadido
mogna, tagne, stagne are said exception- a que la tilde sobre la n, como hoy se
ally to preserve the (g) and in logn the usa, se introduxo para denotar la otra
sound is (loein). The irregularity of n que se omitia, al modo que la tilde
Swedish orthography as compared with puesta sobre las vocales se uso fre-
pronunciation is considerable, shewing qiientemente en lugar de n." Orto-
a great alteration of pronunciation in grafia de la Lengua Castellana, com-
the comparatively short period since puesta par la Real A.cademia Espaiiola.
the orthography was established. 7th ed. Madrid 16mo, 1792, p. 64.
3 In old Spanish nn, just as II is the
13
194 L — XVI TH TO XVI1ITH CENTURY. CHAP. III. § 4.
form, and finally (ootr'), the modern form. In England
(alw) became felt as (aul) or (awlw) and this degenerated
into (A A!), perhaps through (aul). Finally when a conso
nant followed, it was more convenient to leave out the (1),
and the lazy or the nimble tongue, as usual, took the most
convenient or shortest road, and (1) disappeared. The Scotch
even lost it without a following consonant as (!CAA A A) for
(kAAl, AA!). The passage was perhaps (talk, talw?k, taulwk,
tauk, tawk, tAAk). Whether (tAAlk) was ever said, except by
Gill's "docti interdum" is more than doubtful.
Similarly after (oo) we had (oolw?d, ooulwd, could) or
(ooul). In this case the (1) was not generally absorbed, but
we have provincially (ood) for old.
Salesbury says that in the English calme, call, the a " is
thought to decline toward the sound of the diphthong au."
Again : " o in Welsh going before //, soundeth nothing
more boystous, that is to say, that it inclineth to the sound
of the diphthong ou (as it doth in English) no more than if
it had gone before any other letter." "L hath no nother
difference in souwd in Welsh than in Englysh. And note
that it neyther causeth a nor o when they come before it, to
sound anye more fuller in the mouth, than they do else
where sounde, commyng before anye other letter." " Some
times a has the sounde of the diphthong aw especially when
it precedes / or //, as may be more clearly seen in these
words : BALDE bawld (bauld) calvus, BALL, bawl, (baul) pila ;
WALL wawl (waul) murus." " 0 also before Id or // is pro
nounced as though w were inserted between them, thus
COLDE, cowld (kould) frigidus, BOLLE bowl (boul), TOLLE iowl
(toul) vectigal." " In some districts of England //is sounded
like w, thus boicd (booud) for BOLD, bw (buu) for BULL, caw
(kau) for CALL. But this pronunciation is merely a provin
cialism, and not to be imitated unless you wish to mince like
these blunderers." But this did not arise from mincing, but
from broadening. The mincer, so far from dropping the
front of the tongue from the palate, raises the middle part
and produces (Ij) which degenerates into (i), as in Modern
French. The effect of / which Salesbury names is generally
recoWized and exists to this day in the modified form of
(A A) ibr (au) and (oou) for (oou) or (ou). The sound (ou)
is however, heard in (ould) Ireland, either in its genuine
form (bu) or its modified form (au) at the present day.
Buchanan> -in the xvm th century wrote (sauld, kauld, bauld,
skauld, tould, nauld, sauld'j/r) for sold, cold, bold, scold, told,
hold, soldier. v Sheridan did not imitate him, but scrupulously
CHAP. III. §4. L — XVI TH TO XVIII TH CENTURY. 195
used (001) and notes (bAuld, kAuld) as Irishisms for (boold,
koold), in which again the Irish were only following the
fashion of the English in the xvn th century.
Salesbury recognized ('!) or prolonged (1) as forming a syl
lable by itself in ABLE, SABLE, TWYNCLE, WRYNCLE, writing
abl, sabl, twinkl, wrinkl = (aa'b'l, saa'b'l, tw/q'k'l, wn'q'k'l).
In this he is fully borne out by all subsequent writers. Hart
and Bullokar have special signs for ('!). Hart considers it
to be the -same as the Welsh II, (Ihh) which is the reason
why he provides it with an especial character. He says
"Wee haue farther the 1, aspired lyke to the Spanishe and
Walsh1 often vse of the 11, which maketh the .xij. dumbe or dull
sounde, but we vse it not that I know of, at the beginning of
any words as they do : but often at thend of words, as in this
sentence, the bedle is hable to fable. Where we wrest the e,
which is but closely or (as it were) nalfe sounded : wherfore we
may with, as smal cost and labour, as of tbe rest, vse a fit figure
for it: and neuer neede to vse the 11, or Ih, and for the reasons
abouesaid not to abuse tbe h."
Smith says :
"Qui nescit quid sit esse semivocalem ex nostra lingua facile
poterit discere, ipsa enim litera L quandam quasi vocalem in se
videtur continere, ita ut juncta mutse sine vocali sonum. faciat, ut (aabl)
habilis, (staabl) stabilis, (faabl) fable, &c ; alii abil stabil fabil, alii
abul stabul fabul scribunt, sed ne quicquam pronuntiant ; nam con-
sideratius auscultanti nee e nee i nee u est, sed tinnitus quidam
vocalis naturam babens, quee naturaliter his liquidis inest. In
omnibus bis quidam e addunt in fine, vt able, stable, fable : sed
certb illud e non tarn sonat bic quam fuscum illud et foemininum
Francorum e? nam ne quicquam sonat."
1 Like Salesbury lie confuses the to draw the distinction. In the same
Spanish (Ij) with the Welsh (Ihh). way I have represented the final -e in
2 This is a recognition of an oh- Chaucer by (e), as doubtful. Eapp con-
scurely sounded final French e, the pre>- tinues : "Yet where the syllable nen with
sent (a), in the xvi th century, agreeing double n results, (nsnen) nennen is dis-
with Palsgrave but disagreeing with tinctly pronounced." Eapp writes (nsn-
Meigret. In the same way most Ger- nen) owing to his custom of doubling
mans call their e final in eine gule Gabe the consonant after a stopped vowel,
a fine (e), and very many Englishman "To exhaust what I have to say about
would call it (»). Eapp, Physiologic the unaccented e, observe that the first
der Sprache, vol. iv. p. 16, says (trans- e is taken as the natural vowel in the
lating the passage for convenience) : termination enen, (gefalanen) gefallenen,
" Short (e) only occurs unaccented, as or else elided. The natural vowel is
(be, ge, Ende), be,ge,ende, doubtful, half- distinct before M, E, S and T, (aatam,
mute, or, when heard, with a faint nasal faatar, guutas, bEEtat) at hem, va(ert
in en (gEEben) geben. On account of yutes, betet, foreign names as (mooses)
the uncertainty we generally prefer the of course excepted ; custom varies in
orthography (gEEben)." Eapp uses e (juupitar, JuupitEr). The enclitics (ar,
much as the palaeotypic (e), and repre- far, tsar; ar, dar) er, ver, zer ; er, der
sents (E, e) by e, e, but (EE, ee) by a, e. must be mentioned among the (arj.
Generally I have used (e, ee) for his e, The e is always mute before L, as in
a, but in this passage it was necessary all allied languages, as (mit'l, Eq'l)
196 R — XVI TH TO XVIII TH CENTURY. CHAP. III. § 4.
In Bohemian the ('!) is fully recognized, and forms the
, only vocal element in some accented syllables, as wlky
(bh'l'ky) wolves, slza (sTza) a tear. It seems probable that
it was the sound intended to be represented by Sanscrit
^gr ^ = ('1, "1) commonly called (Iri, Irii), unless these were
originally cerebral, as ('L, "L). The modern French do not
possess the sound, but pronounce (tabF) or (tablh), some
times merely (tab'), although their orthoepists write (tabl),
and contend that (1) here forms a syllable by itself. As we
have seen Hart indicates his own pronunciation of final -le
to have been (*lh.)
E
In English at the present day r has at least two sounds,
the first, when preceding a vowel, is a scarcely perceptible
trill with the tip of the tongue (r) which in Scotland, and
with some English speakers, as always in Italy, becomes a
clear and strong trill (.r), but as this is only an accident of
speech, it will not be further noticed, (r) being used indiffer
ently for both. The second English r is always final or pre
cedes a consonant. It is a vocal murmur, differing very
slightly from (a). I seem to hear it occasionally in two
forms, differing nearly as (ce, E) which I represent by (^, a).
As however this distinction is, certainly, by no means always
made, I do not usually mark it. This second (j) may diph
thongise with any preceding vowel. After (a, A, o) the effect
is rather to lengthen the preceding vowel, than to produce a
distinct diphthong. Thus farther, ford, scarcely differ from
father, laud ; that is, the diphthongs (aj, 01) are heard almost
as the long vowels (aa, A. A). That a distinction is made by
many, by more perhaps than are aware of it, is certain, but
it is also certain that in the mouths of by far the greater
number of speakers in the South of England the absorption
of the (j) is as complete as the absorption of the (1) in talk,
mittel, engel, and this should be theo- " The terminations (Eq'ln, shmai&h'ln,
retically the case even when termina- gaab'ln) engeln, schmeic/ieln, gabeln,
tions are added on, although it is then are difficult to pronounce with purity
certainly difficult to continue to make for foreigners and even for Germans,
the vowelless L form a syllable by it- Finally the natural vowel or mute e is
self, as (shmaiWi'1-ai, Eq'1-lEndar, mit'l- generated in popular speech by neg-
lEndish) schtneichelei, engelldnder, mit- lecting ancient terminations as in
tellandisch." This theory is partly (nskar, iizar, ruud'lshtat, iq'lshtat,
wrong, for the vocal ('!) being only a doktar, profiesar) and among the un-
lengthened (1) = (11) is naturally short- educated even in (jeesus, jeena, goota)."
ened before a vowel, as (steerb'l, siee-- This passage is interesting as serving
blt'q ; fid-'l, ft'd'la) ; so it should be in to shew the state of a language in
German (shmaiythlai), but in fact which the final e is in a transition state.
(shmaiJfchelai) is said. Rapp continues : See supra p. 119, note, col. 2.
CHAP. III. § 4. R — XVI TH TO XVIII TH CENTURY. 197
walk, psalm, where it has also left its mark on the preceding
vowel. When Dickens wrote Count Smorl Tork he meant
Small Talk, and no ordinary reader would distinguish be
tween them. But in (ai, oa) proper, there is a slight change
of lingual position generating a glide, and consequently Mr.
M. Bell represents the effect by a glide character especially
invented for the purpose, which he terms the " point glide "
and describes " as a semivocalized sound of (r)." The diph
thongs (eJ, ai) are very difficult to separate from each other
and from (aa). But the slight raising of the point of the
tongue will distinguish the diphthongs from the vowel
in the mouth of a careful speaker, that is, one who trains
his organs to do so. No doubt the great majority of
speakers do not make any difference, and I think that the
best representation of these sounds is the simple (j) or ('j),
which is in this respect wholly comparable to the ('!) already
discussed. It seems to be an indistinct murmur, differing
from ('!) by not having any contact between the tongue and the
palate, but similar to it, in absorbing a variety of other vowels.
The following is a comparison of my notation of this mur
mur (a) and its various diphthongs, with Mr. M. Bell's.
The (j) character will express Mr. Bell's glide, and (aw) its
labialised form, as in Introduction, p. 15. The examples
have been taken from Visible Speech, pp. 113-116.
BELL ELLIS. EXAMPLES.
ai j word, journey, fwmish = (wid, dzLnri) &c.
CT a paper, circuitous, answer, martyr = (peep 'i) &c.
aii aii fire, lyre, choir = (fail, laii, kwaii)
ai'r aiir wVry, fiery = (wairra, fairn')
am auj hour, power = (aiu, pauj)
ai«0 auj ourselves = (auiselvz*)
au'r, aur auir dowery, noweiy, showery = (daum',flaurw')&c.
rti aaa hard, clerk, heart, guard = (naaad, klaaik) &c.
aa ai barbarian == (baibearraim)
ahi i alter, grammar, particular = (AAl'ti) &c.
a'r, aar aar starry, tarry (adjective) = (staa'n, taai*')
aoi J,, i prefer, earnest, firm, myrrh, guerdon= (pril/')&c
ij iia near, heer, here, we're, pier = (niii, biia) &c.
i'r iiir aerie, era, weary, peeress = (iirra?, iii'rB) &c.
ea eej care, aer, pair, Ayr, prayer (petition), there,
hear, ne'er, their, eyre, mare = (keej) &c.
eei mayor = (meea)
eexr canary, fairy, therein, bearing =(kenee.rn), &c.
AAI war, ward, swarm, dwarf = (WAAI, wAAjd) &cv
uui poor, moor, tour, attre = (puui, muua, tuui) &c.
utur- poorer, swrer, asswring, towrist = (puiu'ri) &c.
iui cure, pure, endure, immwr* = (kiui, puu) &c.
198 R — XVI TH TO XVIII TH CENTURY. CHAP. III. § 4.
' BELL. ELLIS. EXAMPLES.
•ra'r iuir fury, -purer, enduring = (fiurn, piurri) &c.
iui iiu lure, allwre = (Imi, Blmr)
iu'r iuir Iwrid, allwring = (liuj'n'd, Blitu'nq)
01 ooi, ooi boar, o'er, door, floor, borne, torn, sore, corps,
•pour, towrnament, towards = (booi booi) &c.
o'r OOJT, OOJT glory, soaring, powring = (glooj'n, glooi'r* ) &c.
01 ooi, AAJ extraordinary, George, order, born =(boom) &c.
ohi i spectator, tailor, razor, orator = (spektee'ti) &c.
uj j, iiu azure, fisswre, measwre, seizwre = (eezh'i) &c.
• JT7i im, ji nature, feature, stature = (n^'tiujt neet'JJL) &c.
It will be observed that Mr. Bell has not marked a long
vowel in many places where I have marked one. His
general habit is not to distinguish the length of the first
element in diphthongs. Simple r is used in ordinary spell
ing, after long vowels, for the combination (ar), or ('r) as
Mr. Bell prefers writing. This combination is very peculiar
in English ; compare dear, deary, mare, Mary, more, glory,
poor, poorer, with the French dire, dirai, mere, mairie, Maure,
aurai, tour, Touraine.
The Scotch do not use (i) at all, but only (r) or rather
(.r), saying (ward, serf, sarf, karv) word, serf, surf, carve.
In Italy (.r) is constant, in France and a great part of
Germany (r) is pronounced in lieu of (r). Could it be to this
sound that Palsgrave alluded when he said :
" R in the frenche tonge shalbe sounded as he is in latyn without
any exception, so that, where as they of Parys do sounde somtyme
r lyke z, sayeng pazys for parys, pazisien for parisien, chaize for
chayre, mazy for mary, and suche lyke, in that thyng I wolde not
have tbem Mowed, albeit that in all this worke I moost folowe the
Parisyens."
Certainly z would be the nearest character by which, with
out explanation, he could have given a conception of the true
r grasseyt ou pro venial, the French (r), which is not unlike
ti e Arabic (grh),1 and the Northumberland burr. The last
is often confused by southerns with (g), (Hagrh'iet) Harriet
sounding to them like (Haeg'iet). The Spanish r suave is (r),
with no more trill than in English, but the r fuerte is, ac
cording to Mr. M. Bell, the usual (.r), but according to M.
Favarger, (.r), a sharp uvula rattle without any moisture.8
1 The French razzia (razia) is a cor- remo, rico, romo, rueda ; after /, «, *
ruption of the Arabic x\\e. (grhazaat-V *lway8' , M «?'«*»•» «"'«««^. *«•»«»,
> Israel, desreglado ; m compounds, where
2 See Ortografia de la lengua Cas- the second part begins with r ; and
tellana compuesta por la real Academia where rr is written as barra, carro. In
Espanola, 7th ed. Madrid, 1792, p. 70, other cases the soft r (r) is to be pro-
where the strong r (.r) is said to occur, nounced.
at the beginning of words as razon,
CHAP. III. §4. R — XVI TH TO XVIII TH CENTURY. 199
No allusion to more than one sound of r is found in any of
the older writers except Ben Jonson, yet it can hardly be sup
posed that even if the northerners have retained (r), the com
plicated (r, J, Jr) system could have grown up in a single
century in the South. For the old wr- (TW), see p. 187.
1547. SALESBURY has the following words which are now
pronounced with (j), the old spelling being in small capitals
and the phonetic Welsh in italics.
PAPYR papyr, QUARTER kwarter, SYR syr, TRESTJRE tresuwr, YERTUE
vertuw, CHURCHE tsurts, LADDER lad-dr, BLADD' blad-dr, EMPEROTTRE
emperwr, EFERMORE efermwor, THONDRE thwndr, WONDRE wndr, STJFFRE
swffffer, GYLBERT Gilbert, GYNGER tsintsir, HONOFRE onor.
Here we find the unaccented syllable er or ir represented
by the Welsh er, yr, ir, and finally simple r. This points out
to an indistinct murmur, where the writer tries first one
vowel sound and then another and finally gives them all up
in despair, and trusts to the simple consonant (r) as best re
presenting the sound. Now in Bohemian (r) is recognized
as sufficient to form even an accented syllable, as srna a roe,
zrno kernel, trn thorn, dm turf, chrt greyhound. I do not
know whether the sound is here (j) or ('r), but as Ziak (Boh-
mische Sprachlehre) compares it with the German termination
-er, which Rapp (supra p. 194, note) declares to be (ar), it
will be safest to consider it as ('r) or ('.r), though even the
Germans are apt to fall into the convenient (i) final. The
examples from Salesbury would therefore lead us to conclude
that ('r) was sufficiently common in English of the xvi th
century, but would not allow us to assume either that the
syllables he writes er, yr, «>, r were (i), or that every final r
was (j) and middle r (ar).
1569. HART says of / m n r that they are " rightly vsed
in sounde when they be single."
1580. BULLOKAR, who has especial signs for ('1, 'm, Jn),
has none for ('r) or (a), writing (foormer, dheer, aar,
severawl, letterz, figyyrz,) for former, there, are, several,
letters, figures.
1621. GILL says : " aeri fere trissyllabum est ; earl mobilis ; apud
alios enim diphthongus valet, hie erl auditur, illic erl."
Here some tinge of ('r) or (i) seems to come into play,
(a'ri, e'rl, eerl). Gill also writes (fbi'er) fire, and complains
that they say (fir) in place of (fai'er) in the East of England.
But the Germans also write feuer (fayer, foyr, foir), and this
does not imply (i).
1653, WALLIS and 1668, WILKINS have no allusion to (j).
200 R — XVI TH TO XVIII TH CENTURY. CHAP. III. § 4.
If it was then heard it was possibly considered to be an
erroneous utterance not worth naming.
1685. COOPEB says : " Verba Anglicana & latina derivativa quae in
origine scribuntur cum er scribimus item er, pronunciamus autem
ur (ar), non quia sic proferri debet, sed quia propter liter® r vibra-
tionem vix aliter efferri potest ; ut adder coluber, prefer praefero,
slender tenuis."
Here the mention of the vibration excludes (j) and insists
on (ar) or ('r). Cooper proceeds to give lists of such words
with final (ar) spelled -ar, -er, -ir, -or, and even -ure, shewing
that he pronounced -ture as (-tar) in adventure, juncture,
lecture, nature, pasture, picture, rapture, scripture, etc., which
are vulgarisms at present under the form (-ti), although in
figure, injure, measure the (j) is common (fVg'J, m'dzha,
mezh'j). Cooper also says : " r sonatur post o in apron
gremiale, citron citreum, environ circundo, gridiron craticula,
iron ferrum, saffron crocus ; quasi scriberentur op-urn, &c,"
almost as at present.
1688. MIEGE also says of r, " en certains mots la voyelle qui la
suit se prononce devant, comme en here, sire, spire, hundred, apron,
citron, saffron, iron;"
but this can only point to (ar) or ('a) after what Cooper has
said. Jones identifies the sounds of er, ur, referring from
the latter to the former, and making both co-extensive with
the modern (i), but he does not help us to determine the
double power of r.
1640. BEN Joxsox says: "B is the Dogs letter, and hurreth in
the sound; the tongue striking the inner palate, with a trembling
about the teeth. It is sounded firme in the beginning of the words,
and more liquid in the middle, and ends : as in rarer, viper, and so
in the Latine."
This seems to imply that a difference was made so early as
the end of the xvi th and beginning of the xvn th century.
The precise meaning of the vague terms firm and more liquid
cannot of course be assigned. But probably firm meant
more consonantal and liquid more vocal, so that something
like the difference between (r) and (j) is indicated. The
reference to the Latin is of no value, as it was only to its
English pronunciation.
WALKER, 150 years later, refers to this passage and says :
" The rough r is formed by jarring the tip of the tongue against
the roof of the mouth near the fore teeth : the smooth r is a vibra
tion of the lower 'part of the tongue, near the root, against the
inward region of the palate near the entrance of tbe throat. This
latter r is that which marks tbe pronunciation of England, and tbe
former that of Ireland."
CHAP. III. § 4. R — XVI TH TO XVIII TH CENTURY. 201
But he does not proceed to point out where the rough and
smooth r were pronounced, and his description of the smooth
r better agrees with a gently pronounced (r) or (grh), the
uvula trill, than with (j). The theory of a vibration of the
back or lower part of the tongue is untenable ; that part of
the tongue is too firm to vibrate in the manner conceived.
And in England we do not perceptibly vibrate the uvula.
SMART, who has entered into the consideration of (i) more
than any preceding writer, calls (j) a " guttural vowel
sound." He says of (r) that " it is formed by a strong trill
of the tongue against the upper gum," to which it may be
objected, first, that the trill is gentle in English, and, secondly,
that the tongue vibrates freely, near, but not striking the
upper gum. For (a) he says, "there is no trill, but the
tongue being curled back during the progress of the vowel
preceding it, the sound becomes guttural, while a slight
vibration of the back part of the tongue is perceptible in the
sound." Now I do not find the tongue to be "curled back,"
altho; gh it passes from the preceding vowel to the (j) position,
and I find no vibration of the back of the tongue, though
vibration of the velum may occasionally be felt, and some
persons may more or less vibrate the uvula.
On account of the resemblance of (i) to (a), a sound to
which all unaccented vowels approximate in the mouths of
of many southern speakers, and also because when (j) is
followed by a vowel, it is usual to interpose (r) thus (uee.rn,
Hii-rnq), hairy, hearing, illiterate speakers — those who either
do not know how to spell, or ignore the rules of spelling in
their speech — usually interpose an (r) between any back
vowel, as (a, A, a) and a subsequent vowel, thus (drAA*r?'q,
lAAr o-dha-leend, wmder 8 dhi ,aeus) for (drAA'/q, IAA ov dhe
laend, wm'do ov dhe naus) drawing, law of the land, window of
the house. From this habit, a very singular conclusion has
been commonly drawn by a great many people, namely,
that such persons habitually say (drAAr, lAAr, wm'dar)
when not before a vowel, — a feat which they are mostly
incapable of performing. They will indeed rhyme ivindow,
cinder, not because they say (wm'dar sm'der) as generally
assumed, with the trilled (r), but because they say (wziida
smda) or (wm'dj snrdi), omitting to trill the r in both cases.
Another point on which Smart insists is the distinction
between serf, surf, which Mr. M. Bell writes (saojf, sa-if ), and
I write either (s./f, sjf) by preference, or (self, saaf), or else,
sinking the distinction, as is far the commonest practice, write
(sif) for both words. A distinction of course can be made,
202 R — XVI TH TO XVIII TH CENTURY. CHAP. III. $ 4.
and without much difficulty, by those who think of it, and is
made by those who have formed a habit of doing so ; but the
distinction is so rarely made as to amount almost to pedantry
when carefully carried out, like so many other distinctions
insisted on by orthoepists, but ignored by speakers whose
heart is in the thought they wish to convey, not in the
vehicle they are using. Smart, notwithstanding the pains
he has bestowed on this subject, finds that the words payer,
player, slayer, which are dissyllables = (pee',x p\ee-,x, s\ee',i),
rhyme perfectly with care, fair, hair, share, which are mono
syllables = (keei, feei, Heei, sheej) with a different vowel.
The action of the ('!) in altering the preceding (a) into (au)
and thence into (AA) has already been noticed. It is always
the tendency of two sounds combined in rapid succession, to
generate some alterations in one or both, or to fuse themselves
into some new sound (p. 52). This is very marked with (a).
It is now not customary to pronounce (ee) or (00) before (i) .
Such words as (meet, mooi) have a very peculiar effect, either
antiquated or illiterate, and are replaced by (meei, mooi)
mare, more. Mr. M. Bell considers that (uu) is in like
manner altered to (uu). This is certainly often the case, but
(puuj) for (puux) has no singularity in it. We certainly do
not change (ii) into (ii) and say (iu) for (iij) ear.1 It is pro
bably this action of the (i) which has preserved the sound
of (a) so that art, part are not (seat, pae.it) but (ait, paat) or
(aa.it, paa.it) or simply (aat, paat). Indeed, in ordinary
spelling, many writers now habitually use ar to indicate the
sound (aa), in the same way as they use of to represent (AA) ;
(p. 197). At the same time (ser, aeaer) were certainly prevalent
in the xvn th century, and are fossilized in America.
How far all these effects are modern, or how far they were
heard even in Ben Jonson's time, I have been quite
unable to determine. But as (r) may still be said, and
is still used by Irishmen and Scotchmen (implying an
older form of English) and, carefully inserting (') or (a),
is even now used by many Englishmen without giving
offence to the ear (ii'r, iiar), it is certainly safer to
assume that there was formerly only one sound of (r),
but that a murmur (') was generally inserted before it
when following a vowel. In my transcriptions, however,
I have been obliged to omit this theoretical (') for which
I have no proper authority.
1 But observe the Norwich street cry, p. 138, note, col. 1.
CHAP. III. § 4. p, B. T, D. C, K, Q. G. CH. J. 203
P,B. T,D. C,K,Q. G. CH. J.
The pronunciation of P,B does not seem to have varied in
any respect.
T,D have now a tendency, ignored by most orthoepists,
under particular circumstances to pass into (tsh, dzh) ; thus
nature, verdure are, perhaps most frequently, pronounced
(nee'tshj, v-rdzhi), the last word being in that case identified
with verger. This alteration takes place generally through
the action of a palatal sound, originally (yy), then (iu, ju) so
that the transition was (-tyyr, -tiur, -trui, -tjj, -tshi). I
have not found traces of the change however, but the pro
nunciation (nee'ii) or its equivalent given by Jones seems to
shew an effort to avoid it by omitting the palatal element (j) .
In the xvni th century Sheridan carried this still further and
allowed for such pronunciations as (tshuut'ai) for tutor. The
palatals (i, j) have always had a great effect upon preceding
consonants of the dental and guttural class, as they tend to
materially alter the position of the tongue, in order to facili
tate the transition to a following vowel. The languages de
rived from the Latin are full of instances. It is a fashion in
modern English to resist, or to believe that we resist, this ten
dency in the especial case of -ture and -dure, but we have
given into it completely in -tion, where the t, hesitating in
classical times between c and t, underwent a change which
gave (-sioA) in French, whence in English, first (-sum) and
then (-shan), — never, except in orthoepical fancies, (-shon), —
and in Italian produced (-tsitmh'ne). A similar change is re
cognized in -cious, -cial. And it is in vain to protest against
-ture, -dure becoming (-tshj, -dzh-i), at a time when even
(,-tjwi, -djza), though far less pedantic than (-tiuj, -diuj),
have a singularly orthoepistic effect.
C, G also underwent a similar change, not from the action
of an (i) sound, but paradoxically, as it might appear, through
the action of a following (a) sound. The letter k is not much
used as an initial in English and hence the observation refers
in spelling to c but in sound to (k). It would be interesting
to know when the English began to introduce an (i) sound
between (k, g) and an (a) sound. There is no trace of it in
orthoepists, but there are traces of it in a very early stage of
our language, in the Anglosaxon orthography, and there are
traces of final (k, g), especially after (1, n, r) having been also
palatalized to (k, g). The word church, now (tsh-itsh), but
previously (tshertsh) if we may trust Salesbury's Welsh tran-
204 P,B. T,D. C,K,Q. G. CH. J. CHAP. III. § 4.
scription tsiurts, is an excellent example. The Anglosaxon
forms are circ, ciric, cyric, circe, cyricea, the Greek being
KvpiaKov, which in the present Greek pronunciation, pre
valent certainly in all its main points when the word was
transplanted into Anglosaxon, is called (kiriakon*), and the
word (kirik) or (kirk) probably arose * from omitting one or
two of the intermediate vowels. Ormin's kirrke = (kirk'e)
and the Scotch kirk (kerk, ke.rk), shew the unpalatalized
form. That the initial consonant should have yielded to the
following (i) was to be expected, and although in modern
high German we have kirche (kir&lre), the old high German
often shewed an initial ch = (kh) or perhaps (kh), a palatal,
although it possibly meant the upper German initial (kn).
The final k in this word is palatalised in modern German, for
it is (kh) and not (kh), and it is to. be remarked that the
Germans always use (kh) and not (kh) after (1 n r) shewing
the tendency of Germanic languages to this palatalisation.
The transitional form between (kirk) and (tshirtsh) was (kirk).
From (k) to (tsh) seems a great stride. Yet there is no doubt
that the passage was accomplished in Italian, where every
(tsh) results from a palatal (k), and every (sh) from a palatal
(sk) precisely as in English. In modern Greek KOI, properly
(ke), becomes (ke, ki, tshi) in various dialectic pronunciations.
In Sanscrit also there can be no doubt that the palatal series
^ 15 «I fj ^ were originally (k kiL g gs. q} although they
are said to be now (tsh tshn dzh dzhn nj).2 This is not
the only change of the palatised (k). The older French seem
to have generally palatalized the Latin c before a, as (&)
from campus, whence afterwards (shamp, shaA), (p. 53). But
the change was often first into (s), whence (sh) became evolved
by a further action of an (i) sound, so oceanus, ocean, ocean
(o#e-anus, oseaA, oo'sh'en).
In pronouncing (j) the middle of the tongue is arched up
against the palate ; while for (k) the back, and for (t) the
tip of the tongue only come in contact with the palate.
When then (kj) or (to) come together rapidly, the first
change is to produce (kj) and (tj). By (kj) is meant pre
cisely the same as (kj. The latter is generally the more
convenient notation, but the former seems more suitable for
the present discussion. For (kj) there is an attempt to pro-
1 There is a possibility that eire is remain ; few Englishmen would detect
not of Greek origin, see Graff, iv, 481, the difference between (nj) and (q) that
Dieffenbach's Goth. Wort., ii, 450. is (qj), and some mispronounce the
This however will not affect the de- French gn as (q). The sound (nj) be-
rivatives of the Anglosaxon. longs to a series (tj tjn dj djn nj), not
2 It is very possible that (q) may developed in Sanscrit.
CHAP. III. § 4. P,B. T,D. C,K,Q. G. CH. J. 205
nounce (k) and (j) simultaneously. Hence the back of the
tongue still remaining in contact with the palate, the middle
of the tongue is also raised, so that both back and middle
lie against the palate. This is rather a constrained position,
and consequently the back of the tongue readily drops.
The result is the exact position for (tj) which, originating in
an attempt to sound (t) and (j) simultaneously, brought the
tip and middle of the tongue to the palate, and this being
almost an impossible position dropped the tip. The two
consonants (kj, tj) are therefore ready to interchange. The
passage from (tj) to (tsh) is very short and swift, so much so
that many writers, as Wallis, have considered (tsh) to be
really (tj).1 But the organs of different speakers have dif
ferent tendencies, and in some (s) or (sh) are more readily
evolved than (tsh) from (tj). It must be remembered that
when the sound is thus spoken of as changing, it is not meant
that it changes in the mouth of a single man from perfect (k)
to perfect (tsh). Quite the contrary. It probably required
many generations to complete the change, and the transi
tional forms were possibly in use by intermediate genera
tions. From these must be excluded all intentional, that is,
artificial inorganic changes, such as those induced by modern
orthoepists. The (s, sh, tsh) were all imperfect attempts at
imitating (tj), a sound which is said to have remained stable
in the Hungarian language where it is written ty, while its
congener (dj) is written gy, Magyar being called (Madjvzr).
The reason why (k) should have been palatalized to (kj)
after (l,n,r) is not so clear, but the example of the modern
high German milch, manch, durch (mil&h, man&h, dur/ch)
shews that the tendency is a reality not an hypothesis, and
enables us to understand milch as well as milk ags. mile,
meolc ; bench as well as bank, ags. bane ; drench ags. drencan
as well as drink ags. drincan, stark and starch ags. stearc,
mark and march a border, ags. mearc. Chaucer interchanges
werk, werch, etc., to suit his rhyme. It would seem there
fore that about this time there was a great tendency in the
two sounds to fall into one another. The close connection
also of the sounds of (k, tsh) naturally suggested the related
signs c, ch, a notation early adopted. And as (sk) became
1 Wallis says : " Ajiglorum ch vel syan-syer, at si prseposuerit t, d for-
tch sonat ty . . . Si voci Anglicanae yew mabit Anglorum changer, hoc est, tyan-
taxus sigillatim prseponantur d, t, *, z dyer." There is no doubt of the
fiunt dyew, tyew, syew, zyew, hoc est, readiness with which the first sounds
Anglorum Jew Judaeus, chew mastico, generate the second, but the. two are
shew ostendo, et Gallorum jeu lusus. quite distinct, and a very little practice
Qui syllabis yan, yer pracposuerit s, z enables any one to distinguish them,
formabit Gallorum changer, hoc est,
206 P,B. T,D. C,K,Q. G. CH. J. CHAP. III. § 4.
(skj, stj, sh), the earliest sign for the new sound was sch.
This has been adopted in German where ch by itself has a
different meaning. See also Chap. Y, § 4, No. 1.
But the phenomenon which suggested these remarks,
namely, the palatalisation of (k) before an (a) sound, is dif
ferent. Generally the consonant follows the tendency of the
vowel. A German is so imbued with the tendency of ch to
become (kh, kjh, kwh) according to the preceding vowel,
so used to say (akh, ikjh, aukwh), that his organs would find
(akjh, ikh) an impossibility. But different speakers seem to
have been affected with the very opposite tendency; some
striving to render the consonant thinner, or more palatal, by
inserting an (i) effect, between it and a following (a) sound ;
others avoiding the palatalisation of a consonant before an
(i) sound by the introduction of an (u) sound. The first
would convert (ka) into (kia), whence (kja, kja), the common
Italian schiacciato (skjattshaa'to) effect ; the second change
(ki, ke) into (kwi, kwe) or (kwi, kwe). These tendencies are
carried far beyond these limits in the Sclavonic palatalisation
and the French labialisation of consonants. They are not
widely developed in our own language, and, being inor
ganic, may prevail only partially both in time and place.
In modern Italian both chi and cui (ki, cuui) occur, the
French qui though written with the mark of thickening or
labialisation, is palatalised into (kji) and similarly in all
words where qu precedes a (i, e) sound in French.
As' respects the particular usage, (keat, A-aind, s£a.rlet,
s&ei ; ^-aid, #aid) for cart, kind, scarlet, sky ; guard, guide, it
is now antiquated in English. But in Walker's time it was
so much the custom that he found it " impossible" to pro
nounce garrison and carriage with the pure (g, k), without
any inserted (i) sound. I have however not been able to
find any allusion to this practice in the older writers. The
custom is now dying rapidly out. But we find the same
tendency in other languages. Thus in Modern Greek, I
have been told, that % is always (&h) even before to, a, and
it seems that the Sanscrit sj had the same sound.
What has been said of k applies directly to g, substituting
sonants for mutes, and as (k) produced (tsh), so did (g} pro
duce (dzh). The Anglosaxon g has however usually re
mained (g), and even in several cases, as edge, bridge in which
the change to (dzh) has been made, the (g) is found as a
dialectic form. The alteration of the Anglosaxon g has
generally taken other -directions, which will be considered
under ah.
CHAP. III. § 4. P,B. T,D. C,K,Q. G. CH. J. 207
CH and J, Q- are also (tsh, dzh) when corresponding to
the present French sounds (sh, zh). Palsgrave admits that
French ch .is English (sh), but he makes the French and
English / identical. It is not easy to determine whether in
very old French ch, j were read (tsh, dzh) or (sh, zh). Hart
makes eight pairs of consonants (b p, v f, g k, dzh tsh, d t,
dh th, z s) and two breaths (sh H'). The letters here trans
cribed (dzh, tsh), he identifies with Italian (gi, ci) and the last
with the " High Dutch" tsch, by which their sounds are deter
mined. Then he says, translating his phonetic orthography,
"The French do use the j consonant in a sound which we use
not in our speech, whereof this (sh) serveth for the sister thereof,
with us, as ch doth with them, having no inward sound, and are
both framed with keeping of the tongue from the palate and bring
ing the teeth together, or the one or other lip to his counter teeth,
and thrusting the breath through them with the inward sound for
the French j consonant ; which if we had in use, should make us
the eighth pair. For want whereof the (sh) doth remain to us, a
breath without fellow, which the other seven pairs have. But for want
of that sound, we have four others which the French never use, to
wit of (dzh, tsh) and (dh, th) which are very hard for any natural
French to pronounce : other than such as are -brought up amongst
us somwhat in youth." And again in the theoretical part of his
work, after an elaborate description of (sh) he adds : " For the
felowe of which sh, the French do sounde their g, before e, and i,
and the i. consonant before a, o, and u, and sometimes before e,
and doe neuer sound perfitely our sounds beforesaid for (dzh) &
(tsh), in all their speach."
Hence the French j is fixed as the voiced form of (sh),
that is (zh), as Hart heard it in 1569. Yet Palsgrave,
whose ear was unfortunately by no means delicate, confused
(zh) with (dzh). The Welsh have no (sh,(zh, tsh, dzh), and
are forced to transcribe the two first by si and the two last
by tsi, while they sometimes use si for all four. Thus Sales-
bury transcribes JESU, JOHN, JOYNT by tsiesuw, tsion, tsioynt,
and makes a JACK APE into a (siak ab) in his dictionary.
He admits that the Welsh tsi is as like the English (tsh)
" as brass is to gold," and says of the English " CH, G and i"
(tsh, dzh), that there is " the same likeness between these
three English letters as exists between pewter and silver,
that at first sight they appear very like each other, but on
close examination they differ."
The letters ch when transcribing the Greek % are called
(k), and in the word ache which the Promptorium also writes
aJie, ch has generally the sound of (k). But Hart says :
"We abuse the name of h, calling it ache, which sounde
208 P,B. T,D. C,K,Q. G. CH. J. CHAP. III. § 4.
serueth very well to expresse an headache or some bone ache,"
so that as the name of the letter could only have been
(aatsh), the words imply that ac-ts was also so pronounced.
Bullokar also notes it as (aatsh), and thus, by the very same
collocation bone ache, is confirmed a fancy of John Kemble's,
in pronouncing the line (Tempest, act i., sc. 2, v. 370) :
Till all thy bones with Aches, make thee rore.
It is true Kemble said (^etsh'ez), and therefore erred in
the vowel, though right in the consonant ; and the feeling of
the 0. P. rioters in placarding, " Silence ! Mr. Kemble's
head aitshes," was in so far correct, that it was absurd to
retain a single antique pronunciation in the midst of his
modern sounds.
The initial k according to all the authorities was still
heard in the xvith century before n, as (knoou, knot,
knuk'l) and hence probably initial gn was (gn), as both are
used in present German knochen, gnade (knokh'en, gnaa'de),
but I have not met with an instance of gn. Jones makes
initial gn always (n), but says that initial kn " may be
sounded kn," which was therefore unusual at that time.
Wallis however fifty years before allowed (knou, knyy)
know, knew, and Cooper, strangely enough says : " Kn
sonatur ut hn ; knave nebulo .... quasi hnave &c.," meaning
(nh), but perhaps really simple (n), the aspiration being a
theoretical difference to distinguish initial kn from simple n.
Labialised I or (\w) has already been shewn to have existed
in our language, (p. 193,) but it has died out. Labialised k or
(k«>), the lips being opened simultaneously with the release
of the k contact and not after it, is an ancient element of our
own and probably of many other languages. In Anglosaxon
it is written cic, in Latin qu, which is the form adopted in
English. It is . needless to say that no orthoepist has dis
tinguished (kw, ktt?). Ou properly bears the same relation
to g as qu to k, but as the form of the g remained unchanged,
little attention was paid to it. It does not exist as part of the
Saxon element of our language. Initially it is generally
used superfluously for g. Occasionally it has the sound (gw)
as in language, itself a modern form, anguish, distinguish, &c.
Usage, however, varies, some saying (laeq'g?nydzh, £eq'g^/sh)
and others (laeq'wydzh, aoq'w/sh). The Italian quale, guanto
are apparently (kwuaa'le, g?aian-to). The final -gue for -g
as in tongue, plague is quite a modernism. Ague, also spelled
agwe in the Promptorium, was probably (aa'gyy) or (aa'guu)
from aigne, and hence does not belong to this category.
As we have (kj gj, kw gw), so also to our unacknowledged
CHAP. III. §4. GH XVI TH TO XVIII TH CENTURY. 209
(tj dj) correspond an equally unacknowledged (iw d.w,)
which, written tw dw as in between, twain, twang, twist, twelve,
twirl ; dwindle, dwell, dwarf, have been generally considered
as (tw, dw), but many of those who have thought on pho
netics have been more perplexed to decide whether ic was
here really a vowel (u) or a consonant (w), than in the cor
responding words wean, wain, wist, well, war. The difficulty
is resolved by observing that the opening of the lips is really
simultaneous with the release of the (t, d) contact.
The termination -age is represented as having the sound
(-aidzh) in Salesbury, in damage, heritage, language, all
French words, and this agrees with Palsgrave, supra, p. 120,
note. Smith, Bullokar, Gill, and Butler, however, do not re
cognize this tendency in English, although Butler notes the
similar change of (a) to (ai) before -nge (-ndzh), and both
are confirmed by the modern sounds (-ydzh, -eendzh), of
which the first is a degeneration of (-edzh, -eedzh).
GH
The Anglosaxon alphabet having no especial letter to repre
sent the guttural (kh), the single letter h was used, as in old
High German the double letter hh was employed. As g often
interchanges with h in Anglosaxon, as lagu, lah, law, it is pos
sible that there was a tendency in those times to pronounce
g final or medial as (gh), just as the Upper Germans now do,
and as the Dutch pronounce their g in all positions. At a
later period the Auglosaxon g seems to have become (gh) and
then (j), sounds even now confused by German phoneticians.
Hence 5, which was also written ?, and occasionally printed
z, became the regular sign for (j) till it was supplanted by y.
When, therefore, it was desirable to shew that g retained the
sound of h, that is, (kh), it was natural to write gh in its
place. In the Orrmulum we have all varieties ; fulluhht
pohhtesfit, mihhte are instances of h, doubled merely to shew
that the preceding vowel is short ; ma}], etfwhcer, «jj, twitfess
illustrate the use of j, doubtful whether (<?h) or (j), while
re]hell-boc, folfyhenn shew the use of jA. As in Dutch the g
often sounds (kh) as well as (gh),1 and as the Scotch adopted
the orthography ch, it seems probable that (gh) early ac-
1 Eecent opportunities of hearing (srhep) rather than (skrhep, skh«p).
Dutch pronunciation have convinced The Dutch themselves consider the
me that the Dutch ch, g are rather sound very soft. The Dutch final and
(krh, grh) than simple (kh, gh). But medial sch is pronounced as simple *,
the sounds are so lightly and gently thus vleesch (vices), a modern example
pronounced that they rather resemble of an omitted guttural,
(rh, »•) than (krh, grh), thus schip =
14
210 GH — XVI TH TO XVTIITH CENTURY. CHAP. III. § 4.
quired the sound of (kh) only. But it is by no means
certain. The two sounds (kh, gh) are so easily confused by
those not familiar with them, and may so readily inter
change owing to the nature of the adjoining consonant, and
so few languages have provided for their discrimination, that
we cannot be certain of their not having both existed even
though only one is named. It is the same with (sh, zh), the
latter of which is scarcely ever noticed, so that it is not easy
to say when it first came into use. Even (s, z) are constantly
confused. They both exist in Italian, and have only one
sign s. But only one of them (s) exists in Spanish and
Welsh, having the same sign s. Hence it is impossible to
tell from the orthography gh whether it represented only
(kh), only (gh), or occasionally (kh) and (gh), nor would it
be certain if a Welsh writer, for example, who only knew
(kh) and was not acquainted with (gh), asserted that the
English gh was (kh). Now Salesbury says : "Gh has the
same sound as our ch (kh), except that we sound ch deeper
in the throat and more harshly." The two expressions
" deeper " and " more harshly " might be applied in Sales-
bury's popular language in two ways. For example, (kh) is
deeper than (A'h) and harsher. And (kh) being called 'hard'
in contrast to (gh) ' soft/ (kh) might be esteemed harsher
than (gh) ; or the reverse, when (kh) is a familiar and (gh) a
strange sound. But certainly (kh) would be felt to be much
deeper and harsher than (^h). There is another supposition,
namely, that yh was merely (H'), the simple jerk of the
aspirated breath. In most cases (H, H') are confused, and
the aspirate is considered to be (H'). In my own opinion
(H') is much less frequent than (H), but (H') is occasionally
said when only (H) is intended. Sir T. Smith writes h for
either sound, and this is the general custom of orthoepists.
He also represents gh by h only, saying :
" Scio tauht, niht, fiht & caetera ejusmodi scribi etiam g adjuncta,
vt taught, night, fight, sed sonum illius g quaerant, quibus ita libet
scribere, aures profecto meae nunquam in illis vocibus sonitum rov
g poterant haurire."
This ought to imply that the sound was (H') and that
(taun't, nm't, fiH't) was at that time the pronunciation of
taught, night, fight. Hart at the same time writes lauht, oht
= (lauH't, oH't) for laught, ought. Bullokar has also (liht,
boicht = (Im'tbooun't). But then Gill finds it necessary to
introduce a new sign, namely, h with its stem crossed like a
t, to represent the sound of gh in bought, and says :
"X. ch. GrsDCorum in initio nunquam vsurpamus, in medio, ct
CHAP. III. § 4. GH — XVI TH TO XVII1TH CENTURY. 211
fine saepe ; et per gh, male expriminms : posthac sic (kh) 1 scribemus :
vt in (waikht enukh.) WEIGHT ENOUGH satis ponderis."
Now those who do not possess a symbol for (kh) often
write h for it, as we have seen in Anglosaxon finals, and as
Rapp considers to have been the case in the Anglosaxon
initial hi, hr, hw, which I rather suppose to have been (Ih,
rh, wh). The sound of (khw) is very harsh, and in Scotland
and North "Wales it is modified into (kwh), corresponding to
the English and South Welsh (wh). Those who wish to
acquire the sound of (akh) may be led to it by endeavouring
to say (an*), and at the same time slightly raising the back
of the tongue. Hence it is possible that Salesbury's ch,
(which is not so "deep" and "harsh" as the "Welsh chj
Smith's, Hart's, Bullokar's h, and Gill's %, may be all one
and the same sound, either (H') or (kh). But it is certain
that when Gill wrote, the sound (kh) was disappearing in
the south of England, for Butler, who uses a g with a
crossed stem, to represent gh, says that "the Northern
Dialect doth yet rightly sound " it, implying of course that
it had gone out in the South by '1633.
The safest conclusion seems to be that the sound in the
xvith century was really (kh), but was generally pronounced
very lightly;3 it might, however, have been (&h) after (i,e).
This is still the custom in Scotland.
By the middle of the xvn th century the rule had become
to omit the sound, after changing the preceding vowel, or to
change it into some other sibilant, generally (f ), in one or
two cases provincially (th). "WALLIS, 1653, after noticing
that initial gh is simply (g), adds :
"alias vero nunc dierum prorsus omittitur; syllabam tamen pro-
ducenclam innuit. A quibusdam tamen (prsesertim Septentrion-
alibus) per molliorem saltern aspirationem h effertur, ut might
potestas, light lux, night nox, right rectus, sight visus, sigh singul-
tus, weigh pondero, weight pondus, though quamvis, thdught cogi-
tatio, wrought operatus est, brdught attulit, taught docuit, sought
quaesivit, fraught refertus, nought nihil, naught malus, &c. In
paucis vocabulis effertur plerumque per ff; nempe cough tussis,
1 Gill misprints 8, which he uses for hour vocattfr nehour ; neigh abreuiated
(dh) and in his errata endeavouring to ne." This seems to shew that both
correct this mistake and also (inukh) (neekh) and (nee) were heard in the
for (enukh), he has accidentally re- first syllable of this word, and would
peated the error instead of making the imply that (neekh) was rather pedantic,
correction, as has been done here in Indeed if it were to be classed with the
the text. other pronunciations which the pedant
2 The Pedant in Love's Labour Lost, recommends, as (doubt, debt, kali', naif)
Act v. Sc. 1. 1623 comedies p. 136 it might be considered as obsolete,
complains of the pronunciation "neigh-
212 GH — XVI TH TO XVIII TH CENTURY. CHAP. III. § 4.
trough alveolus, tough tenax, rough asper, laugh rideo profenmtur,
cdff, trdff, tuff, ruff, laff. Inough (singulare) sat multum, sonatur
inuff; at inough (plurale) sat multa, sonatur enow."
WILKINS, 1668, after saying that gh might have been
(gh) adds : "this kind of sound is now by disuse lost among
us." PRICE, however, in the same year, says : " Gh sounds
now like h in Almighty, although," etc., adding in the margin
" but the Ancients did, as the Welch & Scots do still pro
nounce gh thorow the throat." He notes that gh sounds as
(f) in cough, laughter, enough, rough. COOPER, 1685, says :
" hodie apud nos desuevit pronunciatio gh, retinetur tamen
in scriptura," but he makes it (f ) in cough, laugh, rough,
tough, trough, and makes Wallis's distinction between enough
and enow. MIEGE, 1688, says also that gh is generally mute,
but is (f ) in laugh, draught, rough, tough, enough (not distin
guishing enow,} but adds " sigh, un Soupir, et le Verbe to
Sigh soupirer, ont un son particulier qui approche fort de
celui du th en Anglois." JONES, 1701, extends both the (f )
and the (th) list. According to him (f ) is heard regularly
in draught, draughts, laugh, cough, enough, hough, rough,
lough, trough ; and he adds " some also sound daughter,
bought, nought, taught, &c., as with an f, saying daufter, boft,
&c." And he states, that gh, ght are th " in sigh, sounded
sith ; in drought, height sounded drouth, heith," but in other
parts of his book he also admits the sounds (ssi, drAAt> Heet).
In the xvin th century we may notice that Fielding in his
Tom Jones, book vii, chap. 13, makes his landlady say oft,
thoft, for ought, thought, and Mrs. Honour write soft for
sought, book xv, chap. 10. These are meant to be West of
England vulgarisms, but they sufficiently shew the tendency.
It would be vain to consider the changes thus indicated,
without proceeding at once to the fountain head. In Anglo-
saxon itself g became h before t very frequently, and was
often omitted. Let us therefore consider the sound as some
times (fch, gh) and sometimes (/ch, ^h). Let these sounds be
kept as widely apart as possible. Then (gh) must be rounded,
that is, there must be a rounding of the lips while the gut
tural is uttered, producing (kwh, gu>h), thus German auch,
auge are, as already mentioned, in reality (aukwh, aug^h-e),
The Scotch sough is (suuktoh), and generally the (uu) sound
before (kh) has a tendency to produce (kwh). This would
then have a natural tendency towards (wh, w). On the
other hand (kjh, gjh) are in themselves the closest allies of
(jh, j). Hence an effort to keep the two sounds of (gh, gjh)
well apart would result in producing (w, j), which, after
CHAP. III. § 4. GH XVI TH TO XVIII TH CENTURY. 213
vowels, would diphthongise as (u, i), and after consonants
would form the syllables (u, i). Now this is precisely what
has happened in the passage from Anglosaxon into English.
First the (u) change. From lagu, lah comes law (laau,
IAA) ; from draff an comes draw (draau, drAA) ; from boga comes
first bough (booukwh) and then bow (boou) or (boukwh, bou,
bau). From halgian comes hallow (nal'u, nal'oou, nsel'o)
from tcelg comes (tal'u, tal'oou, tael'o). In Edinburgh, Mussel-
burgh, etc., although gh is written, (0) is regularly sounded.
Next the (i) change. From wcegn comes wain (wain,
weein) ; from fceger comes fair (fair, feej), from rdgn comes
rain (rain, rcein). From beefy come bulge (buldzh, beldzh),
bellows (bel'uz, bel'oouz), and belly (beH), shewing three
changes of g.
If instead of falling to (u), the (kw>h), remained at (wh),
this would after a vowel rapidly become (f). In Aberdeen-
shire (f) is the regular substitute for (wh) or rather the
Scotch quh, which looks like an attempt to write (kwh) under
the form of (kwh). Dwarf from dweorh is an instructive
example. The old English forms dioerghe, durwe and the
dialectic durgan are found ; a dialectic Swedish dwerf, and
Dutch dwarf, dorf are said to exist (E. Mueller, Etym. Wort,
d. Eng. Spr., i. 327). The Dutch agter, kragt and English
after, craft, Anglosaxon cefter, crceft, are examples of the
correspondence of (f ) and (gh) in different forms of the same
low German word. The chief English examples have been
already cited, and it has been shewn that the change pre
vails dialectically much further than it has been admitted
into the received forms of speech. Some words have even in
English both forms, as hough (nef, Hok), trough (trof, troou),
slough of a snake (slef), slough a quagmire (slau), tough (taf,
toou), enough (enaf1, enau-), the grammatical distinction made
by Wallis and Cooper that the first is singular, sat multum
and the second plural sat multa, although conformable to
Scotch usage, does not seem to be historically justified.
The change of gh into (p) in hiccough (mk'ap) is mentioned
by Jones 1701, and must be considered to be of the same
nature as the change to (f), as (wh, w, p) are even more
closely related than (wh, f ). The curious but not admitted
change to (th) seems to rest merely on the confusion of the
(f, th) hisses.1 When these are pronounced without any
vowel it is very difficult to distinguish them at a little dis
tance, as is well known to those who teach to spell by means
of the powers of the letters.
1 Sigh, which Jones and Miege give as (soith) is called (eaif) in Devonshire.
214 s, c; z. SH. x — xvi TO xvnr CENTURY. CHAP. III. § 4.
When^A falls into (u) it naturally alters the preceding
vowel, with which it diphthongises, hence (a) becomes (au,
aau, AA). Similarly (o) should become (ou) and thence (au),
but in this case the tendency has been rather to (ou, oo, AA),
as in ought, bought, etc. When gh falls into (i) we have
alterations in the other direction, as (ai, eei, ee).
After the vowel (i), the (i) change of gh, which is the only
natural one that could be expected, would simply prolong the
(i), and hence, from hih, niht we might have (mi, niit),
forms which really exist dialectically for high, night ; and
from the termination -ig we might expect (-»'), the com
monest form in present use.
"We shall see in the next chapter that such were probably
the original forms of transition. In Cumberland and West
moreland igh is regularly replaced by (ii), and the change to
(ai), which is constantly attributed to the omission of the
guttural, seems to have no real connection with it, but forms
part of the general change of long * from (ii) through (ei) to
(ai), which will be minutely considered in Chap. IV, § 2,
under I. If we are to trust Gill, the sound of (ai) and the
guttural coexisted, as he always prints (naikht) and neither
(nikht), the pronunciation of Salesbury, nor (nait) as became
prevalent during the xvn th century.
With this gh proper must not be confounded gh written
for g, in comparatively recent times, at the beginning of
words. Jones tells us that the sound of g is written gh in
gherkin, ghess, gheus, g hit-tern t ghost, where ghess is found in
Spenser for guess.
S, C;Z. SH. X.
The use of c for (s) follows the same rules as at present,
throughout the period under consideration. The letter s seems
also to have been (s) or (z) under the same circumstances as
at present, but as the sound of (z) does not exist in Welsh,
Salesbury had no means of indicating it by Welsh letters,
and he therefore writes s in all cases, although he names the
z sound. Smith, Hart, and Gill all use s, but none of them
are sufficiently careful. Still there can be no reasonable
doubt that s was pronounced (z) under the same circum
stances as it is at present. The letter s is now used for (sh),
where the change has been generated by a subsequent (i)
sound, and the same remark applies to c, t, as in mission,
pressure, special, motion ; and s passes in certain cases into
(zh) under similar circumstances, as vision, excision, measure.
There is no trace of this in the xvi th century. SALESBURY
CHAP. III. § 4. S, C ; Z. SH. X — XVI TO XVIII CENTURY. 215
has GRACYOUSE, grasiws (graa'si,us), CONDICYON, condisywn
(kondis'wn), EXHIBITION ecsibisiwn (eksibis'iun), PROHIBITION
proibisiwn (proOjibis'ijim), TRESURE tresuwr (tree'zyyr).
BULLOKAR has (abreviasion, komposiz'ion, naa'sion, syyor,
syygar) for abbreviation, composition, nation, suer, sugar.
And G-ILL writes (ekspektas'ion, Habitaa'sion, naa'sion,
okaa'zion, pas'ion) for expectation, habitation, nation, occasion,
passion. In the xvn th century WALLIS generates (sh) from
(sj), but WILKINS writes (resarreksion) for resurrection.
PRICE, 1668, only recognizes " hard s in passion ; soft s in
concision, and sh in cushion, fashion." COOPER, 1685, does not
name the use of (sh) in such cases, but admits shure, shugar,
which may have been, (shuur shag'er), "facilitatis causa,"
although he places such words immediately after his " vitanda
barbara dialectus." MIEGE, 1688, writes chure, pennchoun in
French letters for sure, pension, states that in the termination
-ision, s sounds as French g or j (zh) and writes ujual, train-
gient, lejeur, djer, hqjer, cr&jer for usual, transient, leisure,
osier, hosier, crosier. JONES, 1701, says : " Tho' you have the
Sound of sh very often in the Beginning of the last Syllable
of Words, as in action, nation, &c. sounded, acshon, nashon,
&c. yet is sh never written there in Words of two or more
Syllables ; except in cushion, fashion, hogshead, lushious,
Marshal." He admits that s is commonly sounded sh (sh)
in assume, assure, assurance, censure, consume, desume, ensue,
ensure, fissure, issue, leisure, measure, pleasure, pressure, pursue,
pursuer, pursuit, sue, suet, sugar, suit, sure, sute, tissue,
treasure, and says that ocean is " sounded oshan" He does
not recognize (zh), but says that sh is written z "in azure,
sounded ashure." The change was therefore fully estab
lished at the end of the xvn th century.
Though the orthoepists of the xvn th century were slow
to recognize this change, and those of the xvm th and xix th
even admit it rather grudgingly, while those of the xvith
do not seem to be even aware of such a " slovenly habit,"
yet we have at least two early traces of the degeneration of
suit into shoot, in Shakspere and in Rowley, for a notice of
which I am indebted to Mr. Aldis "Wright. In Love's
Labour Lost, Act iv. Sc. 1, written before 1598, the folio 1623,
Comedies, p. 130,1 there is apparently a play on suitor and
1 " Qu. Who gaue thee this Letter P Clo. From my Lord Berowne, a good
Clo. I told you, my Lord. master of mine.
Qu. To whom should' stthougiue it? To a Lady of France, that he called
Clo. From my Lord to my Lady. Rosaline.
Qu. From which Lord, to which Qu. Thou hast mistaken his letter.
Lady ? Come Lords away.
216 s, c;z. SH. x — xvi TO xv in CENTURY. CHAP. III. § 4.
shooter, deer and dear. The two latter words were pronounced
alike by Smith. Were the two former really pronounced alike
by Shakspere, as they were by Jones, 1701, and Buchanan,
1766, though Cooper, 1685, gives (smt) and Sheridan, 1780,
(suut) for suit? Gill, 1621, only allows (syyt), Bullokar,
1580, has (syygar). Hart has (syyer).1 But some persons
must have said (shuut), or such jokes would have been lost,
and, whatever was the case in Shakspere,2 we have this pun
in Rowley's Match in the Dark, 1633, Act ii. Sc. 1 :
Moll. Out upon him, what a suiter have I got. I am sorry you
are so bad an Archer, sir.
Eare. Why Bird, why Bird ?
Moll. Why to shoote at Buts, when you shou'd use prick-shafts.
In the present day we have a joke of an Irish shopman
telling his customer to shoot himself, meaning suit himself.
Here sweete, put vp this, 'twill be
thine another day.
Exeunt.
Soy. Who is the shooter? Who is
the shooter ?
£osa. Shall I teach you to know.
Soy. I my continent of beautie.
Rosa. Why she that beares the Bow.
Finely put off.
Boy. My Lady goes to kill homes. ***
Itosa. Well then, I am the shooter.
Soy. And who is your Deare?"
In Boyet's first speech, Steevens, at
the suggestion of Farmer, altered the
shooter of all the quartos and folios, to
guilor, which is the reading usually
adopted. The preceding dialogue,
which has been given for the purpose
of comparison, seems at first sight to
point to suitor as Boyet's meaning,
which Eosaline perversely takes as
shooter. But the connection is not
evident. There is no allusion to suitor,
but much to shooter in what follows.
Hoyel knew both the suitor (whether we
take him as Biron or Armado), and the
shooter (the Princess, apparently, who
is represented as going to shoot a deer
at the opening of the~ scene), but
Rosalineli. reply, and her remark that
PMfrposely mi^nderstanding him. In
*^e absence of a tenable hypothesis
fors- the introductM1 of tfle new word>
Boyet,
or, we may su ,
looking off after tht shooting party
which has just left, sees'"1 arr°w sped,
and inquires of RosaW® w
it, whereupon she puts fiP °
the truism that it was she (one of the
Princess's company) who bore the bow.
1 John Hart, in his first treatise, as
cited in Chap. VIII, § 3, note 1, classes
the three words " suer, shut, and bruer,"
as he spells them, together, and pro
nounces (syyer, shyyt, bryyer). The
first may be suer or sewer, the last is,
of course brewer ; is the second suit,
or shoot intended to be written shute
(Scotch, scJmte = shoot), as Hart in
that treatise constantly omits the
final e ? It is the only indication of
such a change in the xvith century,
and the word suer renders it very
doubtful. We can hardly suppose the
word to have been shut. Stratman
gives the old English forms for shut,
schutten, schitte, schettin, shette; for
shoot, sceoten, schetin, sheten, scheete,
ssete, schete, scuten, soten, shoten,
schoten. The original difference of the
words is difficult to determine ; Ett-
mUller does not give any ags. word
scyttan, to shut, as different from
sceotan, to shoot; E. Miiller refers
shut to shoot from shooting the bolt
of the door.
2 Steevens quotes an equivoque of
suters and shooters, miscalled archers
by a servant, from "The Puritan,
1607," and Malone a similar play upon
archers and suitors in " Essays and
Characters of a Prison and Prisoners,
by G. M., 1618," and also Antony and
Cleopatra Act v. Sc. 2, where Pope reads
" a grief that shoots My very heart at
root," and Capell reads smites for the
folio, 1623, suites.
CHAP. III. § 4. S, C ; Z. SH. X — XVI TO XVIII CENTURY. 217
The Irish pronunciation however only shews an English
pronunciation of the xvnth century. In England at the
present day, shoot for suit would be vulgar, but the joke
would be readily understood, though few persons use, or
have even heard, the pronunciation. Might not this have
been the case in Shakspere's time ? At any rate there is no
authority for supposing that such a pronunciation could have
been used seriously by Shakspere himself.1 But the sound
1 Mr. Aldis Wright seems to sup
pose that the compositors might have
had that pronunciation, and that it
therefore might have crept into the
text. In Lear, Act ii. Sc. 2, the word
three-suited of the fo. 1623, is spelled
three shew ted in all the quartos but
one, where it is three snyted, an evident
misprint for three suyted. Now shewted
would probably have been written for
(shyyted), and may indicate the tran
sitional pronunciation ; on the other
hand it may be itself a mere misprint
for sewted, which would be a legiti
mate orthography for suited. This
hypothesis is questioned by Mr. Aldis
Wright, who says : "in books printed
in the time of Shakespeare and Bacon
variations occur in different copies of
the same edition. I have never seen
two copies of the 1625 edition of
Bacon's Essays which were exactly
alike. A list of the variations is given
at the end of my edition. Now there
are six copies of the quarto of King
Lear printed in 1608, which we [Mr.
W. G. Clark and himself, editors of
the Cambridge Shakespeare] have in
our notes erroneously (as we confess in
the Preface) called Q2 , whereas we are
now convinced that this edition was
earlier than the one in the same year
which we have called Qi . These
copies of Q2 (so called) differ from
each other in having some of them
been corrected while passing through
the press. The earliest of these which
we have met with is one of the two
copies in the Bodleian, and we call it
for distinction sake Qa (Bodl. 1). This
has the reading three snyted: but all
the other copies of the same edition
read three shewted. I suppose therefore
that while the edition was in course of
printing the error was discovered, and
the correction communicated verbally
to the compositor, who inserted it accord
ing to his own notions of spelling. It is
not a question between the readings of
two different editions, but between an
uncorrected copy and a corrected copy
of the same edition. The later quartos
follow the corrected copy but their tes
timony is of no value, because their
reading is merely a reprint." Hurried
corrections, whether of print or manu
script, frequently introduce additional
errors, and hence there is no guarantee
in this curious history that the com
positor who substituted shewted for
snyted, did not himself put shewted
when he meant to have inserted sewted.
More instances are certainly required
to decide the point. The Scotch
wrote schute for shoot. Palsgrave
writes sute for suit. In Henry V.,
Act iii. sc. 6, fol. 1623, p. 81, we find
" what a beard of the Generalls Cut,
and a horride Sute of the Campe, will
doe among foming Bottles and Ale-
washt Wits, is wonderfull to be thought
on." In the Chronicle History of
Henry the Fifth, printed in the fourth
vol. of the Cambridge edition shout
stands for sute. If we take Bullokar's
old pronunciation, shout would be
(shuut). Mr. Aldis Wright observes
that this was " an instance of a play
apparently taken down at the time of
acting, and whether shout or suit be
the true reading, one of them could not
have been substituted for the other
unless the pronunciation was some
thing similar," and he thinks that
these instances lead to the conclusion
that the pronunciation (shuut) "was
in existence at the beginning of the
xvnth century. The jokes upon
shooter and suitor certainly establish
that a sufficiently similar pronunciation
of the words was in existence to make
the joke appreciable. The various
spellings, I fear, prove nothing, be
cause, considering the frequency of the
word — suit occurs 163 times, suitable
once, suited 7, suiting 1, suitor 38 times
in Mrs. Cowden Clarke's Concordance,
— the rare variations can only pass for
218 s, c; z. SH. x — xvi TO xvin CENTURY. CHAP. III. § 4.
may well have existed unrecognized, precisely as the sound
of (sh) is supposed to be unknown in Welsh, although ceisio
is now generally called (kai'sho), and not (kai'sio). Simi
larly in Dutch (sh) has been developed from (si-, (sj-) in
several words, but it is not orthoepistically acknowledged.
In the xvni th century there was a decided tendency towards
(sh). Thus sue, suet, sugar, suicide, suit, suitable, suitor,
sure, suture, all commence with (sh) in Buchanan, sue, suit,
suitable, suitor, have (s) in Sheridan, but the rest have (sh),
which Sheridan also uses in sudorific, sudorous, super-,
superable, superb, superior, supernal, supine, supinity, supra-,
supremacy, supreme, sural, where Buchanan has (s).
The sound of (sh) was well known in the xvi th century.
SALESBURY says :
" Sh when coining "before a vowel is equivalent to this combina
tion ssi, thus SHAPPE ssiapp (shapp), SHEPE ssiip (shiip). Sh coming
after a vowel is pronounced iss, thus ASSHE aiss (ash, aish ?), WASSHE
waiss (wash, waish ?). And wherever it is met with, it hisses like
a roused serpent, not unlike the Hebrew letter called schin. And
if you wish farther information respecting this sound, you should
listen to the hissing voice of shellfish when they begin to boil."
We learn from Hart, supra p. 207, that (zh) was un
known in the xvith century. Wilkins, 1668, says that (zh)
is " facil and common .... amongst the French, who express
it by J, as in the word Jean, &c., and is easily imitable by
us," implying that it was not in use in England. But
Miege, 1688, being a Frenchman, heard it, as we have seen,
p. 215, in the words where we now use it. He is the only
writer in the xvii th century .who notices it, and, as he is a
foreigner, his testimony is suspicious. Franklin, 1768,
seems only to know it in French, as he has no special sign
for it, and even in French writes (zshaeme) for jamais.
Just as Hart writes (ozdzhuurdwi) for aujourd'hui, for want
of an appropriate sign, although he had recognized the sound.
Sheridan, 1780, fully acknowledges it. It is always written
(s) or (z), and arises in English from palatisation as (z*j).
In French it seems to be a degeneration of (dzh) formed
from a palatalised (g*j); or else to have arisen from (j)1, pre-
misprints. The absence of any notice
of such a practice in orthoepists of the
xvi th century (if we except the very
doubtful passage from Hatt in the last
note), together with the depreciating
manner in which similar usages are
mentioned in Cooper, shew that any
such pronunciation was considered not
worth mentioning.
1 The Dutch at the Cape of Good
Hope say (dzhaa, Dzhan) etc., for (j«a,
Jan), ./a, Jan. This is an alteration of
precisely the same character, and is
comparable with the Italian Giugno,
Giunone, Gittylio (Dzhuu-njo, Dzhu-
nwuh-ne, Dzhuu Ijo) from the Latin
Junium, Juno>iem, Jitlium.
CHAP. III. § 4. F, V. TH — XVI TH TO XVIII TH CENTURY. 219
cisely in the same way as (sh) derives in some parts of
Germany, and still more frequently to English ears, from
(kh) as (ish) for (ikh).
X was usually (ks). Salesbury gives FLAXE fflacs (flaks),
EXHIBITION ecsibisiwn (eksibis-i,un), OXE ocs (oks), but, ap
parently by a misprint, AXE ags (agz).
F, V
jPand v seem to have retained their sounds throughout,
but in the earlier times v and u were interchangeable, and
either could be used as a vowel or consonant. This was not
the case in Welsh, where u was the vowel, and v the conso
nant. The consonant has been generally replaced by / in
Welsh, ff being used for (f). Salesbury notices as a dialectic
variety in " some countries of England" the use of (v) for
(f), but he does not particularize the districts. Gill attri
butes it to East Anglia, " (v) pro (f), ut (vel'oou), pro
(fel-oou)."
TH
The double sound of th as (th, dh) is fixed by Salesbury
as the Welsh th, dd, and the two uses were distinguished
almost exactly as at present; with seems however to have
been always (with), though (widh) is now more common.
Salesbury gives (th) to through, thystle, thynne, wyth, thanke,
thorowe, thyck ; and (dh) to this, thyne, the, that, thou. He
also notices that th sounds (t) in Thomas, threasure and throne,
which he writes trwn (truuri) ; and (d) in Thames Inn.
Smith, Hart, Bullokar, Gill, Butler, have all different signs
for (th, dh) and use them according to our present custom
of speech. Jones makes th = (t) in antheme, or anthymn,
Anthony, apothecary, asthma, Author, authority, authorize,
Catharine, Cantharides, Esther, Isthmus, Lithuania, posthu-
mus, priesthood, Thames, Thannet, thea, Thomas, Thomson,
Thomasin, Thuscany, thyme.
It is difficult to determine when these uses were settled.
The two Anglosaxon letters J? *8 are usually taken to be
(th, dh) but their employment is almost exactly opposite to
modern use. In later Anglosaxon and Early English only
one, either % or, more usually, ]> was employed, and even
Orrmin makes no distinction. This might have been a
peculiarity in writing names. It seems safest to infer the
old use from the modern, which is found to hold for the
xvi th century.
220 H — XVI TH TO XVIII TH CENTURY. CHAP. III. § 4.
H
The question concerning h is simply when was it mute ?
for its sound, or rather its action on the following vowel was
always the same as (H) or (H'). Palsgrave says h is mute in
honest, honour, habundaunce, habitation. Gill does not agree
in the last word, and the h has now disappeared, even in
writing, from the last but one. Salesbury says h is mute
in honest, habitation, humble, habite, honeste, honoure, exhi
bition, prohibition. Modern orthoepists will not admit the
two last, though custom sanctions them, but habite and
habitation have recovered their h, and humble is still
doubtful. Gill adds the words hour, hyssop, which he
writes (si'zop). Abhominable was a common orthography in
the xvi th century, and the h seems to have been occasion
ally pronounced or not pronounced, for the Pedant in Love's
Labour Lost (1623, Comedies, p. 136) says : " neighbour
vocatur nebour ; neigh abreuiated ne ; this is abhominable,
which he would call abhominable." 1 It is usual to print the
second abhominable without the h and the first with it, but
it seems more proper to reverse this, and write "this is
abominable, which he would call abhominable," for the
Pedant ought certainly to have known that there was no
h in the Latin, although in the Latin of that time h was
used, as we see from the Promptorium, 1450, " Abhominable,
abhominabilis, abhominacyon abhominacio," and Levins 1570,
" abhominate, abhominari," as if the words referred to ab-
homine instead of ab-omine.
In the xvn th century, Price 1668, says that h is mute in
ghost, rhetoriclt, catarrh, dunghill, host, hour, John, impos-
thume, myrrh, Rhene, rheum, rhode, Wadham. Miege, a bad
authority, because Frenchmen cannot rightly appreciate the
English aspirate, having no such element of their own, de
clares that hour, hourly are the only two words in which
h is mute, and especially instances honour as having an
aspirated h.
1701. Jones says h "may be sounded in halleluiah, harber-
geon, habiliment, haver-du-pois," &c., but seems to imply that
it is generally mute in these words, and says that -ham in
names of places in England is -am as in Broxham, Bucking
ham. He also makes h mute in cowherd, Nehemiah, shep/icrd,
sivine-herd, and in Ifcber, Hebraism, Hebrew, hecatomb, hectical,
Hector, hedge, Hellen, hemorrhoids, herb, heriot, hermit, &c.,
" which h may be found by putting a Vowel before them."
1 The quarto 1631 also prints abhominable in both places.
CHAP. III. § 4. H — XVI TH TO XVIII TH CENTURY. 221
He allows unaccented his to lose the k, "as in told his man,
sounded told is man, &c." He says o is written ho " when
it may be sounded ho, as in homage, holster^ homo, in the
beginning of all words, hosannah, host, hostage, hostess,
hostler, hostile, houlet, hour, so-ho, inkhorn, &c., often
sounded as with o only." Also he says oo is written
v v
hoo, "when it may be sounded hoo after a vowel, as
hood, hoof, hook, hoop, hoord, and in hood in the End of
Words as in likelihood, manhood, Priesthood, &c." Finally
he says u is written hu " when it may be sounded hu, espe
cially after a Vowel, as in humble, humility!, humour, Hum
phrey" This frequent reference to the vowel depends on
the following remark: "That h is hardly sounded before or
after consonants ; but more easily before and after Vowels,
therefore the best Way to discover on h, is to sound the
Word that begins with it after a vowel; as a hat, &c." Un
fortunately this rule wonld make a vast number of h'& to be
heard in London, as (a H'OI, a n'ass), an eye, an ass.
At the present day great strictness in pronouncing h is
demanded as a test of education and position in society, and
consequently most of the words mentioned in Jones are now
aspirated. Smart, 1836, reduces the list of words with mute
h to heir, honest, honour, hostler, (in which the h is now
commonly not written) hour, humble, and humour. It is
certainly at present very usual to say (nam'b'l, jhuu'nu), so
that the list is reduced to five words, which it would be
considered social suicide to aspirate. But in practice, even
of the most esteemed speakers, -ham in names of places has
no aspirate, exhaust, exhibit, exhibition, lose h, and his, him,
her, etc., after an accented consonant when perfectly un
accented, drop their h. Tt is extremely common in London
to say (® too'wm) for at home. A vast majority of the less
educated and refined in London, and a still greater majority
in the Midland Counties, never use the h, pronouncing their
words as if they never had had an h at all. The insertion of
the h, generally in the form of a very strong (H'), is also a
remarkable phenomenon, not so common, and still more
illiterate.
(H) is properly only a jerk of the voice, and as such forms
part of the Sanscrit post aspirates (kn gn) etc., and is fre
quent as a post aspirate in the Irish brogue. It also occurs
before every o in Tuscan pronunciation, in which dialect (k)
is also changed into a strong (.H') thus (.n'onfrnon'tHo) for
confronto. I have heard Livorno pronounced in the place
itself, almost like (livH'or'nn'o) so that a foreigner might
222 H — XVI TH TO XVIII TH CENTURY. CHAP. Ill § 4.
easily persuade himself that he heard (lighorno),1 whence
an Englishman's Leghorn is but a step. As an initial letter
however (H) is not common. Thus Sanscrit has no initial
(H), the letter ^ being (gh). Precisely the same thing
occurs in Russian, where the (gh) has also to be used for a
foreign (H). The Gothic h may have been occasionally (H),
but seems to have been frequently (kh), in place of which
(H') as a milder form, became gradually prevalent in the
Germanic languages. No German at present leaves out or
puts in an initial h contrary to the orthography ; but final h
after a vowel, which is dialectically pronounced (kh) or
(k«?h) as (shuukwh) Schuh shoe, has disappeared in the re
ceived pronunciation. No Scotsmen omit the aspirate. The
old Greeks had an aspirate, the exact nature of which cannot
be accurately known, as every trace of it has disappeared
from the language, and its old relations were rather singular.
It is a matter of dispute how far the Latins pronounced their
h, but the Italians, Spaniards, and French have nothing
resembling the true sound of (H), although the French have
a trace of its former existence, asserted by Palsgrave but not
recognized by Meigret, in that hiatus which they call an
h aspire". The French and Italian also have no (kh), which
has been retained in the form (&h) by both the Sanscrit and
Greek. The so-called (kh) x, j, of the Spaniards seems to be
a Moorish importation, and is possibly an alteration of (h).
In Spanish America it is said to be replaced by (H). The
Spaniards used it to replace a foreign (sh), as in Mexico; the
French transliterate it by ch = (sh), and the English have
made Xerez (xee'reec) into sherry. The (H') is abundant in
Arabic.
In England the use of the (H) among the illiterate seems
to depend upon emphatic utterance. Many persons when
speaking quietly will never introduce the (H), but when
rendered nervous or excited, or when desiring to speak par
ticularly well, they abound in strong and unusual aspirations.
It is also sir^ular how difficult it is for those accustomed to
omit the h, to recover it, and how provokingly they sacrifice
themselves on the most undesired occasions by this social
shibboleth. In endeavouring to pronounce the fatal letter
they generally give themselves great trouble, and conse-
1 Rear-Adm. "W. H. Smyth. The the name of Livorno. This would be
Mediterranean, London, 1854, p. 331, pronounced (leghorno), and is a singn-
mentions that a map belonging to a lar testimony to the antiquity of this
Greek Pilot in 1550, now in Brit. Mus. custom of speech.
Add. MS. 10,134, contains \eyopvo as
CHAP. III. § 5. PRONUNCIATION — XVI TO XV III TH CENTURY. 223
quently produce a harshness, quite unknown to those who
pronounce (H) naturally. An English author, S. Hirst,
writing an English Grammar in German,1 in which 50
quarto pages are devoted to a minute account of the pro
nunciation of English, actually bestows 167 quarto lines of
German, measuring about 90 feet, upon attempting to shew
that formerly h was not pronounced in English, and that it
was altogether an orthoepistic fancy to pronounce it, saying
that almost all non-linguists would admit that h was gene
rally mute, or at most scarcely audible, and that linguists
who denied this in theory gave into the practice.3 The
division of the people is not exactly into linguists and
non-linguists, but it must be owned that very large masses
of the people, even of those tolerably educated and dressed
in silk and broad cloth, agree with the French, Italians,
Spaniards, and Greeks, in not pronouncing the letter H.
§ 5. Realisation of the Pronunciation of English in the
xvi th, xvn th, and xvm th centuries.
THE results of the two preceding sections are sufficiently
minute to give an indication of the pronunciation of English
during the xvi th century, but it is not easy from this mass
of details respecting individual words, to arrive at a con
ception of the actual sounds of sentences. Hart, Bullokar,
Gill and Butler have however given specimens of connected
speech, and in Chapter VIII, §§ 3-6, sufficiently extensive
extracts will be given from their works, and translated into
palaeotype, to enable a reader to form an accurate conception
of the sound of our language in the xvi th century. After
these, follows, § 7, a vocabulary of the principal words pro
nounced by the authorities of this period, which will be very
useful in endeavouring to read any other work of that time,
because, even if the unknown word is not there found, some
analogue will almost certainly present itself, which will suf
fice to determine the sound within the requisite limits.3
.Finally, applying all the results of previous investigations,
1 Kritisch.es Lehrgebandes der en- him. If, however, he had heen aware
flischen Sprache von S. Hirst, Mitglied of the loose manner in which h is in-
er Universitixt zu Cambridge, 2nd ed., serted and omitted in Layamon, Genesis
Leipzig, 1847. and Exodus, Prisoner's Prayer, and
2 His principal argument is the re- other writings of the xm th century,
tention of an, mine, thine, etc., before he would doubtless have considered his
words beginning with h, in the author- point established. In practice I under-
ized version 1611. The lists of words stood from a gentleman who conversed
with mute A given by Palsgrave, Sales- with him, he omitted the h altogether,
bury, etc., were of course unknown to 3 See also the Index of Words.
224 PRONUNCIATION — XVI TO XVIII TH CENTURY. CHAP. III. § 5.
I have in § 8, endeavoured to realise the pronunciation of
Shakspere, and have reduced my conception to palaeotypic
spelling, which will enable a reader of moderate perseverance
to reproduce it orally. The result is peculiar, and has been
generally well received by those to whom I have had an
opportunity of communicating it viva voce* There can be
no reasonable doubt, after the preceding discussions, of its
very closely representing the pronunciation actually in use
by the actors who performed Shakspere's plays in his lifetime.
In Chapters IX and X, I have endeavoured to give a
similar realisation of the pronunciations which mark the
xvn th and XVLII th centuries. The only connected phonetic
writing of the xvn th century which I have found, is Bishop
Wilkins's transcription of the Lord's Prayer and Creed, but
this very inadequate specimen is eked out by a vocabulary
collected from the principal authorities of the time. It is
with considerable hesitation, that in the midst of such di
versities of sound attached to the same symbols, and such
numerous lists of rules and exceptions, relating to different
parts of words and not furnishing the complete representation
of entire words, that I have endeavoured to restore Dry den's
pronunciation, or rather the pronunciation of some contem
porary reader. It is impossible to feel the same certainty
respecting his sounds as respecting Shakspere's, and the
attempt should be viewed with indulgence.
For the xvin th century, the complete vocabulary of
Buchanan has enabled me to give his pronunciation of a
passage of Shakspere, and Dr. Franklin's interesting letter
furnishes a contemporary piece of phonetic writing, uncor-
rected certainly, but sufficiently suggestive. A vocabulary
of the principal words in which Buchanan, Sheridan, and
other authorities, differ from the received pronunciations of
to-day, or anticipate them, will complete the account of this
century.
It has not formed any part of the plan of this work to
enter into detail upon the pronunciation now prevalent,
although incidental allusions to it perpetually occur. This
is a very difficult and very complex subject, which has been
taken up by many other writers, but requires entirely new
treatment, in reference not only to the results of the present
investigation, but to those abnormal, cacoepistic, rare, vulgar,
and dialectic forms, which the history of the past shews that
we ought to collect for the benefit of the future, and for the
thorough appreciation of the real state and possible develop
ment of our language, which is principally unwritten. Mr.
CHAP. III. $ 6. DIRECTION OF CHANGE. 225
Melville Bell's Yisible Speech, or my own Palaeotype, now
give a means of writing all such, forms with great accuracy,
and the rougher Glossotype (p. 13 and Chapter VI, § 3), will
enable those who do not wish to enter into» minuter distinc
tions of sound, to write our dialects much more intelligibly
than the generality of systems hitherto pursued. Those
therefore who wish to assist in forming a written picture of
our language for the first time, should neglect no opportunity
of immediately noting diversities of pronunciation whenever
heard, after some of these comprehensive systems, of which
Palaeotype possesses the great advantage of requiring none
but ordinary type. To shew the nature of the process re
quired, I have in Chapter XI contrasted Mr. Melville Bell's
and my own pronunciation of the parable of the Prodigal
Son, and transliterated many specimens of Scotch dialectic
pronunciation which he has furnished, both into palaeotype
and glossotype, while the politeness of several correspondents
in the provinces, has enabled me to give a first instalment of
a greatly needed comparative phonology of the English
dialects.
§ 6. The Direction of Change.
For determining older pronunciation than that of the
xvi th century, it is important to consider the direction in
which sounds have changed since that period, because we
can then by continuing the line backwards, arrive at some
conception of the sounds from which those in the xvith
century were derived. It is for this reason that so much
space has been devoted to a consideration of the pronuncia-
of the xvn th and xvm th centuries.
TABLE OF CHANGES IN THE YALTJE OF THE LETTEES.
1. Short Vowels.
A short, in xvith century decidedly (a), became (ae) in the course
of the xvn th and has so remained except in a small class of
words, where the various sounds (aa, a, aah, ah, aese, se) are
heard.
E short, has remained (e) throughout, but is locally (E) and
may have been (E) at any period.
I short, has remained («') throughout.
0 short, seems to have been generally (o) and often (u] in the
xvi th century. The (o) sounds became (o) or (A), it is impos
sible to determine which, in the xvn th century, and have so
remained, the present sounds being generally (o) in closed and
15
226
DIRECTION OF CHANGE.
CHAP. III. § 6.
(0) in open syllables. In a few words (o) remains, as cross,
gone. The (u) sounds, as in the case of short w, became (a) in
the xvnth century and have so remained.
II short, was either (u) or (u\ probably the latter, in the xvith
century, but during the xvnth become decidedly (a), which
has remained to the present day, with the exception of a few
words which retain the old (u} sound, but some of these are
occasionally pronounced (a), and more of them probably were
so pronounced in the xvm th century.
2. The Long Vowels.
A long, was (aa) in the xvith century, but inclined already to a.
very fine and thin pronunciation, nearly (aah), quite different
from (aa}.1 In the xvnth century this seems to have become
decidedly (seae), advancing at the close of that century or the
beginning of the xvmth to (ee), which in the xixth century,
if not earlier, became (ee} and even (eei).
1 In an unknown treatise on the
pronunciation of French, of which two
quarto leaves with the signatures B i,
B ii, bearing date 1528, (two years prior
to Palsgrave's book,) are preserved and
described in Rev. S. R. Maitland's
List of some of the Early Printed Books
in the Archiepiscopal Library at Lam
beth, 1843, p. 291 (but which did not
fall under my notice till the preceding
pages were printed), we read of the
French A and E, "A. ought to be pro
nounced fro the botom of the stomak
and all openly. E. a lytell hyer in
the throte there properly where the
englysshe man soundeth his a." This
would imply that the French sound
was (aa), unless it was rounded into
(AA), as we know that it sounded to
Englishmen in the xvnth century.
The English a was quite distinct from
this and sounded more like (EE) to
French ears, than (aa). The sound
could certainly not have been (EE), or
Palsgrave would not have found it like
the French a, and Salesbury like the
Welch a. If we suppose the English
a, e were (aa, ee) and the French were
(aa, EE) we shall be probably very near
the truth which underlay this and simi
lar statements. Compare Gilles du
Guez, supra p. 61. Since the above
was written, Mr. Payne has obligingly
brought uuder my notice : " The French
Garden : for English Ladyes and Gen
tlewomen to walke in. Or, A Sommer
dayes labour. Being an instruction for
the attayning vnto the knowledge of
the French tongue .... By Peter Eron-
dell, Professor of the same Language,
London, 1605, 8vo., the English in
black letter, the French in Roman
type, unpaged, signatures extending to
P 3, with two more leaves. The au
thor has taken considerable pains, but
not always successfully, to indicate the
French sounds, and occasionally refers
to the English, in passages which will
be quoted as footnotes to this table. It
must be remembered that as in the two
cases just cited, the author was French.
" Our A is not sounded altogether, as
this english word awe as some haue
written, but as the first voice of this
word Augmtim or After opening some
what the mouth, as for example, JBap-
tiste, tacitement, sfauoir : and not after
the rate of the english word ale, for if
a Frenchman should write it according
to the English sound, hee would write
it in this wise esl and sound it as if
there were no «." This passage seems
to indicate clearly that French a was
rather (aa) than (AA). It also infers
that this («a) was heard in the English
after, where we retain (aa, aah), but
that in ale and other words of that class
the Frenchman heard (EE). I may
mention in illustration that Padre
Secchi, the astronomer, when speaking
English at the meeting of the British
Association at Norwich, 1868, said
(mEEd) for made, which to English ears
sounded very nearly as (macicd), and
very unlike (meed). It must be borne
in mind that Erondell's esl was quite
CHAP. III. § 6. DIRECTION OF CHANGE. 227
E long was (ee) during the xvi th and xvnth centuries, except in a
very few words, as he, she, me, etc., because in the xvr th century
the spelling ee was introduced for those words in which the
sound has actually altered to (ii), but no such alteration of
spelling was afterwards admitted, and in the beginning of the
xvm th century the sound of (ii) began to prevail, and became
general by the close of that century, as it now remains.
I long was a diphthong in the xvrth century, probably (ei) but
occasionally (ai). In the xvnth century, and perhaps during
the latter part of the xvi th, the sound of (ai) was introduced,
which has remained. Even at the present day, however, (ei,
ai, oi) and other varieties may still be heard.
0 long was apparently (oo) in the xvi th century, a sound which i&
still generally heard before r, in more, glory, &c ; but in the
xvnth century, (oo) was introduced, and still remains, though
frequently called (oo'w} or (oou), and dialectically (ou). Some
words containing o long were pronounced (uu) but in the xvi th
century these were mostly written with oo, and hence o long is
sounded (uu) in only a very few words, as move, prove.
U long does not occur in any Saxon words, and in the xvrth and
down to the middle of the xvnth century had the sound of
(yy) or some closely allied sound as (rr, tnr, 99} which may be
still heard dialectically both in the East and "West of England.1
After the middle of the xvnth century the long u became (iu)
after a consonant in the same syllable, and (juu) at the be
ginning of a syllable, and this sound has remained ; in the
xvm th century, as at present, after (r) it is pronounced (uu).
distinct from die our present ail (eel). singular of the first perfect tense of the
As in 1605 there must have been a Indicatiue moode, is sounded as it is
large class of speakers who called long written, as j'aimay I loued,./e trouvay
a (aah) or (sex), which could have I sound, j'e parlay I spoke, &c. (ai ?).
sounded nothing but (EE) to a French- As for the rest, wheresoeuer you shall
man, we may suppose that this was the find ai, sound it as gaye {gay in p. 185]
sound with which Erondell, with his gaping." He means of course (EE),
limited experience as a foreigner, was and he seems to agree with Hart partly
familiar. In : The French Littelton. in gay, and with the xvn th century
A most easie, perfect and absolvte way pronunciation generally in gaping. The
to learne the French tongue, Set foorth only English writer who would make
by Clavdivs Holyband, Gentil-homme (?«y = (gEE) is Cooper, supra p. 125.
Bourbonnois, London, 1609, 3'2mo., Most probably the Frenchman heard
pp. 223, for a knowledge of which I an English (gsei) as his (gEE), and
am also indebted to Mr. Payne, the found the first syllable of gaping =
author says, p. 184 : " Ai, and ay, have (gaea?), more like his gai than his ga.
three diuers sounds : for the first per- 1 Erondell says of French tt: " v Is
son singular of the future tense of the sounded without any help of the tongue
Indicatiue moode, and these three but ioyning of the lips as if you would
verbes ay, and his compounds : j'e s$ay, whistle, say u, which u, maketh a silla-
1 know, nay, I am borne, be fully ble by it selfe, as vnir, vniquement as if
pronounced as, e, masculine : say then it were written v-neer, pronounce then
for ay, fay I have, je diray I will say, musiqm, punir, subvenir not after the
je liray I will reade, f aimer ay I will English pronounciatiow, not as if it were
loue, &c., as if it were written 4, je, je written muesique, puenir, suevenir, biit
dire, je lire, &e. But the first person rather as the u in this word, murtherer,
228 DIRECTION OF CHANGE. CHAP. III. § 6.
3, Combinations with A final.
AA was not used in English -words in the xvrth or subsequent
centuries, except in Hebrew names, as Isaac.
EA, which had been used occasionally without any strictness for
long e, was established towards the close of the xvi th century
as (ee), and remained so throughout the xvnth century, with
the exception of about 30 words. In the xvinth century
however it rapidly altered its sound to (ii), only a few words
finally resisting the change, after having yielded to it for a
time. Several words with (e) short, were from the middle of
the xvi th century, and still are spelled with ea.
I A had no particular value separate from («a), and has followed the
fortunes of its components, one or the other letter being
frequently omitted.
0 A was introduced at the close of the xvi th century for the long
(oo) in closed syllables, after oo had been appropriated to (uu).
In the xvn th century it became (oo), except in broad, groat,
where it was (AA). It has retained these sounds.
UA is not an English combination.
4. Combination with E final.
AE was so to speak, not used, in the xvi th century ; even in Latin
words e was often employed. When « was introduced into
English it was always pronounced as the long e of the period.
This a is one of Bullokar's signs for (ee).
EE was introduced in the middle of the xvith century for the
sound of (ii), which it has since retained. In the earlier part
of the century no distinction was made between ee and long e,
IE wis a combination having the same meaning as long e until the
xvn th century, when it was considered the same as ee.
not making the u too long." It is very when Englishmen do prefer, v, they aay,
difficult to understand the meaning of you : and for, q, we suppose they say,
this passage. It is possible that as kiou : but we sound, v, without any
Erondell may have met with those who helpe of the tongue, ioyning the lips as
said (seae), he might have heard (iu), if you would whistle ; and after the
which of course must have been fre- manner that the Scots do sound Gud."
quently used at this date, though it was Here we have the first distinct recog-
not received, and as this sound did not nition of the English long u as (iu)
satisfy him he took refuge in (u) or (u) distinct from the Scotch and French
as confused by a following (r), and fry). Hart, who in his first treatise
perhaps was thinking of some indi- (infra, Chap. VIII, § 3, note,) also
vidual pronunciation, which he had not identifies English long u and you,
satisfactorily appreciated, but conceived makes both the same as the French and
to be general. Holyband also (French Scotch, and in his second treatise, supri
Littelton, 1609, p. 152) seems to have p. 167, distinctly describes (yy) and not
recognized (iu) in English and not (yy), (iu) for this sound. Wilkins, 1668, is
for he says : " "Where you must take the next author who distinctly recog-
paine to pronounce our, v, otherwise nizes (iu), Wallis, 1653, being the last
then in English : for we do thinke that who as distinctly insists on (yy).
CHAP. III. § 6. DIRECTION OF CHANGE. 229
OE was not an English combination ; when it was introduced as #,
it followed the sound of the long e of the period.
UE was only used at the end of words in the xvn th century and
later, for the long u, which had in this situation been pre
viously written ew.
5. Comlinations with I or Y final.
AI was (ai, aai) in the XYI th century and possibly (sei, seaei) in the
xvn th ; but towards the close of that century, and in the pro
nunciation of a minority even as early as the middle of the
xvi th century, ai was called (ee).1 Becoming thus identical
with long a, it shared its fortunes and fell into (ee, eei).
El was (ai) or (ei, eei) in the xvith century, and seems to have
retained the sound of (eei) or (ee) till a late period in the
xvm: th [century, when many, but by no means all the ei fell
into (ii). In either, neither, the old (ei) developed (ai) as well
as (ii), and both sounds are yet heard from the same speaker at
different times.
II was never used.
01 was (oi) and nearly (ui) in the xvith century, in some words
(oi, uui) were heard indifferently. In the xvnth century
though (A!) or (oi) was the rule, (ai) was frequently heard.
In the xvm th and xix th centuries only (oi) was recognized,
although some speakers still say (ai), now considered a vul
garism.
UI was not a genuine English combination, and was only a sub
stitute for long u, or long and short »', and followed their laws.
6. Combinations with O final.
AO is only accidentally an English combination in extraordinary,
where it is usually pronounced (AA).
EO when used at an earlier period seems to have been considered
identical with long e, and has been generally so treated. In
pigeon, dungeon, the combination eo is only apparent, for the e
belongs to the preceding g.
10 is not found.
00 was used in the beginning of the xvi th century indifferently
with long o, but was introduced towards the close of that
century to indicate those long o which had come to be pro
nounced (uu), and it has retained this value.
UO is not used.
1 Erondell says in the French nouwced as these english words day, say,
Garden, 1605, speaking of French ai, may," which he therefore identifies
which was then certainly (E) : " Also with long a. No English writer of the
if s doe follow ai, it maketh the word period makes this confusion. But corn-
long, and the s vnsounded, as Maistre, pare Holyband's gay, gaping, supra,
paistre, where the ai or ay be pro- p. 227, note, col. 2.
230 DIRECTION OF CHANGE. CHAP. III. § 6.
7. Combinations with U 'or W final.
AU was (ail, aau) in the xn th century, and seems to have passed
by the absorption of (u) into (w\ or simple labial modification,
into (AA) in the xvnth century, which sound it generally
retains although there is still a contest between (aa, AA) in
a few words.
EU had in the xvith century two sounds (yy) and (eu) which
were not distinguished by any orthographical expedient. In
the xyn th century the (yy) sounds became (iu, juu), and the
(eu) sounds either remained (eu), or became (00). In the xvm th
century those which had become (00) remained so, the rest fell
into (iu, juu) where they have since remained.
ITT is not used.
OU in the earlier part of the xvi th century, and in the pronuncia
tion of some writers even down to the latter part of that
century, had the sound of (uu, u) ; by the middle of the
xvi th century it was generally pronounced (ou), but occa
sionally (uu). A class of words in ou, however, derived from
the Anglosaxon aw, ow, was by both set of speakers pro
nounced (oou). In the xvn th century the (oou) sounds be
came (o0u) as they have since remained, though theoretically
considered as simple (00). The (ou, u) sounds at the same
time became (au, a) and have since retained these forms.
UU is not used.
8. Consonants.
B invariably (b).
C invariably (k) before a, 0, u and (s) before (e,i), except that
in the xvin th century, and perhaps earlier, c before a became
(k) ; and ci- before a vowel became (sh).
CH sometimes (k) in Greek works, generally (tsh) throughout the
period.
D invariably (d) except that, in the xvmth century, d in the
termination -dure, -dier became (dj) or (dzh).
F invariably (f).
G invariably (g) before a, 0, «, and almost invariably (g) in
Saxon words before e, i; otherwise invariably (dzh) before
e, i. In the xvmth century and perhaps earlier, g before a,
and gu before i long became (g\
GH in the beginning of the xvi th century, full (kh) or (&h) ;
towards the middle and close, very gently pronounced, almost
(H'); and in the xvnth century and subsequently entirely
lost. In a few words of the xvi th century and more after
wards, gh was sounded as (f). In one word, sigh, in the
xvnth and xvmth centuries gh was called (th), and in one
word, hiccough, (p). "When gh was omitted in speech after i,
the sound of that letter was changed from («) to (ai) ; the
sound of augh with silent gh was either (aa) or (AA) ; of ough
with silent gh, (oou) or (AA), sometimes (au) and (uu).
CHAP. III. § 6. DIRECTION OF CHANGE. 231
H in many words in the xvn th century, where it is now never
omitted, was not sounded.
J or " I consonant" had invariably the sound of (dzh).
K was (k) before all vowels, perhaps inclined to the palatalised
(£) before the sound of (ii), and in the xvmth century fre
quently became (k} before a (se, aa), and long i (ai).
L invariably (1) or ('!). In the xvi th century it was beginning
to disappear after a, after becoming labialised to (lw) and thus
changing the sound of a from (a) into (au, AA), the latter pre
vailing in the xvn th century ; (aa) is now commonly heard in
the termination -aim.
M invariably (m) or ('m).
N invariably (n) or ('n).
NG invariably (q) or (qg), except in the combination -nge when it
became (-ndzh) and had a tendency to change preceding (a)
into (ai) which became subsequently (ee).
P invariably (p).
PH invariably (f ), except perhaps in such combinations as Clapham,
in which the h was omitted in the xvn th century.
QTJ invariably (kw), or labialised (k).
E. preceding a vowel, invariably (r), following but not preceding
a vowel, it was most probably (JL) as early as the xvmth
century, and possibly in the xvn th.
RH was the same as simple r.
S initially, invariably (s), medially and finally either (s) or (z)
according to present usage. In the xvmth century s before
long «, and si- before a vowel became (sh), and -isi- became
(-izh-) ; in the termination -sure, s became (sh) or (zh). None
of these changes seem to have been acknowledged before the
middle of the xvn th century.
T invariably (t), except that ti- in the terminations -tion, -tious,
was (s^) in the xvi th and xvn th centuries, and became (sh) in
the xvn th. -In the termination -ture in the xvm th century,
t fell into (tj) or (tsh).
TH either (th) or (dh) according to the present laws, except that
in the xvr th century it was (t) in Thomas as now, and also in
throne, and (d) in Thames Inn ; and generally (th) in with
instead of (dh) as now.
V or "TJ consonant" invariably (v).
W as a consonant, whether confused with an initial (u) or not,
invariably (w).
"WH, whether confused with (HU) or (HW), was probably always (wh).
X invariably (ks), the present use as (gz) seems to have been
unknown previously.
Y as a consonant, whether confused with an initial (i) or not,
invariably (j).
Z invariably (z).
232
DIRECTION OF CHANGE.
CHAP. III. § 6.
On examining this table of changes, it would appear that
the consonants have been subject to little or no alteration,
except under the action of an (i) or (u) sound. The action
of an (i) sound changes (t, d, s, z,) to (tj tsh, dj dzh, sh,
zh), but this action did not materially affect the English
pronunciation of the xvi th and earlier part of the xvn th
centuries. The (u) sound was generated through the labiali
sation of (1) which gradually disappeared, labialising the pre
ceding vowel.
The consonant gh, originally (kh), became gradually dis
agreeable and harsh to the Southern English and passing
through (H') soon ceased to be appreciable, and was therefore
neglected, although it was probably theoretically maintained
long after it had practically disappeared. On examining
the oldest forms of words, however, this sound appears to
have passed through (i, u), and in its disappearance to have
acted by palatisation and labialisation on the preceding
vowel. The change of igh to long i is the only one that
presents a difficulty, and this depends upon the same cause
which changed long i generally from (ii) to (ai), p. 234.
For the vowels the following changes occur, taking the
sounds only, independent of the spellings.
Short Vowels.
Long Vowels*
Diphthongs.
a, 85
aa, 8386, ee, ee, ed
ai, sei, ei, eei, ee, ee, eei
au, aa\ AA
ee, ii
ei, ai
ei, eei, ee, ii
eu, iu
eu, oo, oou
0, 0
00, UU
ou, ou
00, 00 OOU
OOU, 00, OOU
U, 8
UU, OU, 8U
ui, oi, A!, oi
yy> iu
The directions of change are here seen to be three, — towards
(i), towards (u), towards (a). But the two last are not
essentially different, as (u) may be considered as a labial-
ised (a), p. 162.
The long vowels have altered more than the short vowels.
The voice being sustained there was more time for the vowel
sound to be considered, and hence the fancy of the speaker
may have come more into play. This has generally given
rise to a refining process, consisting in diminishing the lin
gual or the labial aperture. The lingual aperture is materi-
CHAP. III. § 6. DIRECTION OF CHANGE. 233
ally diminished in the passages (aa, seae, ee, ee) and (ee, ii).
It seems curious that the first was not continued as far as
the second. In the name James, however, which became
(Dzheemz) in the xvn th century, and has passed to (Dzhiimz)
in flunkey English, and to (Dzh/m) as a common abbrevi
ation, the series of changes is complete. Fashion and refine
ment have nearly banished (aa), but have not yet confounded
in one (ii) all the words formerly distinguished by (aa, ee).
The change of (oo) to (uu) was a similar refinement, con
sisting first in the elevation of the tongue, and correponding
narrowing of the labial passage, producing (uu), and secondly
in the narrowing of the pharynx. The change from (oo) to
(oo) consisted simply in narrowing the pharyngal cavity.
One of the most remarkable changes is that from (uu) a
simple vowel, into (ou) a diphthong. Both sounds held
their own side by side for some years, Palsgrave in 1530
and Bullokar in 1580 both upholding (uu), while Salesbury,
Smith, and Hart declared for (ou), which finally prevailed.
Although the change is certain, there is no trace of any
reason being given, and as the sound (uu) had been repre
sented by the letters ou in those cases where it changed into
(ou), whereas when (uu) was a change of (oo), it did not
further change into (ou), and the orthography also did not
give ou, — the mere accident of the spelling naturally presents
itself as a cause. This hypothesis is strengthened by ob
serving that in the north of England, where reading was
perhaps less common than in the South, the sound of (uu) in
these words still remains unaltered. But such a supposition
can hardly be correct, because the change of (uu) into (ou)
is precisely analogous to the change of (ii) into (ei), a change
which must certainly have occurred in passing from the
Anglosaxon period to the xvi th century, although it has not
yet come distinctly before us, and had no connection with
the orthography. In each case the change simply consists in
commencing the vowel with a sound which is too open, (that
is, with the tongue not sufficiently raised), and, as it were,
correcting that error in the course of utterance. This variety
of speech might easily be generated and become fashionable
in one part of the country and not in another, and as it
penetrated far beyond the classes whom orthography could
affect at a time when books were rare, and readers rarer in
proportion to the speakers, the physiological hypothesis
seems more deserving of adoption than the orthographical.
On further examination it will be found that this hypothesis
has an analogue in a well known, custom of the South of
234 DIRECTION OF CHANGE. CHAP. III. § 6.
England. In the North of England, in France, and Ger
many, no difficulty is felt in prolonging the pure sounds of
(ee) and (oo), but in the South of England persons have in
general such a habit of raising the tongue slightly after the
sound of (ee), and both raising the tongue and partly closing
the lips after the sound of (oo), that these sounds are con
verted into the diphthongs (ee], oo'w), or (eei, oou) where
the (ee, oo) parts are long and strongly marked, and the (i, u)
terminals are very brief and lightly touched but still per
ceptible, so that a complete diphthong results, which how
ever is disowned by many orthoepists and is not intended by
the speaker. Now we have only to suppose a habit growing
up of beginning the (ii, uu) sound with a tongue somewhat
too depressed, and in the latter case with the lips also too open,
but passing instantly and rapidly from these initial sourfds
to the true (ii, uu), and (eii, ouu; would result. From the
habit of accenting the first element of a diphthong, the
initial touch of (e, o) would come to have the accent, and
being very short and indistinct might readily vary in dif
ferent mouths into (a, a, a). We should thus obtain the
diphthongs (ei, ou ; ei, ou ; ai, au ; ai, au) in which also the
second element may be, and at present in the South of Eng
land seems to be («, u) rather than (i, u). Thus on length
ening out the terminal sounds of nigh, now, I seem to hear
in my own pronunciation (naw, r&uuu).
The generation of (eei, oou) from (ee, oo) consists then in
subjoining brief (i, u) to long (ee, oo) ; while the generation
of (eii, 0uu) from (ii, uu) consists in prefixing brief (e, o) to
long (ii, uu). The elements in both cases are the same (eei,
eii; OOVL, 0uu) and the accessary sounds are in both cases
brief, but when terminal they are unaccented, when initial
accented, just like an appoggiatura in music.
We might therefore expect to hear (ei, 0u) developed
either from (ii, uu) or from (ee, oo). Further reasons for
supposing the first to have actually occurred will be given in
Chap. IV, § 2, under I. For the second, it is not uncom
mon at present to hear (ei) for (ee), and (ou) for (oo}, although
these changes have not been generally recognized.
This change of (ii) into (ei, ai, ai), and (uu) into (ou, au,
au) is etymologically interesting because it is by no means
confined to our own country. The Gothic (ii) corresponded
to (ii) in Icelandic, Anglosaxon, Friesic, Old Saxon, Low
German, and Upper German, and is still (ii) in Danish and
Swedish, but is now (ai) in English and Swabian, and (ai) in
Dutch, High German, Frankish, East Frankish and Bavarian,
CHAP. III. $ 6. DIRECTION OF CHANGE. 235
according to Rapp (Phys. d. Spr. iv., 144) and the same
writer says that (uu) in Gothic was (uu) in Icelandic, Anglo-
saxon, Friesic, Old Saxon, Low German, Upper German,
and is still (uu) in Danish, but it has become (au) in English
and Swabian, (au) in High German, Frankish, East Frankish
and Bavarian, (?y) in Dutch, and (uu) in Swedish. Except
the two last changes, the phenomena must be all referable to
local habits of the kind named. The Dutch sound (0y), written
ui, would appear to be an alteration of (0u), but whether there
is any historical as well as phonetical ground for supposing
such a form to have existed, I cannot say.1 It is impossible
not to be reminded in this historical change of (ii, uu) into
(ei, ou) of the (guNa) changes in Sanscrit, because they are
phonetically the same, although they arise in a different
manner.
"We have then briefly the following changes of the prin
cipal vowel sounds, of which the change (ii) to (ei) was
anterior to the xvith century, unless, as seems to be the
only legitimate inference, Palsgrave's and Bullokar's state
ments (pp. 109, 114) are held to imply that long i was still
pronounced as ii in some words by them : —
From (aa) through (aeae) to (ee, ee, eei)
From (ee) to (ii)
From (ii) through (d) to (ei, ai, ai)
From (oo) to (uu), or to (oo, oou)
From (uu) through (ou) to (ou, ou)
Proceeding backwards, then, we must, if there was any change,
look for it in the same series. Thus (AA, aa) may have
preceded (aa). Perhaps (EE) may have preceded (ee). The
sounds (ee, oo) may have preceded (ii, uu), and it is possible
that (aa) may have preceded (oo), as the latter is only
the rounded form of the former.
The vowel (yy) can hardly have been an original vowel
sound. Its relations to (i, u) and (iu) are so close, that it
might have arisen from any one of the three, but it has
principally the appearance of being an alteration of (u)
caused by making the narrowest part of the lingual channel
with the middle instead of the back of the tongue. This
1 In the actual Dutch pronunciation make on hearing the sound, not (ay) as
of AMIS, muis, it is very difficult to Dr. Rapp remarks. The Dutch con-
distinguish the sound from (au), and sider it to be the sound of the German
the difference seems mainly produced eu, which Dr. Rapp also says is sounded
by altering the form of the lip into (»j) in the North-East of Germany,
that for (yy), which is slightly flatter Berlin, Brandenburg, and on the Baltic
than for (uu), rather than by bringing coast from Mecklenburg to Russia;
the tongue into the (i) position. Still the general sounds being (ay, oy, oi)
(ay) was the best analysis I was able to and even (oi) in Hamburg.
236 DIRECTION OF CHANGE. CHAP. III. $ 6.
d priori physiological conception is confirmed by finding that
dialectically, in Scotland and in Devonshire, (yy) or some
form of it as (n, uu), occurs as a substitute for (uu), as the
Devonshire (myyr, myyn), or more properly (muuv, muun)
for (muuv, muun). In German we find that (yy) has also
been generated from (uu) by the retroactive effect of an (i)
or (e) sound in an added syllable. In French, the substitu
tion of (yy) for the Latin (uu) can only be traced to a
national habit, The same see'ins to have occurred in Greek,
where v was at a very early period changed from (uu) into
(yy). There is no historical evidence that (yy) can be con
sidered in any case as an alteration of (iu), although we have
in English the proof that (iu) may be an alteration of (yy),
and we know by the "Welsh uw and Hart's iu, that the use
of iu as a representative of (yy), was natural. In fact the
second vowel u in both iu, au naturally suggests a labialisation
of the preceding, which would give iu, au = (iw, aw) = (i,
o), whence (y, A) readily derive. This seems to have been
the case with Ulphilas, who certainly uses au for (A) and
probably iu for (yy).1
In such languages as the English, French, and Greek,
where the natural sound of u had been replaced by (yy),
the only device left for marking the (uu) sound was to use
the o from which it was derived, as in the Swedish, or to
put an o before, after, or over the u to indicate more dis
tinctly that the combination was to have the modified o
sound. This seems to be the origin of the use of ou in
older English, French, and Greek for the sound of (uu).
Similarly in old High German uo, in Italian uo, in Bohe
mian u are employed to indicate relations between u and o?
1 Weingartner (Die Aussprache des sequent (w) by the lip action of (yy),
Gothischen zur Zeit des Ulfilas, Leipzig, which is nearly the same as that of (u),
1858, 8vo. pp. 68) sums up all the on the following vowels, precisely as in
arguments bearing on the pronuncia- the case noticed on p. 133 note. The
tion of Gothic iu in favour of (n). combination iu is the most difficult
The actual English change of (yy) into to appreciate in the Gothic and old
(iu), and the common German change high German orthographies,
of (yy) into (ii), seem sufficiently to 2 The Dutch use oe for (uu) or (uV
account for the various forms, wnich their long and short M being (yy. a),
the Gothic iu received, or rather to that is, nearly precisely the same as Wal-
which it corresponded in various Ger- lis's English sounds. The older Dutch
manic dialects. The alteration of iu writers seem to have used e as a simple
into iv before vowels, as in kniu, knivis, sign of prolongation in ae, oe, tte, so
may be explained as perhaps (knyy, that oe can only be regarded as o used
knywis) the full written form kniuvis for (uu) with a special mark of pro-
having been contracted into knivis, as longation. In modern Dutch the sound
the single letter v seemed most neatly is frequently short, as there is no other
to express first the labialisation of the means of representing (u, M). Siegen-
i, and secondly the generation of a sub- beek (Nederduitsche Spelling, Amster-
CHAP. III. § 6. DIRECTION OF CHANGE. 237
In English the change of (yy) has been into (iu), but in
German it changes into (ii), that is, in English the lips were
not rounded at the beginning of the sound but were rounded
at the end of the sound, producing first (iy) and afterwards
(iyu, iu), while in German the lips are frequently not
rounded at all.
For the long vowels, then, anterior to the xvi th century
we may possibly have (ad) for (aa) ; (EE) for (ee) ; (ee) for
(ii) ; (oo) for (uu), and (uu) for (yy) ; (oo) is not likely to
have been changed.
For the short vowels we find no change in (i, e), which we
therefore must suppose to have existed anteriorly in this
form. The change (a ) to (SB) could only give (a) for an
anterior sound. The changes (o, o) and (u, a) could lead to
no conclusions respecting any anterior sound. The first
change (o, o) consists merely in depressing the tongue, the
second change (u, o), as has been shewn, may consist only in
neglecting to close the lips sufficiently. These changes do
not give sufficient indication of direction. It would be safest
to conclude that (a) or (a) and (e, «, o, u) were the sounds of
the five vowels before the xvi th century,1 but the words busy,
bury (biz'i, bere) and the pronunciation (trast) for trust,
leads us to suppose that u in writing may often indicate a
short (y) which would be taken as (i).
We find then that there was probably an older pronuncia
tion of the English vowels than that of the xvi th century,
dam, 1804, p. 139), denies that ie should ality, in Belgium. This left oe free for
be considered as long i, although it is (uu, u) without any danger of confu-
now pronounced (ii), because long t sion, and even the Belgians admit the
used to be written ii, ij, and says that distinction oo, oe.
in the province of Zeeland ie is still l Hart expressly says : " And to per-
heard as a distinctly mixed sound swade you the better, that their auncient
" duidelijk een gemengd geluid," pro- sounds are as I haue sayde," that is
bably (iia). The same author (p. 82) (a, e, i, o, u), " I report me to all
accounts for the use of e as a mark of Musitians of what nations soeuer they
prolongation in ae, oe, ue, on the ground be, for a, e, i, and o ; and for u, also,
that when words anciently written except the French, Scottish and Brutes
mate hope, mure, came to be pronounced as is sayd : for namely all English
mat', hop', mur', without the final e, Musitians (as I can vnderstande) doe
the e was transposed in writing, thus sounde them, teaching vt, re, mi, fa,
maet, hoep, muer, precisely as Lane pro- sol, la ; And so do all speakers and
Eosed to write English, supra, p. 44, readers often and much in our speach,
3. The orthographies oe, ue for as in this sentence : The pratling
(oo, yy) had been replaced by oo, uu Hosteler hath dressed, curried, and
for more than two centuries before he rubbed our horses well. Where none
wrote, and he proposed and prevailed of the flue vowels is missounded, but
on the Dutch to use aa for ae, an kept in their proper and auncient
orthography jealously retained with ue, soundes : and so we maye vse them,
y for MM, y, as marks of distinct nation- to our great ease and profite."
238 DIRECTION OF CHANGE. CHAP. III. § 6.
and that we may not unnaturally expect to find in it (aa, ee,
ii, oo, uu) for (aa, ii, ei, uu, ou) of the xvi th century.
As to the diphthongs they have followed two courses, ac
cording as the first or second element became the most con
spicuous. In (ai) the (a) has been gradually made closer,
changing in the diphthong (aei, ei), as in the simple sound
(ae, e), and then the first element being lengthened (eei), the
second gradually disappeared (ee), only to reappear as a faint
aftersound in the present century (eei). Hence, before the
xvi th century we can only expect the (ai) to have been the
same, or at most to have been preceded by (ai). On the
other hand (ei) may have had an antecedent (ai). It is a
remarkable circumstance that (ai) in French also gave place
to (ei) and then to (ee), p. 118. In Modern High German
we also find a dialectic substitution of (ee) for (ai), as (een)
for (ain) one, but it remains to be proved which is the older
form, the old high German ei answering to the Gothic ai =
(ee), and the modern high German ei often answering to an old
high German i = (ii), of which (ee) may be a first degradation.
In Latin (aaii) as in pictal appears to have generated (ai, ee)
as in pictcB (pik'tee). In Greek at, which could hardly have
been originally anything but (ai), is now (ee) and was so ap
parently at the time of Ulphilas. In Sanscrit the (guNa)
combination (ai) resulted in the present (ee) or (ee).
In (au) the (a) has been gradually made opener (a), and
the (u) has acted more and more to produce a labialisation
of this open (a), thus (A.'W) till it disappeared altogether;
leaving (A A) only. "We cannot, therefore, well suppose (an)
to have preceded (au). The sound may have had an ante-
cedgnt (eu), but was most probably original. It is remark
able that (au) in Welsh generated (oo), that is (a) was labial-
ised to. (o = aw), without being previously broadened to («),
in quite recent times, pob, pawb = (poob, paub) being still
co-existent. In French (au) produced (oo). In German (au)
is often dialectically (oo). In Latin (au) became Italian
(oo); as paucus poco (poo'ko). In Sanscrit the (guNa) com
bination (au) has become (oo) or (oo). In Greek the vowel
(u) fell into the consonants (bh, ph) and hence the vowel
was preserved. But Ulphilas used the combination (au) for
the Greek 6 piicpov.
The change (ei, ei) hardly indicates a direction. But as
(ou) had an antecedent (uu), so (ei) may have had an an
tecedent (ii).
The change of (eu) to (iu) on the one hand and (oo) on the
other is recent. One or the other seems to have occurred
CHAP. III. § 6.
DIRECTION OF CHANGE.
239
according as the first element (e) or second (u) prevailed.
The number of words in which the sound of (eu) remained
is so small that it is difficult to form any conclusions on the
change.1
The change (ou, au) would have been insufficient, if we
had not known that (uu) generally preceded (ou).
As far as the xvi th century is concerned (oou) is original,
but as (aa) may have preceded (oo) so (aau) may have pre
ceded (oou).
There seems every reason to suppose that (ui) was the
original form of the diphthong which is now (oi), and that
the form (uui) which we find in the xvith century, and
which, altered to (ai), appeared in the xvnth century, and
crops up even now, is not an alteration of (oi), but is rather
a remnant of the older form. It does not appear possible to
suggest an antecedent for (ui).
Combining the above observations on the direction of
change, with the orthographical representation of sound, we
should be led to expect that previous to the xvi th century
the sounds attributable to the various letters in alphabetical
order might possibly be as follows : —
MODERN SPELLING.
POSSIBLE SOUNDS
BEFORE XVI TH
CENTURY.
MODERN SPELLING.
POSSIBLE SOUNDS
BEFORE XVITH
CENTURY.
a short
a, a
i short
i
a long
aa, aa
i long
ei, ii
tri
ai, ai
ie
ee
au
au
o short
o, a; u
e short
e, E
o long
oo, aa; uu
e long
ee
oa
oo, aa
ea
ee
oi
oi, ui
ee
ee
00
oo ; uu
ei
ei, ai
ou
oou, aau ; uu, u
eu
yy> eu
u short
u ; *', y
u long
yy, uu
But at what time any such combinations were prevalent,
and how early the xvi th century pronunciation had prevailed,
we must seek other evidence to shew. In the meanwhile, by
1 The pronunciation cited on p. 141,
(sheu) for shew, must be some dialectic
remnant of (sheu), and suggests an
intermediate between (sheu) and (shoo).
Hart in his phonetic writing uses both
(shio) and (sheu) for shew. Mr. M.
Bell notices that there is a ' Cockney"
habit of "separating the labio-lingual
vowels (u, o) into their lingual & labial
components, & pronouncing the latter
successively instead of simultaneously,"
one result of which is saying (au) for
(oo). Yisible Speech, p. 117.
240 DIRECTION OF CHANGE. CHAP. III. § 6.
comparing this purely theoretical table, founded on no evidence
of any kind, put purely deduced from a consideration of the
direction of change, and not limited to any particular period
of time preceding the xvith century, with the table given
by anticipation on p. 28, as an expression of the general
general results of the following investigation respecting the
xiv th century, it will be seen that there is a remarkable
agreement between the two, so that all the results there
obtained may be pronounced theoretically probable, however
strange they would have appeared if the direction of change
had not been previously ascertained. At the same time the
great difference between the sounds here considered as pos
sible, and those which, based upon present habits, are usually
assumed, will serve to shew the value and importance of the
preceding investigation. The subject has hitherto been
considered from far too modern a point of sight, and with
far too limited a range of vision. The changes in the last
three centuries, of which we have contemporary evidence,
not having been generally known, and the changes in the
cognate Germanic dialects, although recorded by Rapp and
Grimm, not having been duly weighed, and the habit of
reading Spenser and Shakspere in our modern pronunciation
having become ingrained, we were prepared to regard the
sounds of our language as something fixed and settled in
point of time, at most admitting a dialectic difference which
we perhaps attributed solely to geographical causes. This
must now be given up, and we must proceed to investigate
pronunciation with a knowledge that it has changed, and
must change chronologically, that at any time there must
be, even at the same place, diversities of coexistent forms ;
and at different places, even when the language has been
derived, at no very great interval, from the same sources,
there must also be differences arising from want of commu
nication, which will therefore be the more striking, the
earlier the period and therefore the more imperfect the
means of transit, and especially that any cause which will
occasion the intercommunication of districts usually isolated,
must have a great effect on pronunciation. Our endeavour
therefore will be to discover, not what earlier English pro
nunciation was generally, but as definitely as possibly what
it was at different particular times and places. Of course
this can only be done by means of determining the value
attributed to the alphabetic symbols by writers of known
time and place. This is the object of the investigations
contained in the two next chapters.
241
CHAPTER IV.
ON THE PRONUNCIATION OF ENGLISH DURING THE FOUR
TEENTH CENTURY AS DEDUCED FROM AN EXAMINATION OF
THE RHYMES IN CHAUCER AND GTOWER.
§ 1. Principles of the Investigation.
THE War of the Roses raged from 1455 to 1486. The
Long Parliament met in 1640, and Charles II. returned in
1660. Hence the xvth and xvnth centuries were memor
able in English history for two long continued civil wars,
causing unprecedented communication between all parts of
the country, and withdrawing the minds of men from litera
ture to fix them upon the events of the day. This "commyxs-
tion & mellynge," as Treuisa hath it, of men from the
various counties of England necessarily produced an effect
both on the structure and pronunciation of the language.
The whole style of English at the close of the xvn th cen
tury is dissimilar from that at the close of the xvi th. A
different mind reigned in the people and required a different
instrument to express itself. And that this was not confined
to an alteration of words, idiom, and composition of sentences,
but extended itself also to pronunciation in a most distinctly
characterised manner, we have already seen. The xvnth
century produced a number of writers who paid attention to
pronunciation, who sought either to investigate the relations
of spoken sounds, or to supplement the deficiencies of ortho
graphy by lists of words and rules, by which the pronuncia
tion could be tolerably ascertained. These lists and rules
became so full towards the close of the xvn th century, that
we have been able to trace the successive phases of alteration
which words underwent, and to see how the sounds of the
xvi th century gave place to those with which we are more
familiar.
If then the civil commotions of the xvn th century pro
duced such important changes in our language and pronun
ciation, what must we expect from the still longer and ruder
16
242 EFFECTS OF CIVIL WARS ON SPEECH. CHAP. IV. § 1.
disturbances of the xvth century, when the language was
in a more inchoate stage, when the French element was
fusing with the Saxon into the familiar alloy of the xvi th
century, when no printing had as yet called forth an abund
ance of readers,1 so that the language altered organically
from mouth to mouth untrammeled by literary fetters, and
men of the north, middle, and south, jostling with each, wore
down the angles of their dialectic differences, and gradually
produced an English of England ? Practically we know
that the xv th century was a period of great change in the
whole character of our language ; the last remnants of our
inflexional system were abandoned, the sharp distinction
between the "gentilmans" French and the " vplondische-
mens" English, disappeared, and a "common dialect" was
acknowledged by all writers.2 The distinction between the
English of Chaucer, writing down to the close of the xiv th
century, and that of Spenser, the next great poet on our roll,
who wrote after the country had well settled from its
troubles, and printing had formed a reading public, is so
sharp, that we seem to have fallen upon another language
rather than upon a form of speech differing only by five
generations.
As then the language altered so markedly, must we not
look for similar changes in the pronunciation ? The exam
ple of the xvi i th century irresistibly forces this conclusion
upon us, and we also feel that if there had only been a
succession of writers to chronicle them, we should have had
a continual list of changes, comparable to those furnished
while the xvn th passed its meridian and drew to its termi
nation, only more complex, more striking, more characteristic.
Unfortunately we have no such writers, no such rules and
lists to refer to ; only a certainty of chaos and no guide.
In shewing the development of the spellings ee, ea (p. 77)
and oot oa (p. 96) in the xvith century, to mark distinc
tions in the sounds of long e and long o, familiar to the
speaker, but ignored by the writer, and, without such a
guide, impossible to discriminate by an ignorant reader, as
one of the xix th century must naturally be in this respect,
we foreshadowed the confusion in the orthography of the
latter end of the xvth and commencement of the xvith
1 Caxton set up his press in 1471 ; loquor, ad rusticos tantum pertinere
the effect on the masses did not make velim intelligas ; nam mitioribus in-
itself felt till the next century. ingenijs & cultius enutritis, unus est
2 Gill, after distinguishing the ubique sermo & sono, & significatu,"
Northern, Eastern, and Western dia- and this he terms the " dialectus com-
lects, says "quod hie de dialectis munis."
CHAP. IV. $ 1. THE XV TH AND XIV TH CENTURIES. 243
century, a confusion which it is as yet impossible to dissipate.
We can, as in the estimate made at the end of the preceding
chapter, be tolerably sure that a given written vowel or
combination of vowels, was pronounced in one of two or three
ways, but there does not appear to be, at present, any means
of deciding which of those ways should be chosen in any
particular case. After we have arrived at a more definite
notion of the pronunciation of the xiv th century, the range
of diversity will be somewhat narrowed, and by comparing
the xiv th with the xvith century pronunciation of any
word, noticing the direction of change, and, theoretically
estimating the time necessary to effect it — an estimate which
must be always hazardous — we may feel somewhat more
confident. As however it is advisable in a preliminary
investigation like the present, to reduce theory to the nar
rowest possible limits, and to base results upon evidence, or
a wide induction, I have thought it necessary to exclude the
xv th century altogether from my researches, and to proceed
by one step from the settled period of the xvith to the
settled period of the xiv th century. In § 7 of this chapter,
however, I shall indicate a rough practical method which
may be adopted for reading works of the xvth century,
founded upon the comparison already indicated.
The manuscripts of the xiv th century poems, which the
name of Chaucer points out as the principal subject of in
vestigation, though all belonging to the xvth century were
fortunately written in its early part, and the Harleian MS.
of the Canterbury Tales, No. 7334, which will be here
generally followed, was probably written before the Rose
troubles had commenced, so that although it labours under
the disadvantage of being a generation after time,1 yet it
was not subject to those more violent changes which render
the earlier printed editions of Caxton and others useless for
our present purpose. This manuscript has, in addition to
its careful execution, early date, and accessibility in the
British Museum, the advantage of having been twice re
cently printed, by Mr. Wright,2 and by Mr. Morris.3 In
1 Mr. Morris in his Chaucer Ex- ' Mr. Morris's edition forms the
tracts, (see note 3, below), p. xliv, calls second and third volumes of his com-
this a "MS., not later perhaps than the plete edition of Chaucer's poetical
year of Chaucer's death." works in six volumes^ published by
2 Mr. Wright's edition has been re- Bell and Daldy, London, 1866, at five
printed in double columns large octavo, shillings a volume, the only edition of
and is published by Richard Griffin Chaucer's works taken wholly from
and Co., London and Glasgow, for half- MS. authority where MSS. exist. In
a-crown. It is the most convenient the Clarendon Press series Mr. Morris
working edition. has reprinted the Prologue and two
244 CHAUCER AND GOWER. CHAP. IV. § 1.
both, editions the punctuation and capitals and the uses of
th, y, u, n, are modern, and the contractions are all extended.
In Mr. Morris's edition, the Lansdowne MS. 851 has been
collated throughout, but every word not in the Harleian is
printed in italics, and many final e's have been also added in
italics when considered to be grammatically necessary.1 The
long and tediously written Confessio Amantis of Gower, has
not been properly edited. Dr. Reinhold Pauli's text, like
Tyrwhitt's Chaucer, exhibits the text and orthography of no
particular manuscript or time. But three good MSS. in
the British Museum, and one at the Society of Antiquaries,
are readily accessible, and Pauli's edition serves as a guide
through the ponderous mass. The great regularity of
Gower's verse and rhymes, renders his works a convenient
supplement to Chaucer's, and I have found it necessary to
make a complete examination of his rhymes. The mode of
referring to Chaucer's and Gower's works will be explained
at the end of this section.
The principles of the investigation on which I am about
to enter, as to the sounds intended to be conveyed by the
orthography used by the scribe of the Harleian MS. 7334 in
particular, which may be assumed as the received Court pro
nunciation towards the close of the xivth century, and
will be briefly termed the pronunciation of Chaucer, are the
following.
tales in a cheap form from this MS, ample, in the Secounde Nonnes Tale,
This will be referred to as his Chaucer supposed to he told by a woman, not
Extracts. written by a man, we have —
1 In the numerous citations which I And though that I, unworthy sone
shall have to make I have generally of Eve,
followed Wright's edition, but in all Be synful, yet accepte my bileve.
important or doubtful cases I have re- 11990.
ferred to Morris's, One reason for Yet pray I you that reden that I
using Wright's edition, besides con- write. 12006.
venience, was that the lines are num- A . in the Schipmannes Tale sup.
bered consecutively throughout except & ed t be told b \ ^ ^
the Coke's Tale of Gam*/yn, which is £f wiyes we find J
numbered separately because it is Tfae gd housbond al t moste p
omitted by Tyrwhitt as certainly not He mfl/t ^ dothe ^ , £J
Chaucer s. Mr. Morris s edition has A1 for Ms hne worschfp richely ;
fresh sets of numbers for every pro- Jn which ^ M daunce jolily ;
loguc, tale, and part of tale thoughout. And if thftt b/ not ' r«tin*
This is theoretically the best, for it is Qr eJlcB ^ not ^ ^ ^ endur '
certain that the poem is altogether But thv-nketh it is wasted and i-lost,
fragmentary, and, as the manuscnpts Than moot another for Wfg cogt
and editors do not all agree in the Qr lene ug u fl^fffperf!^. H422
order of the pieces, it is probable that
no order as yet adopted is that into These expressions are in both cases ir-
which Chaucer woulc have cast the reconcilable with the supposed speaker,
poems had he lived to give them the so that there must have been some
extension originally designed. For ex- jolting or oversight in the editing.
CHAP. IV. § 1. FIRST PRINCIPLE OF INVESTIGATION.
1.) When few people can read, rhymes to be intelligible must
be perfect.
Owing probably to a change of sound, which has not been accom
panied by a change of spelling, English poets of the xvmth and
xix th centuries take the liberty of considering such words as love
move, pull cull, eternity I, pass was, none stone, etc., to be rhymes,
and readers are accustomed to pass them over as " licenses,"
although they always produce a disagreable effect upon children
and unlettered adults. On the other hand words of which the
final parts are pronounced almost identically, at any rate with a
much nearer coincidence of sound than those cited above, are abso
lutely tabooed as rhymes. A xixth century poet would be much
sooner allowed to rhyme whelk, with talk, than harm with psalm,
or fork with hawk, although an unlettered Southern makes no
difference in the sound, and a lettered Southern rather imagines
that he makes than really makes any distinction (p. 196). It is
different with Northerns, Irish, or Scotch. It would be, perhaps,
incorrect to push the theory too far, and say that in the very earliest
attempts at rhyme an untutored audience would be satisfied with
nothing less than that perfection which they could not possibly
appreciate. But even then the general tendency becomes a suffi
cient guide. In finished and careful writers like Chaucer and
Gower, such imperfections are not a priori likely to occur, and, as
we shall see, are in fact unknown,
The various kinds of rhyme which are actually found are as
follows. Let BAG, DEF represent two syllables, A, E being
any vowels, and B, C ; D, F any consonants. Then if B = D but
AC is not = EF, as in Bac, Bef, we have initial rhyme or allitera
tion, which was used in the earliest form of English poetry, the
Vision of William concerning Piers Plowman, 1362, being a com
paratively modern instance. Next let A = E, but B-C not equal
D-F, as bAc, dAf, the result is middle rhyme or assonance, which
prevails in Spanish ballad poetry, where the same vowel occurs in
the final syllable of alternate lines throughout the whole ballad,
and the consonants must vary.1 Thirdly let C = F but BA not =
DE, as laC deC we have^/maZ rhyme, the English "rhymes to the
1 This is the theory ; in practice how- derecho, fecho, medt'o, alojam&nto,
ever the difficulty of keeping the con- fccho, mensageros, storgamzmto, man-
sonants always distinct has occasioned cebos, acwerdo, arr«o, Pedro, heredero,
rhymes to be occasionally mixed up contento, casaim'mtos. In ' Despues
with assonances. If a diphthong is que ret& a Zamora;' among others
introduced in place of a simple vowel, occur : Lara, hrtya, contraries, cawsa.
the assonance refers only to the ac- In ' Considerando los condes,' among
cented vowel, e.g. in Spanish ai, au are others : vale, paces, bailes. In ' Morir
assonant with a, ia, ua, and ei, eu with TOS queredes, padre ;' Tajada, prece'ada,
e, ie, ue. Thus in the Cid romance caz'ga. See also the Cid ballads ' Con
' En las cortes de Toledo,' the asso- el cuerpo que agoniza,' ' Fablando
nant words are : Sesto, sentimtento, estaba en el claustro,' ' Si atendeis que
mw«rto, dee<do, dello, propwcsto, pwesto, de los brazos,' ' De palacio sale el Cid,'
swlo, asi'mto, denwestos, m'no, teneos, ' Desterrado estaba el Cid,' ' Aquese
condeno, consejo, pl«to, reto, cscuderos, famoso Cid,' ' Non quisiera, yernos
246 SECOND PRINCIPLE OF INVESTIGATION. CHAP. IV. § 1.
eye," like love, move ; (the words was, pass form no rhyme at all).
I am not aware that BA = DE, but C not = F, as BA c, BAf
that is double initial rhyme, or B-C = D-F but A not = E, as BaC,
BeC, that is extreme rhyme, are recognized as rhymes under any
system. But AC = EF, and B not = D, as I A C, dA C or double
final rhyme, is the ideal of a perfect rhyme in modern English and
most European languages, and is the normal rhyme of Chaucer.
Nevertheless modern French writers, as well as Chaucer, admit the
identical rhyme BAC = DEF, that is BA C, BA C, which under the
name of rhyme riche is constantly used in French versification.
Either perfect rhyme I A C, dA C, or identical rhyme BA C, BA C,
and even the assonance bA c, dAf, would obviously serve to deter
mine either one of A and E from a knowledge of the other. This
leads to the second principle —
2). When a word containing a known vowel sound rhymes
with a word containing an unknown vowel sound, the sound of
the latter may generally be assumed to be the same as the former
before xv th century.
The difficulty consists in finding words whose vowel sounds are
known. These are supplied in Chaucer from three sources, Latin,
French, and those known sounds of the xvith century which we
have a right to suppose, according to the results of the last chapter,
came down to that period in an unaltered form.
As regards the Latin words we may assume a Eoman Catholic
pronunciation, which will give a, e, i, o as certainly (a, e, i, o)
long or short, and short u as (u). There may be a doubt whether
long u had its general sound (uu), or its occasional Latin and
general French sound (yy). I am rather disposed to think that
Chaucer, to whom French was familiar, used the French sound
(yy) for Latin long u. Even in 1580 we learn from Bullokar that
Latin as pronounced in England did not possess the sounds of (ch,
ii, uu, sh, dh, w, wh, j), so that long u was pronounced by him
in Latin as in English and French, namely as (yy).1 We are
mios,' 'Despues que el Cid Campeador,' cent English they are avoided, or occur
' En Valencia estaba el Cid,' ' De Cas- only from ignorance or carelessness, as
tilla van marchando,' &c. In ' Cuando in the Nursery Ehyme " Sit on a barn
el rejo y claro Apolo,' we find Idstima And keep himself warm," and in the
quasi last ma, assonancing with: estaba old catch " Cinnamon and ginger, nut-
pasan. In the oldest Romance poems, megs and cloves, And that gave me this
assonances occur mixed with rhymes ; jolly red nose," or as Benedick (Much
the following are instances of diph- Ado, v. 2) " can finde out no rime to
thongal assonances : Eulalia (Diez : Ladie but babie, an innocent rime."
Altrom. Sprachdenkmale 1846, p. 21) In Goethe's song in Faust:
tost coist v. 19, Leodegar (Diez : Zwei "Es war einmal ein Konig
Altrom. Gedichte, 1852, pp. 39-46) fiet Der hatt' einen groszen Floh,
rei stanza 9, mesfait ralat 15, advuat Den liebt' er gar nicht wenig,
estrai 16, mors toit 20, pre'ier deu 25 Als wie sein eignen Sohn,"
and 31, talier qucu 27, deus eel 40. In the apparent assonance : Floh Sohn, may
English poems of the xmth century, have only been a reminiscence of his old
assonances are well marked, see Chap. Frankfurt pronunciation Soh for Sohn.
V, § 1, and especially No. 5, Havelok, l See the example of Bullokar's pho-
and No. 6, King Ho'rn. In more re- netic writing Chap. VIII, § 4.
CHAP. IV. § 1. SECOND PRINCIPLE OF INVESTIGATION. 247
therefore hardly justified in assuming a different pronunciation for
the Latin long u in Chaucer's time, as the English long u had most
probably the same sound. The case is different with respect to
long i which was (ei) or (ai) in the xvi th century both in English
and the English pronunciation of Latin, but was I believe («) in
both during the xiv th century.
The French of the xivth century would, on this hypothesis,
have the same set of vowels as the Latin. It would be useless
attempting to distinguish in the French pronunciation of that time
two sounds of e and two of o ; we cannot even be sure that they
existed at that early period, as we know from Meigret that they did
in the xvith century. The combination ou in French was in
Chaucer's time (uu, u) and eu was probably (eu) or (ey) and oc
casionally (yy) as in the xvi th century ; (ce) the modern sound of
French eu appears not to have been developed in Chaucer's time, or
Meigret would have been familiar with it. The French diphthongs
ai, au could not have differed from (ai, au) or (ai, ao), since we find
them in the latter form in Meigret. The syllables an, in, on, un
now pronounced as the nasal vowels (aA, eA, OA, 8A), seem, to have
been received in England as (aan, aun, en, oon uun, un), without
any nasality, and it is difficult, if not impossible, to discover any
trace of vowel nasality in the notices which exist of early French
pronunciation; Beza, 1584, the earliest I have found, seems to con
fuse (A) with (q). This tolerable certainty with regard to the sounds
of French letters will be found extremely useful, expecially when it
is remembered that Chaucer not only used French phrases, but in
troduced a large number of French words into his poetry, and as
these were familiar to the gentry in the pronunciation of the time,
he could not have ventured to give them a different form in poetry
intended especially for the delight of that gentry. We have modern
examples of the same kind. Old French words we ruthlessly angli
cize ; we talk of a feat (f iit) of arms, as if it were feet, but we
refuse the same sound to fSte. We speak of recoup (rikuup-) and
estate (esteet') but of coup d'etat (kudeta) not (kuup dest^t"). "We
do not scruple to say annoy (aenor) but we try to say ennui (aAnyi),
and even if the trial results in (onwir), it has not the true English
ring with it like (aenoi-). The old words aid (eedi) and camp
(kaemp) will not allow us to call an aide de camp an (eed di
kaemp), although our (<?e-di-kaA) is not the French (eed d? kaA).
Environs, envelope are words in a transition state (envarrenz, en--
veloop) and (on-viron, on-vilop) being both heard. Chignon and
crinoline, constantly spoken of, remain French (shinjoA, krinolin)
or as nearly so as the speaker can contrive. l
For old English words we shall have to lay most stress on the
pronunciations of those now written with ai, ea, and pronounced in
the xvi th century as (ai, ee). "We might safely assume that these
sounds must have been the same in the older periods, but we shall
be generally able to establish the fact by the other two sources.
1 This subject will have to be specially noticed in the next section, under I, Y.
248 THIRD PRINCIPLE OF INVESTIGATION. CHAP. IV. § 1.
In case of any marked peculiarity, the imperfection of manu
scripts will make it necessary not to draw conclusions from isolated
examples, but to collect as many examples as possible, and to search
as carefully for exceptions as for corroborative instances. The
exceptions will then have to be separately examined, and carefully
investigated to see whether they are mere mistakes of the scribe,
which other known orthographies would explain, whether they are
simply solecisms not borne out by other instances and therefore
incorrigible errors, or whether they really indicate a double pro
nunciation.
Having thus obtained an insight into the system of orthography
used by the writer, having learned to estimate his various contri
vances to represent sound, at their true worth, we may venture to
assume as a third principle, —
3.) Orthographies shewn by rhymes to have certain values,
may be assumed to have those values even where they are not
confirmed by rhymes.
This assumes that the intention of the writer was to represent
the sounds of the words, and that his variants arose, not from
simple ignorance, but from the fact that he had to make his ortho
graphy, as he proceeded, after the usages which he had been taught
in youth, and he naturally hesitated as to which usage was most
appropriate at any time. Other variants of course occur from care
lessness, for which the scribe who writes many hours a day is
scarcely to be blamed, — he that is without such carelessness among
us, let him throw the first stone, I cannot.1 That the writers
anterior to printing had any intention of representing the histories
of words by means of the orthography, in place of the mere sounds,
it is impossible to believe. Not only do the variants we meet with
exclude this notion, but there was the all-sufficient reason that they
could not indicate what they did not know. New French words
would be written, of course, in the French way, but then this
accorded so closely with the English way, that the scribe would
hardly note the difference.8
1 In reading over the first draft of But natheles, pas over, this is no fors,
this chapter, I found I had written I pray to God to save thi gentil corps,
consequence for confident, to such utter 13718.
destruction of the meaning of the sen- Where the p is written although not
tence, that I had some difficulty in re- pronounced, as in the French fashion,
covering the original word. Similar Yet we have now hoth corse and corpse,
examples will occur to every author, and it may have been mere accident
and his own difficulties in correcting that the copyist wrote corps for cars,
his own errors will lead him to appre- just as if, because corpse is the more
ciate the difficulty and danger of a usual word, we made it in writing
critical restoration of any corrupt text. rhyme with remorse. In the middle
a So far as I can recall, 'there are of a line we find temps 12803. The
very few decided examples of a French use of gn in French words where we
spelling being retained which did not have reason to think only n was pro-
represent the English sound. The nounced in English may be also con-
only example I have noted where the sidered as a case in point, as digne
rhyme pointed it out, is 619, atteigne 8323.
CHAP. IV. § 1. NO REAL FAULTY RHYMES IN CHAUCER. 249
These are the principles on which I shall endeavour to
determine Chaucer's pronunciation. The question naturally
arises, how far is the first and most important principle, to
which the two others are only subsidiary, justified by the
manuscripts ? A careful examination of all the rhymes, in
the 17368 lines which compose the Canterbury Tales as
exhibited in Wright's edition, has resulted in finding less
than fifty rhymes in which the spelling indicates a difference
of pronunciation. Of these a large number consist in one of
the two words cited having a final e added or omitted, while
there are constant examples in other places of an ortho
graphy which would render the rhyme perfect.
The principal instances are : — born biforne 1225, trace alias 1953,
bere messager 5142, eeke leek 6153, potestate estaat 7599, wolde
brynge, for her lyvyng 8101, of hew, at newe 8253, withoute youre
witynge, in this thing, in your wirching 8368, mighte, to sigbt
8556, solace alias 9149, atte laste, it cast 9827, est beste 10773,
her witte, it 8303, rest, be keste 10663, hert smerte 10793, kepyng
rynge 10965, hoste wost 11007, ever dissevere 12802, Galiene
Egipciene Arrabiene sleen 15822, matere gramer 14946, tresor
Nabugodonosore 15629, gold olde 15645, may aye 17105, leye
pray way 8753.
Tbese cases are often mere slips of tbe pen and can easily be
corrected. Tbe considerations in §§ 4 & 5, will be sufficient to
explain them all, and they must be all reckoned as errors of writing,
not of rhyme. Poor Cbaucer is very pathetic in reference to tbe
damage done to bis verse by scribes. In Troylus and Cryseyde
5 '74 be says, addressing bis " litel boke,"
And for ther is so gretc dyversite
In Englissh, and in writynge of our tonge,
So preye I to God, that non myswrite the
Ne the mys-metere, for defaute of tonge !
And red wher so thow be, or ellcs songe,
That thou be understonde, God I beseche !
" But yet to purpos of my rather speche.
And wbat he suffered from tbe carelessness of scribes is well ex
hibited in bis address to bis own scrivener, wbich by tbe bye bas
itself been much injured in transcribing.i He is made to say: 6 '307
Adam Scrivener, if ever it the befall
Boece or Troilus for to write new,
Under thy long locks maist thou have the scall,
But. after my making thou write more trew!
So oft a day I mote thy werke renew,
It to correct and eke to rubbe and scrape ;
And all is thorow thy necligence and rape.
Would tbat we bad a text corrected by Cbaucer' s band !
1 Mr. Morris had added several e's proved" to suit the xvith century
required by the language. But the pronunciation. It is a wonder we do
lines are quoted from Thynne's edition not find anew in the second line ; for
of 1532, and were evidently "im- in the second, long in the third, and
250 NO REAL FAULTY RHYMES IN CHAUCER. CHAP. IV. § 1.
The cases in which short or long « rhyme with short or long e,
may either belong to the class of accommodation rhymes, to be im
mediately noticed, or are explicable on the principles laid down in
the next section under i. The following are the chief instances noted :
geven lyven 917, list best 6819, 7567, list rest 9299, 16559,
abrigge alegge 9531, swere hire = A0r 11101, 12076, pulpit iset
13806, shitte = shut lette 14660.
There remain only nine instances of other classes to be considered,
and some of these are patent clerical errors. Thus since hye is con
stantly found for high, it follows that in : charged hem in hyghe,
some remedye 4629, the gh is a mere errop of the writer. In :
tyrant Buserus, serpent veneneus 15589, there is little doubt that
-neus is a clerical error for -mom, which would give a perfect rhyme
and be a correct form, as Mr. Morris reads and as is found in
16063. The common yen for eyes, shows that the initial e, in :
thin outer eyen, may well aspien 12426, is a mere slip of the pen.
The rhymes : alle thastates, of debates, desolat 4548 are manifestly
clerical errors, and we have probably to read : thastat (= the
estate) debat, desolat. The lines
There saw he hartes with her homes hee
The gretest that were ever seen with eye, 11503
given in Wright and Tyrwhitt (who has hie eie] are not in Morris,
and correspond to a gap in the Harleian MS. If genuine, the
rhyming words should clearly be the common pair hye ye or heighe
eyghe. In: more and lasse, marquisesse 8816, lasse is evidently a
clerical error for lesse, which is the reading of the MS. Dd. 4. 24,
University Library, Cambridge.
The rhyme: i-eased, y-preised, 6511, is given as: y-eased
y-presed 2-234 by Morris, and: esed ypreised by Tyrwhitt, but the
Harl. 7334 reads: I eased, y pleased, and the Landsd. 851 esede
yplesede.1 These are usual rhymes. Lastly : jelousye me 1809,
more in the fourth line are evident in- cessarily added in mote, werke, eke; and
sertions ; e final was omitted in befalle, thorow should be tlmrgh. The lines
newe, scalle, trewe, renewe, and unne- may then have possibly sounded thus :
(Aadaam Skruneer, if eer it dhee befal'e
Bo,ees- or Troo-ilus to rwzrte neu-e,
Un'der dhj lok'es maist dhu nan dhe skal'e
But aft-er -mii maak't'q- dhu ru>trte treu-e !
So oft a dai i» moot dh» werk reneu-e,
It to korekt' and eek to rub and skraa'pe, —
And al is thurkwh -dhn negh'dzhens- and raa-pe !)
1 Wright says in a footnote : " The y-pleased, for flattery and pleasing,
Harl. MS. reads y-pleased: but the named at first, are repeated as Jlattery
reading I have adopted seems to give and attendance, business, afterwards. The
the best sense." The context as well whole passage, inserting the bracketed
as the rhyme declares in favour of words, runs thus in the Harl. 7334: —
Some fayden' [)>at] cure herte is moft I eafed
Whan [j?at] we ben y flaterid and y pleafsed
He go)> fill neigh )>e foth I wil not lye
A man fchal wynne vs beft wij> flaterye
And with attendaunce and [wib] bufynefle
Ben we y limed bo)>e more and lefle.
CHAP. IV. § 1. SO REAL FAULTY RHYMES IN CHAUCER.
251
is not even an approach to rhyme and is manifestly corrupt. I
find on examination that all the other MSS. in the British Museum
readjolite, which is Tyrwhitt's reading, and is no doubt correct.
The rhyme: mercy sey 13308, will be specially examined in the
next section, under I, when it will be shewn from other MSS.
that the proper reading is : mercy sy.
This examination is calculated to make us feel confident in the
correctness of our first principle as applied to the Canterbury Tales.
On extending the examination over the whole of Chaucer's poems,
the following faulty rhymes are all that I have noted, which do not
admit of an immediate correction. Except in certain pieces, of
which the originals are thereby proved to be of very doubtful
authority, and of comparatively recent date, the faulty rhymes will
be found exceedingly rare. The citations refer to the volume and
page of Mr. Morris's edition, and the references to the original MSS.
or editions, are all given.
VOLS. II. & III.
1. The Canterbury Tales, from the
Harl. MS. 7334, collated with Lans-
downe MS. 851. After the previous
examination this may be said to have
no faulty rhymes.
VOL. IV.
2. The Court of Love, pp. 1-50 : from
Trin. Coll. Cam. MS. R. iii. 20 : write
aright 1, discrive high 4, wonderly
signifie 4, degree ye = eye 5, white de-
lite hight 6, hie crye whye 10, I espye
ye=eye 10, hie besyly ye = eye 11, fan
tasy e merily 15, ye =eye pretily 15, white
delite sight 16, eschewe newe due 17,
ben engyne 1 9, ye = eye wonderly hie 24,
se ye = eye 27, shewe hewe 34, by nye =
near 34, modifie truly 35, avowe wowe
—woo howe 42, I flye sodenly 45,
trewe dewe pursue 48.
3. The Parlement of Briddes, or the
Assembly of Foules, pp. 51-74, from
Bodleian MS. Fairfax 16, collated with
Harleian MS. 7333, and Bodleian MS.
Seld. B. 24. None.
4. The Boke of Cupide, God of Love,
or the Cuckow and the Nightingale,
pp. 75-86, from Bodleian MS. Fairfax
16, collated with Harl. MS. 7333, and
Bodleian MS. Seld. B. 24. None.
5. The Flower and the Leaf, pp. 87-
107, from Speght's edition of Chaucer
1597 and 1602, no manuscript copy
being known : hie = high certainely 87,
truly company 93, melody soothly 93,
company lady richely 98, sautry craftely
98, womanly daisie 99, company friendly
103, properly company 103, chivalry
Avorthy 104, victory mightily 104, com
pany humbly hie=kai>te 107.
6. Troylus and Cry sey de, p. 108,
from Harl. MS. 2280 collated with
Harl. MSS. 1239, 2392, 3943, and
Additional MS. 12044. Troye, joye,
fro the 108, contrarie debonaire staire
116.
VOL. V.
Troy his and Cry sey de continued, pp.
1-77. None.
7. Chaucer es A.. B. C. called La
Priere de Nostre Dame, pp. 78-85, from
the Bodl. MS. Fairfax 16, collated
with a MS. in the Hunterian Museum,
Glasgow, medycine resygne 81, this
rhyme is probably correct.
8. Chaucer's Dream, pp. 86-154,
from Speght's edition of Chaucer 1597
and 1602, no manuscript copy being
known : eene = eyen kene 87, was glasse
88, paire here (this word seems to have
been supplied by the editor) 88, hie =
high sie = see 88,. be companie 89-90,
come some 92, undertaketh scapeth 96,
grene yene=eyen 96, place was 100,
named attained 104, een=eyen queen
106, joyously harmony 107, gentilnesse
peace (?) 107, be companie 108, de-
stroid conclude 108, vertuous use
110, signe encline (?) 113, resigne
nine (?) 120, found bond 126, re
member tender 129, fiftene, an even
132, ligne compane 132, safety com
pany 133-4, greene eerie =eyen 138, cry
company 138, softely harmony 141,
nine greene (?) 142, vertuouse use 143,
company by 147.
9. The Boke of the Duchesse, or the
Dethe of Blanche, pp. 155-195, from
the Bodl. MS. Fairfax. 16 : Pythagoras
ches 175.
252
NO REAL FAULTY RHYMES IN CHAUCER. CHAP. IV. § 1.
10. Of Queue Anelyda and False
Arcyte. pp. 196-208, from the Bodl.
MS. Fairfax, 16. None.
11. The House of Fame, pp. 209-275,
from the Bodl. MS. Fairfax, 16. None.
12. The Legende of Goode Women,
pp. 276-361, from the Bodl. MS. Fair
fax, 16, collated with Bodl. MS. Seld.
B. 24, MSS. Harl. 9832, Addit. 12524
(British Museum) and Gg. 4. 27, in the
University Library, Cambridge, pri
vately printed by H. Bradshaw, Cam
bridge, 1864. None.
VOL. VI.
13. The Romattnt of the Hose, pp.
1-234, from the unique MS. in the
Hunterian Museum, Glasgow : be
nycetie 1, samet delit(?) 27, loreyes
oliveris 41, I maladie 57, hastily com
pany 57, generaly vilanye 67, worthy
curtesie 68, more are 68, abrode for-
weriede 78, annoy away (?) 82, escape
make 84, joye conveye (?) 89, curtesie
gladly 91, foly utterly 97, laste barste
97, foly hastily 99, 100, werye seye 99,
redily maistrie 101, flaterie uttirly 103,
affere debonaire 105, bothom salvacioun
106, angerly villanye 107, espie sikirlye
116, folilye jelousye 116-7, jelousie I
1 19, 1 26, 1 lechery 119, bothoms sesouns
122, high delyvetly 123, ceiteynly
jelousie 123, glotouns bothoms 131,
storme corne 132, sikirly foly 136,
bittirly foly 138, I curtesie 139, lorde
rewarde 141, seignorie I 142, ever
fer (?) 146, engendrure plesyng 147,
companye disrewlilye 149, servise preise
=praise 151, worthy drurie 154, vice
wys 164, to bye hastily 171, sj=part
of the second syllable of fysic, foly 175,
covertly ipocrisie 186$ company outerly
192,whye tregetrie = trickery 194, com
panye I 209, mekely trechery 223,
sobrely, je vous die 225.
14. Oomplaynte of a Loveres Lyfe, or
the Complaint of the Black Knight,
pp. 235-259, from the Bodl. MS. Fair
fax, 16: white bryght nyght 235,
grevously petously malady 240, felyngly
malady 242.
15. The Complaynt of Mars and
Venus, pp. 260-274, from the Bodl.
MS. Fairfax, 16, collated with MS.
Ff. 1, 6, in the University Library,
Cambridge, edition of H. Bradshaw,
1864. None.
16. A goodly Ballade of Chaucer,
pp. 275-277, from Thynne's edition of
1532 : supposeth ryscth 277.
17. A Praise of Women, pp. 278-
284, from Thynne's edition of 1532.
None.
18. The Compleynte of the Dethe of
Pite, pp. 285-286, from Bodl. MS.
Fairfax, 16, collated with Harl. MS 78.
None.
19. Ballade de Vilage Sauns Peyn-
ture, pp. 289-292, from Bodl. MS.
Fairfax, 16. None.
20. Ballade sent to King Richard,
pp. 292-293, from Bodl. MS. Fairfax,
16. None.
21. The Compleynte of Chaucer to
his Purse, p. 294, from Bodl. MS.
Fairfax, 16, collated with Harl. MS.
7333 and Bodl. Seld. B. 24. None.
22. Good Counseil of Chaucer, p. 295,
from Bodl. MS. Fairfax, 16, collated
with Cotton MS. Otho A. xviii., and
MS. Gg. 4, 27, in Univ. Lib. Cam.
And Add. MS. 10340, see Athenceum,
14 Sept. 1867, p. 333. None.
23. Prosperity, p. 296, from Bodl.
MS, Seld. B. 24. None.
24. A Ballade, pp. 296-7, from
Harl. MS. 7333. None.
25. L' Envoy de Chaucer a Scogan,
pp. 297-8, from Bodl. MS. Fairfax,
16. None.
26. L' Envoy de Chaucer a Button,
pp. 299-300, from Bodl. MS. Fairfax,
16. None.
27. ^tas Prima, pp. 300-302, from
MS, Hh. 4. 12. 2, late MS. Moore 947,
in the Univ. Lib. Cam. None.
28. Leaulte vault Richesse, pp. 302-
303, from Bodl. MS. Seld. B. 24. None.
29. Proverbes of Chaucer, p. 303,
from Bodl. MS. Fairfax, 16. None.
30. Roundel, pp. 304-5, reprinted
from Percy's Reliques of Ancient
English Poetry. None.
31. Virelai, pp. 305-6, from MS.
R. iii. 20, Trin. (/'oil. Cam. : infortunate
fate whate 305, hate desperate estate
306, certayn payn 306.
32. Chaucer's Prophecy, p. 307, from
Sir Harris Nicolas's edition of a MS.
belonging to Mr. Singer. None.
33. Chaucer's Words unto his own
Scrivener, p. 307, from Thynne's
edition, 1532. See supra p. 250, note.
None.
34. Orisoune to the Holy Virgin,
pp. 308-312, from Bodl. MS. Seld. B.
24 : honour cure 310.
CHAP. IV. § 1. NO REAL FAULTY RHYMES IN GOWER. 253
In examining Gower's rhymes through the medium of Pauli's
edition, I have put aside his orthography as of no value, and have
reckoned as faulty rhymes only such as I could not immediately
correct hy means of the results obtained from an examination of
Chaucer, and exhibited in the following sections. The citations
refer to the volume and page of Pauli's edition.
Vol. i. sely privete 225, er= formerly ware 231,
Vol. ii. named proclaimed 84, joy money 147, Troy monaie 188,
nine peine 261, enemy michery 355,
Vol. iii. accompteth amounteth 54, straught sought 374.
Nine faulty rhymes out of more than 33000 verses would not be
much. But in fact the editor Dr. Pauli, and not the author, is the
person really answerable for them, as the following examination
will shew.
The reading : sely privete i 225, is wrong on the face of it, for
sely makes no sense ; the word is celee or cele as in Harl. 3490, 3869,
7184, and Soc. Ant. MS. 134, meaning secret, a purely French
word. The passage runs thus in Harl. 3869.
As who faij>. I am so celee
Ther mai no mannes priuete
Ben heled half fo wel as myn.
The reading: er ware i 231, is: er war in Harl. 7184, but : ar
war in Harl. 3490 and 3869, the passage in the last being
Of such enfamples as wer ar
Him oghte be )>e more war.
The rhyme : named proclaimed ii 84, is given : named, pro-
clamed, by the three Harl. MSS, and:.naimd proclaimd, by the
Soc. Ant. MS. The first reading is evidently correct from the
French proclame, and even Pauli in another place writes : named
proclamed i 6.
For: joy money ii 147, Troy monaie ii 188, the Harl. MS. 3869,
reads : ioye monoie, Troie monoie. These rhymes will be further
considered in the next section under 01.
The rhyme : nine peine ii 261, is written : nyne peyne in Harl.
3869, but this is an evident slip for: nyne pyne, the reading of
Harl. 3490 and 7184.
For : enemy michery ii 355, both Harl. 3490 and Harl. 3869
read : enemie micherie.1 The enemy is Venus, and the word re
ceives the French feminine form, thus, according to Harl. 3869
For Venus which was enemie
Of J?ilke loues micherie.
The words : accompteth amounteth iii 54, are so spelled in the
three Harl. MS., but as it is certain that the two French words
from which they have been taken, had the same sound, the rhyme
was really perfect. This then is an example in Gower of the
retention of a French spelling, which did not represent the English
sound, supra, p. 248, note 2. The orthography accompt is even yet
1 Harl. 7184 is illegible; the word they mean it is hard to say; probably
is like enme, that is, there are five we should restore missing letters thus :
strokes between the two e's, and what enemt'e.
254 ACCOMMODATION RHYMES. CHAP. IV. § 1.
retained in our written language, though generally superseded by
account.
The words : straught sought iii 374, were wrongly transcribed
by Pauli from the Harl. 3490, which he professed to follow in this
passage, and which reads : strauht cauht.
This examination must be held to establish the correctness
of the first principle for all the writings of Chaucer and
Gower. The exceptions are clearly due to some error of the
editor or the scribe, or to certain varieties of pronunciation
which will meet with an explanation hereafter. In Chaucer's
time many words certainly existed in two or more forms
either entirely different, as tho for those, say for saw, they
for though, mo for more, etc., or only differing in a vowel as
kess for kiss, lest for list lust, stree for straw, etc. We find
instances of this double use even in prose, and in places
where the use was optional,1 but it was evidently a most
convenient instrument in the rhymester's hand, and Chaucer,
who, notwithstanding the far greater facilities for rhyme at
his time than at the present, seems to have been frequently
"hard up,"2 to judge by those numerous little tags which
appear in his poetry and are absent from his prose, has ex
tensively availed himself of them. The following are a few
examples of these Accommodation Rhymes, as I propose to term
them : —
rood upon a mere (= a mare), and a mellere 543, gan the child to
blesse, gan it kesse 8428, holde champartye, may sche gye 1951,
Then pray I the, to morwe with a spere That Arcita me thurgh
the herte bere = bore 2257, unto oon of tho, moche care and wo
2353, that on myn auter bren, that thou go hen = hence 2357,
stree = straw three 2935, Paternoster soster = sister 3485, compame9
1 A cook thei hadde with hem for 851, Harl. 1758, MS. Reg. 18. C. ii.;
the nones, and Sloane MSS. ) 685, 1686, all agree
To boyle chiknes and the mary in reading : compame blaine. Harl.
bones 381. 7335 has wwi* bame, Harl. 7334and MS.
Hence marrybonea for marrow bones Reg. 17 D. xv. have both com pame,
(possibly a reference to St. Mary le bon) which Wright prints compame in one
is not a recent vulgarism, but can boast word, and Morris misprints compaine,
a high antiquity. and it should be observed that there is
2 Compare Chaucer's own admission, tfl^^ i^VT^* ? ^\
fi yjA MS. 7334, fol. 49 b, which looks at
' And eke to me hit is a grete penaunce, first S\S^ f/ P«>" and not pome
v .iL.li iTo+A onr.li were intended, but such a mark is
^kaiSe neyer ™* «"™gh.out .the MS- f°r the
To8 folowe worde by 'worde the dot over an i, which is always rcpre-
• -, sen ted, when written, as it would be in
«„,„ , o v™ *Vo* such a case, by a flourish like i. The
CTr, FranZ ™ter of MS. Harl. 7333 was so
puzzled that he left out the line with
s This reading is doubtful. Lansdown compame, altered the next line to
CHAP. IV. § 1. THE ORTHOGRAPHY SHEWS THE SOUND. 255
= compagne blame 3709, beete sTieete = shoote 3927, day lay = law
4795, wirche = work "chirche 9257, Eve preve = prove 9203, feste
meste = moste 10613, est almest = almost 15168, als = also fals
4315, speche seche = seke 4939, beech, theech = the ich —prosper I
12856, sein = seen agayn 5177, time envenyme 6055, nobleye,
preye, seye 8704, therto, is do = idon 10313, glayre of an ey, cley
12734, seye dbeye 13514, mystrist wist 13784, the mery orgon, in
the chirche goon 16337.
These instances, which are only a few out of many, are
abundantly sufficient to shew that the scribe was not content
with continuing to write one form of a word, and allowing its
different sounds to be elicited from the rhyme (as we should
now write a tear, to tear] but that he altered the spelling
when he wished to shew a difference of sound. Hence
although we have detected him tripping at times, from mere
carelessness, we can feel confident that when varieties of
spelling as eyen yen, hye hihe, deyde dyde, etc. constantly
occur, they really indicate different sounds, such as for ex
ample we shall learn to attribute to ey, y, ih, in other com
binations, so that the words just cited should be read (ai'en,
ii'en, Hire nikire, daid*e diid'e), and we are thus led to a
corroboration of our third principle as well as of our first.
Having thus established the trustworthiness of my instru
ment of investigation, not merely for the particular instance
of this Harleian manuscript 7334, but for all good MSS. of
the period, I shall proceed to apply it to discover a complete
system of pronunciation, so as to allow us to declaim Chaucer's
Canterbury Tales as they might have been read during his
lifetime, although doubtless with a modern accent which
would have failed to satisfy the poet's ear. Still this pro
nunciation would have probably been perfectly intelligible,
while our modern English method of reading must have
sounded as mere gibberish.1
rhyme, omitted the following which which has heen scored out, as it was
was then without a rhyme, and read : thus left without a rhyme, hut is per-
Go from )>e wyndowe, Jacke fole fectly legible.
fhee fayde
I love hette o]>er and ellcs I were to l This opinion I entertain so strongly,
blame that I retain its expression in the text,
"Welle more Jan ]?e by Jhefu and his notwithstanding that I have been in-
dame formed, since it was written, that many
So lette me slepe a twenty devilweye. Early English scholars adopt systems
The words : and his dame, in the last of pronunciation agreeing in the main
line but one, are in another ink, and with our barbarous method of reading
are apparently written over an oblitera- Latin and Greek. While this sheet
tion. The last line was originally pre- was passing through the press I re
ceded by : ceived the following : " As to O.E. and
Go forth thy weye or eU.es I wolle A.S. Pronunciation, my scheme is i = i
caste a stone, of shine, e=ee of feet, a=a of father,
256
REFERENCES TO CHAUCER AND GOWER. CHAP. IV. § 1.
Mode of Reference to Chaucer and Gower.
The lines of the Canterbury Tales will be cited by their numbers
in Wright's single volume edition (p. 243 note), the number refers
to the first line or word cited. The lines in any of Chaucer's other
poetical works will be cited by the volume and page (not number of
line) in which they occur in Morris's edition, a turned period being
placed after the number of the volume ; thus, 4'87 means vol. 4,
p. 87. As final words are usually cited, hardly any difficulty will
be thus experienced in finding the passage. The Hst of Chaucer's
poems on pp. 251-2, will show at once from the reference the par
ticular poem in which the passage occurs. The lines in Gower will
be cited by the volume and page in Pauli's edition,1 the number
of the volume being in small roman letters and the number of the
pages following without an intervening comma, thus ii 84 is vol. 2,
p. 84. By this means the form of the reference distinguishes
the book cited, which will therefore not be named.
As Mr. Morris's edition of the Canterbury Tales is not numbered
throughout, and as Tyrwhitt's order of the Tales is not entirely the
same as Wright's, the following comparison will be found useful.
The numbers refer to the volume and page in Morris and the line in
Wright and Tyrwhitt. Occasionally some lines are inserted in one
of these editions and omitted in the others, hence it will not always
be possible to refer from one to the other by the numbers with
certainty, but the difference is always very small, and if allowed for,
will create no confusion. In order to correspond as far as possible
with Tyrwhitt's system, Mr. Wright's first line of a piece is not
always numbered consecutively to the last line of the preceding
piece, and his number 6440 is a misprint for 6439. The roman
titles of the pieces in the following table follow Mr. Morris's edition ;
the italic titles of the tales have been added by the author in ac
cordance with the text of the poems, for convenience of reference.
HAEMONY OF THE KEFEEENCES TO MOREIS'S, WEIGHT'S, AND
TYEWHTTT'S EDITIONS or THE CANTEEBTJEY TALES.
Name of Piece.
Morris.
Wright.
Tyrwhitt.
1 TVio Prnlnoiip
2-1
2-27
2-96
2-98
2-120
2-122
2-13/5
1
861
3111
3187
3853
3919
432.'}
1
861
3111
3187
3853
3919
4323
2. The Knightes Tale. Palamon and Areite
3. The Prologue of the Myller ....
4. The Milleres Tale. Nicholas, Absolon, and
the Carpenter es Wyf .....
6. The Prologue of the Reeve ....
6. The Reeves Tale. The Miller of Tromp-
a = o of bone, SB = a. of fate, u = ou of
house, &c," a scheme utterly irrecon
cilable with the direct evidence of the
last chapter. See also Benjamin Thorpe
on the pronunciation of Orrmin, (Ana-
lecta Anglo-Saxonica, 1846, 8vo, pre
face, p. xi) quoted below Chap. V, § 2,
No. 1.
1 Confessio Amantis of John Gower,
edited and collated with the best manu
scripts by Dr. lleinhold Pauli, London,
Bell and Daldy, 1857, 8vo, 3 vols.
CHAP. IV. $ 1. REFERENCES TO CHAUCER AND GOWER. 257
Name of Piece.
Morris,
Wright.
Tyrwhitt.
8. The Cokes Tale. The Prenlys - - -
The Cokes Tale of Gamelyn ....
9. The Man of Lawes Prologue - - - -
10. The Man of Lawes Tale. Constance - -
11. The Prologue of the Wyf of Bathe - -
12. The Wyf of Bathes Tale. The Knight
nvifl thf ~Fnii] Wiif
2-136
2-138
2-170
2-173
2-206
2-232
2-245
2-246
2-258
2-259
2-278
2-280
2-284
2-292
2-297
2-302
2-307
2-315
2-317
2-318
2-354
2-355
2-365
31
3-2
3-29
3-46
3-60
375
3-75
3-85
3-90
3-106
3-107
3-121
3-122
3-130
3-131
3-138
3-139
3-198
3-201
3-227
3-229
3-249
3-252
3-261
3-263
4363
4421
4519
5583
6439
6847
6881
7247
7291
7877
7933
8073
8325
8486
8661
8815
9053
9089
9121
10293
10323
10661
10985
11041
11929
12482
12940
13410
13416
13702
13878
14384
14412
14846
14864
15102
15123
15327
15375
15477
16253
16307
16933
17037
17295
4363
4421
4519
5583
6439
6847
6883
7247
7291
7877
7933
8073
8325
8486
8661
8815
9053
9089
9121
10293
10323
10661
10985
11041
15469
16022
16188
11929
11935
12221
12263
12903
12931
13365
13383
13621
13642
13847
13895
13997
14773
14827
16950
17054
17312
13. The Prologue of the Frere ....
14. The Freres Tale. The Sompnour and the
15. The Sompnoures Prologue - - - - -
16. The Sompnoures Tale. The Frere and
17. The Clerk of Oxenfordes Prologue - -
1 8. The Clerkes Tale. Grisildes. - - -
L'Envoye de Chaucer - ....
1 9. Prologue of the Marchaundes Tale - -
20. The Marchaundes Tale. January and May
22. The Squyeres Tale. Cambymkan. - -
Incipit secunda pars .....
23. The Frankeleynes Prologe - - - -
24. The Frankeleynes Tale. Arveragus and
25. The Secounde Nonnes Tale. Cecilie.
26. The Prologe of the Chanounes Yeman -
27. The Chanounes Yemannes Tale. The
False Chanoun and the Prcst - - -
28. The Doctoures Prologe .....
29. Tale of the Doctor of Phisik. Virginius.
30. The Prologue of the Pardoner - - -
31. The Pardoneres Tale. The Thre Riot-
32. The Schipmannes Prologue - - - -
33. The Schipmannes Tale. Dan Johan and
34. The Prioresses Prologe - - - - -
35. The Prioresses Tale. The litel Ckrgeoun
36. Prologe to Sire Thopas
37 The Tale of Sir Thopas .....
39. The Tale of Meliheus, prose - - - -
40. The Prologe of the Monkes Tale - - -
41. The Monkes Tale. The harm of hem that
42. The Prologe of the Nonne Prestes Tale.
43. The Nonne Prest his Tale. Chaunteelere.
44. The Prologue of the Maunciples Tale -
45. The Maunciples Tale. Phebus and the
White Crow -----.-
46. The Prologe of the Persones Tale - -
17
258 THE VOWELS — XIV TH CENTURY. CHAP. IV. § 2.
§ 2.— The Towels.
LONG AND SHORT VOWELS.
The orthographic custom of the Germanic languages is to
consider a final vowel in an accented syllable long, and a
vowel in a syllable closed by a consonant short. The physio
logical cause for the duplication of a consonant between two
vowels to indicate the shortening of the first vowel has been
already explained, p. 55. But long vowels also occur in
syllables closed by a consonant, and here the writers have
generally been put to great straits. Orrmin by simply leav
ing the consonant single after a long vowel, and always
doubling it after a short one, escaped the difficulty. In the
oldest Germanic monument, Uphilas's Gospels, the Greek
custom of using different signs for long and short (e, o) was
usually followed, thus e ai, o au were generally, = (ee e, oo o)
Long * was represented by ei, following the Greek custom of
pronouncing et at that and the present time. Long a, u,
were not distinguished from short, even if the real long
(aa, uu) existed in Gothic.1
In Anglosaxon an accent is occasionally placed over the
long vowel, but it is frequently omitted. In modern high
German and Dutch aa, ee, oo are often used for the long
vowels, but this system of reduplication does not extend to
long i and long u. When the i was not dotted, it would have
been difficult to distinguish ii from u, and the combination
uu might be read nu, un, im, mi, ini, which seems sufficiently
to explain the non-use of reduplication to express these pro
longations. Still I find reduplication sufficiently distinct
even in these cases, provided that the i is properly dotted,
and hence I have employed it consistently in palaeotype.
In Chaucer, as represented by our MS., reduplication is
not unfrequently resorted to in the case of aa, ee, oo, but as
the writer often neglects to mark the distinction (compare :
in such a caas 657, arwes in a cas 2081), and sometimes
employs ee where we expect to find a short vowel (as iceel for
wel 2125), not much reliance can be placed upon this ortho
graphy. The fact, however, that both short and long a, e, i, o
rhyme with each other, but that long u and short u never
rhyme, leads at once to the conclusion that the sounds of the
long and short a, e, i, o differed only in quantity, but the
sounds of long and short u differed also in quality. This
general conclusion, will be abundantly confirmed.
1 See an account of the values of the Gothic letters, Chapter V, § 4, No. 3.
CHAP. IV. § 2. A — XIV TH CENTURY. 259
A — xiv TH CENTURY.
That long and short a could not be very different from (aa, a)
we have already seen. It is not possible to distinguish after such
a lapse of time between (a, a) and it is safer probably to consider
(aa, a) as the real sounds. The effect of a preceding w does not
appear to have been felt ; that is, a in was, warm would not have
differed from a in has, harm.
LATIN RHYMES. ... as assoillyng saveth, a significavit 663, where
the old habit of reading the Latin termination -it as (-ith) may
have been alluded to ; ' the Psalm of David, cor meum eructavit 7515 ;
Yet spak this child, when spreynde was the water,
And song, 0 alma redemptoris mater. 15051
My teeme is alway oon, and ever was,
Radix malorum est cupiditas. 13748
On which was first i-writen a crowned A,
And after that, Amor vincit omnia. 161
These examples lead at once to the conclusion that a was called
(aa), and that saveth, David, water, was were pronounced (saaveth,
Daa'vid, waa*ter, was). Hence also the words rhyming with was
will have (-as) or (-aas), e.g. hire statue clothed was, arwes in a
cos 2081, therto chosen was, such a caas 2111, he walketh forth a
pas, ther hir temple was 2219, this hors of bras, siege of Troye was
10619, of Macedon he was, alas, such a caas, thyn sis fortune is
torned into an aas 16142, where sis, aas are six, ace. These words
give the key to many others, thus : in this caas, of solas 799, and
all words of that kind now usually spelled -ace, as : paas Thomas
827. We should also conclude that in: caught in his lace, this
trespace 1819, we ought to read laas, trespas, as in: a dagger
hangyng on a laas 394 &c.
FRENCH EHYMES. . . . hadde thei ben to blame, to be clept madame
377, hadde hosen of the same, no wight clepe hir but madame 3953,
fy for shame, sayde thus Madame 16377, it happed him par cas,
ther the poysoun was. 14300
This last example confirms one of the Latin rhymes. In the
other examples observe that Madame is a word which has preserved
its French sound (or what is meant to be such) down to the present
day, and hence the rhymes with it are conclusive.
SHOUT AND LONG A RHYMES.
A long surcote of pers uppon he hadde
And by his side he bar a rusty bladde. 619
Here, judging by the modern use, Wade is spelled Hadde simply
to secure the rhyme, that is the long vowel is, for the occasion,
treated as a short one. This of course could not be done if the
quality of the vowels changed with the length, as in the present
had, blade. In the following example —
Each after other clad in clothes blake
But such a cry and such a woo they make. 901
1 See Salesbury, infra, Chap. VIII, § 1, under T.
260 E, EE, EA, EO, OE, IE — XIV TH CENTURY. CHAP. IV. § 2.
we have exactly the converse, the vowel in llacke being lengthened
to rhyme with make.. This is also the case in : I may no lenger
tarry, lady seinte Mary 7185, where the correct reading would
probably be tarie, Marie. In ags. both bleed and bl<ec had short
vowels.
The pronunciation of a in Chaucer, which scarcely admitted of
doubt before, is so clearly indicated by these three classes of ex
amples, that it is unnecessary to accumulate passages of the last
kind, those cited in the first two cases are all that I have observed
of that description in the Canterbury Tales. We must, there
fore, conclude that
A in the xivth century was always either [aa,} a) or{aa, a).
E, EE, EA, EO, OE, IE — XIVTH CENTURY.
Final e presents peculiar difficulties, and will therefore be treated
separately in the fourth section of this chapter after the other
vowels and the consonants have been fully considered. At present
it may be assumed to be pronounced as the inflexional German final
e (p. 195, note) in all cases where it ends a line or seems to be re
quired by the metre, and to be otherwise omitted in pronunciation,
leaving the precise discrimination of these cases to future investigation.
The combination ee is used so frequently in place of e long, that
it cannot be considered as a different letter. The combination ea
is rare, but occurs most frequently in ease, please, which are also
found without a. Eo, oe are occasionally used instead of e, when
an e usurps the place of o, but there does not appear to have been
any variation of sound. le and e alternate in some words, especially
matiere matere, hiere here, but ie does not appear to have had any
special signification distinct from e. The modern pronunciation of
the e, and the separation of its long sound into (ee, ii) which was
confirmed in the xvi th century, does not appear to have commenced.
LATIN RHYMES. — The only Latin word ending in e which con
cludes lines in Chaucer is benedicite, and this was almost always
pronounced in three syllables, but whether (ben'diste) or (ben'aite,
ben'ete), — compare Seint Beneyt 173, and the modern Sennet — I
am not able to say, I incline however to (ben'ete).1 The following
are all the passages in which I have observed the occurrence of this
word, and as most of them illustrate the sound of e, ee, it may be
best to cite them all at length.
The god of love, a ! benedicite (5 syllables)
How mighty and how gret a lord is he. 1787
To fighte for a lady ; benedicite !
It were a lusty sighte for to see. 2117
What ? Absolon, what ? Cristes swete tree !
Why ryse ye so rathe ? benedicite. 3765
1 Prof. Child (infra, § 5, art. 96) has five syllables. The word has always
suggests bencite as the contraction and five syllables in Gower.
suspects a lacuna in v. 1787, where it
CHAP. IV. § 2. E, EE, EA, EO, OE, IE — XIV TH CENTURY.
Ey, benedifite\ than had I foule i-sped. 4218
What roune ye with hir maydenes ? benedicte,
Sir olde lecchour, let thi japes be. 5823
And cbyding wyves maken men to fle
Out of here oughne hous ; a, benedicite. 5861
And sayd, 0 deere housbond, benedicite,
Fareth every knight with his wyf as ye. 6669
I trowe thou hast som frere or prest with the.
Who clappith ther ? sayd this widow, benedicite. 7165
Til atte last he sayde, God vow se !
This lord gan loke, and sayde, Benedicite.- 7751
A wyf ? a ! seinte Mary, benedicite,
How might a man have eny adversite
That hath a wyf? 9211
Unto cure oost, he seyde, Benedicite \
This thing is wonder merveylous to me. 12-556
I see wel that ye lerned men in lore
Can mochel good, by Goddes dignitee.
The Person him answerde : Benedicite! 14389
0, seinte Mary, benedicite (3 syllables)
"What eylith this love at me
To bynde me so sore ? 16 195
So hidous was the noyse, a benediciee !
Certes he Jakke Straw, and his meyne,
Ne maden schoutes never half so schrille. 16879
These examples establish the pronunciation of, in modern spelling,
he, see, tree, bee, flee, ye, thee, me, as (see, see, tree, be, flee, jee,
dhee, mee), so far as the vowel is concerned. The other rhyming
words, adversity, dignity, meny, will be considered under I, Y. The
words thus established suffice to prove the pronunciation of many
others and shew that the personal pronouns, he, she, we, ye, which
were exceptionally pronounced with (ii) in the xvi th century, (p.
77), and the combination ee which was confined to (ii) at the latter
end of the same century (p. 79), had in Chaucer's time, exclusively
the sound of (ee).
It might seem proper to reckon among these Latin rhymes
Yet schal I saven hir, and the, and me,
Hastow nat herd how saved was Noe. 3533
But certeynly no worde writeth he
Of thilke wikked ensample of Canace. 4497
But the preceding examples will also shew that Noe Canace must
have had a final (ee).
FRENCH RHYMES ... a sop in fyn clarre, than sittith he, 9717 away
fro me, as well as thin parde 5891, the lasse light parde! the thar
not pleyne the 5917.
For cosynage, and eek for bele cheer
That he hath had ful ofte time heer. 14820
LONG AND SHORT EHTMES . . . trapped in steel, dyapredw/ 2159,
here the long pronunciation of wel is not noted as it is in
Som wol been armed on here legges weel,
And have an ax, and eek, a mace of steel. 2125
Thanked be fortune, and hire false wheel,
That noon estat assureth to ben weel. 927
His eyen steep, and rollying in his heed
That stemed as a forneys of a leed. 201
262
E, EE, EA, EO, OE, IE — XIV TH CENTURY. CHAP. IV. § 2.
Here head, lead are now both short (ned, led). They may have
been both long occasionally, as bread, dead spelled breed, deed 147.
In : Jerusalem, a straunge streem 465, both words may have been
pronounced with (eem). But in: I holde my pees, al the prees 5096,
we have either short and long rhyming, or else a short lengthened
to rhyme with the long. In either case the sound of long e is
shewn to be (ee).
In the following examples we have words written in the xvi th
century with ee and then pronounced (ii), rhyming with words then
written ea and pronounced (ee). Those afterwards written with ee
will be italicised for distinction : ful lene, no calf j-senc 593, this
cost (coast) so clene, that ther nys no ston j-sene 11307, his speche,
gladly teche 309, it needeth nat the teche, I the byseche 3599,
wolde ban caught a sleep, Johan the clerk up leep 4225, in this
drede, at thy grete neede 5077, at Inisfeet, and of a man he eet 2049,
a child that is i-bete, went he over the strete 3757, in word and
dede, repentaunce and drede 1777, bodyes dede, of herneys and of
wede 1007, glorious for to see, fletyng in the large see 1957, with
leyghen stepe, noon in chepe 755.
In the next examples we find ee rhyming with words which the
Latin rhymes have established to be sounded with (ee) : so as it
semed me, of what degre 39, so ofte of his degre, hadde he be 55.
The following are examples of words written with ee or simple e,
which were afterwards "written with ea. The ea words are
italicised: humble cheer, ye schal Jieer 2221, piled berd, sore aferd
629, hem to wreke, scholde speke 963, breeth, heeth 5, as of the deth,
upon an Tieth 608, agreved with here, to a bere 2059, pite to Jieere,
Dyane gan appeere 2347, quod sche, in the salte see 5527, in the
Greete see, hadde he be 59, or forge or bete, to counterfete, 13432.
Those examples might be greatly multiplied. Ea occurs in : for
ease, nought displease 5709, sche wolde vertu please, noon ydel ease
8092, his spirit was at ease, nothing may me displease 9507.
The use of eo and oe is shewn by the spellings: theof 13498,
theves 13499 ; eorthe 8557, boef 9295, poepel 9241, pepul 2536,
reproef 10078, 10137, preef 5829, reproeve 17002, repreve 6759,
these latter words having generally simple e.
The following shew the pronunciation of ie as (ee) : with evel
preef, a great meschief 5829, al your greef, an odious meschieflTll,
a theef, mescheef 1327, me repreve, we believe 6759, ere that it was
eve, made him bileve 4993, and eek a frere, disshe and matiere 6418,
in this mater e, quod the Frere 6421.
The following are some instances of words now spelled with ie
but apparently only written with e in Chaucer. See the table,
p. 104. I sawh no man him greve, Osewald the Reeve 3857, be
agreved, be releeved 4179,- by youre leve, ye yow not greeve 7395,
a frend, as a fend 5825, loth or leef, an ivy leef 1839, longen unto
eelde, mowen be unweelde 3883, oon bar his scheeld, in his hondes
heeld 2895. We also find cUerte 5978 for cherete, and whiel 15482
for wheel.
CHAP. IV. § 2. El EY, AI AY, AU AW — XIV TH CENTURY. 263
These rhymes lead irresistibly to the conclusion that the
one general sound of e, ee, ea, eo, oe, ie in Chaucer was (ee)
long or (e) short, and they leave no room to conclude that e
was ever pronounced as (i) except in the prefix be which
we find written indifferently be bi. The double forms lesse
lasse, left laft, seem however to indicate that e short wa
occasionally pronounced as broadly as (a) . In the xin th
century this was certainly dialectic, and the various forms
may have remained in use during the xiv th. Perhaps the e
was generally broad, as (E) rather than (e). In the same way
we shall find i short to have been occasionally pronounced as
(e), and this might be rather held to indicate the broader
sound of (i), for i, or the finer sound of (e) for e. Such
delicate distinctions, difficult to appreciate in actual living
speech, are quite beyond our grasp at such a remote period,
and we must be content with one form (e) for the, possibly,
three forms (e, e, E). It is indeed very probable that all
three coexisted, and were not discriminated by the speakers
themselves. Practically this is the case at present.
El EY, AI AY, AU AW — XTVTH CENTURY.
It is needless to shew that ai, ay were generally (ai) and au, aw
generally (au). They could not have had any other sound, as we
saw at the conclusion of the last chapter, p. 238. But whether any
distinction was made between ei and ai may be doubtful. In the
greater part of modern Germany, ei, ai are both (ai), and they seem
to have both had the same sound in Chaucer. Thus we have them
rhyming together in
That we with pitous hert unto yow playne
And let youre eeris my vois not disdeyne, 7973
But playne is written pleyne in
He was out cast to wo and into peyne.
0 glotony, wel ought us on the pleyne. 13926
Again: I wot it well certeyn, I dar well sayn 8185, may be
compared with : myn harmes not bewreye, I may not seye 2231.
In 13335, 13511 thay occurs for they. And generally the same
words constantly vary from ey to ay, and conversely, so that the
phonetic identity of ey, ay is the only legitimate inference. Thus :
for sche was feir, to maken hir his heir 3975, what so men jape or
pleye, holden the righte weye 9263, companyes tweye, that cowthe
' = say 2591,
Kepeth this child, al be it foul or fair, ....
Crist whan him lust may sende me an hair
More agreable than this. 5184
"Well wiste he by the drought, and by the reyn,
The yeeldyng of his seed and of his greyn. 597
264 EI EY, AI AY, ATJ AW — XIV TH CENTURY. CHAP. IV. 6 2.
And Venus faylith wher Mercury is reysed
Therfor no womman of clerkes is preised. 6287
Ben thay us seely men for to desceyve
And from a soth euer wel thay weyve = they waive. 10297
The assumption that ai was pronounced as (ai) is confirmed by
the French rhyme : how lasteth hir vitaille, no wight but Crist
saumfaile, it was a gret mervaile 4919, and the Latin rhyme, as all
rhymes with Scripture names must be considered : the mount
of Synay, fasting many a day, 7469.
It would appear that (ai) was sometimes lengthened and divided
into (aa,i) forming a dissyllable. Thus seynt is a monosyllable
(saint) in
For by that lord that cleped is seynt Jame. 4262
But when prefixed to the same name it becomes a dissyllable
(saa,int) in
"Wel he we met, hy God and seint Jame. 7025
Where, however, by may have been omitted after and. On the same
principle I would explain
Hire grettest ooth nas but by seynt Loy. 120
That is (saa.int Luu'i), St. Louis, as Meigret writes his first name
Loy s in his Traite touchant le common vsage, etc., but Louis in his
phonetic French Grammar. Prof. Child would read othe, but this
form is not well established.
I had the printe of seynt Venus sel. 6186
That seynt Peter hadde, when that he wente. 699
So also fair in
To lede him forth into &fair mede. 7621
And maistrye in
Bachus had of hir mouth no maistrye. 13472
In the four last cases there is no simple means of altering
the reading,1 and on repeating the lines it will be readily perceived
that this pronunciation is not at all strained, and immediately solves
their metrical difficulties. In the Prisoner's Prayer, Chap. Y, § 1,
No. 2, it will be seen that the French diphthongs in: ueine 17,
mayn 36, are given to two musical notes each, though they are
frequently given to single notes, and other examples from Norman
poems will be found near the end of Chap. V, § 1, No. 3.
As compared with Salesbury's observation that a in aslie is
"thought to decline toward the sound of the diphthong ai," it is
interesting to note aisshen 3880, aissches 12735. Four words now
written ai were either always or occasionally written with e, ee and
hence pronounced (ee). They are sustain, hair, slay, strain, and I
have not observed more. Thus for sustain : to susteene, bright and
1 And sayede twyes, Seynt Mary« ! In : a goune cloth, by God, by seint
Thou arte noyouse for to cary«. 5-226 Johan. 7833
we should probably read : Seynte Marye. the word and has been probably omitted
Compare before the second by.
Twelf pens P quod sche, now lady
seinte Marye. 7186
CHAP. IV. § 2. El EY, AI AY, AU AW — XIV TH CENTURY.
265
schene 1995, sche myhte nouht Mr sustene, sit adoun upon tlie
grene 11173, o blisful queene, in my wyt susteene 14892,
Then nys ther noon comparisoun bitwene
Thy wo, and any woo may man sustene. 5265
For hair (ags. hser) : a tufte of heres, a souwes eeres 557, Tieer
677, heres 1390, kempt his heere, a trewe love he beere 3691, myn
olde yeeres, so moulyd as myn heeres 3867, Sampson left his heris,
kut hem with hir scheris 6303, under his lange heris, tuo asses
eeris 6535. On the other hand as we have seen that heir is spelled
heir and hair. But we have keire 12061, for hair shirt.
For slay (ags. slan, slean, sleahan) : or elles sle his make 2558,
the freisshe beaute sleeth me sodeynly 1120, for curs wol slee 663,
hir self to sle, as it thenketh me 11709.
The sleer of himself yet saugh I there,
His herte-blood hath bathed al his here. 2007
For strain, in the sense of race (which is derived from ags. streon,
streonan, strynan, and has nothing to do with the other word
strain), we have
For God it woot, that childer ofte been
TJnlik her worthy eldris hem bifore ;
Bounte cometh al of God, nought of the streen
Of which thay been engendrid and i-bore. 8031
Strain, hair, slay, are clearly not proper instances of ai pronounced
as (ee), but rather examples of a subsequently inserted i. But
susteene would have naturally appeared as susteigne, as we have
atteigne 8323.
Connected with this is the converse use of (ai) for (ee) or (e),
thus: fleissh 147 for flessh, have ye not seye 5065 for seen; and
wayke ben the oxen 889, this weylce woman 5352, to arreyse, at eyse
7683 for ease. That the word was then really pronounced (aiz-e)
and not (eez-e), appears not only from this rhyme, but from the
following lines in Gower, where Pauli incorrectly prints ese ; the
orthography is that of the Soc. Ant. MS. 134 :
Whyche hadde be feruant to Thaife
So ]>at fche was }?e worfe at ayfe. iii 320
Anfwere)> and faye}> my name is Thayfe
That was fum tyme wel at ayfe. iii 332
The use of Jleissh, waylc 1 is not so easy to explain, but eyse, freissh
367, 1120, burgeys 371, paleys 2201, 2697, 9585, 10374, herneys
2498, harneys 3760 are rather direct representatives of ai, oi in
French, the latter being changed into ei in Norman French, so we
have in the rhymes to the two last instances palfreys 2497, Gerneys
3759 and days 9585 = dais. This is an argument in favour of the
Norman pronunciation (ai) for ei.
"We find say for saw 8543, 9810, 13642, 16600 and elsewhere,
and in the same way we now have a saw for a saying.
The sound of au is of course generally (au), as is confirmed by
1 It is remarkable that both words Compare fleyes Eel. Ant. i, 22, fleiss,
have ei in Modern German fleisch, weich. ib. 57, and veikr in Icelandic.
266 O, 00, OA — XIV TH CENTURY. CHAP. IV. $ 2.
the French rhyme : to make hir alliaunce, him happede par chaunce
14020, but the name of St. Paul, especially when applied to the
cathedral church, was pronounced with (oou) as we have found for
this particular case in the xvith century (p. 145). The orthography
by seint Paules belle 16266 is very unusual and probably erroneous,
we have : seynte Poules, chaunterie for soules 511, in Petres wordes
and in Poules, cristen mennes soules 7401, with Powles wyndowes
corven on his schoos 3318, after the text of Crist, and Powel and
Jon 7229,
Of this matier, 0 Foul, wel canstow trete.
Mete unto wombe, and wombe unto mete,
Scbal God destroyen botbe, as Powel saith. 13938
The most singular interchange, however, is that of (au) with (ee).
Gill complained of his Mopsaa saying (leen) for (laun) (p. 91), but
200 years before that time we find : for leeful is with force force to
schowve 3910, in mullok or in stree, so fare we 3871, of the stree,
of the realite 5121 and elsewhere. The two forms straw, stre are
due of course to ags. straw, strea. But lee must be a form of lay,
as ese of ayse. The form lay for law occurs, for the rhyme, in :
on a day, that sche wold reney hir lay 4795, and must be due to
the French loi, lei, while law must come from the ags. Idh, The
interchange was therefore not phonetic, but etymologic.
Hence we conclude that El, AI were always (ai), and AU
was always (au) in the xiv th century.
O, 00, OA — xiv TH CENTURY.
0 long and oo must be considered as the same letter in Chaucer.
The regular sound was (oo), as shewn by the Latin rhyme,
For though a widewe hadde but oo schoo
So plesaunt was his Inprincipio
Yet wolde he haue a ferthing or he wente, 253
whether the sound was (oo) or (oo) is of course open to the same
difficulty as in the xvi th century, but the perfect agreement of long
and short vowels, turns the balance strongly in favour of (oo),
which seems to have been the original Latin sound.
The sound of scho gives that of do by : may nought do, is not
worth a scho 6289, which gives to, therto, a hoo, by : oon hole to
sterte to, than is al i-do 6155, he addid yit therto, what schulde
yren doo 501,
An herowd on a skaffold made a hoo
Til al the noyse of the pepul was i-doo. 2535
After this we may feel tolerably certain of the sound of long o
and its identify with that of oo = (oo). The following examples
are however worth attention : of symony also, did he grettest woo
6892, never the mo, tel me who 6273, for he saith us soth, that so
doth 6523, ever in oon, thought anoon 1773, as stille as stoon,
for ther ascapith noon, as we knowe everychon 7997, al ther sche
goth, I have no thrifty cloth 5819, a fan right large and brood,
CHAP. IV. § 2. O, 00, OA — XIV TH CENTURY. 267
lay his jolly schood 3315, his eyghen grey as goos, corven on
his schoos 3317, God amend it soone, ye wot what is to doone 7775,
whan he awook, he the lettre took 5226,
Tel, quod the lord, and thou schalt have anoon
A goune cloth, by God, by seint Johan.1 7833
Aud every statute couthe he pleyn by roote
He rood but hoomly in a mealed coote. 329
Wei may men knowe, but it be a fool,
That every partye dyryveth from his hool. 3007
As then oo seems to be always (oo) we must assume wood = mad,
often spelt wod, wode, to have had (oo) and hence conclude the
same of Hood, stood, good from the rhymes : upon a carte stood,
grym as we were wood 2043, jalous and eke wood, wel neyh al the
blood 1331, that is so good, of blood 2565. The change of long o
into (uu), developed in the xvith century, had therefore not yet
occurred.
But did short o always represent (o) ? Generally it did so, but
there must have been exceptions. It would be difficult to imagine
an interregnum of (o) between two reigns of (u). It will be shewn
soon that ou represented long (uu) and but rarely short (u) for
which certainly u was available, but nevertheless o seems to have
been often employed. Thus we have
Outher for ye han kept your honeste,
Other elles for ye hau falle in frelete. 13492
So that in two consecutive lines ou, o are used in the same word ;
in the Knightes Tale Palamon seems to have had either (o) or (u)
to suit the rhyme, as : oon, Palamon 1015, doun, Palamon 1072,
prisoun, Palamon 1453, 1469, Palamon, opynyoun 1481, while we
have the orthography: doun, Palamoun 1517. Again: he might
not lenger sojourne, horn ward most he tome 6569, had I not done
a frendes torn to the 14230, for fere of beres or of boles blake =
bulls 16421, i-lyk to the stremes of borned liete = burned 13453,
bokeler 112, asonder, thonder 493.
The fact is that short (u) is comparatively rarely represented by
u, perhaps among other reasons because short u was as we shall see,
frequently called (i) or (e), as in our modern words busy, bury, so
that except in certain very well known words there might be more
error induced by writing u than by writing o. Under these cir
cumstances I have been compelled to adopt a theory, indicated at
the commencement of the last paragraph, and I consider short o to be
(u) in all those words where it replaces a former u, and was in the
xvi th century pronounced (u) ; that is, as a practical rule where it
is now called (o). There will be exceptions to this practical rule,
thus word is now (waid) and Bullokar makes it (wurd) but in
Chaucer it was (woord) as we see from
But al for nought, he herde nat o word,
An hole he fond right lowe upon the board. 3439
There might seem to have' been another sound of short o in a few
1 Johan, written Jon, 7229, is regularly a monosyllable.
268
OI, OY XIV TH CENTURY.
CHAP. IV. § 2.
words, compare the uses : hadde we on honde, my fourth housbondo
6033, to withstands, thral and bonde 7241, in londe, to telle it wol
I fonde 15295, as liked Cristes sonde, approched unto londe 5322.*
In comparing this o in place of a in land, withstand, hvsband, with
oa in loande in the Proclamation of Henry III., and with the inter
change of a and o in northern and southern dialects, the use of nat
for not frequently by Chaucer, and later by Palsgrave, it was easy
to imagine the pronunciation (o) or (ah) as an intermediate sound,
which the scribe did not know whether to represent by o or a.
Thus Englishmen now confuse Scotch (man) or (mahn), and Irish
(sahr) with their (mon, sor), and write them man, sorr = man, sir.
But this conjecture will not explain such rhymes as the above. As
bonde, sonde must have had (o) and housbonde ought to have it, we
must read (o) in londe, stonde, and in stronde and elsewhere, compare :
straunge strondes, sondry londes 13.
I have not noted any instance of the combination oa, but some
cases may have escaped me. The modern oa is replaced regularly
by oo or o as: goot 690, loot 9298, brode 2919, loode 2920, ook
10473 for goat, boat, broad, load, oak.
The conclusion seems to be that long o or oo in Chaucer
was (oo), that short o was generally (o), but occasionally (u),
the latter cases being those in which there was a previous
Anglo-Saxon (u), and a xvith century (u), now become (a).
01, OY — xiv TH CENTURY.
This is a rare diphthong and its sound cannot be satisfactorily'
established by the rhyme. If the identification of Loy 120 with
Loys, that is, Louis, be correct, then: ful symple and coy, by seint
Loy 119, should give (kuui) as the sound of coy. In my article on
the Diphthong OY (Trans, of Phil. Soc., 1867, Supp. part I.), I
have given reasons for supposing (ui) or (uui) to have been the
original sound of this diphthong, which we have seen was fre
quently so pronounced in the xvi th century. Thus Hart gives the
sound (buee) for boy (p. 133), and if we interpret this as (bui) or
(buui), the above pronunciation of Loy is confirmed by the rhyme.
That was wel twight, myn oughne lyard, boy,
I pray God save thy body and seint Loy. 7143
The word boist 13722 is merely the French boiste now boite, box,
which historically would have the sound (buiste), and in our bushel,
Fr. boisseau, which Chaucer writes buushel 4310, we have preserved
the (u) of the original. The two spellings boist, buisshel seem to
shew two ways of writing the same sound, the writer, accustomed to
use either o or u for short (u) hesitating between them. This is still
more plainly shewn by the double orthography of the word destroy.
It doth no good, to my wit, but anoyeth
See y^nouht, lord, how mankind it destroy eth f 11187
1 Sonde 5245 rhymes with grottnde, indicating the pronunciation (sund'e).
CHAP. IV. § 2. OI, OY — XIV TH CENTURY. 269
Where anoyeth most probably had the old sound (anuui'eth), and
destroyelh is used to make the spelling agree with its rhyming word.
But where this motive did not act we find uy written, as
That hath destruyed wel neyh al the blood. 1332
How he destruyed the ryuer of Gysen. 7662
And in the prose tale of Melibeus (Wright's ed., p. 159, col. 2,
1. 32, Morris's ed. 3-172, 1. 13) : by vengeaunce takynge be wikked
men destruyed.
The words: fruit destroy i 137 are written in Harl. 3869 and
3490 fruit destruie, in Harl. 7184 fruit destroie, and in Soc. Ant.
MS. 134, frute destriue, the last being clearly a mistake for destruie.
It cannot be supposed that the combination ui was pronounced in
the same way in both words. The last is the more common
spelling of fruit, viz. frute = (fryyt). The same MSS. in the same
order read in i 140 despuiled, despoiled, despuiled, despuiled.
From these readings, it would seem to follow that (ui) was the sound
meant, but that the writing oy was preferred, short o having as we
have seen (p. 267), very commonly the sound (u) or (w), because
ui rather suggested the sound (yy). Probably oui was not employed,
because ou rather suggested the long sound (uu).1 Thus acloyeth
anoyeth 4-68, encloied annoied ii 47, must refer to a French acloue,
encloue, and hence ought to have been written oui and to have
had the sound (ui), which they therefore lead us to infer in annoy.
See also the sound of (ui) cropping up even in the xvith century
(pp. 131 sqq.). But this was probably not the only sound of words
generally written oy in the xiv th century. The French oi was as
we have seen (p. 130), pronounced (OE, ue) with the stress on the
second element, which was generally converted into English as (ue,
u* ) with the stress on the first element, but Gower probably retained
the French pronunciation when he invented the rhymes : ioye
monoie ii 147, Troie monoie ii 188j (p. 253). On the other hand,
the Norman ei, pronounced originally perhaps (ei), but, on account
of its interchange with ai in the xiv th century, pronounced in the
same way (ai) at that time, see Chap. Y, § 1, No. 3, regularly
replaced the French oi, so that many French oi appear as ey in
Chaucer. In: Gregois vois iii 188, the oi was probably the usual
(ui), just as in: chois vois ii 181, 206. But Harl. 3869 writes:
gregeis curteis ii 238, and considering that the latter was the usual
form of this word, the reading is probably correct. If any depend
ence can be placed on the readings of the Hunterian MS. of the
Romaunt of the Rose (p. 252), this must be the explanation of :
joynt queynt 6'62-3, annoy away 6*82, joye conveye 6'89, but the
passages are probably corrupt.2 In the Canterbury Tales there
1 It might have suggested a division et ne sont pas, par consequent, une
of the diphthong into two syllables. triphthongue."
Beza (Livet, p. 523) says of otti : * It must not be assumed that this
" Quand ces trois lettres sont placees is the origin of (ai) in a well known
devant II, 1' t sert seulement a prevenir vulgarism, as (bail, paint, dzhaint) for
le lecteur qu'il faut mouillec II; par- boil, point, joint, because this was a
tout ailleurs oui forment deux syllabes, mere regular xvn th century trana-
270 I, Y — XIV TH CENTURY. CHAP. IV. § 2.
seems to be no instance where (ui, ue) might not be used, with
the stress on the first element, and the modern English (AI, oi) is so
limited geographically, and appears to be so modern, that it would
be merely truckling to present habits to introduce it into Chaucer.
We must therefore conclude that the most general pro
nunciation of 01 in the xi v th Century, was (ui) .
I, Y — xiv TH CENTURY.
It will probably prove the most difficult conclusion for the
reader to admit, that long i in Chaucer's time had not that diph
thongal sound (ai) with which we are so familiar, and which we
have since the xvi th century at least, recklessly introduced into our
pronunciation of Latin and Greek, and into our method of reading
Anglo-Saxon and Gothic. The belief that long i was anciently (ai)
or (ai) is not simply shared by those only acquainted with modern
English, it is adopted by men eminent for their knowledge of the
older languages. To assert, then, that so recently as the xivth
centuiy this sound (ai), now so universal, in different modifications,
was never associated with the letter i, is a thesis which will require
ample justification. As regards the present writer it may be men
tioned that before he began his researches he simply wondered
whether it was possible to establish any conclusion whatever, that
he inclined to the supposition of (ai) or (ai),1 and that, even after
having established the general pronunciation (ii), misled as he now
believes by an isolated instance, he for a long time imagined that
he could point to a whole class of words in which long i had the
sound of (ai). A rhyme in Gower first induced him to reconsider
this conclusion, and he then undertook the examination of the
rhymes in the whole poetical works of Chaucer, in addition to the
Canterbury Tales, and in Gower's Confessio Amantis, with the sole
view of discovering something which might help to decide the point,
and he examined or caused to be examined all the available manus
cripts containing the passage in question,2 seventeen in number, to
see whether there were not sufficient orthographic variants to render
it doubtful. He also made inquiries into various existing dialectic
formation of the xvi th century (bull, the pronunciation of the account of the
puint, dzhuint), see p. 134. The Dor- Prioresse, 117-162 in my Essentials
setshire (pwaint, bwail) etc. is probably of IVtonetics, 1848, 1 find (ai) given in:
a descendant of (pui'rat, bun']) etc. the smiling, by, wiped, eyen, I, and (ii) in :
stress falling on the second element, prioresse, hire, Eglentine, service, de-
which then became transformed from vine, swetely etc., Paris, curtesie,
(n) to (ei, ai, ai) as almost all other digne, tretis.
accented long (t») in that dialect, cheem,
sheen for chime, shine being the only 2 Quoth the chanoun, and far wel,
exceptions noted by Mr. Barnes (Poems graunt mercy,
of Mural Life, 1848, p. 28. He went his way, and never the priest
him sey.
1 In a theoretical attempt to assign After this day. 13308.
CHAP. IV. § 2. I, Y — XIV TH CENTURY. 271
pronunciations, of long i and the pronoun / in England and Scotland '
to see what corroboration there was for any theory on the subject.
These various researches have led to one conclusion, already antici
pated as the only possible explanation of Palsgrave's and Bullokar's
otherwise enigmatical treatment of the letter i (pp. 110, 114),
namely that
The vowel i in the xivth century was probably called (ii)
when long, and (i) when short.
The sounds of (ii, i} as distinguished from (ii, i), the true Italian
vowels, have been already carefully considered (p. 106). The first
point which strikes an Englishman in endeavouring to teach the
common short sound (i) to a foreigner, is that the latter most
generally confuse it with (e, e), p. 83. The words in French
final -te, the representatives of the Latin -tas, and similar words,
Chaucer still distinctly pronounced (-te, -tee), etc., rhyming them
with he, me, we, be, see, three, degree, as : be chastite 2237, charite
me 1723, we felicite 1267, he faculte 243, vanite thre 3833, degre
destyne 1843, destene be 1467, possibilite free 1293, subtilitees
bees 10295, citee iniquite 941, adversite parde 1313, thentre see
1985. In all these cases we now use (-*), and it is curious to trace
the change in the spelling. Promptorium 1440, chastyte, charyte,
faculte, vanite, desteyne destenye,3 cyte, entre. Palsgrave 1530,
chastyte, charyte, vanyte, desteny, cytie, entre = entree, entrye =
auant portail, entry = introite. Levins, 1570, chastitie, facultie,
vanitie, destenie, citie, entrie, and he classes -ie, -ye, -y as identical
endings. We have here then an example of the change of (-e) into
(-i) while any living Frenchmen will prove that the best way to
teach him to pronounce pity (piti) is to tell him to consider it as
written, in French letters, pete (pete). Again in Scotland the short
* in closed syllables is almost invariably pronounced (e), our words
ill, pit, bid, bit becoming (el, pet, bed, bet), but are saved from any
confusion with ell, pet, bed, bet because a Scotchman calls the latter
(E!, pEt, bEd, bEt). In Scotland moreover (ii) is considered to occur.
But when Mr. Murray pronounced some words to me in which he
thought he said (ii), and which: he writes weade, beate, keate, I
seemed to hear rather (ee) than (ii}. In examining Cooper's vowel
system, 1685 (p. 83), we were led to consider his pair will, weal to
mean (w?l, weel) rather than (wil w^Vl), that is, Cooper classed as
(ii) a sound which in the general opinion of other writers was (ee)
or (ee).
These facts serve to shew that (ii, i) are now often confused with
1 He is particularly indebted to the ingly answered a general invitation in
elaborate observations of Mr James the Athenaum to give the author in-
A. H. Murray, F.E.I.S., of the Philo- formation on this point, by which
logical Society, on the Scotch dialects traces of the older pronunciation, as
which were kindly placed at his dis- he believes, have been unexpectedly
posal, and had their value enhanced by brought to light.
oral explanation and pronunciation of 2 This is the reading of one MS.,
the difficulties. One lady and several and is probably erroneous, as indeed
gentlemen from different parts of Eng- desteyne for destene would appear to be.
land (p. 277, n. 1) have also most oblig-
272 I, Y — XIV TH CENTURY. CHAP. IV. $ 2.
(ee, e, e), and hence we should be led to expect, if there be any
truth in the theory advanced that we should not unfrequently find
i, e confused by the scribe, and allowed to rhyme by the poet, both
when long and short. Cases of the short vowel are not uncommon,
for example: list best 6819, list rest 9299, abrigge alegge 9531,
abregge tallegge 3001, pulpit i-set 13806, shitte lette 14660, blesse
kesse 8428, schert, hert 9757, yett witt 4-117. Cases of the long
vowel also occur, as : swere hire 11101, 12076, geven1 lyven 917,
enquere lere 5049, there requere 6633, enquere were 8646, afered
requered 4'244,2 matere desire 4*333, desire manere 6-85, lere desire
6-143, and in Gower, her sir i 161, here spire i 198, yere fire,
i 302. These rhymes are not only reconcilable with the theory
that (ii, «') were the usual and proper sounds of *', but are exactly
what we should expect from the mistakes which occur at the
present day. If indeed long i had been pronounced (ei) and the
first element had been slightly lengthened, as (eei), we should get
a sound almost identical with a pronunciation of long a now much
in use in London.3 In this case the rhyme might also appear to be
explained. But this theory would not account for writing a simple
e for long i; we should rather expect to find ey, and this never
occurs except in a few words, as eye, high, die, dry, sly, etc.
to be especially considered presently, in which there is every
reason to conclude that there was a double pronunciation.
Hence the specimens of long i rhyming to long e, and being fre
quently replaced by long e, throw great difficulty in assuming any
diphthongal sound for long i, and tend greatly to confirm the
hypothesis that the sound was not pure (ii), but such a modification
of it, as would easily fall into (ee), namely (ii). Add to which
there is the negative evidence that long i does not rhyme to ey, ay
and that, except in the few cases of a double pronunciation, long i is
never written ey by an error of the scribe in any decent manuscript.
There are a number of words of French origin which have now
the accent on the penultim or antepenultim, but which were used
as if with an accent on the last or penultim respectively, in Chaucer's
verses. In the French language when these syllables, which are
now unaccented, had the vowel *', it was pronounced (i) or (ii), and
it would be difficult to suppose that Chaucer, who was familiar
with French, and, in the spirit of the times as shewn by the con
temporary practice of Gower, was introducing it into English, could
have changed the French sound and have pronounced the words
with (ai). Still more difficult would it be to suppose, that at a
time when the (ai) or (ei) or (ai) pronunciation of long i was
1 This is from the ags. form geofan, when Mr. Matthew Arnold visited a
and is therefore not an instance of e school at Tenby, Pembrokeshire, where
written for t, but of e long rhyming an ancient Flemish colony seems to
with i long. have materially affected the language
» The French forms sufficiently ex- and pronunciation of the people, the
plain the termination -quere. chl.ldren had great difficulty in distin-
crushing msfate (feeit) from their Jight
3 A correspondent informs me that (feit).
CHAP. IV. § 2. I, Y — XIV TH CENTURY. 273
common, as at the close of the xv th and beginning of the xvi th
century, it should have been deliberately rejected from these words,
and replaced by («•') when the accent was thrown back permanently.
But we know that such words had (») in the xvi th century, add
that this sound has continued to the present day. For my own
part I cannot force myself to suppose that * in the last syllable of
the following words ever had any other sound but (ii, i, ii, i} :
Venise, lycorise, coveytise, servyse, justise, merite, Evaungiles,
malice, sangwyn, famyn, Latyn, Jankyn, opposit, superlatif, motif,
Phisik, ypocrite, practike, riche, cherice, office, Cupide, visite,
avarice, cowardyse, Ovide, authentik, sybil, retorike, magike, cubit,
Yirgile, famyne, ruyne, apprentys, relyke, doctrine, profit, positife,
peril, musike, chronique, inquisitife, mechanique, elixir, olive, etc.,
etc. ; or that the * was ever diphthongal in the penultim of: possible,
digestible, fusible, etc., etc. Now if we admit that i in these
words was (i} or (ii}, or if we even allow it to have had the purer
French sounds (ii, i), — and there is absolutely no ground whatever
for any other conjecture, and great reason for this, — we have gone
a long way to prove that long i in Chaucer was (ii} or (ii), and was
not (ei, ai, ai). For in the first place these words rhyme as
having long vowels, and rhyme with words which are by no means
always French, and which in modern pronunciation have (ai), and
had generally received (ei) by the xvi th century. That is, from
undoubted cases of long (ii} or (ii), we are led to infer that the
rhyming words had also long (ii} and not (ai, ei, ai). If at present
we saw machine rhyming with seen, we certainly should rather
conclude that the i in the first word was (ii), than that the ee in
the second word was (ai), and we should never dream of rhyming
mine, seen, even in these lax rhyming times. Perhaps even
Butler has not such a rhyme in his Hudibras.1 Hence it is of great
importance to study and weigh the rhymes to the words just cited.
They are as follows : and to Venise, were to devyse 7927, at point
devys, cheweth greyn and lycoris 3689, which I shall devyse, augur
coveytise 3881, ther any profyt should arise, lowe of servyse 249,
for that thay ben wyse, sittyng as as a justise 6609, so wel to write,
do me endite, thurgh hire merite 11958, i-write with evaungiles, in
the mene whiles 5085, to pitous and to nyce, of his crouned malice
10838, he was sangwyn, a sop of wyn 335, sterve for famyn, licour
of wyn 13866, wel dronken hadde the wyn, he speke no word but
Latyn 639, oure apprentys Jankyn, schynyng as gold sofyn 5885,
a gate of marbul whit, another in opposit 1895,2in gre superlatif, an
humble wyf 9249, of me tak this motif, a court man al my lyf 9365,
Doctour of Phisik, he was ther non him lyk 413, to byte, ypocrite
10826, of youre practike, syns it may yow like 5769, solempne and
so riche, was there noon it liehe 10375, cherice vice 4*148, nyce
vyce cherice 4*182, office vice 4*283, cupide tabide gyde 4*298-9, cryede
1 On p. 16 of the Grammar of 1713, sense of rhythm, accent, quantity or
supra p. 47. we find incline rhyming for rhyme seems to vanish, p. 275, note 3.
the nonce with magazine and join, but "2 Compare the modern names Whitby
when memorial lines are attempted, all and Whitsunday, both from white.
18
274 I, Y — XIV TH CENTURY. CHAP. IV. § 2.
glide Cupide 4-349, Cupide syde 5-25, beside Cupide abide 6-238,
Cupide side i 160, Cupide guide i328, Ovide Cupide iii351, vysite
wyte 4-227, visite delite myte 4'328, avarice vice 4*298, emprise
cowardyse 4-324, slyde Ovide 5-172, Ovide wide 5*254, lyke
autentyke 5-188, Sybile yle 5-22, retorike lyke 5'235, magike syke
5-248, lyte cubite 5-251, Virgile while 5 -254, famyne ruyne 5-269,
apprentys wys 6-22, relyke lyke 6-82, doctrine discipline 6-146,
profite myte 6-176, positife strife i 12, vile peril i 33, musike beswike
i 58, cronique like i 145, inquisitife life i 226, inechanique like iii 142,
fire elixir ii 86, blive olive ii 266.
If that were possible, and more penyble 8589, digestible, on the
Bible 439, in the Bible, it is an impossible 6269, on the Bible, so
redy and so penyble 7427, metal fusible, wold passen eny bible
12784.
The last cited rhymes to Bible were the first which gave me any
hope of being able to discover the pronunciation of Chaucer, ap
proximately, by a study of his rhymes. The above list does not con
tain by any means all the rhymes of this sort which I have noted
as important ; but it is obviously sufficient to establish that in the
words : devyse, devys, arise, wyse, write, endite, whiles, nyce, wyn,
fyn, whit, wyf, lyf, lyk, byte, vice, abide, gyde, cryede, glide, side,
beside, delyte, myte, wide, yle, while, strife, vile, fire, &c, all of
which have now (ai), the » could not have been diphthongal in
Chaucer's time. And these words admitted, determine so many
others, that the proposition might almost be considered proved;
but it is one which many will find so difficult to believe that it
is worth while accumulating proofs.
Besides the French words already dealt with, in which the accent
has been thrown back and the sound (i} preserved, there are many
others which have either not become part of our modern language,
or have not been left without at least a secondary accent on the i.
We may divide them into three categories, which however do
not include all, such words as sacrifice, &c. being omitted. The
first class comprehends those French words in which the i is fol
lowed by a simple consonant, the second those in which t ends the
word, and the last those in which i is immediately followed by an
e final. Now we have at present in our language a series of French,
Italian, and other foreign words containing i, of comparatively
recent introduction, which we may therefore properly compare with
the words then recently introduced into English by Chaucer, Gower,
and others. The following list is taken from Walker, into which a
few words in [] have been introduced ; the f marks words which
have become obsolete since Walker's time, and the italics words in
which the French (ii) has become (t) ; in all other cases the sound
(ii) has been retained in modern English, notwithstanding our pre
dilection for (oi) and our association of (ai) with long i.
Ambergris, verdegris, antique, becafico, bombasin, brasil, capivi,
capuchin, f colbertine, chiopp^ine or chopin, caprice, chagrin, chevaux-
de-frise, [chignon, crinoline,] critique, ffestucine, frize, gabardine,
CHAP. IV. §2. I, Y — XIV TH CENTURY. 275
haberdine, sordine, frugine, trephine, quarantine, routine, fascine,
fatigue, intrigue, glacis, invalid', machine, magazine, marine, pa
lanquin, pique, police, profile, recitative, mandarine, ftabourine,
tambourine, tontine, transmarine, ultramarine.
Now if it would sound hideous in our ears to talk of (Luarzaz
shairrjan aend krarnolain,) notwithstanding our -acknowledging
(/lai'za send Kaeroloin), can we imagine Chaucer having called lys
(lois),1 parvys (parvais), agrise (agraiz*), sophime (sofainv), desir
(dezair), avys devys (avais' devois*), assise (asaiz1), devyne, (de-
vairr), &c. ? Such a supposition appears to be monstrous, unless we
also adopt the theory that French in England in that day was pro
nounced with (ai, ai, ei) for (ii) as now used. Of this there seems
to be no shadow of proof, nor even a germ of probability.2 Since the
present habit of Englishmen is to make long i into (ai) in all words
not of recent introduction, it would be necessary to establish that
the Normans so pronounced and that that pronunciation of French
was general in England during the xirr th and xrv th centuries, in
order to use this hypothesis in opposition to the usually accepted
theory that the French sound was (ii). We shall find however
that any doubt of this kind affects the present argument very
slightly, because most of the words rhyming with those just cited,
are also found rhyming to words of the preceding class, in which
there can be no reasonable doubt of the old sound having been pre
served by the throwing back of the accent. The following are some
of the rhymes which belong to this class : —
he bar utterly the prys, the flour-de-lys 237, war and toys, atte
parvys 311, might agrise, may devyse 7231, som sophime, hath time
7881, to wilde fuyr, it hath desir 5955, to aryse, I you devyse 33,
make it wys, more avys 787, ne non novys, wily and tvys
15425, so wise, in assise 315, madame Englentyne, service devyne
121, lord and sire, knight of the shire 357, 3 Arcyte quyte 1033,
1 For convenience the modern (ai) is into notice. "Walker quotes the follow-
written for whatever diphthongal form ing lines from " the Grammar called
(ei, ai, ai) etc. the reader may choose Bickerstaff's, recommended hy Steel,"
to adopt. which this quotation identifies with the
2 M. Le Hericher's opinion to the Anonymous Grammar of 1713, supra
contrary will be considered in Chap. p. 47, in which they occur, p. 16. —
V, § 1, No. 3, at the end, together with Bickerstaff's recommendation is quoted
the value of the Old Norman French opposite the title page —
ai, ei, and some other matters relating " To sound like double e, i does incline,
to modern Norman French pronun- As in Machine, and Shire, and Magazine."
ciation. "Walker adds: "It may likewise be
3 The pronunciation (shaij) is very observed, that this word, when unac-
recent and by no means general. cented at the end of words, as Notting-
Walker gives (shiir), and says that hamshire, Wiltshire, &c., is always pro-
this "irregularity," as it appeared to nounced with i like ee." Smart says:
him, " is so fixed as to give the regular " Letter t or y under the accent, and
sound a pedantic stiffness." Even his final in a syllable, or followed by a con-
recent editor Smart, 1836, gives (shiij). sonant and e mute, is irregular in no
Webster has (shair). This is an excel- word purely English except the verbs to
lent example of the change of sound, live and to give, and the noun shire ; but
and the difficulty with which a new there are several semi- French and other
fashion of pronunciation forces its way foreign words in which the French
276 1, Y — XIV TH CENTURY. CHAP. IV. $ 2.
Arcite endite 1381, Arcyte, a lite 1335, lite, quyte 3861, delyte
lyte 4-52, vyne devyne 4'57, devyse gyse 4-64, suffice nyse devyse
vise agrise 4 -7 5, desire fire 4-76, enclyne pyne myne 4*180, arise
forbise1 empryse 4-209, affile while 4-221, vefire 4-225, desire fyre
enspire 4'254, myne Proserpyne pyne 4-319, ile wile 5-321, rys
(= rice) tretys 6-32, ile while i 95, Cecile while i 104.
The word lyte, which seems shewn to have been (Hit) or (Hit} by
some rhymes above, being the origin of our little, can hardly be
conceived as (lait).2 The following among other rhymes to this
word, however, not only establish the sound as (Hit, l«Vt), but settle
many other words as well.
Lite rhymes with delyte 4*52, quyte 4-55, kyte 4-63, white 4-76,
white delite 4-94, 6-237, vryte = know 4-141, deHte endyte 4-163,
plite 4-202, write 4-202, 5-269, 6-256, wjie = wit 4-255, myte =
mite 4-259, white 4-289, 5-195, 5-282, Arcite wite=punish 5-200,
smyte 5'232, cubite 5-251.
The word Inde must be considered French, and most probably
had the sound (ind'e) which the English heard (md'e). The pre
sent nasal pronunciation of French in is certainly not at all indi
cated in any of the numerous words beginning with in, which we
have taken from the French, and without any intimation of this
nasaHty or any trace of it in English derivation we have no right to
assume it. The vowel in India is short in the original language,
and in the Greek and Latin derivatives. It is still so pronounced
in EngHsh, and although I have heard some persons read (aind),
for the sake of a modern rhyme, I doubt whether they would
venture to talk of (aurdia). It seems therefore just to conclude
that the Saxon words which rhymed with it, most or aU of which
had acquired the sound (eind) in the xvrth century had also the
sound (md). Thus we have kynde Inde 6405, and fynde kynde
mynde Inde bynde lynde 9057, 9063, 9069, 9075, 9081, 9087,
rhyming together in L'Envoye de Chaucer, at the end of the Clerkes
Tale. The last worde ^w<& = linden or Hme tree, still has the
sound (md) and confirms the other conclusions. The use of mende
sound of i is retained ; as marine, police, vation of quality by shortening of
profile, &c. : .... The word oblige, quantity, as in p. 273. Shire, ags.
which formerly classed with marine, scire is said to have a long vowel by
&c., is now pronounced regularly." Bosworth, and a short vowel by Ett-
Live, gothic liban, ags. libban, Orrmin miiller. But the vowel became de-
libbenn, had from the first a short cidedly long, and, as we have seen, it
vowel, with which, however a long has preserved the (ii) sound. The
vowel alternated in Orrmin in life\\, cognate word sheer, ags. scir with long
lifenn, and a long vowel seems general i, which has preserved its sound in all
in Chaucer, and tence we have simply Germanic dialects, will fee especially
the usual continuation of the short noted in Chap. V, § 1, No. 5, at the
vowel. Give, gotMc giban, ags. gifan, end, as a rhyme iofire.
gerfan, also had a short vowel, but in
Orrmin, all parts except the imperative 1 " Set an example to," from ags.
3*y, and preterit gaff, huve long vowels. bisen, example.
From geofan, we have the frequent z LUe, however, the Danish lille for
form %eve in Chaucer. In this case we little, is called (lail) in the North of
have then perhaps rather the preser- England.
CHAP. IV. § 2. I, Y — ^XIV TH CENTURY. 277
for minde to rhyme with ende in the carefully spelled Harl. MS.
3869 of Gower, ii 23, ii 67, and Icende for kinde also to rhyme with
ende iii 120, is scarcely reconcilable with the present diphthongal
sound of * in mind.
Through the kindness of several gentlemen1 1 am enabled to say
that in South Shields, Kendal, "Westmoreland, and Cumberland
generally, and parts of Lancashire, the short vowel (a) is still heard
in the words bind, blind a., behind, hinder a., hindmost, find, grind,
wind* v. = (bind, blmd, bim'nt', smd'i, mirmast, fmd, grmd,
wrad). See also the Scotch pronunciation infra p. 289. With
these analogies it would be considerably more difficult to imagine
the diphthongal sound than the short vowel in such words.
The French words of the next class are those which end in i or y,
and which are referred to in that paragraph of Palsgrave which
occasioned so much difficulty in the last chapter (p. 109), and they
are also remarkable for the English words which rhyme with them
in Chaucer. The French words are themselves not numerous. In
the Canterbury Tales, there seem to be only mercy, fy, enemy, fool
hardy, cry, quirboily, to which perhaps yvory, vicory, although the
final y is difficult to account for.3 These words rhyme, first with
each other, next and very frequently with the termination -ly, and
these words and this termination rhyme with the Dutch (?) courtepy,
and with the Anglosaxon /, why, ly, thereby, sty. The only words
among these which could have a plural, enemy, sty, do not occur in
the plural in rhymes in the Canterbury Tales. It was with special
reference to this investigation that I enlarged the field of enquiry,
extending it over the rest of Chaucer's poems and Gower. Some of
these poems, as we have seen, are not in a trustworthy form, especially
the Cowrt of Love (p. 251), Flower and Leaf (p. 251), Chaucer's
Dream (p. 251), and Romaunt of the Rose (p. 252), because they
admit of rhymes which belong to a later period. The best manus
cripts are altogether free from such rhymes. The spelling in Pauli's
Gower must always be corrected by the manuscripts. Allowance
must be made also for those words which had a twofold pronunci
ation, as (ai) and (ii\ not always marked with sufficient care in the
1 Kev. C. Y. Potts, of Ledbury, for great trouble to themselves enabled me
South Shields ; Mr. Brown, of St. to supply these illustrations. Messrs.
Peter's College, Peterborough, for Ken- Potts, Brown, Hetherington, and Shelly
dal ; Mr. J. N. Hetherington, Clifton have been particularly liberal with the
Parsonage, "Workington, for Cumber- time they have bestowed on me. I
land ; Messrs. Jackson, Fielding, and shall term these assistants generally
Axon, for Lancashire, — have supplied my dialectic correspondents,
me with information from personal 2 The substantive wind is generally
knowledge on this and other points ; (wmd), but in Cumberland it seems to
and Mr. Shelly, of Plymouth, for be always (wahind, waind), so that
Devonshire ; Messrs. Atkinson and wind s. wind v. have precisely the
Moore, for Yorkshire ; Mr. Hallam, opposite pronunciation to what they
for Derbyshire ; and a lady near generally receive in the south.
Norwich, have also supplied much in- * Diez says that atwi, ivori are
formation on dialectic pronunciation. Provenqal forms, which it is singular
I beg to express my thanks to these to encounter in English. For vicory I
and other correspondents who have at know no authority.
278 T, Y — XIV TH CENTURY. CHAP. IV. § 2.
spelling, to be carefully considered presently. With the exception
of such words no case has yet come before my notice in which -t or
-y final rhymes with -ey or -ay. In the following list of rhymes
all cases of -ly rhyming to -Zy, which are very frequent and convey
no information, are omitted; and by no means all the rhymes,
except in the Canterbury Tales, of 1 with -ly, -by,forthi, etc., are
given.
Soburly courtepy 291, pitously mercy 951, enemy I 1645, ryally
by 1689, fy mercy 1775, ryally enemy 1795, synfully fy 4499,
mercy solempnely 5110, pitously, mercy I 5479, by specially 5544,
therby I 6597, prively therby 6925, yvory fetisly 7323, sty I
7411, comunly why 7839, stedefastly mercy tenderly 8970, why
I 9315, uncurteisly cry 10237, cry pitously 10727, therby I
12650, mercy sey 13308, therby ydelly 13860, subtily by 13980,
redily forthby 14082, pitously, ther by 15011, quirboily yvory
15283, I fool-hardy 15401, trewely by 15411, sodeinly enemy
16889, lustily vicory 17315.
I mercy 4*65-6, truly unlusty I 4-76, by prively 4*77, by I cry1
4-78, cry ocy 4*79, ny cry I2 4*81, wrongfully I 4*125, redy I 4*148,
trewely I by 4*175, tyme, hi me, pryme 4*193, by hertely 4*205,
whi by bisily 4*272, I fynaly 4*336, pitously by hastily 4*337, I
certeinly therby 4*341, y why 5*173, why comelely 5*180, trewely
lady 5*190, hooly mercy 5-193, I why 5*239, I mercy 5*266, by,
domus Dedaly = Dadali 5*267, y by <r269, by and by, curteysly
5*285, y by 5*341.
I openly i 44, why I i 47, forthy pleinly i 51, forthy therby i 53,
cry unhappily i 54, redily by i 93, sodenily by i 102, I, graunt
mercy i 103, forthy mercy i 106, I forthy i 107, worthy mercy
i 107, sky sodeinly i 109, why forthy i 114, openly cry i 115,
mercy why i 116, why prively i 148, communly why i 172,
why forthy i 173, comely awry i 174, redely forthy i 200,
kindely why i 205, sely privete i 225, time, by me i 227, 309,
370, ii 41, 49, 114, iii 6, 369, I truely i 227, bodely why
i 259, why forthy i 280, lady thereby i 292, cry buxomly
i 297, by lady i 298, cry therby i 314, forthy enemy i 350, I forthy
i 332, enemy why i 347, why forthy ii 20, I by ii 24, 41, sky
by ii 29, bodely therby ii 34, forthy therby ii 50, openly forthy
ii 51, truely sky ii 59, why I ii 69, besily enemy ii 75, I forthy ii
95, why cry ii 122, bodely forthy ii 133, redely by ii 137, why
sky ii 158 forthy Eoly = Moli ii 160, forthy by ii 161, forthy why
ii 163, sky why ii 167, Satiry = Satyri properly ii 171, forthy
proprely ii 187, by I ii 219, why buxomly ii 228, by mercy
ii 278, esely mercy ii 295, why therby ii 301, mercy redy ii 314,
mercy therby ii 373, I worthy ii 379, sodeinly askry ii 386,
mercy rudely ii 396, why almighty iii 61, mercy thereby iii 82,
forthy mightily iii 92, high sky iii 93, by and by sky iii 116,
Gemini redely iii 119, Gemini forthy iii 119, Gemini proprely iii
127, I by iii 168, I forthy iii 185, mercy redely iii 198, sodeinly
1 Erroneously spelled bye, cn'e. 2 Erroneously spelled nye, crie.
CHAP. IV. § 2. I, Y — XIV TH CENTURY. 279
askry iii 217, why pitously iii 260, why Genesy iii 276, by and by,
prively iii 305, pitously I iii 315, enemy envy iii 320, cry by iii
321, lady prively iii 325, forthy by iii 348, redely why iii 368,
I mercy iii 372, sodeinly sky iii 375.
It is impossible to glance over the above list without feeling that
whatever was the pronunciation of this final -y in any one word, it
must have been the same in all the words, and hence if there is a
certain clue to any one word, we have a clue to all the rest. Two
rhymes are very noteworthy: mercy sey 13308, and sely privete
i 225, but their very peculiarity and the absence of any corrobora
tive instance whatever, render them suspicious. Yet, as the first
of these was the only clue which I could obtain for some time, I
was misled by it to suppose that this termination -y had like sey the
sound (sai). This shews the danger of trusting to single instances.
Even in the Harl. 7334, which is followed by "Wright and Morris,
we find: an hihe, sihe 11161, which should be : hih, sih, probably
(azkh, s«kh). But an examination of seventeen MS. which con
tain v. 13308, shews the following variants.
In the British Museum.1 Rawl.MS.Poet 149 mercy sey
Harl 7333 mercy sey S^ i, merCy
R rc SeM. B 14
Lansdowne 8ol mercie sihe c c Coll Mg 19
Sloane 1685 mercye say F 3 2 mercv sev
Reg. 17 D xv mercy sy
Eeg. 18 C ii mercy sey At Cambridge.*
.. ,. , ,, Gg. 4. 27 (No. 1) sey
At Oxford! ufg 26 * g/
Laud 600 mercy sie Mm. 2. 5. seye
Laud 739 mercy sey Trin. Coll. R. 3. 3. mercy sigh.
It is clear that the passage has much exercised the scribes who
have occasionally ventured to add an e to mercy, which is quite
illegitimate, and the majority have inclined to the more usual form
in Chaucer, sey. The usual form, however, in Gower is sih, written
sigh by Pauli. The above 17 instances may be divided into an
(ai) class and an (ii} class, thus —
(ai) sey sey say sey sey sey say sey sey seye . .10
(ii) sihe sy sie syhe sy se sigh ...... 7
The word clearly belongs to those doubly sounded and doubly
spelled words to be presently examined, and we must conclude that
those scribes who used the (ai) class of forms were misled by habit,
and should have used an (ii) class, and, since the guttural could not
have been pronounced in French, the scribes ought to have omitted
it in the English word. It will be seen that when eye, high are
pronounced with (ii) the guttural is frequently omitted. This leads
us to prefer sy, given by two MS, of which sie, se are mere accidental
varieties. The preterite (sii) as : I see him do it yesterday, is not
yet obsolete among the uneducated, while (sai) is unknown.
1 Examined by myself. 8 Examined by Messrs. H. Bradshaw
2 Examined by Mr. G. Parker. and Aldis "Wright.
280 I, Y — XI VTH CENTURY. CHAP. IV. § 2.
The second instance : sely privete i 225, although unparalleled
among these rhymes, would not be unprecedented, for we saw at
the beginning of this investigation that long i and long e occasion
ally interchange, but we already know that the proper reading is :
cele privete, (p. 253).
Rejecting these isolated instances, we are struck by the rhyme :
tyme, bi me, pryme 4*193 in Chaucer, and the eight times repeated
rhyme : time, by me, in (rower. The rhyme : sophime, time 7881,
has already (p. 275) led us to consider (to'rme) a probable pro
nunciation, and hence these repeated rhymes lead to calling by (btY).
More than this, by is often spelled be, be thy trouthe 5*227,
alle be hemselve 5*246, be God 5*256, and indeed be, by occur in
the same line : be strengthe and by his might. 5*348, from the
Legende of Good Women, following the Bodleian MS. Fairfax 16, a
good manuscript. These variants strongly confirm the hypothesis
that by = (bii).
It is certainly fair to conclude that the purely French words in
these rhymes had the sound (ii) or (ii\ the latter probably in
England, and the former in France. We were driven to this sup
position on comparing Palsgrave with Meigret in the xvrth century
(p. 110). We might therefore assume that: mercy, enemy, fy, cry,
quirboily, fool-hardy, envy, had the sound (ii) or (ii), and these
would be fully sufficient to determine all the rest. But as this
assumption in fact involves the whole question, it will be better not
to lay great stress upon it.
The cry ocy attributed by the cuckow to the nightingale 4*79 —
For thou hast mony zfeyned queint cry,
I have herd the seye, ' ocy, ocy ; '
But who myghte wete what that shulde be ?
leaves us in the same ignorance as the cuckow, and can be of no
assistance if we go to the real cry of the bird; but if we take it as a
French spelling of an imitation of that cry,1 then we have simply
two French sounds cry, ocy rhyming.
There are several instances of Latin final -i, one in Chaucer:
Dedaly 5*267, and several in Grower : Eoly ii 160, Satiry ii 171,
Gemini iii 119, twice, and iii 127, and it is difficult to suppose that
Latin was at that time so mispronounced as to have t called (ai).
The Roman Catholic tradition must have saved this heresy, which
seems to have only crept in with the xvi th century, and was even
then reprobated by many, as by Salesbury. At least these rhymes
must be considered to add to the probability of the (ii) or (ii)
pronunciation).
With regard to the termination -ly which plays so great a part in
all these rhymes, it is to this day generally pronounced (Ii) in con
versation, although declaimers will sometimes permit themselves to
1 " FIER, FIER, OCY, OCY : Sons ung chesne sur lequel avoit ung ros-
onomatopes representant le chant du signol qui chantoit tres melodieuse-
rossignol (repetes plus bas dans une ment et cryoit ainsy que tout endesve
chanson)." Eoquefort, sub. yfer, where et far, fier, ocy, ocy," from Roman de
he cites : " il y avoit au-des^us de luy Perce-Forest.
CHAP. IV, §2. I, Y — XIV TH CENTURY. 281
say (lai), and we find Gill in his transcript of the Psalms con
stantly using this sound, apparently to add dignity. He also says
(madzh'estai), and, at least in one place (mersai), but the latter is
probably a misprint, for he generally writes (merst ). Modern poets,
working upon an old foundation, permit themselves to consider -y,
under a secondary accent, as either (-ai) or (-ii). This belongs to
the licentiousness of modern rhyming, superinduced by an un-
phonetic orthography. I cannot consider this early usage of Gill
to indicate in any way the old pronunciation. It was undoubtedly
wrong in words which had formerly -ie, -e, and was probably fanci
ful in other cases. Dr. Gill had a notion that the (ai) added to the
beauty and strength of the English language,1 and hence his employ
ment of it is suspicious unless well corroborated. As to the practice
of modern times, it is sufficient to cite Walker and Smart, who, not
recognizing the difference between (i, i) identify this termination
with (-li), but that is properly an Irishism. As, then, there seems
no reason to suppose that this termination -ly ever had, in natural
speech, the sound of (-lai) but only (-lii, -hY, -li, -le), the conclusion
in favour of the (ii, ii} pronunciation of the other words seems
inevitable. But those who have made up their minds to the (ai)
pronunciation of long «', and especially of the pronoun /, will object
that we have in Gill an actual example of the (ai) sound, and that
we hear occasionally, under peculiar circumstances perhaps, and by
no means uniformly in the same speaker, but still we do hear (-lai)
now and then, and that it is possible that (-K) may be a "cor
ruption" of (-lai), rather than (-lai) a mistaken intensification of
(-!*)• It is therefore necessary to try some other words, which
are free from Gill's imputed (ai). Enemy is not such a word, for
he writes (en-emaiz), supra p. 110, note. But lady 5'190, i 292,
298, iii 325 ; almighty iii 61, worthy i 107, seem unexceptional.
The words do not occur in Gill, but lady does occur in Salesbury,
who transcribes it in Welsh letters ladi= (laa'di). In modern
ballad poetry we have constantly to read (Imlii'),1 but the pro
nunciations (lee'dai, l^edar) are utterly unknown. As this word
determines -ly -by, by its rhymes, and these are sufficient to de
termine all the rest, the difficulty may be considered as solved.
But there are still important considerations which lead the same
way, and which must therefore still be adduced. It is difficult to
suppose that a cry and the verb to crye, had their y differently
pronounced. This y would probably retain its sound in the in
flected form cryede, often a dissyllable as cry'de. Now we find :
cryede glide Cupide 4'349 in Troilus and Cryseyde from a good
manuscript, and Cupide is one of those words in which we have
already recognized the persistence of the (M) sound. Again : criede
Cupide Cipride 5*9 occur in the same poem. Gower has: cride
hide i 149, cride wide iii 213. All this points to the pronunciation
(crn'de) and hence (cm) for the substantive. But there is one
•' Retinebimus antiquum ilium et Hazeldean, in which the first stanza is
masculum sonum." Logonomia, p. 7. said to be ancient: "Why weep ye by
a As in Sir W. Scott's Jock of the tide, ladie ?"
282 I, Y — XIV TH CENTURY. CHAP. IV. § 2.
word which seems at first sight to run counter to this conclusion :
reneye 4796, 12196, 12376, 16047 etc, always meaning to renounce,
abjure, in modern French renter, so that ey seems to answer to
French i. But Roquefort (Gloss, de la lang. rom. ii, 463) gives
the old forms renoier, rentier, and Kelham (Diet, of the Norman or
old French language 1779) has reneyee renegado, reneign refuse.
So that the t is a modern French development, which does not
affect the present investigation.
Perhaps the strongest evidence of all is furnished by the very
word enemies, which was lately rejected on account of Gill's (en-e-
maiz). Of course there is no doubt whatever of the sound of * in
the words is, his. These words never could have been (ais, nais)
at any time. No champion of (oi) could ever entertain such a
notion as this. Now in Gower we have : pris is ii 341, wis is iii
226, which may be taken to settle the pronunciation of pris, wis
i.e. price, wise, in the xivth century, and strongly corroborate the
method by which we have already arrived at this result. Bearing
this in mind, the rhymes : enemies pris ii 67, iii 199, enemies is
ii 342, enemis his iii 214, enemies wis iii 216, leave no doubt that
Gower said (en'enu'z) or (en'enu's), and that he therefore must have
said (en'eim) as the natural pronunciation of his time, or have
occasionally lengthened the final vowel into (ii, ii). But if so, all
the rest follows from the rhymes: enemy I 1645, ryally enemy
1795, sodeinly enemy 16889, forthy enemy i 330, enemy why i 347,
besily enemy ii 75, enemy envy iii 320.
It seems impossible to form a stronger chain of evidence in favour
of an unknown pronunciation, but the strength is rendered more
evident by the circumstance that there is no instance of -» rhyming
with -ey, except such as are explicable by the fact that the word
had several sounds and several modes of writing, often used in
other places, and that the scribe accidentally employed a wrong
orthography, as in the instance : mercy sey 13308, already con
sidered. Everything is therefore so far reconcilable with the
hypothesis i = (ii, i}, and many circumstances are irreconcilable
with the hypothesis i= (ai, «'). Hence I feel compelled to admit
that even the personal pronoun /was called (n) by Chaucer. This
personal pronoun had three forms, / most commonly, ic, ich, rarely.
That in these latter forms the t was («) short, seems proved by such
contractions as theek 3862, theech 12857, 14362, =thee ik, thee
ich. The diphthong could hardly have been so lost. Again the
change ic, ich, would be unusual, though possible, if i were (ai).
But / seems formed from ic, ich, just as a is from an. The original
pronunciation of the indefinite article was of course (a), and it is
now frequently (a, B), but the emphatic pronunciation (ee) is of
modern growth, and seems precisely comparable to the emphatic
use of (ai) for (i} in /.
Further corroboration of the above conclusion will be afforded by
considering the termination -ie, -ye. In two instances Chaucer uses
the French words par compaignye, at the end of a line, not as
Anglicised, but as a real French phrase. There may be some doubt
CHAP. IV. § 2. I, Y — XIV TH CENTURY. 283
as to the sound of gn, whether (nj, nj) or simply (n), as will be
hereafter considered, but as it is also written as a simple n, it will
be sufficient to consider it here as (n). The two last letters must
have had the French sound, which cannot well be conceived as
anything but (ii'e), or the English modification (ii'o), a change so
slight that the Englishman would have thought he was exactly
correct. Hence : par compaignye, fantasye 3837, par companye,
molodye 4165, must be considered as establishing the English pro
nunciation (fantasye, melodjY'e) of these Anglo-French words. The
following rhymes strongly confirm this conclusion :
hostelrie companye 23, multiplie Marie 15100, Emelye melodye
873, Emelye, gan to crie 2343, signified, sche cryed1 2345, philo
sophic, wolde he crye 647, envye2 crie 909, tyrrannye espye 1113,
chyvalrye curtesie 45, I made him Me, jalousie 6069, ragerie, as a
pye 6037, maladye manye = mania 1375.
I schal not lye, companye 765, curtesye lye 7251, vilonye, nat a
flye 4189, Emelye, gan sche hye = hie, hasten 2275, harlotries,
tollen thries 563, boille and frie, bake a pye 385, melodic, my body
gye 12062, curtesie, for to gye 7950, maladye, moist or drye 421.
The first list consist entirely of Anglo-French words, the second
gives rhymes of such with other words. Now throughout Harl.
7334 this termination -ye never rhymes3 with any other termination,
such as -y, -e, which has now received the same sound (-»). But
during the xv th century the final e was thrown off, and then these
words fell into (mel*od», fan'tast) etc, and became rhymes to -ly.
These rhymes therefore not only shew a later date, but indicate an
identity in the pronunciation of * in the two sets of words. As
then we have no conception of there having been an (ai) sound in
the -ye endings, (except in such words as signify, where of course
it is due to the accent), we have a corroboration of our former
conclusion that long i was (n, ii). Whenever we see in any
manuscript of Chaucer or Gower such rhymes as -y, -ye, or as -e,
-ye, we may be sure either that there has been some accidental
orthographical error of the scribe, or that some words of a more
recent period have been substituted. The error is often very
obvious and easy to remedy, thus: high testifie 4*1, majestie dignyte
kne 4-3, see ryaltie 4*5, libertie degree 4'10, crueltie pyte 4*12,
should have : hye, majeste, ryalte, liberte, cruelte. But degree
ye = eye 4-5, I dye high 4'8, hie crye whye 4*10, I espye ye = eye
4- 10, hie besyly je = eye 4- 11, fantasye merily 4- 15, ye = eye pretily
4' 15, se je = eye 4*27 etc., are certainly erroneous, and could not
have been written by a xiv th century writer. They serve there
fore to discredit the MS. (R. iii. 20, Trinity College, Cambridge,)
of the Court of Love.
1 Probably signifiede, eryede are the 3 The mistakes hyghe remedye 4629,
proper forms. eyen aspien 12426, hee eye 11503,
2 Both French forms envi, envie jelousye me 1809, have already been
occur, old and recent, and both envy, noticed (p. 250) ; the proper readings
envie are found in old English. are hye, yen, hye ye, jolite.
284
I, Y — XIV TH CENTURY.
CHAP. IV. 6 2.
Three other corroborative circumstances may be mentioned.
First, if long » had been (ai) in the xrvth century and earlier,
English would have presented the extraordinary spectacle of a
language without a long (ii, u~), one of the primitive vowel forms.
Sir Thomas Smith had indeed reduced Latin to such a condition,
but this was a purely artificial formation, due to a mistaken theory,
and we may safely say could never occur in practice. Secondly,
if long i had been (ai), we should have to account for its common
unaccented form («'). There is a dispute among orthoepists as to
whether (ai) or (*') should be pronounced in certain unaccented
syllables, such as (sm'Hzee'shim) or (smlaizee'slmi), or (didzhest',
daidzhest'), (iirfnut, m-fainait). These disputes at least serve to shew
that there is no difficulty whatever in using (ai) in an unaccented
syllable, and hence make the employment of (*') inexplicable, except
on the theory that it was the original normal sound. The change
of (ai) into (»') is of course possible, but it is generally through
(ei, ee, ii). We have this very transition in deceive, which was
(desaiv) in the xivth and even xvith centuries, became (deseiv)
and passed into (deseev) in the xvnth, and fell into (disiiv) in the
xvm th century. But the transition took a long time. This was
probably the course by which the old Greek et reached the modern
Greek (ii). "We have no trace of such a change in the words con
sidered. The third circumstance is, that the scribes of the xivth
and early part of the xv th centuries seem to have had no hesitation
in writing i and ei or y and ey according as they wished to indicate
a difference of pronunciation. This is especially the case with the
words die, dry, eye, high, lie, sih, tie, pine, which must therefore be
considered individually.
Die = (dare, dire). This common old English word is not
Anglosaxon. The old Norse is deyja, ek dey, do (dei'ja, ek dei,
doo), and degenn in Ormin, deigen in Lagamon, deyin' in the
Promptorium, point out (dare) or (dere) as the older pronunciation.
The same sound is indicated by : seye deye 4944, 7207, waye deye
5010, 5238, 11649, disobeye deye 8239, deyth seith 7623, seyde
deyde 2847, preyde deyde 8424, sayde abrayde deyde 8935, and
generally. In : brayde prayde dyde 16022, we have therefore a
clerical error for deyde. But we have a different spelling and a
different set of rhymes in: Marie dye 5261, Emelye dye 1569,
1589, 1595, dye, folye 1799, ye = eye- dye 7913, Lombardye hye
allie dye 15886, die Galaxye 4'53. Hence in: deyevilonye 11715,
deye bigamye 5667, deye sloggardye 11943, deye is a clerical error for
Aye. Whether this double pronunciation was of a much older date
or not, it is difficult to say. The point to note here is, that there
was a double method of spelling, and that, except from mere
carelessness of the scribe, each method answered to its own rhymes,
which we had previously recognised as (ai, if). At present (dai) is
the common form, but (dii) is more usual in South Shields, Kendal,
Westmoreland, and Lancashire.
1 MS. Univ. Lib. Cam. Dd. 4. 24, reads eye deye, which is also legitimate.
CHAP. IV. § 2. I, Y — XIV TH CENTURY. 285
Buy = (bw'e, bare). The first seems the older form as an
alteration of biggen, the second is not so frequent: to byen 14467,
bye housbondrie 5869, preye beye 12564.
Dry = (drzVe, drare). Here (n) seems to have been the
original form corresponding to ags. (yy), and (ai) the derived. Ags.
dryge drige drege dry, Orrm. drijge. Hence : maladye drye 422,
drye remedye 4'56, drye dye drie crie guye 5*208, where the first
drye means to suffer, still found in Scotch as dree (drii). On the
other hand : weye dreye 8773, drye seye preye 4'64, where drye is
evidently an error for dreye, aweie drey(e) i 220, but : drie deie
iii 93 might be : drye dye, or : dreye deye, probably the former. The
form dreye seems proved, but it is not so common, and what is most
important for the present purpose, it was a derived, not an original
form, which the scribe was not content to leave under the old
spelling drye. The legitimate inference is, therefore, that if in
other words (ai) had been pronounced, ey would have been written.
At present (drei, drai) are the common sounds, but (drii) is known
in South Shields.
Eye = (are, M'e). The older sound seems to have been (ai/fclre,
ei&lre). The more usual orthography is eyghe, eyghen, or eyhen
when the word does not occur final. • I have not noted it in a
rhyme in Chaucer, but we have : eie seie i 72, eye awey(e) i 127,
and Pauli constantly writes eie when the HSS. have yhe. The
guttural (&h) seems to have been often entirely lost, passing
probably through (jh), and then becoming absorbed in the
preceding (i) ; or more properly the diphthong (ei) grew out
of (ejh). The value (ere) results from : melodic yhe 9, companye
dayesye = daisy = day's eye 333, (for dayse hie 4-77, read daysye
hye,) crye yhe 1097, ye = eye plye 9044, yen wryen 17193. For :
specific eye i 3, highe eye i 106, sigh eye i 116, as Pauli writes,
read : specifye ye, hye ye, syhe yhe. Although (ei) is very
general, yet (ii) is almost the only form known in Newcastle,
Cumberland, and Lancashire, and is even used in Devon.
High = (sai, roY). The older form is here (sei, nai) the (i)
being generated from (jh), the representative of (£h). The usual
forms when the rhyme does not' require the others, are heih, heigh,
frequently with an added e. Possibly, as in eye, the guttural was
early lost in developing the diphthong, compare Orrmin's heh,
he^he. In rhymes this older form is not common, and is often
doubtful, thus : heye eyghe 3243, heyghe eyghe 10587, might
have been : hye ye. More certain seems : heyghe piggesneyghe
3268, on heigh seigh = saw 1067, which may have been :
on hih sih, compare 11162. This form often occurs in Gower,
where Pauli writes : high sigh i 2, i 24, i 137. On the other
hand the form (mi) is very common : hye crye 10725, hye
prye 7319, hihe eye, read yhe 11347, eyen read yen, prien 9985;
prye hye compaignie 4*222, hye gye compaignye 4'296, hye navye
5-215, hye jurye 5'253, hye skye 5'258, high read hye, poesie ii 36.
(Hii) is used in Cumberland and Scotland.
286 I, Y — XIV TH CENTURY. CHAP. IV. § 2.
Sly = (slai, sin). The first is the old form, in Orrmin sleh, and
(sin) is more recent. The rhyme slye, lye mentiri, ye oculus 5-37-8
is ambiguous; but if: high testifie sly 4'1 should be hye, testifie,
slye, this is a rhyme in point. Sleigh occurs 3201, 4-339 v. 944.
(Slii) is still found in Cumberland and South Shields.
Tie = (tare, tiie). The first is the old form, from ags. tegan, the
second seems to have come from a second form ags. tygan ; seyd teyd
10305, gives the first distinctly, the form : tyjed, Allit. Poems by
Morris A. 464, suggests the second sound, for which I have noted
no rhymes. (Tii) is found in Kendal, Cumberland, and Lancashire.
Pine, pain = (pirne, pai-ne), are really two separate words, but
they are used so much in the same sense that they might be easily
supposed to be different forms of the same word. The first is
Anglosaxon, the second French, but both apparently come from
Latin poena. They have come down to the present day also with
different pronunciations (poin, pern), and different meanings. The
following passages will shew how the words are confused by Chaucer
as the exigencies of the rhyme require.
And whan a beste is deed, he ne hath no peyne,
But man after his deth moot wepe and pleyne,
Though in this world he have care and woo :
Withouten doute it may stonde so.
The answer of this I lete to divinis,
But wel I woot, that in this world gret pyne is. 1321
In which ther be som merthe or doctrine.
Gladly, quod I, by Goddes swete pyne. 15343
That telleth us the peyne of Jhesu Crist. 15352
And sythen that I knewe of loves peyne
And wot how sore it can a man destreyne. 1817
Ful gulteles, by Goddes swete pyne,
For as an hors, I couthe bothe bite and whyne. 6967
who wold* suppose
The wo that in my herte was and pyne ?
And whan I saugh he nolde never fyne
To reden on this cursed book. 6369
In Armorik, that clepid is Bretaigne
Ther was a knyght, that loved and dide his peyne
To serven a lady 11041
"We thus see that in the xiv th century there was a tendency to
two forms in certain words, and that in general the original form
has (ai) and the secondary form (n). In 9ne case, however, at
least, dry, the (*V) form appears to be the older. In every case,
however, except from mere carelessness of the scribe, the two
sounds were carefully distinguished as ei, i or ey, y. There can
therefore be very little doubt that when only one form i or y, was
employed, there was only one pronunciation, («), because the
scribe, who was hampered by no historical associations, must have
many a time and oft written ey if he had ever heard the sound (ai).
In all of these cases the (u) sound has been dialectically preserved.
This completes the argument in favour of the proposition with
which I started, viz., that the sound of i in Chaucer's time was
(it, i} and not (ai, »'). But the result admits of illustration by
CHAP. IV. § 2. I, Y — XIV TH CENTURY. 287
dialectic peculiarities in addition to those just adduced. Isolated
and small societies necessarily preserve idiomatic expressions, pecu
liar words and peculiar pronunciations. Of course the so-called
Anglosaxon which established itself in England was not uniform.
The languages with which our dialects began, so to speak, were
remarkably different in many respects. It is not merely the pro
nunciation of a few words which now distinguishes the men of the
North, North-west, North-east, West, East, Midland, South-west,
and South-east, from each other and from those who speak literary
English. The whole intonation, many of the words, the idioms,
the grammatical constructions, are different. The effects of isolation
are shewn strongly among the scanty population that speaks what
we call Scotch, and consider it as a single language. Mr. Murray
has been able to distinguish eight Scotch dialects so sharply as to
translate the book of Ruth into each of them. In some of these
dialects the differences of pronunciation are as great as those which
separate English utterances in distant centuries.1 Nevertheless
we feel that all these dialects have one common origin with the
literary English, and that an examination of their peculiarities,
as respects this vowel i, will be of some assistance in conceiving
the former existence of a pronunciation so extremely different
from our own. It was with this view that I requested the
cooperation of those personally acquainted with these modes of
speech — which every one must regret to see at present so imper
fectly written, that the spelling conveys but little knowledge
to a reader who is ignorant of the dialect, and whom the writing
ought principally to aim at instructing.
Mr. James A. H. Murray's native dialect was that of Teviotdale,
and this possesses a very remarkable peculiarity. The following words
which are pronounced with (ii) in all other Scotch dialects, are in this
dialect, which extends over Roxburghshire, Selkirkshire, and part
of Dumfries, pronounced with (ei) : eye, be, bee, die, dree endure, fee
mad, a fly, to fly, free, gi' ye give you, glee squint, gree agree, he,
key, lie falsehood, me, knee, pea, plea, pree try, see, stee steep,
spree, tea, ti' ye to you, tree, thigh, three, wi' ye with you, agee
aslant. That is where other Scots say : (ii, bii, dii, drii, f ii) etc,
the Borderers say (ei, bei, dei, drei, fei) etc. This one pecu
liarity is very striking. Some of these words as : eye, fly, lie, thigh,
are pronounced with (ai) in the South, but what Englishman would
say (boi) for lee, (frai) for free and so on ? Conjoined with this
curious correspondence of (ei) with the (ii) of other dialects is
another of precisely the same character. The sentence : You and
me will go over the dyke and pull a pea, is a perfect shibboleth
in this dialect. Alone, in all Scotland, it says : (Jau an mei al geq
our dh» deik an pan B pei).2 On the other hand, the Edinburgher
1 See Mr. Murray's paper on the z Mr. M. Bell writes (myi pyi) for
Lowland Scotch Dialect, read before (mei pei). The latter were the sounds
the Philological Society on the 4th as I appreciated them when Mr. Murray
and 18th Dec., 1868. pronounced them.
288 I, Y — XIV TH CENTURY. CHAP. IV. § 2.
would say: (Juu an miral gj^q Eur dlw dmk an puu TJ pii). Observe
the (ja:u pan) for (juu puu) corresponding with (mei pel) for (mii
pii). We have here, then, two sets of words in a living dialect
corresponding in precisely the same way as the xvrth century
(ei ou) with the xrvth century (ii uu),1 and similarly in the
Netherlands, we shall find (ai, ii) coexisting in adjacent provinces,
as pronunciations of the written ij. The phenomenon, then, of the
change of (ii uu) to (ei ou) ought not to present any very serious
difficulties. Nor ought we to feel any great surprise at Palsgrave
and Bullokar having retained (ii uu), while their fellow countrymen
generally said (ei ou).
The sound (ii) for long i is by no means extinct, and the double
use of (ii) and one of the (ai) sounds is, as we have seen, familiar
in the very words which have been noted above. Mr. Murray,
notwithstanding his residence in England, and his critical know
ledge of our language, confesses that he is " continually discovering
words which he has all his life pronounced with (ii) which English
men pronounce (ai)." "In fact," says he, "long (ii) is the sound
we instinctively associate with the letter i unless we have been
taught to pronounce it as in English." The following is taken
from some remarks which Mr. Murray obligingly communicated in
writing.
Fly s. and v. general Scotch (flii), but Teviotdale (flei). Cleve
land (flii) a fly, but (fleg) to fly, compare lie.
Lie (mentiri), general Scotch, "Westmoreland, and Cumberland
(lii), Teviotdale and Dumfriesshire (lei).
Lie (procumbere), Westm. Cumb. Lane, and Cleveland (1/g, leg) ;
this does not seem to cross the border where the word is (lai, la',
lohi), although the older Scotch always wrote lig, lyg.
By preposition of the agent, (bi). Teviotdale (Hei waz sin bi
si'verelz) = he was seen by several.
By of place is always (bai, bohi).
Thigh Scotch, Westm. Cumb. and Cleveland (thii), Tev. and
Dumf. (thei).
Friar = (friir), thus a part of Jedburgh is called the Freirs*
Briar = (briir), Cleveland (briir) and (brii), inquire (enkwiir),
choir (kwiir) and (kwe#r) (?), squire (skwiir).
Site, old people pronounce (sit, zit).
Neighbour = (nib'er), with a short vowel, not (nii'ber) as Eng
lishmen hear.
Like = (lek, leik), the latter more common, but (lek'Kz) is used
for likely ; in Cleveland also, like == (lah'k), but likely = (lek'l*,
l«k-lt).3
1 The difference between (au ou) is to attempt to discriminate between (ou
very slight, the latter having simply ou) in an ancient form of speech, when
labialised the first element of the former, it would be difficult to do so in living
which effect readily produced by the pronunciation.
action of the subsequent (u). The 2 A well of very fine water at "Work-
difference between (ou ou) is merely ington, Cumberland, is always called
that the first element of the latter is the (frir.i).
widened, and it would be presumptuous 3 An old Scotch jeweller, who had
CHAP. IV. §2. I, Y — XIV TH CENTURY. 289
Oblige, obliged = (obliidzlr, oblwst')1 and similarly in numerous
French words, as invite, polite, and words of classical origin as idol
(iid'l) type (tip), baptize, chastize, civilized (sivaliizt), advert'ise-ment.
Eye, general Scotch (ii), Teviotdale (ei), plural in both (in) with
short (i). Cumb., Westm., Lane., and North Yorkshire (ii, iin)
with long (ii). Barnsley, South Yorkshire (ii, iiz).
High Tev. (He£h, nei, nai), other Scotch (nekh, mkh, mi), as
(as Hrlahnt az dhe mi rood) = as highland as the high road.2 The
guttural form is common but is passing away, and (nil) is used
instead in Centre, West, and North of Scotland, as also in Cumb.,
and Westm., (sai, nohi) are the common recent forms in Teviotdale.
Die, general Scotch, Cumb., Westm., Lane., (dii). Teviotdale,
Eskdale, Annandale (dei).
Dree (drii) endure, and so in Cleveland ; but dry (drai drai dnz'
drohi), and so with buy.
Sly follows the analogy of high, but the guttural form seems only
to occur in sleight (sle&ht) like height (ne^ht). The usual Scotch,
Cumb., Westm., and Lane, is (slii), Tev. (slei), or more commonly
(slai, slohi).
Hie is not known to Mr. Murray in living speech, in reading
ballads it is called (nai sohi) in Tev. In Westm. dialects it is
sometimes written hii?
-Ight, words of this class, as right, might, light, sight, which
in Scotland are (lekht, le&ht) are in Cumb., Westm., Lane., and
Yorkshire, (riit, niit, Kit, siit) etc.4 In cases where -ight does not
represent ags. -iht, the pronunciation is different, so fight ags. feoht,
Tev. (fceiAht), Lane, (feit) not (fiit).5
Sigh (seM).
China, the ware or the country (tshura, tshin-«), as in (Whaht
est uts ^t Jens uut B tshura' ran en'B tshurV? Tei) = What is-it
that -is at once out of China and in -of China? Tea. Walker
lived from youth in London, always men in the Dales sounded such words
said (lek) for like, in all senses. He as sigh, night, light, &c., with a gentle
was constantly using the word, and guttural breathing," which, he adds in
never seemed to hear that other persons a footnote, " seemed partly to come
pronounced it differently. from the palate," and was therefore
1 Observe the form of the past tense. (Ah). See : A Memorial by the Trus-
I quite lately heard (obliidzlr, obliitsht') tees of Cowgill (Koo-gz'l) Chapel, with a
from a noble lord at a public meeting. Preface and Appendix, on the Climate,
2 Perthshire simile in describing one History, and Dialects of Dent, by
who is ultra Celtic. Observe here Adam Sectgivick, LL.D., senior fellow
the different use of (as, az). of Trinity College, and professor of
8 A gentleman in Derby informed Geology in the University of Cam-
me that in North Derbyshire the bridge. Cambridge, 1868, 8vo. pri-
peasantry say (mak mi) for make haste. vately printed, p. 103 — a book of affec-
Compare : I se where come a messengere tionate and interesting reminiscences of
in hie = in haste 4-10. ags. higian v. manners and speech, extending over
hig^ s. Orrmin bib s. Promptorium nearly 120 years, through Prof. Sedg-
hyyn' p. 229. wick's father, the honoured clergyman
* Prof. Sedgwick, a native of the of Dent, who was 50 years older than
dale of Dent, Yorkshire, writing at up- his son.
wards of eighty years of age, says : " I 5 Several correspondents have con-
remember the day when all the old firmed this rule, and the exception.
19
290 I, Y — XIV TH CENTURY. CHAP. IV. § 2.
gives (tahwa*) for china ware or orange, but (Tshornae) for the
country, and has a long note on it.
Bind, find, hind, blind, grind = (bend, fend, -sent, blend, grend),
wind v. and s. = (wand), but kind, mind, wynd = (kaind, maind,
waind), and little is often (lait'l) especially as a proper name.
Why ! as an exclamation, not why ? the interrogative, is (w{ !) in
Scotch, and (wiia !) in Cumb., Westm., Lane., and Cleveland.
(Wiia ! sez ai) = Why ! says I, is a common formula in the
Northern counties.
Can this existence of the (ii) sound, and its general association
with i in Scotland, be considered a modern development ? Has it
not rather the appearance of an ancient form? The latter view
seems confirmed by seeing that numerous words are pronounced
with one of the (ai) forms as (ei, ei, aei, ai, ai, ohi, ai), and that
these various forms are differently distributed in different localities,
whereas the (ii) form when it occurs is almost general. Mr. Murray
gives the two following lists of words which have (ei, ei) in Teviot-
dale, but (ai) in Western Scotch, the first element of these diph
thongs being more distinctly heard than in English (ai, au).
Tev. (ei), west Scotch (ai) : bike wasp's nest, dyke, fike to 'irk,
like, pike pick, sike wet hollow, spike, strike, tike ; bite, clyte clot,
dite doit, flite scold, gite crazy, kite a belly, mite, knite (kneit) rap
the knuckles, quite, white (kwheit), spite, snite How the nose, wite
blame, write (w'reit),1 yite (jeit) yellow hammer, gype (geip) im
pudent fellow, (nei-pelt) awkward clown, pipe, ripe, sipe ooze, snipe,
tripe, wipe ; — bice, Brice, Christ, dice, grice, lice, mice, nice, price,
rice, spice, sklice slice, trice, wise (weis), twice, thrice, fife Fife,
five, life, knife (kneif ), rife, strife ; — pint (peint), ninth (neint).
Tev. (ei), "West Scotch (ai) : bide, bride, guide, hide, pride, ride,
side, slide, tidy, wide ; — jibe, kibe, siba (sei'ba) onion Lat. cepa ;
— guize, prize, rise, stays (steiz) ; — kithe shew, lithe, writh ; — dive,
drive, hive, alive, lives, knives, deprive, schive slice, strives, thrives,
wives ; — tings (teiqz) tongs, whings (wh<dqz) shoe-strings ; — brine,
cryne dry in, fine, line, mine, nine, pine, sine since, swine, shine,
tine lose, twine, wine, vine ; — crime, dime, glime glimpse, lime,
prime, rime, stime indistinct form, time ; — bile, file befoul, guile,
kile hay-cock, mile, pile, sile strain milk, tile, vile, wile, stile,
smile ; — hire cowshed, chair (tsheir), fire, hire, mire, sire sewer, swire
tire, wire ; — wild, mild ; — mind, hind, kind, rind, sind rinse.
In the second list the consonant is a liquid, nasal, or voiced
letter, which distinguishes it from the first. Generally in Scotland
when English long i or y is final in monosyllables, as cry, dye, or a
long i occurs in underived words, as dial, trial, the sound is (ai),
and in Teviotdale (ai, ohi). Derivatives follow their root sounds.
The two sounds, that is the (ei, ei, ai, ai) series, and the (aei, ai,
ai, ohi) aeries, attributed to the Scotch long i, are strongly insisted
on by Scotchmen, and in 1848 when I was printing much English
in a phonetic form, the Scotch always exclaimed against the use of
1 In Aberdeen (vriit) or (bhriit).
CHAP. IV. § 2. I, Y — XIV TH CENTURY. 291
one sign for the two forms. The late Professor W. Gregory, of
Edinburgh, divided the sounds into (ai) and (ai),1 in which case
they answer to the two sounds heard in Isaiah in England. Mr.
Melville Bell in a private letter says that: "in different districts
you hear (a', a', ahi), but the representative sound is (aei). This is
heard regularly when the sound is final, before a vowel, or before
final r, and generally when it occurs before (z) or (v). This (aei)
is the ' genteel' form of I. I hear it from all my educated Scotch
pupils ; though they come from widely separated districts they give
(aei) for 'I' etc., with absolute uniformity.2 The other sound (ei)
is the regular one for *"in other syllables, and in a few words for
a," as aye, pay, clay, Tay, May, way, plague, etc. In Teviotdale,
aye, may, are called (ei, mei) to distinguish them from (ei, mei) =
ee, me.
My dialectic correspondents (p. 277 note), and Mr. Murray have
furnished me with the following words in which (ii) or (n)3 re
mains in the provinces. Abbreviations — C. Cumberland, D. Devon,
Db. Derbyshire, K. Kendal, L. Lancashire, N. Norfolk, S. Shields,
generally South Shields, sometimes North Shields, and occasionally
Newcastle, Sc. general Scotch, "W. Westmoreland, Y. Yorkshire,
Yc. Cleveland, Yorkshire The list is of course very incomplete,
both in words and localities. The numerous French and classical
words pronounced in Scotland with (ii), p. 289, are omitted.
WOKDS SPELLED WITH I, USUALLY SOUNDED (ai), BUT PBOYINCIAXLY
PRONOUNCED (ii),
alike D fly v. CKSScWY liar S sight CWS
briar CYc fly «. CKLSScYYc lie «. CKLSScW sly CLSScW
bright CKLSW friar CSc light CDWSY stile C
by preposition of fright S lightning S thigh CSScWYc
agent, Sc hie Db mice DN thy ITW
child D high C might s. D tie t>. CKL
die CKLSScW hind «. C mind D why ! CLScWYc
dry S Ide D my passim wright SY
dyke N I'll C night CDKLSY write S
eye CDLSScWY kindly D nighest (niist) D
eyesight Y kite Y right CSWY
It would be difficult to suppose that in all these cases, widely
differing from ordinary use, and extending over several counties,
the (ii) should have been a recent transformation of (ai). The
probabilities are all the other way.
The personal pronoun / is one of the greatest difficulties. In the
Aryan languages its changes have been great. The original word
seems to have been (a) to which a strengthening termination (gham)
1 See my Essentials of Phonetics, p. conception of the proper pronunciation
172, note, where (ai) is used when not of the English long i. In England
followed by a consonant and before the (aei) is rather cockneyfied.
inflectional (d, z), and also before (v, z), 3 It is impossible to trust the unac-
but otherwise (ai) is more common. customed ear to distinguish these
2 Mr. Murray accounts for this ab- sounds, though they have separate
normal uniformity, by saying that (asi) letters », »', in Icelandic.
is not a Scotch sound, but the Scotch
292 I, Y — XIV TH CENTURY. CHAP. IV. § 2.
was affixed, producing (agham) as in Sanscrit.1 The vowel (a) was
retained, and the following guttural altered to a -sibilant in Zend,
Lithuanian, and old Sclavonic. In Greek, Latin, and Gothic, the
guttural was retained, but the vowel palatalized, into (e) in Greek
eycav (eghoon'), and Latin ego (eg'oo, eg'o) which retained por
tions of the following syllable, and into (i) in Gothic (ik), which
dropped the following letters. This low German form (ik) was the
normal Saxon form, probably ^"k), and the orthography ice in
Orrmin, guarantees the shortness of the vowel. In Icelandic we
find ec, ek, 6g, where the vowel seems to have become long, and (j)
was prefixed in speaking. The Modern Danish \sjeg (jei, jai). In
Chaucer as we have seen (p. 282), the form ic still occurs, and is
sometimes palatalized to ich («tsh), but the usual form in Chaucer
and Gower is /. 2 By Shakspere the words /, eye, aye were identi
fied in sound (p. 112). The frequent phrase quoth-a, may some
times mean, quoth I, but is often interpreted quoth he, and the well-
known passage in Henry V, act ii, sc. 3, describing the death of
Falstaff, is full of a for he. Now as he was certainly generally
pronounced (nji), as it was frequently written hee, at that time, the
provincial, or vulgar, or dialectic correspondence of (a) with (mi),
would be precisely similar to a dialectic use of (a) for («), sup
posing the last to have been Chaucer's personal pronoun. At the
same time the acknowledged form (nii) for he, would lead us to
expect some acknowledged forms (ii) or (»Y) for /, existing in
dialects.
Now both of the forms (a) and (ii) exist in the provinces for /,
though the traces of (ii) are very few and very slight, but few as
they are, it would be difficult to account for them except by the
action of an old tradition, and as in some cases the pronunciation is
only known among very old people and is fast going out, it may
have been much more common as lately as one or two hundred
years ago.
"Eed = T had: If eed done soa, it wad sartainly hev been
better."3 "/, aye, eigh. Yes. I is sometimes pronounced like E,
particularly when the pronoun follows the verb, as ' do E,' for I
do."4 "I is often sounded like E, in «w," 5 probably (»') as a con
tracted form of (m).
1 F. C. August Fick, Wb'rterbuch 3 Rev. W. Carr, Craven Glossary,
der Indogermanischen Grundsprache in vol. i. p. 127, 2nd ed.
ihrem Bestande vor der Vb'lkertren- * Ibid., p. 241. The author cites as
nung, 1868, p. 4. C. F. Koch, His- an illustration, what looks like a coup-
torische Grammatik der Englischen let, from Cant. Tales, 12530, by which
Sprache, vol. 3, p. 3. it seems as if me, /rhymed. Of course
2 The omission of the guttural is this was not the case. The author has
quite similar to the (ai, i, mi, di, si, taken together two lines belonging to
aa, do, no) for euch, ich, mich, dich, different couplets, and the whole rhymes
sich, auch, doch, noch, in the neigh- arejolite me, I thriftily.
bourhood of the Danube, Bavaria. 5 Ibid. The author has unfortunately
Schmeller, Grammatik art. 427. So in not followed any strict orthography, and
old high German, and old English we has not attempted to explain that which
find ine for ih ne, ic ne, Graff, 1, 118, he has used.
Rel. Ant. 1, 235.
CHAP. IV. § 2. I, Y — XIV TH CENTURY. 293
In Lancashire («') is used when unemphatic, as (mgn * tel dhe ?)
must I tell you.1
In Blackburn "the old fashioned way" of pronouncing /," is
(») very short."2
"I have frequently heard old people pronounce /like our own
ee (ii), especially in the interrogative form, did ee do it? will ee
go ? must ee do it ? etc. This is very common, in fact about twenty
years ago it was the invariable pronunciation. In the phrase : (aiz
gaa'an Hjam, at iz ii!) = I am going home, that am I, ee (ii) is
as decidedly emphatic as / ordinarily is. The contraction I'll for
/ shall, is frequently given ee'tt. Ee is also used occasionally
but very seldom in every tense and form. This pronunciation is
only used by old people here, but in central Cumberland it is more
general. The same people use the form (aa) and sometimes (a),
but never in questions or in the direct future."3
Scarcely less convincing as respects the vowel in English ich are
the contractions cham, chas, chil (tshara, tshas, tslw'l) for ich am,
ich was, ich will, mentioned by Gill (Logonomia p. 17) as a Southern
pronunciation, in Rev. "W. Barnes's edition of the Glossary of the
Dialect of Forth and Bargy, and in the Glossary to his Poems in
the Dorset dialect, 1858, p. 150. See also J. Jennings, Dialects of
the West of England.*
The dialectic pronunciations Ise, 'ch are preserved in Shakspere,
Sing Lear, act iv, sc.- 6, 1. 240, Globe ed., Tragedies p. 304, col. 2,
folio 1623, which reads :
Edg. Chill5 not let go Zir,
Without vurther 'casion.
Stew. Let go Slaue, or thou dy'ft.
Edg. Good Gentleman goe your gate, and let poore volke paffe : and 'chud6
ha'bin zwaggerd out of my life, 'twould not ha'bin zo long as 'tis, by a
vortnight. Nay, come not neere th'old man : keepe out che vor'ye,7 or ice 8
try whither your Costard, or my Ballow be the harder ; chill6 be plaine with you.
Stew. Out Dunghill.
Edg. Chill 5 picke your teeth Zir : come, no matter vor your foynes.
About thirty years ago utehy (atsh'« ?) was in use for / in the
Eastern border of Devonshire and in Dorset, and examples of cham,
chould = I am, I would, occur in the" Exmoor Scolding," which
dates from the beginning of the last century,9
The prevailing dialectic forms of the pronoun are however (a, a, A,
oh) occasionally (a, 'B\ and (ai, ai, ohi, Ai, oi). In Derbyshire I
generally heard (a), but in the northern parts it is said to be (AI).
Mr. Murray writes : " / in the Northern dialects of England is
1 Letter from Mr. John J. L. Jack- 6 I will,
son, teacher of languages, Manchester. 6 I would.
3 Letter from Mr. T. Fielding, Man- 7 Printed chettore ye in the 4to, 1608.
Chester. "Australes — (Tsbi voor ji), pro (ai
3 Letter from Mr. J. N. Hethering- war-ant jou) cerium do," Gill, Logo-
ton, Clifton Parsonage, "Workington, nomia, p. 17.
Cumberland. 8 Ice = Ise=I; printed tie = I'll, in
* For these references to Glossaries the 4to. 1608.
I am indebted to Mr. "W. Aldis "Wright, 9 Letter from Mr. John Shelly,
Trin. Coll. Cambridge. Plymouth.
294 I, Y XIV TH CENTURY. CHAP. IV. § 2.
usually a simple vowel of the (a, a, oh) series. In some dialects it
is, when accented, a diphthong composed of the same first element
and (i,'). In Scotch (oh, aa), even when emphatic (*oh wohd'ne
gohq) = I would not go. In Ayrshire it would probably be (aai,
aa'j) in such a case, so also in Cumb. and Westm. In Lancashire
it is (AA) even when emphatic, in Barnsley, Yorkshire, (act}. "When
unemphatic it is in all the dialects an obscure (a, a:, 13), it is hard
to say what." Unemphatic syllables have always a tendency to
fall into this colourless (Q, B) sound. Even in Germany, where
there is no tendency to pronounce ich (i&h) with an (ai), rapid
speaking will generate (a), as (nab'adi, las'ami, taa'toda, deqk'ama)
= habe ich dich, lasse ich mich, thate ich drr, denke ich mir, in
Bavaria.1
The confusion of (i) with (e) penetrated, as we have seen, into
orthography, p. 272. But during the xvth century there also arose
a tendency to thin (ee) into (ii), whereby so many (ee) of the
xiv th century became (ii) by the xvr th. This tendency was pre
cisely the same as that which converted so many of the remaining
(ee) into (ii) at the beginning of the xvmth century, p. 88. Now
if we suppose these two tendencies to act together, which is no
extravagant hypothesis, since they certainly co-existed, the result
would be that (ii) would be begun as (ee) and ended as (ii), that is
that (ii) would become first (eei) and then (ei). During the same
time we know also that (oo) was in many instances refined to (uu).
We might therefore suppose that there was the converse tendency
to take (uu) as (uu), and then as (oo), which is by no means un
common, and then that the joint action of these two tendencies pro
duced first (oou), then (ou) or (ou) as it would have been certainly
accepted. This supposition as to the mode of generating (ei, ou)
from (ii, uu), has the advantage of being based upon known facts.
But the considerations adduced on p. 233, are quite sufficient to
account for the change. At the present moment the (ee, oo) of the
South of England are actually changing into (ei, ou), and these
sounds have been developed by the less educated, and therefore
more advanced speakers, the more educated and therefore less ad
vanced having only reached (eei, oou)2 although many of them are
not conscious of saying anything by (ee, oo).
1 Schmelkr, Mund. Bay. art. 284. thongs. This is illustrated .... in the
2 "The English alphabetic accented a, regular pronunciation of the vowels in
in the mouth of a well-educated Lon- aid, ail, aim, ache, &c. (ei), ode, oak,
doner.... is not quite simple, but finishes globe, &c. (ou). The same tendency
more slenderly than it begins, tapering leads to the ' Cockney' peculiarity of
so to speak, towards the sound (i) .... separating the labio - lingual vowels
5 in a Londoner's mouth is not always (u, o) into their lingual and labial corn-
quite simple, but is apt to contract ponents, and pronouncing the latter
towards the end, finishing almost as oo successively instead of simultaneously,
in too." B. H. Smart, Walker Re- Thus we hear (ceu, BU, yu) for (u), and
modelled, 1836, Principles, arts. 1 and (o'w, o'w, ah'w) for (o)." Visible
7. Mr. M. Bell, among "English Speech, p. 117. As Mr. Bell marks
Characteristics" reckons: "The ten- the second element by the glide sign
dency of long vowels to become diph- he does not distinguish the length of
CHAP. IV. $ 2.
I, Y XIV TH CENTURY.
295
As has been already remarked, p. 234, the change from (ii, uu)
to sounds of the (ai, au) order has not heen confined to England,
but took place in the literary language of the other Germanic
countries, nearly at the same time, that is, during the xv th and
xvi th centuries ; and in these countries as well as in England
traces of the original pronunciation remain in the provinces.
Siegenbeek, whose work on Dutch Spelling originated the ortho
graphy now in use, tells us that old Dutch manuscripts employed
i, M, for their long «', which, partly for distinctness and partly for
ornament, became ij, and hence that the inhabitants of Friesland,
Zeeland, Guelders, Overyssel, and Grb'ningen, who still pronounce
(ii), evidently preserve the ancient sound ; but that the inhabitants
of the province of Holland had at an early period changed the
sound into one very like (ei) 1 and that after the Spanish disturb
ances, that is, about the end of the xvith century, this province
having become the seat of learning and civilisation, its pronunciation
necessarily became prevalent, and is now the literary pronunciation
of the country.2 Hence we have an indubitably ancient (ii), pre
served in those provinces of the Netherlands whose dialect most
resembles ancient English, and passing into an (ai) in other pro
vinces which by a political accident was able to set the fashion of
pronunciation.
the first element, so that with him (ee,
oo) have already in appearance become
(ei, on), but this does not represent his
actual pronunciation, which is rather
(ee'j, oo'w).
1 The Dutch ij, ei differ slightly,
if at all. Sir Hendrik Gehle, D.D.,
minister of the Dutch Reformed Church
in Austin Friars, London, who kindly
pointed out to me the passage in Sie
genbeek (Sii'ghenbeek) referred to in
the text, and cenfirmed what is there
said of the provincial (ii), said that he
felt more of the e in pronouncing ei
than ij, reminding me much of Gill's
remark (supra p. 114), of being diffuse
over the e. At first he seemed to call
both (ei), but afterwards he recognized
my (ai, ei) as the two sounds, and, as
suming the English as (ai), he said he
considered the Dutch a neater sound.
The distinction (ai, ei) is precisely that
which I had to make in Gill, and, con
sidering the close connection between
Dutch and English, the coincidence is
remarkable.
2 " Doch deze enkele » kon geene
plaats hebben in lettergrepen, op eenen
medeklinker stuitende, als mijn, zijn,
bliif en. soortgelijke ; maar moest hier
noodzakelijk verdubbeld worden. — Men
schreef dus oudtijds, met eene dubbele
*', bliif, wiin, schriif, von welke schrijf-
wijze, in oude handschriften, nog vele
sporen voorhanden zijn. Doch, om de
gelijkheid der dubbele t met de «,
waaruit ligtelijk verwarring kon ont-
staan, en misschien ook sieraadshalve,
begon men de tweede t reeds vroeg
met een' langen staart te schrijven, 't
welk man, bij hare platsing voor eine
vokaal aan het begin der woorden, ins-
gelijks in zwang bragt. Wij kunnen
niet voorbij, hier te doen opmerken,
dat zij, die, in de woorden blijven,
schrijven, mijn, zijn, bij de uitspraak
den klank der enkele en dubbele f doen
hooren, als de Vriezen, Zeeuwen, Gel-
derschen, Overijselschen en Groningers,
blijkens het voorgestelde, de echte en
oorspronkelijke uitspraak dezer woor
den behouden hebben. Doch op de
tong der Hollanders is deze echte
klank reeds vroeg verloren geraakt, en
voor eenen anderen, eenigzins zwe-
mende naar den klank ei, verwisseld
geworden. Nadat nu Holland, wer-
waards, na de Spaansche beroeringen,
de voorname zetel der beschaafdheid en
wetenschappen werd overgebragt, door
middel van dit uitstekend voorregt,
zijne uitspraak meer en meer als de
algemeene en heerschende heeft doen
gelden, is ook die verbastering in de
meest beschaafde uitspraak en daarop
gebouwde schrijfwijze ingevoerd, en
296 I, Y — XIV TH CENTURY. CHAP. IV. $ 9.
We have precisely the same phenomena in the less closely related
High German dialects. An old and middle high German i (ii)
became a modern High German ei (ai). All these latter ei are how
ever not derived from 2 (ii), but some come from a middle and old
High German ei (ei), answering to the Gothic ai (ee).1 Moreover
we have the same phenomenon of a persistence of the sound of (ii)
in the provinces, notwithstanding the real change of orthography
from i to ei, whereas in Dutch the change is only apparent, from
ii to ij, and hence resembles the English retention of i through a
change of sound. Schmeller says: " ei sounds, conformably with
its origin, like a long (ii) by the lake of Constanz, i.e. on the Upper
Rhine, and by the tributaries to the Weser from the Rhon-chain of
hills ; 2 (miin, diin, siin, — bii, drii, lis, Fliis, Liim, Liib, bhiis, Tsiit
— bis-e^, blii'be,, grif'e,, ii'le<, lii*de(, shnii'de(, shrirbe,, trii'bej,
= mein, dein, sein, — bei, drei, Eis, Fleiss, Leim, Leib, weiss, Zeit, —
beissen, bleiben, greifen, eilen, leiden, schneiden, schreiben, treiben.
Also on the Lauter (siin) for seyn, on the Ilz (ii<) for ein, as in
(iijSpan'eJ = einspannen ; on the east of the Lech, (drii)-fach,
(drii)-fuesz, (shliif )stain." 3
Dr. Rapp in the passage previously cited (supr& p. 235) has
endeavoured to give the relations of all the long vowels throughout
the Germanic languages, and it seems worth while to reproduce his
table here, although it is only a sketch, and requires much filling
in to make it at all complete. The first line gives what Dr. Rapp
imagines to have been the seven primary vowels in this system of
languages. The lines 2 to 6, refer to the older, the lines 7 and 8
to the intermediate, and the following lines to modern forms. The
pronunciations assigned may be occasionally disputed, but they are
near enough for the present purposes, and without attempting to
make any change, I have translated the phonetic symbols as well as
I could understand them. The uniformity with which the Ger
manic, as distinguished from the Scandinavian, branches have in
recent times adopted the (ai, au) forms in place' of (ii, uu) is very
striking. Many persons may feel that it is an argument in favour of
the pronunciation of i long as (ii) in Anglosaxon, and therefor^ in
Early English, that the Scandinavians certainly called their long *
(ii), as their descendants in Iceland, Norway, Sweden and Denmark
continue to do. But that conterminous districts may differ precisely
upon this point we have already seen in the case of Scotland (p. 287)
and Holland (p. 294), and another instance may be cited from the
daarin reeds zoo vast geworteld, dat het Sprache, iii, 267. Grimm, Deutsche
thans volstrekt onmogelijk is, dezelve Gram., 3rd ed. i, 285, 317.
nit te roeijen." Verhandeling over de l Eapp, Phys. d. Spr. iv, 11. Grimm,
Nederduitsche Spelling ter bevordering ib. 95, 106, 175, 182, 225. Grimm
van eenparigheid in dezelve, door assumes Gothic ei, di = (ei, ai) appa-
Matthys Siegenbeek, hoogleerar in de rently ; in Chap. V, § 4, No. 3, the
Nederduitsche Letterkunde te Leyden : sounds (ii, ee) are preferred,
uitgegeven in naam en op last van het 3 In the same district, au sounds as
Staats-Bewind der Bataaftche Repub- (uu) conformably with its origin.
liek. Amsterdam (1804, 8vo., pp. 3 Mundarten Bayern's Art. 244.
380), p. 65. See also Rapp, Phys. der
CHAP. IV. § 2.
XIV TH CENTURY.
297
Norman peninsula containing Cherbourg. At Montebourg, only
fifteen miles SSE of Cherbourg, the pronunciation of i as (ai) is
very common, whereas at Beaumont Hague, on the same peninsula
and only twenty-five miles E"W of Montebourg, this pronunciation
is unknown.-1 Such examples shew the necessity of examining
existing phases of pronunciation before attempting to decide upon
extinct usages.
RELATIONS OF THE SEVEN LONG VOWELS IN THE GEBMANTC
LANGUAGES ACCORDING TO DB. M. RAPP.
Long Vowels.
i
n
m
rv
V
VT
VII
1. Primary - - -
aa
ee
ee
ii
AA
00
uu
2. Gothic - - -
ee
ee
iu
ii
AA
00
uu
3. Icelandic - - -
AA
ei
iu
ii
0U
00
uu
4. Anglosaxon - -
ee
AA
to
ii
^a
00
uu
5. Friesian - - -
ee
ee
ia
ii
AA
00
uu
6. Old Saxon - -
aa
ee
iu
ii
AA
00
uu
7. Middle Saxon
AA
ee
ee
ii
00
00
uu
8. Middle German -
aa
ei
ie
ii
0U
U0
uu
9. English - - -
ii
00
ii
ai
ii
uu
au
10. Danish - - -
AA
ee
yy
ii
03O3
00
uu
11. Swedish - - -
00
ee
JT7TT
ii
O3O3
uu
-uu
12. Dutch - ---
aa
ee
ii
ai
00
uu
0y
13. High German
aa
ai
ii
ai
au
uu
au
14. Suabian - - -
AA
oi
ia
ai
au
ua
au
15. Frankish - - -
00
ee
ii
ai
aa
uu
au
16. East Frankish -
au
aa
ai
ai
aa
au
au
17. Bavarian - - -
AA
oa
ia
ai
aa
ua
au
Examples. - - -
JaJir
Ireit
Dieb
well
Laub
gut
Haus
English - - -
year
broad
thief
wide
leaf
good
house
Although the subject is far from exhausted, as we are thus
led into an examination of the cognate dialects, sufficient has
been adduced to shew the antecedent probability of the
theory that in the xiv th century long i was pronounced as
(M), and as all the facts which we have been able to discover,
agree with and are explicable by this theory, whereas the
usual hypothesis that long i was one of the (ai) diphthongs
during all periods of our language, is not reconcilable with
many of the facts adduced, and is opposed to the general
tendency of the cognate dialects on the continent, it seems to
be the only legitimate inference that in Chaucer's time long i
was (ii} and short (i) was (i)..
1 This curious fact is given on the
authority of Dr. Le Taillis, mayor of
Beaumont Hague, but a native of
Montebourg. See the note on M. Le
Hericher and Norman f, at the close of
Chap. V. § 1, No. 3.
298 U XIV TH CENTURY.
U — xiv TH CENTURY.
CHAP. IV. § 2.
After the lengthened proof which has been given that long u in
the xvi th century had the French sound (yy), it follows almost as
a matter of course, that those words in Chaucer which have long
u, and which are as a general rule all taken from the French or
Latin, had also the sound of (yy),1 and this will be further con
firmed when we find that (uu) the only other sound it was likely
to represent had a different symbolisation, ou. We may, how
ever, notice the pure French rhyme —
Another day he wil par adventure
Beclayme the, and bring the to lure. 17003
compare ly aventure 25, the English phrase. "With this French
sound there was also a tendency to dwell on the syllable ure with
more accentual stress, so (naa'tyyr) 11, and
Venus, if it be youre wil
Yow in this gardyn thus to transfigure
Biforn me sorwful wrecched creature. 1106
Short u was properly (u) or (u) as in the xvi th century, and as
in the Anglosaxon times. This we see from the Latin rhymes —
Sayde Plato. Ye, sire, and is it thus ?
This is ignotum per ignotius. 13384
In which I pleyne upon Virginius.
And if he wile seyn it is nought thus. 13582
At the same time we find u short occasionally used as a substitute,
apparently, for e and * short, where we cannot imagine that a dif
ference of pronunciation was intended, as for example in the verbal
termination -ed, bathud 3, enspirud 6, esud 29, while in the same
passage occur perced 2, engendred 4, semed 39. In connection with
the common forms list, lest should lust 102 be taken as different, or
as another way of writing the same sound? Suster 1835, 8465,
seems to have some claim to be called (sus'ter) on account of the
form soster 3486 rhyming with Pater-noster, and the Anglosaxon
form suster as well as sweoster, swyster, but it may have been like
wise generally called (stVter).
In fithul 298 = fiddle, fadur 100 = father, gult 10142 = guilt,
1 Mr. Murray informs me that u still when ue is final, and where ew is pro-
retains its French sound in Scotch in nounced (iu) in English, whether de-
words taken from the French, as : tune, rived from French or Anglosaxon
lute, cure, sure, Bruce, reduce, conduce, sources, it is sounded (fu) or rather
consume, assume, bruise, judge, endure, (yu) with the accent on the first element,
rude, mute, secure, use, abuse, suit, as in : blue, due, duty, sue, ensue, hue,
mule, fule, just, [is the Cockney (dzhist) few, dew, rue, crew, blew, flew, grew,
a corruption of (dzhyst) P it looks very threw, brew, drew, view, new, clew,
like it,] justice, humour (ymar), ul/ie Jew, rule (rt'ul, ryul), sew, skew,
(ylt, yljt) oil, and similarly Iz, nz are beauty, feu, feud, feudal, queue (kyu),
representatives of (Ij, nj), changed in lewd, ruin (ryu't'n), Euen (Yu-an) not
some districts into (li, nt) in : assuilzie (Ju'en). But the mew of the cat, and
acquit, tuilzie a quarrel, fuilzie contents wno of the kitten are in Teviotdale
of the parish dust cart, the toon's fuilzie, called (nucu, waeu).
gaberluinzie wallet, cuinzie coin. But '
CHAP. IV. § 2. U — XIV TH CENTURY. 299
furst 1920 = first, compare ferst 530, Jiuld 16699 = held, hulden
15802 = helden, hulks 7921 = hills, put 14982 = pit, and many
other cases there seems to be no doubt that u must be read as i or e.
Compare Canturbury 16, with : from Canturbery, the more mery 803,
and this again with the three rhymes —
And thus I lete him sitte in the pirie
And January and May romynge mirye, 10091
thow poete Marcian,
That writest us that ilke weddyng merye
Of hir Philologie and he Mercurie. 9606
Him thought that how the wenged god Mercurie
Byforn him stood, and bad him to be murye. \ 387
Here we have all three spellings mirye, merye, murye of the same
word, the first rhyming distinctly with i short or long, (i] or (ii\
and the two last rhyming with u long which we must consider as
(yy). Now in the Schipmannes Tale there is occasion to mention
the town of Bruges, and we find it spelled Bruges 14466, but
Brigges 14472, 14669, 14712, which must have been intended for
the same sound. Recollecting that the sound of (y) short is in
Sweden, Denmark, and most of Germany scarcely distinguished
from ('/) short, into which it very often entirely falls, it occurred
to me that the explanation of this use of u short as i might be a
similar vagueness or indistinctness of pronunciation, and that the
scribe, writing from dictation, either actual or internal, (for it will
be found that the copyist usually pronounces the words to himself
as he writes, with a mental effort which reproduces the sound to
his consciousness although it is externally inaudible, and although
the organs of speech are not even put into the corresponding posi
tions), feeling doubtful, ocaasionally wrote u, but generally i or e.
This theory supposes that the (y) was a known English sound, and
that the u represented the Anglosaxon y. In the words busy, bury
where the old u spelling has clung to the words notwithstanding the
(i, e) sounds, we have y in Anglosaxon lysig, lyrigean. Trust is
marked by Salesbury as having the sound (*'), and so it has in
Scotch, where (ptt) or (pet) is also said occasionally for put. This
again calls to mind the East Anglian (kiver) 1 for (kuver), now
(kavi) = cover, mentioned in Gill, and also his denunciation of the
Mopsey transformation of (butsh'erz meet) into (bftah'erz miit).
There would seem therefore to be some physiological connection
between u short, and i short, which must be sought for in the eleva
tion of the tongue, both being high wide vowels, although (u) is back
and (»') front, (w) round and («') primary.
This theory that, when short u stood for short i or e, it was in
fact meant for the short sound of the French u (y), of which the
long sound was at that time represented also by u, will receive ad
ditional corroboration in the next chapter.
1 The East Anglian Promptorium spellings fydyll fiddle, fadyr father,
writes cuverynge, and, in connection gylte guilt, furst first, hyllys hills, pyt
with the words we have been previously pit, putt put, lysty lusty lusty, cystyr
considering, it is interesting to note the sister, Mercurye Mercury, inyry merry.
300 U XIV TH CENTURY. CHAP. IV. { 2.
In Treuisa's Higden, taking the chapter 59, De Incolarum Linguis
and comparing the text in Mr. Morris's Specimens of Early English,
p. 338, taken from the Brit. Mus. MS. Tiberius, D. vii., with the
Harleian MS. 1900, and Caxton's edition (Brit. Mus. C. 21. d) I
find the following spellings :
Tiberius D. vii. Harleian, 1900. Caxton.
bu)> bef ben
furste first first
bur]?etonge birbetonge langage
su]?the sib|>e syn, syth
lurnede lerned lerned
wondur wonder wonder
undurstonde]> vnderstondeb vnderstawde
This comparison at any rate shews that different scribes had a
different feeling as to the vowel that should be employed, and
proves the practical identity of this short u with short « or e. If
any one will resolutely say,1 (byth, fyrst, byrtlretuq, syth'e,
ryrnede, wun-dyr, un'dyrstondeth), and then compare his pronun
ciation with provincial utterances of the same words, which are the
best living representatives of the ancient, he will be better able to
appreciate the trouble of the scribe in selecting the proper letter, on
the theory here advanced. It must be borne in mind that the
scribe was quite familiar with long (yy) and had a letter for it, u,
and that he had no other letter for short (y) but the same u,
although he had three signs for short («), viz, u, o, ou. In such a
case he most probably felt it to be a greater liberty to use i, or e,
than u in many words, although, to avoid the ambiguity of sound
(y, u) in the letter u, he often employed *, e.
Although it is of course possible that there was a dialectic "West of
England pronunciation (u) which replaced (y) or («),2 it is at least
extremely doubtful, and certainly cannot apply to the indifferent
use by the same writer of u and e in similar situations in the same
sentence as already pointed out (p. 298).
1 "Without considerable practice an pronunciation especially in the
Englishman may find the distinct enun- distinction of long and short." See
ciation of these words very troublesome, supra p. 176.
especially when he feels bound to keep 2 Mr. Barnes, in his Poems of Rural
himself clear of (u, i, e). The true Life in the Dorset Dialect, 1848, p. 31,
short (y) in a closed syllable is an says : " V" in wall, will, is rather un-
especial stumbling block to English- settled, being mostly sounded in the
men. Prof. Max Milller, gets so often Vale of Blackmore as u in bull (u) ;
called (Malu) and (Mwl'j), that it is a but in some parts will is wul, u in lull
pity English people do not know that (a), and sometimes wiill with the « of
these sounds would be unintelligible in German mutter (y). . . . In the Vale
Germany, where their own (Mtlu) of Blackmoor will is at different times
would be readily understood. Even wool, wull and wiill (wwl, wol, wyl)
"Wilkins, who lived at a time when we even in the same mouth." In the in-
know from Wallis that (yy) was a troductory letter to Nathan Hogg's
common sound in England, and who Letters in the Devonshire Dialect, by
must have constantly heard the sound Mr. Henry Baird, of Exeter, 1847,
from Wallis himself, says that this 12mo, pp. 51, I find the following or-
vowel is of "laborious and difivcult thographies kindly interpreted for me
CHAP. IV. § 2. ETJ, EW — XIV TH CENTURY. 301
The conclusion is that IT in the xiv th century was gene
rally (yy, u), but short U was occasionally employed for (i, e),
which were generally sounds into which a more ancient, ori
ginally Anglosaxon (y), had fallen, although through errors
of the scribe U was employed in many words for I, E simply.
ETJ, EW — xiv TH CENTURY.
In the xvi th century there were two pronunciations of this com
bination, as there were also in the French language, (yy, eu). The
following lists may be collected from Chap. III., under the headings
eu (p. 137) and u (p. 163), where the italicised words in ew are
now spelled with ue.
Eu = (yy) ; blew, brew, glewe, knew, mew (of hawks), new, rewe
(a plant), slew, snew, trewe
Eu = (eu) ; dewe (moisture), ewe, fewe, to hew, mew (of cats),
sewer (a waiter), shew, shrewe, strew
Rhymes in ew are necessarily few in number. I have noted
rather more than thirty in the Canterbury Tales. For the purposes
of comparison an alphabetical list of all the words in these rhymes,
including one Latin word, and a few words whose spellings seemed
of importance, though they do not occur in rhyming syllables, has
been annexed. Against each word its pronunciation in the xvith
century has been written, when it could be ascertained, on the au
thority of Bull. (Bullokar), But. (Butler), G. (Gill), P. (Palsgrave),
Sa. (Salesbury), Sm. (Smith). The immediate ags. (Anglosaxon),
or fr. (French, often old French), origin follows, together with the
orthography, when it could be found, in the Pr. (Promptorium), the
first being the reading in Mr. Albert Way's text, and the sub
sequent ones those which he adds from other MS. Next follow the
rhymes in which the word occurs, with its orthography in the place
and the reference number. By this means a complete comparative
view of all the words is furnished, which will enable us to draw a
satisfactory conclusion.
by Mr. J. Shelly, of Plymouth, in may not he the case, for (tal, spal) may
which u is apparently used for (a, o, u, he representatives of (fol, spsl). The
y, yy, 9, 99} ; vur (vai) for, vury (yarn) Devonshire (y) is here seen to he un-
very, gude (gwd) good, du (dyy, dy) do, certain and to admit (?) as well. The
purmoting (paimoot'm) promoting, dude same is the case in Norfolk. Mr. M.
(dsd) did, yu've (jyyv) you've, uv (av) Bell hears French u as (»). In Nathan
of, kuse (ka?s) course, full (tal) tell, Hogg's New Series of poems, including
spull (spal) spell, bewtivul (bm't«.'vwl) 'Macksy Lane' a ghost story in the
beautiful, ulse (als) else, abul (eb'l, Devonshire Dialect, dedicated by per-
eb-al) able, uny (on**) only, thur (dha) mission to H.I.R. Prince Louis Lucien
thee, wulling (waKn) willing, bukes Bonaparte, London, 1864, 12mo, pp. 52,
(b^ks) books, adu (adyy) adieu. Here Mr. Baird uses an italic u for the (yy,
we have dude (dsdj precisely as in the 99) sound, reserving roman u for the
xin th century, in Kobert of Gloucester others, and similarly uses a for (a), and
etc, but tull, spull (tal, spal) seem to the whole orthography is much im-
indicate an ancient (twl, spwl) ; yet this proved.
302 EI7, EW — XIV TH CENTURY. CHAP. IV. § 2.
A careful examination of this list would shew that if attention is
confined only to the words for which we have xvith century autho
rity, the old classes would remain undisturhed, because no (y) word
rhymes with an (eu) word or conversely. But if we remark that
hue rhymes with true, knew, and also rue, and that rue, which rhymes
with hue, also rhymes with true and with shrew, we are led to con
clude that true and shrew would have rhymed in the xrvth, as they
do in the xixth century. But this breaks up the old classification
altogether. On examining the etymological relations, it will be seen
that the old classification is at variance with them, but taking them
as a basis we can divide the words into two classes, French and
Anglosaxon, — including in the latter, words certainly Germanic,
though not accurately traced, — as follows :
French — Hue, due, eschew, glue, mew, remew, stew, sue.
Anglosaxon — drunkelew, few, hew to hack, hew servant, hue, knew,
new, rew row, rue, shew, shrew, threw, true.
The following table then shews that words of the first class
rhyme together, but no word of the first class rhymes with any
word of the second class. The first class corresponds to a French u,
the second to an Anglosaxon iw, eow. Taking into consideration the
Latin rhyme : de coitu, eschieu 9685, as well as the derivation of
these words, there can be little doubt that in Chaucer's time the
first class had (y) and the second (eu). This distinction, then so
carefully kept, was not understood in the xvith century in which
several of the (eu) words, as knew, new, true, had fallen into the (y)
class. At present all the (y) class, and most of the (eu) class have
formed an (iu) class,1 except when, through the influence of a pre
ceding (r), the modern English organs naturally change (iu) into
(uu), but some of the (eu) class have become (00) as shew, now
more frequently written show. In such a word as Theseus 862,
there is no diphthong, and we have to read (Thee*se,us).
In the xiv th century then it will be safest to call EU,
EW, (yy), in words of French origin, and (eu) in all
other words.
ALPHABETICAL LIST OF EW RHYMES, ETC.
beauty (beuii) G., fr. beaute, Pr. bewte, due (dyy) Sm. G., fr. du, Pr. duly
beawtye decor, bewte 2387 debite, due escbiewe 9325, escbewe
blue (blyy) Sm. ags. bleoh, bleow, dewe 3045
bleo, blio, Pr. bloo lividus ; blewe eschew, fr. eschiver, eschever, escbuir,
mewe (for hawks) 10957 escjuiver, Pr. achwyn vito; eschieu
coitu, Lt. de coitu, escbieu 9685. As coitu 9685, eschiewe due 9325,
the practical identity of the spelling eschewe dewe 3045, eschiewed
ie with e has already been estab- sewed =fottowed 16823
lished, nb weight can be laid on few (feu) P. Sm. G., ags. feawa ; Pr.
the variant ieu as distinct from eu. fewe paucus ; fewe schewe 7431,
drunkelew, Pr. drunkelew (see Mr. 12546, 13758, fewe schrewe 14234
Albert "Way's note there) ebriosus, glue (glyy) P., fr. glu birdlime, gluyer
dronkelewe schrewe 7627, 9407, stick together, Pr. glwyw visco,
13910 i-glewed remewed 10495
1 For the Scotch sounds, see p. 298, note 1, at the end.
CHAP. IV. § 2.
OU, OW XIV TH CENTURY.
303
hew (HCU) Bull., ags. heawan, heawian,
Pr. hewyw seco, hakke and hewe,
lay hem on a rewe = row;, 2867
hew = hind, domestic servant, ags.
hiwa ; hewe untrewe 9659.
hue, ags. hiw, hiw, heow ; hiewe trewe
13836, hewe trewe 10901, 17207,
hewe newe 1039, 10953, 11327,
hewe rewe =Aaw compassion 12656
knew (knyy) But., ags. cneow perf. from
cndwan ; knewe newe 14995,
knewe rewe=repent, 3081
mew, for hawks, (myy) P. Sm, fr. mue
place for putting poultry to fatten;
P. mue for haukes meve ; Pr. mv
of hawkys, falconarium, mwe or
cowle, mv, saginarium ; mewe
(for poultry) stewe 351, mewe
(for hawks) blewe 10957
new (nyy) Sm. G., ags. neowe, niwe,
nywe ; Pr. nwe, nev, novus ; newe
hewe, 1039, 10953, 11327, newe
trewe 14344, 16535, newe untrewe
737, 12970, 15514, newe knewe
14995, newe threw (error for
threwe) 14983
remew, fr. remuer ; Pr. remown or re-
mevyw, amoveo ; remewed i-glewed
10495.
row, ags. rawa, Pr. rowe series ; lay
hem on a rewe = row, hakke and
hewe 2867
rue, pain, repentance, repent ; ags.
hreowe, hreowan; Pr. ruwyn poe-
niteo compatior ; rewe = pain
schrewe 6087, rewe = have com
passion trewe 1865, revre=repmt
trewe 3529, rewe = have compas
sion hewe = hue 12656, rewe=re-
pent knewe 3081
rule, fr. riule monastic rule, Pr. rewle
of techynge, regula, norma ; reule
173, reuled 1674
ruth, see rue, quasi hreowj?e Pr. ruthe
compassio ; reuthe = compassion
5074, reuthe = compassion treuthe
14608, routhe = compassion,
trowthe 8\out'he = sloth 4949
shew (sheu) Sm. G. Bull, ags. scawian
sceawian; Pr. schewe or schew-
ynge momtracio ; schewe schrewe
5865, 12844, schewe fewe 7431,
12546, 13758
shrew (shreu) P., etymology unknown,
see "Wedgewood 3, 176. Pr.
schrewe pravus, schrewyd pra-
vatus, schrewyd hertyd pravicors,
schrewdenesse pravitas, schrewe
rewe =pain 6087 ; schrewe shewe
5865, 12844, schrewe dronkelewe
7627, 9407, 13910, schrewe fewe
14234
stew, fr. estuve, Pr. stuwy« mete, stuyn,
stupho ; stuwyn menw or bathyw,
stuyn in a stw, balneo; stwe fysche
pond, stewe, vivarium; stwe bathe,
stupha ; stewe —fisli pond mewe
(for poultry) 351, styves = brothels
lyves 6914
sue, fr. suir, sivire, sivre, sewir ; Pr.
svyw or pursvyw persequor, suwynge
sequela, svinge successus ; sewed
eschiewed 16823
surety (syyr) Sa. Bull., fr. seur; seurte
1606, sewerte 6485
threw ags. )>reow ; threw (error for
12970, threwe} newe 14983
true (tryy) P. Sa. Bull. G, ags. treowe,
trywe ; Pr. trwe verus, truwe
mann verax, trewe hewe = hue
10901, 17207, trewe hiewe = hue
13836, trewe rewe 1865, 3529,
trewe newe 14344, 16535.
truth, ags. treow^S, Pr. trowthe veritas,
treuth reuth 14608, trowthe routhe
slouthe=sfoz!A 4949
untrue, see true, untrewe hewe = ser
vant 9659, untrewe newe 737,
15514
value, fr. value; valieu 14582
OU, OW — xiv TH CENTURY.
As we have already had occasion to remark (p. 236), when the
letter u, which is the natural representative of the (uu) sound in
all languages that have adopted the Eoman alphabet, has come to
lose its proper sound, as in French, Dutch, Swedish, English, hut
that sound remains in the language, it becomes necessary to adopt
some other notation for (uu). The (uu) sound in these cases has
been generally a transformed (oo). Hence it lay ready at hand to
use o simply for this sound, as we have seen was occasionally done
in Chaucer (p. 267), and is still done in move, etc., and as the Swedes
have been content to do. The Dutch employ oe for (uu), as they
304 OU, OW — XIV TH CENTURY. CHAP. IV. § 2.
use oo and o for (oo), but, as appears from the history of this ortho
graphy (p. 236, note 3), oe was in fact long o used as (uu), precisely
as in the last case. The French used ou, in the earliest existing
documents,1 though the Normans used u for both (yy) and (uu) ap
parently, as may be seen in the French original of Henry Ill.'rds
English proclamation, Chap. V, § 3, No. 1. On an examination of
the documents of the xin th century it will be found that the use of
u for i, e, representing the y, that is (y), of the Anglosaxon, greatly
increased towards the end of the period, so that confusions between
the values of u as (uu, yy) became annoying. "Writers then appear
to have introduced the spelling ou towards the close of that period,
in conjunction with u, to represent (uu), but, the convenience being
manifest, ou became general by the early part of the xiv th century.
These facts will be established in the next chapter, and are here only
stated by way of anticipation. There was one disadvantage in the
use of ou, namely that it had also to be employed for (oou), but this
occasions very slight inconvenience. In the present place we have
only to establish that ou really represented (uu) generally, and con
sequently (u) occasionally, in Chaucer.
As the use of u for short (u, u) was already well fixed, and its use
for i, e was rapidly going out, ou was of course not so frequently
employed for short (u) as for long (uu). Examples however occur,
thus: ous 5729 stands for us, outerfy 6245 for utterly, and the
orthographies Arrious 6344 for Arrim, Caukasous 6722 for Caucasus,
leave no doubt of the use of ou as short (u). Curiously enough the
sound of (uu) fell into (ou) about the xvith century (p. 150), and ou
served then to represent that sound without change of spelling. But
after this it became important to distinguish the (uu) and (oo) sounds
of long o, and the orthography oo, adopted for the former (p. 96),
has remained in use to the present day. In the unaccented syllables
-our, representing -(uur), the orthography was left unchanged as
well as the pronunciation. In the xvn th century these syllables fell
into (-ar), and either the o or u in -our was felt to be superfluous.
In quite recent times factions have been formed, one requiring -or to
be used universally, others maintaining that -our should be preserved
to distinguish the words that come from the French, which now ex
hibits -eur, corresponding to a later development of that language.
In Chaucer's time however -our was used, simply because the pro
nunciation was (-uur), as -oun was used for the present common
termination -on, compare corrupcioun 13950, confessioun 1735,
regioun 2083, visioun 7259, leoun 6377, etc., which were pro
nounced (un) or (uun) even in the xvith century (p. 99). "We
have retained -ous unaltered, and this was also (-us) in the xvr th
century (p. 150).
1 Diez, Gram. d. Rom. Spr. 1, 429, vowel, as NAVEBOUS = navibus, observ-
2nd ed., where he quotes Benary Rom. ing that Mommsen (Unterit. Dialecte,
Lautlehre, 82, to shew that the Old 217) and Ritschl (De milliario Popil-
Romans occasionally used ou as a mere lano, p. 34) are of a different opinion,
orthographical sign for u, and remarks and consider that in really old inscrip-
that it was even employed for a short tions ou = or, and not u.
CHAP. IV. § 2. OU, OW — XIV TH CENTURY. 305
As Palsgrave (p. 149), and Bullokar (p. 152), in the xrrth century
recognized this (uu) sound of ou, it will only be necessary to intro
duce a few examples.
EHYMES WITH LATIN NAMES: — Theseus, desirous 1675, curious,
Darius 6079, Yenus, contrarious 6279, Apius, leccherous 13680,
Claudius, corrageous 15821, vicious, Swethoneus = Suetonius 15949,
Antiochius, venemous 16061.
EHYMES WITH FBENCH WORDS : —
"What will ye dine P I will go there aboute.
Now, dame, quod he, jeo vous dy saunz doute. 7419
Full many mayde bright in lour
They mourne for him, par amour. 15153
Compare —
And but thou do my norice honoure
And to my chamberer withinne my boure. 5882
SOUND. — The cry of the cuckoo was certainly intended
to be (kuk'kmr), and this determines ow in
This crowe song, Cuckow, cuckow, cuckow !
What brid, quod Phebus, what song syngistow now ? 17175
Peifectly Saxon words as lour, now, aboute, having thus the
sound of (uu) established, we may feel sure of it in other cases, as :
hous Caukasous 6721, thus vicious 7629, dowte aboute 489, tour
honour 2029, Arthour honour 6440, dortour hour 7437, powre
laboure 185, flour odour 2939, hour schour 3519, emperour
honour flour 5507, in an hour (error for houre), to honoure 14954,
houres schoures 3195, 10431, and hence schowres 1 = (shuures) ;
yow how 7982, youthe nouthe 463, to give the child to souke, all
in the crouke 4155, colours (error for colour es] floures 10824, licour
flour 3, adoun broun 394, licorous mous 3345, pitous mous 143,
houndes stoundes 5867, stounde founde 5441, vertuous hous 251,
for to touche, in his couche 5669, untrouthe routhe 5107. Whence
also we conclude that: cowde 110, flowtynge 91, drowpud 107,
embrowdid 88, so woweth hire 3372, thay blew and powped, thay
schryked and thay howped 16885, facound 13465, and numerous
other words in ou, have also (uu) or (u).
As examples of those cases in which ou, ow, had the sound (oou)
maintained in the xixth century as (oou) practically, but (oo) theo
retically, we may take : anoon the soules, with fleischhok or with
oules = awls, ags. sawl, awul 7311, Bowe, unknowe 125, lowe
knowe 2301, I trowe, undurgrowe 155.
In the provinces two sounds of ou, ow are also common. One of
these is (uu) in almost all districts, but the others varies as (aa, AA,
au, iau, ou, iou), and even (au, ou), and there is great di|frculty in
obtaining a satisfactory account of what the sounds really are, and
consequently in classifying them. The following lists referring to
the dialect of South Shields,1 will serve as a specimen. For the
1 Obligingly communicated by the Eev. C. Y. Potts, of Ledbury.
20
306 Oil, OW — XIV TH CENTURY. CHAP. IV. § 2.
present purpose the most important point to dwell on is the per
sistence of the (uu) sound.
ow = (uu) in : down, town, crown, tower, now, trowsers, how,
flower, power, drowned, cow, sow, bow *. & v. flectere, bow
arcua = (bau).
ou = (uu) in : plough, round, sound, mound, hound, doubt, thou,
about, count, out, house, sour, flour; — found, bound, ground,
these three words are also pronounced with (o), but this is for
the dialect even, very vulgar ; — our, which is vulgarly (wor).
ou = (au) in : brought, sought, fought, bought, thought, ought «.
& v., nought, soul, four, loup *. & v. = leap, coup == exchange.
ow = (aa) in : blow, snow, low adj., row «., crow, slow, below,
know, callow, arrow, barrow ; — owe, own, another and less
vulgar pronunciation of these words would be (au, aun), and
in these words generally (au) not (00} would be the alternative
pronunciation.
o = (au) in : old, cold, also (aad, kaad) ; — sold, told, also (seld,
teld) ; — old, bold, fold ;— stroll, toll, roll ; — over (au'er).
(au) is heard in : daughter, neither, either, loose, sew, chew, mew,
row v. & «., low = flame, bow arcm.
Mr. Murray has been kind enough to furnish the following in
teresting account of the Scotch usages :
" In all the Scottish dialects the Anglosaxon long u, and French
ou, retain their old sound (uu, u) before a consonant as : hour
(buur) lower, clour a swelling caused by a blow, dour, stubborn,
flower (fluur), hour (uur), power (puur), tour (ets JUUT tuur ta
•plee) its your turn to play, tower, sour, stour l loose dust, shower,
scour, devour (di-vuur), our (uur), your, pour (puur), cower
(kuur), spout (spuut), shout, lout (luut) A.S. lutian, to stoop, rouse,
bouse (ruuz, buuz).
" In the following the vowel is shortened in quantity but un
changed in quality: brown (brun), crown, doun (dun), drown
(drun), gown, loun, town (tun), bowl Fr. ooule (bul), foul, fowl
(ful), swim (sum), sum (sum), howl, yowl, scowl, owl, howlet Fr.
houlette (sul'at), mouldy, course, court (kurs, kurt), source, douce,
croose (krus) sprighthy, house, mouse, louse, mouth (muth), drouth
drought, south, Soutra,2 souter, snout, out, about, (ut, abut'), doubt,
clout, bout (e dreqk'in but) a drinking bout, stout, scout, pouch,
vouch, crouch, often (kruutsh), couch, bulk (buk), duck verb —
1 The first stanza of Burns' s address well illustrates these (uu) sounds. The
" to a Mountain Daisy, on turning one pronunciation is that heard by Mr.
down with the plough, in April, 1786," Murray from a townsman of the poet.
"Wee, modest, crimson-tipped flower, ("Wii, mod-ast, kremz-n-tep-zt fluur,
Thou's met* me in an evil hour ; Dhuu -z met ma en un iivl uur /
For I maun crush amang the stoure For aai man krash amaq- dha stuur
Thy slender stem ; Dhai slEnd-ar stEm ;
To spare thee now is past my pow'r, Ta speer dhi nuu ez past mo puur,
Thou bonnie gem, Dhuu bon-t dzhEm.)
* The hilly ridge which separates the Lothians from the south country.
CHAP. IV. § 2. OU, OW — XIV TH CENTURY. 307
the noun is (dyk, dcek), — drouk to drench, jouk to elude, louk, pouk
to pick, pilfer, ploock to pluck, suck, toue o'drum, stouk a shock of
corn.
"The combination -ound is, like -ind, in a transition state; the
past participles : bound, found, ground, wound, are usually (ban,
fknd, gran, wan), and ground s. (grand), but I consider this to be
recent, for I have heard (u) in some of these from old people, and
we always hear it in : Where are ye (bun) or (bund) for, to beat
the (bunds), boondit, boondarie, boun'tree : and the sound is
always used in round (rund), sound, to found, founded, foundation,
stound a Jit or l spell ' as (e stund a dha toeth'<?k) = a fit of the
toothache. Hound is occasionally (nand), usually (nund).
" Anglosaxon u final is also (uu) in most of the Scottish dialects,
but in that of the Southern counties, the same law which has de
veloped long * into (ei), here develops (uu) into (au). The follow
ing words therefore pronounced in the other dialects with (uu) are
pronounced in Teviotdale and Dumfriesshire with (au) : cow, sow,
how, you, now, bow to lend, through, doo dove,1 loe to love, brow,
fu' full, tipsy, gout, an after taste (guu), Tev. (gau), as (it hees 13
kwiir gau abut' »t) = it has a queer flavour about it, pu' pull, (supra
p. 287,) mou' mouth.
" The Borderers thus pronouncing (EU) where the other Scots say
(uu), — where the others say (au) they advance a step and say (ou),
so that the following words are in the Lothians pronounced (au), in
Teviotdale (ou), in English (00) or (oou) : bow arcus, grow, dow
to avail, howe a hollow, knowe a knoll, bowe a loll,2 lowe 3 a flame,
powe a poll, rowe roll, row, stow, tow, trow, thowe to thaw, drow
a Scotch mist, a drizzle, bowl, soul, four, glower to stare, ower over.
" The two pronunciations may be shewn thus :
Central Scotch : (faur baulz fuu e njuu malk fe dha kuu)
Teviotdale : (four boulz fau a nm melk thra3* dhe kau)
English: four bowls full of new milk from the cow."
The conclusion seems therefore to be that OU, OW in
the xiv th century should be read as (uu, u~) except in
those cases where aw, or simple o was used in Anglo-
Saxon.
1 A school inspector -wishing to get 3 Compare —
the sound of (uu) out of a Hawick girl, (Dharz let'l wat en dha pou
and unaware of this peculiarity of pro- Dhat le&hts dha kan'l at dha lou)
nunciation, asked her what she called a = There's little wit in the poll or head,
pigeon, (A dau) replied she, and posed That lights the candle at the low or
him as much as the child posed the flame ;
teacher, who, wanting to obtain from and the pun on the names of Messrs,
him the word take, asked him : " What Lowe and Bright at the Edinburgh
would you do, if I gave you a piece of Reform Demonstration : " The Lowe
cake?" and received the very natural that'll never burn Bright" (Dhe lou
reply: " Eat it." dhat'l nevar barn bre/cht).
2 Compare Sir T. Smith's /3wD, £«DA, 4 So likewise in the Barnsley dialect
supra p. 151. throo is used for from.
308 B, C, CH, D, F. G, GN — XIV TH CENTURY. CHAP. IV. § 3.
| 3. The Consonants.
Yery little is to be learned from the rhymes respecting the
consonants. With our knowledge of the xvi th century con
sonants, however, there can be but little doubt as to the
values of any one of them.
B, C, CH, D, F.
B when silent as in doubt, debt, was not written thus : dowte 489,
dette 282. It was otherwise (b) of course.
C was (s) or (k), according to the same rules as at present, but
ci- remained (si-) and had not become (sh). In the termination
-tion, we find c, 8, t interchanging, shewing the identity of sound,
but it always formed two syllables. Compare
Lo, heer hath kynd his dominaeebww,
And appetit flemeth Aiscretioun. 17114
0 wantrust, fill of fals suspeccj'oww
Where was thy wit and thy discrecwwn. 17214
And eke he was of such discresstown, 16795
CH was generally (tsh), see J, K.
D was (d) of course.
F seems to have been always (f), so that of must be called (of)
not (ov). Judging from other writing, as Robert of Gloucester and
Trevisa, u or v would have been used had (v) been pronounced.
Mr. Murray says that of is still pronounced (of) in the North, when
the consonant is retained before a vowel, as (dha Hid of B bist) the
head of a beast.
O, GrN.
G followed the same rule as at present, and was (g) in all Saxon
words, but in French words (g) before a, o, u, and (dzh) before
(e, i). See J.
GN occasionally represented simple n, as in the couplet
Sche may unto a knave child atteigne
By liklihed, sith sche nys not bareigne. 8323
where gn represents an old French gn, in laraigne, which was pro
bably (nj) as now, so that (atain* baranr) would be the natural
English representatives. Accordingly the MS. Univ. Cam. Dd. 4.
24, here writes atteyne, bareyne ; a spelling found also in Harl.
7334, in
Thou maist to thy desir somtyme atteyne
But I that am exiled, and bareyne
Of alle grace. 1245
while gn and n rhyme in
And of his oughne vertu unconstrei^wed
Sche hath ful ofte tyme hire seek y-feyned. 13476
where we should have expected gn in the second line as much as
in the first. Companye 24, was also commonly written for : com-
paignye 3837.
CHAP. IV. § 3. G, GN — XIV TH CENTURY. 309
How were digne, lenigne 519, pronounced? As An'glo-French
(dwh'e, benmre) ?J Or after the custom of Latin pronunciation
(maq-nus, iq-nis) in the middle ages — testified by the medieval
Latin orthography, and still existing in Salesbury's time, — as
(diq-ne, beniq-ne) ? The question affects also such words as dignite,
signifie, sign. Here the modern use condign dignity, benign benig
nity, sign signify (kendain d.ig'niti, binain- bmtgllfU', sain sig-ni-
fai) would seem to lead to an anterior (Aim dig'nite, bemYn- be-
mg'mte, swn s*gn«f»V'e). But the old example of itemed for signed
in Henry Ill.'rds English proclamation, throws a doubt over this.
As however the special word sign, had assumed a thoroughly Saxon
form, segnian to sign or bless, segnung a signing with the cross or
blessing, the (ai) sound would be developed naturally by the
passage of the guttural g into (or).
Can we consider the forms: deynous 3939, 6-114, deyne 3961,
5-204, deyneth 5'288 as conclusive. The French digne, daigner,
shew a double form in these words, and hence leave us still
in doubt. The word: dyne 4-200, 4-201, =dine, was in French
disgner, dispner, and is considered by Roquefort to be derived from
the commencement of the grace dignare, domine, but the etymology
is so doubtful2 that no weight can be attached to this. The termina
tion -igne is not found rhyming either with -eyne or -yne, and this
would a priori lead us to conclude that the sound was different
from either, that is, neither (-ain-e) nor (-Mn-e). But we find : digne
benigne resigne 4-125, 4-225, sygne benygne 5-183, digne signe
5-330, so that the old and proved (.sain) and the occasional- (dain)
would seem to imply also (benain', resain"). On the other hand
Gill writes (bem'g-n) or (bem'q-n) for benign, and this ought to im
ply that he did not know the pronunciation (benaiir), which may
nevertheless have existed, and been ignored. Jones, however, 1701,
gives only (bin«'g-an), though he admits (sain, rezain-), and Sales-
bury and Smith give (sein), Gill (sain), Buchanan and Sheridan in
the xvmth century give (binain' biinAin*). Similar difficulties
have existed in the pronunciations of impugn, impregn.
If the sound (ain) had prevailed in Chaucer's time, we should
have expected (ain), not (ein) in the xvith century. Bullokar
seems to write (SMU), and the (sein) of the xvi th and (sain) of the
xix th century are in harmony with this, which would imply (swn)
in Chaucer also. In this doubt the safest plan seems to be to adopt
(mi) for Chaucer's pronunciation, admitting the secondary form
(ain) when eyn is written. This will be consistent with the present
and intermediate pronunciation, with the general use of * in Chaucer,
1 Diez (Gr. de R.S. i, 439 note, 2nd cunque n sequitur i in media diccione,
ed) says that digne occurs in old French in divers-is sillabis g debet interponi,
with silent z, as brigans dignes rhymed ut certaignement, benignement ; sed g
with6n^rtw<ft«eseitingDucangesubvoce non debet sonari."
briga. And the MS. 188 of Mag, Coll. 2 Among the etymons giren are
Oxford, cited by M. Genin (Introduc- Hfiirveiv, decoenare, decima (hora),
tion to the French reprint of Palsgrave, sdigiunare, dejeflner =rdisjejunare. See
p. 29) says, rule 92 : item, quando- Donkin's Diez, sub desinare.
310
GH, Y, Z — XIV TH CENTURY. CHAP. IV. $ 3.
and with his use of -gne in other words, and as regards the word
sign would imply that he took it from the French with the other
words, or designedly adopted a French in preference to the an
tiquated pronunciation (sain). The question is one of extreme dif
ficulty and the conclusion is doubtful.
GH, Y, Z
The modern editors usually represent 5 or rather j l by gh when
medial and final, and by g or y when initial. In Mr. Morris's
Chaucer Extracts he purposed to shew where the manuscript ex
hibited } for his printed gh, y, by italicising these letters. He has
not carried out his plan with sufficient accuracy to make an examin
ation of the MS. unnecessary.8 Assuming, however, that where he
has used the italics, j was employed in the MS., we obtain the fol
lowing results for the Prologue, Knightes Tale, and Nonne Prestes
Tale, in which I have here used a common z in place of 5 or j.
The numbers annexed to the words indicate the observed number
of occurrences of this orthography.
azens 1
sauz 1 zelwe 1
zolden 1
brouzt 1
thouzte 1 zemen 3
zollyng 1
deyzen 1
unzolden 1 zerd 6
zolo 1
douzter 3
upzaf 1 zerde 1
zolow 1
drauzt 1
weyzede 1 zeres 1
zolw 1
eyzen 9
wizt 1 zet 8
zolwe 3
fiztyng 1
ynowz 1 zette 1
zomanly 1
forzete 1
yze 1 zeve 5
zonder 1
forzeve 2
zaf 5 zeven 3
zong 3
heyz 1
zalwe 1 zevest 1
zonge 6
heizer 1
zate 1 zeveth 1
zore 2
knizt 2
zeddynges 1 zif 3
zou 2
nozt 8
zeeldyng 1 ziftes 2
zoung 1
nouzt 9
zeer 14 zit 18
zouthe 5
perfizt 4
zeldehalle 1 zive 3
zou 1
rizt 1
zelleden 1 ziven 1
But the orthography is not consistent, for gh is often employed in
the MS. Thus,
accepting Mr. Morris's edition as
correct, except in
the words you, etc., we find in the Prologue only
brought 1
caughte 1 foughte 1
herbergh 2
bythought 1
draught 1 foughten 1
heye 1
caught 1
drought 2 heih 1
heygh 1
1 This character in the MSS. is
generally indistinguishable from z, so
that when an editor prints some words
with j and others with z he is making
an arbitrary distinction like that of
separating u, v. In Mr. Morris's edition
of Sir Gawaine for the Early English
Text Society, • 5 is printed for both 3
and z. It would have been more con
sistent with the employment of Koman
types to use z instead of j in both cases.
This is the plan I have pursued in the
following lists, and it is one followed
by older printers and embalmed in the
Scotch Menzies, Dalzel, Mackenzie,
which are often called (Meq-iz, Dt zl,
De-EL, Makenv*) in Scotland, see p.
298, n.
2 Thus in v. 34 and 38 he prints
'yow' in place of 'yow' that is 'jow.'
CHAP. IV. $ 3.
GH, Y, Z XIV TH CENTURY.
311
1
1
1
2
4
1
1
neigh 2
neighe 1
night 1
nightertale 1
nightyngale 1
nought 1
oughte
raught
right
seigh
sleight
streight
1
1
4
1
1
1
taughte
though
thought
wight
Wright
wroughte
1
2
2
1
1
1
high
highte
inough
knight
might
mighte
mighten
It may he douhtful whether y is ever used initially, in the modern
sense. I have not ohserved any instance in the MS., but I have not
examined it thoroughly with this view. The use of y was quite
established however before the time of printing.
The reader is requested to refer to the remarks on gh in Chap. III.
(pp. 209-214). As ffh still retained its guttural sounds in the xvith
century,1 we cannot but believe that it had these sounds in the
xiv th, whatever may have been the Anglosaxon original sounds.
The divarications of (kh) into (kjh, kwh) pointed out in the remarks
referred to, so that it sank to (j, i) on the one hand, and (wh, u)
on the other, are well shewn. Thus, to the first class belong theigh
— (dhai^h) for though,
For theigh thou night and day take of hem heede. 10926
which becomes simply they (dhai) in
That Chaucer, they he can but lewedly
On metres and on rhyming craftely. 4467
and similarly seigh 9605, sey 13307 for saw.
1 The sound is hardly lost yet in the
provinces, thus Prof. Sedgwick in the
work cited above, p. 289, note 4, says :
" The suppression of the guttural sounds
is, I think, the greatest of all the mo
dern changes in the spoken language of
the northern counties. Every syllable
which has a vowel or diphthong fol
lowed by gh was once the symbol of a
guttural sound: and I remember the
day when all the old men in the Dales
sounded such words as sigh, night,
sight, (sifch, ni£ht, si£ht), &c., with a
gentle guttural breathing, and many
other words, such as trough, rough,
tough (trookh, ruukwh, tuukwh), had
their utterance, each in a grand sono
rous guttural. The former of these
guttural sounds seemed partly to come
from the palate ; the latter from the
chest. Both were aspirated and articu
late ; and differed entirely from the
natural and simple vocal sounds of the
guttural vowels a, 6 (aa, AA). All the
old people who remember the con
tested elections of "Westmoreland, must
have [p. 104] heard in the Dales of
that county the deep guttural thunder
in which the name — Harry Brougham
) — was reverberated among
the mountains. But we no longer
hear the first syllable of Brougham
sounded from the caverns of the chest,
— thereby at once reminding us of
our grand northern ancestry, and of
an ancient fortress of which Brough
(Brwkwh) was the written symbol.
The sound first fell down to Bruffham
(Brwf-em, Braf-^m), but was too vigor
ous for the nerves of modern ears ; and
then fell lower still into the mono
syllabic broom (Bruum, p. 153) — an
implement of servile use. "We may
polish and soften our language by this
smoothing process ; yet in so doing we
we are forgetting the tongue of our
fathers ; and, like degenerate children,
we are cutting ourselves off from true
sympathy with our great northern pro
genitors, and depriving our spoken
language of a goodly part of its variety
of form and grandeur of expression." —
p. 103-4, palaeotype introduced. Mr.
Murray notes that the Southern (9) is
always (u) in Cumberland and "West
moreland, and that (rut, twf, Brwf,) are
the present pronunciations of rough,
tough, Brough, in those counties, and
for Brougham in Cumberland.
312 GH, Y, Z — XIV TH CENTURY. CHAP. IV. § 3.
To the second class belong lawghe 476, lowh 3117 = laugh, saugh
5268, 9726, sawh 5265 = saw.1 Compare also herbergh 767, her-
berwh 4117, herberw 4143. Sometimes the transition is complete
as in
For, as I trowe, I have yow told ynowe
To reyse a feend, al loke he never so rowe. 12788
where y-nowe, rowe (inmr, ruu) stand for enough, rough, in which
the modern sound of (f), as already suggested in p. 213, has arisen
from (wh). So frequent was this change in the word enough, that
it is sometimes neglected in writing as
For had we him, than were we syker y-nottgh,
But unto God of heven I make avow. 12792
only a couplet beyond the last example quoted, where we must read
(inmr, avuu'). Similarly ynough, now 12946, where ynow should
be read as in you, y-now 11019. Plough which rhymes with inough
889, 3159, had generally the pronunciation (pluukh), and this re
duced to (pluu), (shewn in the spelling plow, which I have noticed
elsewhere, but not in Harl. 7334, an orthography found also in the
authorized version of the Bible in the xvn th century,)2 generated
the modern (plau).8 The following rhymes may also be noted :
When that he saugh that al the peple lough.
No more of this, for it is right y-nough, 14376
He also hath to do more than y-nough
To kepe him & his capil out of the slough. 16995
Compare
Now is my cart out of the sloo parde. 7147
In which ther ran a swymhul in a swough
As it were a stonne schuld herst every bough. 1981
He siketh with ful many a sory swough
And goth, and geteth him a kneedyng trough. 3619
The regular pronunciation of all these ough words seems to have
been (uukwh), whence (uuwh, uu), which afterwards changed to
(uf, ou), and finally to (af, eu). That gh was occasionally written
without being pronounced, we see by the rhymes : at his retenue,
Sir Hughe 6937, melodic yhe 9, etc. We shall see that this is the
case also in Shakspere, whenever it was convenient for the rhyme.
The form augh may have had similar varieties of sound, as the
spellings already cited indicate. In both cases we cannot do better
than follow the spelling of the moment, except the rhyme requires
1 There is a similar resolution of Prov. 21, 4, Luke 17, 7; plowman
medial g in Icelandic. Thus liiiga to Isa. 28, 24, Amos 9, 13 ; plowmen Isa.
tell a falsehood, is theoretically (ljuir- 61, 5, Jer. 14, 4 ; plowshares Isa. 2, 4,
gwha), and practically (Ijmrwa). See Joel 3, 10. Supra p. 159, note 4.
Chap. V. § 4, No. 2. 3 Mr. Murray observes : " ynough
2 The passages are : plough Ps. 37, and ynow (anikwir) and (aniir) or rather
12; plow Deut. 22, 10, i Sam. 14, 14, (anykwlr, anyu-) are both used in Scotch
Job 4, 8, Prov. 20, 4, Isa. 28, 24, with a difference of application. Plough
Hos. 10, 11, Amos 6, 12, i Cor. 9, 10; and plow are synonymous for the noun
plowed Judg. 14, 18, Ps. 129, 3, Jer. (plykwh, plyu), the former the more
26, 18, Hos. 10, 13, Micah 3, 12; common: for the verb the latter alone
plowers Ps. 129, 3; ploweth i Cor. 9, is used as (u plyud fild, B
10 ; plowing i Kiogs 19, 19, Job 1, 14, motsh.)"
CHAP. IV. § 3. GH, Y, Z — XIV TH CENTURY. 313
one of two forms to be altered, and then the first should generally
be accomodated to the second, as there is a probability of its having
been written down without consideration of what was to follow,
and of its having been then left uncorrected, as being of slight im
portance. Thus augh, auwh, auh, aw = (aukwh, auwh, aua', au),
where (aukh) may be used for (aukwh).
When the letter t follows fresh difficulty arises. How should
drought, foughten, daughter, nouht, be pronounced? There seems
nothing but theory to guide us. At present we say (draut, drAAt,
fAA't'n, dAA'ti, nAAt), but these are all quite recent developments.
We find fought = (faus't) in Smith, daughter = (daukh'ter) in Gill,
nought = (noun't, naun't) in Smith, and (nooukht) in Gill. There
is no xvi th century authority for drought. Taking into considera
tion the double use of ou (uu, oou), it seems probable that when the
original vowel was u in ags. as drugo¥>, the sound should be (uu) as
(druukht, druukwht) of which the modern (draut) would be a legi
timate descendant ; and that when the original vowel was o as ags.
dohtor, the sound was (oou) or perhaps simply (ou), the (u) having
been developed by a (kwh) sound of gh. This would give (druukht,
fooukh't'n, dooukh'ter, nooukht) or (drukt^ht, foukwh't'n, doukwh'ter,
noukwht). It will probably be as near the truth as we are able to
get to write (drukht, foukh'ten, doukh'ter, noukht). The spelling
nouht, however, indicates a very light sound of the guttural, as
(nouH't), which rapidly disappeared in (not, nat).1
What the initial sound of 5 or j might have been, it is more
difficult to say. Probably the sound of the ags. letter became
(&h) or (^h) at an early period. Now in modern Germany (&h) is
often considered to be the hiss of (j), that is (jh), and the difference
is certainly very slight. The ease with which initial (Ah) will pass
into (j) may be well studied in modern German pronunciation.
During the xvth century when initial 3 was replaced by y, the
transition was certainly complete. In the next chapter (§2) reasons
will be given for thinking that this transition may have been pre
valent in the time of Lajamon and Orrmin, the preceeding (&h, ^h)
stage being relegated to the Old Anglosaxon period. It will there
fore be safest to pronounce the initial j as ( j) where it corresponds
to the modern y.
We shall have an opportunity of seeing g in every stage of tran
sition, from (g) through (g, gh, j) to (i) on the one hand, and
through (gwh) to (w) on the other, and even absolutely disappear
ing through a scarcely pronounced (gh, gwh), in the living Ice
landic tongue, the very interesting phonetic phenomena of which
will be considered in Chap. V. § 4, £To. 2.
1 Mr. Murray says that in Teviotdale In the other dialect they are (fokht,
drought is (druth) daughter, foughten, bokht, sokht, w'rokht), Aberdeen
sought, bought, brought, thought, nought, (vrokht) with simple (o) and (kh). So
wrought are (doukwhtar, foukwht'n, also with loch, hough, cough, trough,
boukwht, w'roukwht), &c., or perhaps &c. Tev. (loukwh, looukwh), Central
(dooukwhtar, fooukwht), he prefers the Scotch (lokh, lookh).
former, though the o is absolutely long.
314 H. J — XIV TH CENTURY. CHAP. IV. § 3.
H
H, by its substitution for gh, is shewn to have been pronounced
when final distinctly as (H'). In what cases, when initial, it became
(H) or vanished, it is now impossible to say. It appears by many
oldMSS. that there was often great confusion as to the use of initial
h in many words, indicating local and partial peculiarities of pro
nunciation, similar to those now found. But the MS. under con
sideration seems to be quite consistent in the use of initial h,1 and
there is therefore nothing to shew that it was not pronounced in
honour, honest, hour, as well as other words. However, in this
doubt, I have thought it safest in my transcriptions, to follow the
modern use. In the words he, his, him, hire, hem, before which,
especially when enclitic, the final e is, as we shall see, generally
elided as freely as before a vowel, it is extremely probable that the
h was silent under the same circumstances. It is known to be con
stantly so in modern English, and some orthoepists even admit that
it should be silent.2 The apostrophe in catch 'em indicates the ab
sent h, not an omitted th. "When hath, have, hadde, were similarly
placed they also probably lost the h, as they also admitted the elision
of the vowel. The modern contractions I've, we 've, they 'd, and the
old nadde = ne hadde 3751, point to the same conclusion. Hence
when those words beginning with 7t stand in such a position that a
final e might be elided before them, I omit the h in my transcriptions,
but indicate the omission by a hyphen in the usual way, thus : (wel
kuud -e sit on nors) 94.
J
J when representing the French consonant /, is now called (dzh)
and was so in the XVE th century. Was the old French sound (dzh)
or (zh) ? Diez (Gr. d. E. S. i. 400, 402) shews good reason to sup
pose that the Proven9al pronunciation of ch, j, was (tsh, dzh), as for
example Petrarch's ciant for ProvenQal chant, and Dante's giausen
for Pr./flwzm. Again (ib. p. 448, 451) Diez shews reason for sup
posing (tsh) to be an old French sound of ch, although in Palsgrave's
time it had sunk to (sh), and observes that in middle Greek, the
French Jean, Geoffroi, are rendered T£dv, T^efype, which are the pre
sent combinations for (tshan, tshefree'). Considering that the Greek
had no means of representing (dzh),8 this would stand for an original
(dzh) rather than for (zh), which would have been best rendered by
1 Host and ost, hostelrie and osttlrie, World, the italics are mine) : °jCus tz
both occur. feis undurwen't un invAl'untury ablw*-
2 Thus in : Phonotypy by Modifica- j°un und »2 fuwnd imself ridyw'st tw
tion, a means by which unusual types tz prim'itiv cumplek'j°un and in'di-
can be dispensed with on, a plan pro- djens ; that is : Thus his face under-
posed by T. W. Hill (the father of Sir went an involuntary ablution and he
Rowland Hill, and a well known or- found himself reduced to his primitive
thoepist and educationalist) printed in complexion and indigence.
1848 for private circulation only, the 3 In the most recent Greek VT£ is
last sentence runs thus (it is a quota- used initially for (dzh), as vrfafjii
tion from Goldsmith's Citizen of the (dzhamr) a mosque.
CHAP. IV. § 3. K. L, M, N, NG — XIV TH CENTURY. 315
f or £i. The middle Greeks according to Diez also wrote rf for ch,
a.stPiT%dpSo$= (ritshard-os) for Richard. These transcriptions are
precisely similar to Salesbury's tsiurts, tsiff, tsiesuw, tsion, for churche,
chefe, Jesu, John, and should evidently be interpreted in the same
way. Even in Palsgrave's time he makes French _;' = English /,
which we know (p. 207) was then (dzh), but this certainly only
implies a rooted mispronunciation, because we know that although
(zh) had not then been developed in English, it existed in French
(p. 207). But it implies the traditional pronunciation in English,
because Palsgrave was decidedly archaic in his tendencies, as we
have seen in his retention of (n) for long * (p. 110), and (uu) for ou,
ow (p. 149), out of the xvth into the xvith century. This mispro
nunciation therefore is in itself a strong proof of the old pronun
ciation of j as (dzh). If to this we add that in the present pronun
ciation of the Norman peasantry (tsh, dzh) are occasionally used for
(sh, zh),1 it will be difficult to suppose that ch, j, in Chaucer had
any other meaning than (tsh, dzh).
K
E! in Anglosaxon constantly generated tsh in English, as already
explained (p. 205). The orthography of our MS. and the alterations
of words to suit the rhyme, shew that although in many cases the
custom was firmly established, in others there was a fluctuation of
use similar to that in the present day between breeks, breeches, Scotch
Irigg, kirk, English bridge, church. The termination -lv$ or -lie has
become generally -ly = (-1*0 in Chaucer, but traces of the original
form remain as -lik, lich ; thus we have : sikurly 137, 154, against :
sikirlik 3889, and: smoterlich, dich 3961 = (smoo'terlitsh, ditsh),
= dirty, ditch. Against: the holy blisful martir for to seeke 17,
we have: withoute more speche,' not longe for to seche 785, I
schuld yow seeche, in softe speche 6993, and we may compare our
modern words seek, beseech. Against the common form werk, as in :
that was a clerk, al this werk, 11417, we have the altered forms :
wirche, 2761, 7559, 9535, werche 4986, and so on. Such changes,
which have been shewn to be common to other languages, confirm
the value of ch as (tsh) even in Saxon words. The pronunciation of
ich as (itsh), in the phrase : so theech 12857, for example, = so the
ich (soo thee-tsh) is singularly corroborated by Gill's observation
that in the East of England " pro (s) substituunt (z), ut (z*q) pro
(siq) cano ; et (itsh} pro (ai) ego : (tsham) pro (ai am) sum : (tsh«l)
pro (ai wil) volo : (tshi voor ji~) pro (ai warrant JQU) certum do," see
supra, p. 293.
L, M, N, NG
L, M, N must have been (1, m, n) as in all languages. The ter
mination -le from the French is occasionally written -ul, -il, -yl. It
1 "Comme en anglais, D se fait TCH ; Tchien, chien, Tchidbourg,
sentir devant G et J, comme dans Gerce, Cherbourg." Le Hericher, Glossaire
brebis [Dgerce], .... CH se pro- Normand, vol. i. pp. 30 and 32.
nounce souvent comme en anglais
316 P, PH, QU. R — XIV TH CENTURY. CHAP. IV. $ 3.
will be best to call it ('!) as in modern English. Before a following
vowel it probably became (1) as : simple and coy 119 = (sraipl-and
cui) just as in modern English we have double, doubling not double-
ing, i.e. (dab-'l dab'h'q) not (dab-'h'q). As there is a difficulty in
establishing a nasal value of n in Old French,1 there can be no
thought of its occurrence in Chaucer.
NG was either (q) or (qg) or occasionally one and occasionally
the other as in modern English. Modern use can be our only guide.
P, PH, QU
There is no reason for supposing p, ph, qu to have been anything
but (p, f, kw}, but of course it is impossible to determine whether
qu was not (kw, ku) instead of (kw). In Chap. V, § 4, No. 1 & 3,
the fact of the Runic and Gothic alphabets having a single sign for
this sound, has led me to suppose that it was really simple (kw?),
and not double (kw, ku), even at that early epoch. The use of two
letters cw in Anglosaxon would not decide anything, as (kw, ku)
would be a sufficient approximation for all purposes of writing.
R
R presents the same difficulties as in the xvi th century, yet we
cannot allow it to have "any value but (r). It must however have
affected the preceding vowel,2 as we could otherwise scarcely account
for the use of or, er, ir in the same words, as worche 9231, werk
481, wirching 8371. In one case at least we find or where the
modern form is er, as : thurgh the cite large, with cloth of gold and
not with sarge 2569, but both serge, sarge are old French forms. It
is also observable that many words in which the sound was (ar) in
the xvi th century appear as (er), thus, yerde, smerte, herte 149,
werre,ferre 47 ; serve, sterve 1145, prive and pert 6696, pryvy and
a/pert 10845, deere, steere 4867, 5252, stere, here 2151. Against
wors 9183, we have: wers, ers 3731 ; I moot reherse, al be they
better or werse 3173, it needeth nat to reherse, who can do werse
1 The chief reasons assigned by that f, «, were pronounced as nasals
Diez (Gram, der rom. Sprach., 2 ed. even in the xvi th century, Rapp reads
vol. 1, p. 437), for considering the use nasal «=(q). See Chap. V, § 4, note 1.
of the French nasals to be old are the 2 Mr. Murray says : " R affects pre-
identity of the assonances on and en ; ceding vowel in Scotch even while re-
and the constant confusion of the forms maining (r). A simple vowel, short
androit endroit. But the modern before other consonants is long before
femme rhymes with dame, and yet there final r : heat hear, bat bar, not nor,
is no trace of nasality here. Diez also stout stoor, (nit mir, bat baar, not
names the ancient rhymes of Salomon noor, stut stuur). And a before a con-
ferculum, zabulon convivium; but these sonant followed by e mute is in the
may have been due rather to a peculiar South of Scotland ea (ie) but before r
(-om) pronunciation of the Latin, the it remains (ee) so main and mane are
m and n being allowed to rhyme, as in distinguished (men, mien) but fa ir, fare
many English popular songs. At any are both (feer, feer) not (feer, f/er) the r
rate these forms are not incompatible preventing the closing of the sound."
with non-nasality, which was the rule Compare Cooper's observations, supr£
in Provenqal, and "Walloon, and there p. 70, where his (aaa) is the counter-
are absolutely no grounds for supposing part of (ie).
CHAP. IV. § 3. S, SCH T, TH, J? V, W, \VH, X Y, Z, $ 317
10913. Since the xvnth century there has been a great tendency
to pronounce er as (ar) or (ai), as in clerk, Derby, sergeant, and
formerly servant, but the contrary "tendency to use (er) for (ar) does
not seem to have been at all developed except at this earlier time.1
The confusion of (ur, er) as in wors, wers, is very like the modern
confusion of (QX, ei) with ('i). By a change of re into er the
rhyme : ers, kers 3753 is obtained. The terminations -re, -er
alternate, as : mordre 16538, morder 16539, at the commencement
of two consecutive lines. It would seem then that we should
always sound (-er}, as (murder). The metathesis of r is frequent.
S 5, art. 98, d.
S, SCH
S = (s) also represented (z) in plural terminations, but never
had the sound of (sh), which was always represented by
SCH a combination derived from the Saxon sc, in the same way
as ch from Saxon c, to shew the effect of palatisation. In later
times the c was omitted.
T, TH, Ip
T seems to have been generally (t), but it became (s) in the ter
mination -tion, see examples under C.
TH, which is used promiscuously with J? in the MS., had pro
bably the same sounds as at present, and distributed in the same
manner. Occasionally we meet with d in places where we should
have expected th = (dh), as in fadur 100 = father, hider 674,
thider, slider 1265, where the rhyme shews that the sound was
really (d) and not (dh), but the (d) seems to guarantee the pronun
ciation of th as (dh) when written in these words.
Y, W, WH, X
These letters as consonants seem to have had precisely the same
sounds as at present, but w was also used occasionally as a vowel, as
herberw 4143. In arwes 104, Jialwes 14, which had arwe, halwe in
the singular, there seems no reason for not giving w its usual sound.
WE was probably pronounced (rw) as in ags. and down to the
xvi th century (p. 186).
Y, Z, j
The T consonant is always represented by j which is the same
form as the letter used for z. The meanings of this letter must be
disentangled by a consideration of modern usage, see supra under
GH (p. 310).
The consonants seem to call for no further remark, and the rules
laid down in this and the proceeding section are sufficiently general
to permit the reader to read any line in this edition of Chaucer with
tolerable certainty, except as regards the use of the E final, which
has now to be considered.
1 For the xvnth century see p. 86. (ar) or (aa') in : clergy, person, mercy,
The Rev. C. Y. Potts remarks that in eternal, universal, learning, the lastword
South Shields er is usually pronounced being also called (leerntq).
318 E FINAL — XIV TH CENTURY. CHAP. IV. § 4.
§ 4. On the Pronunciation of E Final in the xiv th Century 1
That e final was at least occasionally pronounced, and that its
Bound did not differ, except in accent, from that of me, the = (mee,
dhee) is conclusively proved by the following rhymes. It must be
remembered that to me, to the, when the accent is thrown on to the
preposition, become (too*me, too'dhe), with brief and indistinct (e),
that is nearly (too-m«, too'dhe), or as in modern High German
(p. 321, n. 1). Hence the following rhymes shew that Rome, cyna-
mome, sothe must have been (Roo'me, sinamoo'me, soo'dhe), although
there may have been, as frequently at present, a little liberty taken
with double rhymes, and (soo'dhe) may have been used for (soo'the),
and similarly (juu'dhe) for (juu'the), (swii'dhe) for (switlre)8 in
the following couplets :
That streyt was comen from the court of Rome.
Ful lowde he sang, Come hider, love, to me. 673
My fayre bryd, my swete cynamome,
Awake, lemman myn, and speketh to me. 3699
So faren we, if I schal say the sot/te.
Now, quod oure ost, yit let me talke to the. 12590
Quod the Frankeleyn. considering thin youtlie
So felingly thou spekest, sire, I aloue the. 10987
Elles go bye som, and that as swithe.
Now good sire, go forth thy way and hy the. 13222
Al esily now, for the love of Marte,
Quod Pandarus, for every thynge hath tyme ;
' So long abid til that the nyght departe,
For also siker as thow list here bi me,
And God toforne I wol be thare aipryme.* 4' 193
Bot fader, if it fo betide
That I aproche at eny fide
The place wher my ladi is
And )>anne jmt hire like ywyff
To fpeke a goodly word vntoine,
For al )>e gold bat is in Some
Ne cowj?e. I. after that bewro]?,
Bot all myn Anger ou«rgo]?.4 i 282
Here hy the stands for hye the, but the final e of hye is not pro
nounced, as also it is not pronounced in aloue the, so that we read
(aluu- dhe, mi dhe). This omission will be considered afterwards.
The middle e in Dertemouthe holds the position of a final e in :
For ought I woot he was of Dertemouthe 391, where it is necessary
for the metre, and it is observable that the e is here pronounced to
this day by the peasantry in the neighbourhood of Dartemouth and
Dartemoor.6
1 This section was written before I 2 Just as /, v rhyme in thevys, gref
had had an opportunity of seeing Prof. is 7755.
F. J. Child's admirable' Observations 3 The rhyme time, by me, occurs
on the Language of Chaucer and Gower. eight times in Gower, i 227, 309, 370,
I have thought it best to leave my in- ii 41, 49, 114, iii 6, 369.
vestigation almobt in its original state, * Printed from the Harl. MS. 3869.
and to give a complete account of these 6 Private letter from Mr. Shelly,
observations in the following section. of Plymouth.
CHAP. IV. § 4. E FINAL — XIV TH CENTURY. 319
In the Man of Lawes Tale, there is a king called Alia, whose
name on one occasion is reduced to Alle, which must have been
pronounced (Al'e), so that calle and lifalle which rhyme with it
must have also been (kal'e, bifal'e) in —
Mauricius atte ftmtstone men him calle.
This constabil doth come forth a messager,
And wrot to his kyng that cleped was Alle,
How that this blisful tydyng is bifalle. 5143
Scarcely less convincing than the above instances is the case of
the plurals in -es, where they do not at present form a distinct
syllable.1 Not only are these frequently spelled -is* as is the case
still in Scotch,3 but they also often rhyme with the verb is. Thus,
taking first those spelled with es : —
For sondry scolis maken subtil clerkes ;
Weinman of many a scole half a clerk is. 9301
How schuld I thanne, that live in such pleasaunce
As alle weddid men doon with their wyves,
Come to blisse ther Crist eterne on tyve is ? 9525
Him wolde he snybbe scharply for the nones,
A bettre preest I trowe ther nowher non is. 525
Crist, which that is to every harm triacle,
By certeyn menes ofte, as knowen clerkes,
Doth thing for certeyn ende, that feel derk is. 4900
Thy wyf eek and thy wenche sinfully
Dronke of the same vessel sondry wynes;
And heriest false goddes cursedly ;
Therefore to the schapen ful gret pyne es. 15713
"Withinne the cloyster of thi blisful sydes
Took mannes schap the eternal love and pees,
That of the trine compas lord and guyde is. 11971
And nyl himselve doo no gentil dedes
Ne folw his gentil aunceter, that deed is. 6737
In the following the plural is written -is, but it rhymes with is
in precisely the same way.
Of catapus, or of gaytre beriis
Of erbe yve that groweth in our yerd, ther mercy is.4 16451
Ther schuln ye se expresse, that no dred is,
That he is gentil that doth gentil dedis. 6751
Ye loke as though the woode were ful of thevys,
Sit doun anoon, and tel me what your gref is. 7755
After the opynyoun of certeyn clerkis.
Witnesse on him, that eny parfit clerk is. 16721
And for that faith is deth withouten werkis,
So for to werken give me witt and space,
That I be quit fro thennes that most derk is. 1 1 992
Which gift of God had he for all his wyvis ?
No man hath such, that in the worid on lyve is. 5621
1 In the difficult combinations wrists, -s in familiar versification, and in prose,
priests, we hear generally in the pro- even in the xiv th and xv th century,
vinces, (r/st-z'z, priist-t'z). as shewn in Mr. Murray's paper, supra
2 Sometimes MS is used, with the same p. 287, note 1.
pronunciation as -is or -es, (p. 298). 4 These lines are evidently corrupt
3 This Scotch final -is, generally as they stand. Morris reads 3-233, Of
formed a distinct syllable in serious erbe yve growwz^e in our yerd, ther
poetry, but was practically reduced to mery is.
320 E FINAL XIV TH CENTTJKY. CHAP. IV. § 4.
So made he eek a temple of fals godis,
How might he do a thing that more forbad is? 10169
But me was taught, nought longe tyme goon it,
That synnes Crist went never but onys
To weddyng. 5591
Alias ! and can ye hen agast of swevenys ?
Nought, God wot, but vanite in sweven is. 16407
Since in placis, place is 7349, the final -is must of necessity be
pronounced, it is not reckoned among these examples, which are all
that I have noted in the Canterbury Tales. To these, however,
should be added, as equally convincing, —
Take youre disport : I nyl lieve no talis;
I know yow for a trewe wif, dame Alls. 6901
From hous to hous, to here sondry talis,
That Jankyn clerk, and my gossib dame Alts. 6129
It would be impossible to read many lines in Chaucer without
finding that the number of syllables in a line would be constantly
in default, if the final e's were not reckoned. At the same time
the number of syllables in a line would often be in excess, if every
e final were reckoned. Again, the slightest examination shews us
words which are at present identical, differing in different places
by having and not having a final e. That this insertion or omission
of the e final is not due simply to carelessness or option of the
scribe,1 is apparent from the presence or absence of the e being
generally essential to the metre, or the rhyme, and a notion seems
to have possessed some persons, that lines could be made to scan by
omitting or inserting these 0's at pleasure. The examination of the
prose tales, where these final e's are also found, ought to disabuse
us of this absurd notion. We must admit that these final e's formed
a part of the language of the time, and that there must have been
some reasons for their insertion and omission. These we have, if
possible, to discover, and the first step is to examine two modern
languages, German and French, in which final e's also occur, and
which are the living representatives of the Saxon and Norman
elements of which Chaucer's poems were composed.
Final e in German, which is always pronounced where written,
arises in several ways :
1) it is a natural final of many words as RuJie, Weise, Reise,
Miitze, Rale, Ka.se, Knabe, Heerde, Herberge, weise, leise, sachte,
1 This refers to the Harleian, No. sundre (for sondry), 19 sesone daie,
7334 ; other manuscripts are much 20 laie, 22 devoute, 23 nighte, 24 twente
less strict, and the confusion in the (for twenty), 25 sondrie folke be (for
use of the final e seems to indicate a by), 26 pilgrimes, 27 towarde, 29 esede,
date of writing about the middle of 31 euerychone, 32 anone, 34 }>are
xv th century or later, or else a scribe jowe, 37 resnone, 38 condicionne, 40
of Northern origin. In the first 42 whiche whate 41 eke whatte araie, 42
lines of the prologue in the Lansdowne knighte, where the Harleian shews no
MS. No. 851, with which "Wright e, and : 8 half, 9 smal, 1 1 her, 30 sonn,
and Morris collated the Harleian 7334 31 had, 32 felawschep, where the Har-
to form their texts, we find : 1 wy)>e, leian has the final e. It is obvious
2 hajie, 3 suche tycoure, 4 whiche that no conclusions respecting e final
floure, 5 eke bre]?e, 6 hajje hethe, 7 could be deduced from such an ortho-
haj>e ramroe, 12 one, 13 straungere, 14 graphy.
CHAP. IV. § 4. E FINAL — XIV TH CENTURY. 321
lange = (ruu'0,1 Hharze, rai'ze, myts'0, raa'l>e, kEE'zg
Heerd0, neerde, Herber^he, bhai'ze, lai'ze, szakht*0, laqp«), and so
forth., mostly representing some other vowel in old high. German.
2) it is inflexional, frequently expressing —
a] plurals as der Wind die Winde, der Zug die. Zuge, der Herzog
die Herzoge, &c. = (der bhind dii bhind'0, der tsuugwh die tsyy^hv,
der nerts-og dii nerWoghe).
b] dative cases singular, as dem Winde, dem Zuge, dem Herzoge =
(deem bhind'0, deem tsnugwh'e, deem nerts'oghe).
c] the plural of the indefinite adjective, as gute Goiter, alle Men-
schen, lange Reisen = (guut'e gcet'er, al'e mensh'm, laq'e raiz'm).
d} the feminine singular of the indefinite adjective, as gute Mutter,
arme Frau, keine Frucht = (guut'e mut'er, arm-e frau, kainv
frukwht).
e} the nominative singular of the definite adjective in all genders,
and accusative feminine and neuter, as der gute Mann die gute Frau,
das gute Weib, ich ehre die gute Frau und das gute Weib = (der
guut'e man, dii guut'0 frau, das guut'e bhaib, i&h. ee-r«), &c.
/ ) the imperative singular of verbs, as liebe Gott, ehre den Konig
= (liibv? got, ee're deen koeoe-ni^h).
g} the first person singular of the indicative mood present tense
of verbs, as ich liebe ihn, ich fange an = (i£h liib'e iin, i£h. faq/e an).
A) the first and third person singular of the present and past
tenses of the subjunctive mood of verbs, as er sagt, sie komme; sie
sagten er kdrne = (er zaaght, szii konre, szii zaaght'm, er kEEnre).
i] the first and third person singular of the past tense of weak
verbs, as ich liebte und er lielte dieselbe Freundin = (i&h liibt'e und
eer liibt'e dii'zelb'e froynd'in).8
j} it is frequently added on to numbers in familiar counting, as
eine, zweie, dreie, viere, funfe, &c. = (ain-0, tsbhai'e, draiv?, fii'w,
With all these reasons for adding on e, and the very similar syl
lable en, (which on the Rhine is constantly called e}, the language
is necessarily full to overflowing with this termination, which
is consequently very often dropped or slurred over with great
rapidity in conversation. But that poets with perfect sensations
of rhythm, and immense power of expression, accept this final e and
even multiply it in a single line, may be collected from this one
example in Goethe's most finished drama, Tasso, Act I., Sc. 1.
Ich bring' ihm seinen Sohn .... (I&h briq iim zaiiren zoon ....
Und theile seine vaterliche Freude unt tail'e zain'e fee'terliMre froyd'0.)s
1 The final German e, en, in these 2 In these transcriptions the German
transcriptions have been generally re- eu has been represented by (oy), the
presented by (e, en) as they are theo- sound preferred by Dr. Eapp, but (oi,
retically held to represent these sounds, oi) are frequent in the North, and (oi)
but the reader should consult p. 119, in the South of Germany. Some theo-
note 1, col. 2, and p. 195, note 2, where reticians prefer (ay), and others (ay).
these cases are fully discussed.
3 There are as many final e's in Chaucer's —
Him thoughte that his herte wolde breke 956
(Hz'm thouki^h'te dhat HI'S Heerte wol'de bree'ke),
where the repeated e gives a melancholy softness to the line.
21
322 E FINAL — XIV TH CENTURY. CHAP. IV. § 4.
At the same time the first line gives an example of the elision of
an e — ich bringe ihm — before a following vowel. This is not a rule,
or a necessity, it is merely a matter of feeling. In such a verse as
Wie brennt meine alte Wunde. — (Heine's Die Grenadiere)
(Bhii brent maiire alfre bhund'e)
the elision mem' would have been impossible, on account of the
concord, although it would have avoided a trisyllabic measure and
improved the metre. But throughout the first act of Tasso I have
only noticed one instance in which Goethe has not avoided the
necessity- of an open vowel which he could not elide, namely
Fur bolde Friichte emer wahren Liebe
(Fyr Hold's fryMit1* ainer bhaar«n liib'«).
where the natural pause at the caesura assist the reader. Thus when
ich, er, ihn, es follows a verbal -e, the e is always elided, as : gar oft
beneid' ich, irr' ich mich nicht, besser war's = ware es, ich geb'
ihm oft = (gar oft benaid' iAh, i.r i£h mi£h. ni&ht, bes-er bhEErz,
i/fch geeb iim oft), and so on. The feeling is strongly shewn in
Erwach' ! Erwache ! Lass uns nicht empfinden,
Dass du das Gegenwart'ge gam: verkennst.
(Erbhakh-, erbhakh-e ! Las uns ni&ht empfind'en
Das duu das gee^h-enbhertyhe gants ferkenst-),
Where there are two other elisions one marked in : Gegenwarte'ge, the
other unmarked in : verkennest, both similar to what might occur in
Old English as semde for semede = seemed, singst for singest.
But Goethe does not hesitate to add on his e to an open vowel,
as : ich thue was ich kann = (i^h tuu'e bhas i£h k<ra).
The e of the dative case is frequently omitted, as after the itali
cized words in —
Und lass micb der Gelegenheit, dem Gliiclc —
$tir 1st an diesem Augenblick genug —
Ach ! sie versagt mir eben jetzt ! Im Oliick —
Doch war an Wissenschaft, an recbtem Sinn —
(Und las mi£h der gelee^h'mnait, deem glyk —
Miir 1st an dirzem au'gwhenblik genuugwh1 —
Akh ! szii ferzaagbt- miir eeb'«n jetst ! Im glyk —
Dokh bhaar an bhis-enshoft, an re&bt-em zin — )
The imperative e is frequently omitted even when no vowel
follows, as
Und liebt er nicbt — ver&eiK dass ich es sage !
(Und liibt er ni&ht — fertsar das iA-h es szaagh'e.)
The final e is omitted in many other cases where the feeling of
the poet requires it, even before a consonant, or at the end of a line
where the elision is not absolutely necessary to the metre, as
Fest bleibt dein Sinn, und richtig dein Geschmack,
Dein Urtheil g'rad, stets ist dein Antheil gross
Am Grossen. —
Uns fiir den Sch'atz erkennte, den er lang1
Vergebens in der weiten Welt gesucht —
heiligt er
Den Pfad, den lets' ihr sthoner Fuss betrat —
Ich sah ihn heu( von fern ; er hielt ein Buch —
Und bist du zu yelind', so will ich treiben —
CHAP. IV. $ 4. E FINAL XIV TH CENTURY. 323
Die Menge maeht den Kiinstler irr' und scheu —
Von fremden Heerden Wies' und Buscb erfiillt —
(Fest blaipt dain zin, und ri^ht'i^b dain geshmak,
Dain urtail gr«ad, shteets 1st dain an'tail groos
Am groosvn —
Tins fyr deen ghats erkentv, deen er kq
Fergeeb'enz in der bbait-en bhelt gezuukwbt —
HailiArbt eer
Deen pfaad, deen laiz iir shoeoen'er fuus betraat* — •
Ikh zaa iin Hoyt fon fern : er niilt ain buukwh
Und bist duu tsu gelind1, zoo bhil i&b traib'en — •
Dii meq'e makbt den kynst'ler i.r unt sboy —
Fon fremd'en neerd-en bbiiz und busb erfylt' — )
All these examples are taken from the first act of Tasso. In
lyrical poems we find similar omissions, not merely for the sake of
rhythm or force, but also for the sake of rhyme. Thus in the
Maylied.
Zwiscben Waizen und Korn, (Tsbhish'en bhaits'ew unt korn,
Zwischen Hecken und Dorn Tsbbish'en nek'en und dorn,
Zwiscben Baumen und Qras Tsbbisb-m boynren und graas,
Wo gebt 's Liebcben ? Bhoo geet -s hib'&ben ?
Sag mir das ! Szaagb mir das !'
An dem Felsen beim Flus», An deem fels-m bairn flus,
"Wo sie reichte den Kues, Bboo zii rai&ht'e deen kus,
Jenen ersten im Gran, Jeen en erst-en im graas,
Sek' icb etwas ! Szee i£b et-bbas1 !
1st sie das ? 1st szii das P)
Here Gras (graas) for Grase (graaz'e}, and Fluss (flus) for Flmse
(flus'e) are necessary for the rhyme. The most common omission
is that of the dative e, hut even the essential final e is occasionally
left out, thus in the lines An Luna, we have Buhe (ruu'0) abbre
viated to Ruti (ruu) for the rhyme.
Und in wollustvoller Ruh' (Unt in bhoHustfol'er ruu
Sdh' der Wellverschlag'ne Bitter SZEE der bbelt-fershlaagh'n# rit'er
Durch das glaserne Gegitter Dur^b das glEEz-erne gegit-er
Seines Madcbens Nachten zu. Szaines mEEd-Ahens nE^bt-e tsuu.)
Less common and, no doubt intentionally, very harsh, is Schiller's
DonnerspracK (don'er,shprfl«klr) to rhyme with nach (naakh), in
his Kindes-morderin, st. 9.
On the other hand in Goethe's Gluck der Entfernung (Gflyk der
Entfern'uq) we have an e apparently added in Glucke for GlucK, —
really an archaism from the middle high German Geliicke, — also for
the rhyme and metre.
Trink', o Jiingling ! beil'ges Glucke (Triqk, oo jyq'liq ! nail-^hes glykv,
Taglang aus der Liebsten Blicke. Taagh'laq aus der liib'sten blik'c.)
All poets do not avoid the open final e with the same scrupulous
ness as Goethe, thus "Wilhelm Miiller in his Alexander Ypsilanti has
An des Mittags Horizonte hing sein Auge wnverwandt.
(An des mit'taakbs Hoo-ritson-te niq szain augwh'e un'ferbbant1)
Such examples are however rare. On the other hand the omis
sion of final e for rhyme or metre is very frequent. Thus for rhyme
in Riickert's Der Betrogene Teufel (der betroogh'ene toyfel), EiV
324
E FINAL — XIV TH CENTURY. CHAP. IV. § 4.
(ail) is used for Eile (ail'e) to rhyme with TJieil (tail). In Heine's
Die Grenadiere, already quoted for non-elision, we have Grenadier'
twice to rhyme with Quartier, mir (kbhartiir, miir), and bitt'
(bit) to rhyme with mit (mit), and for metre
Und giirf mir um den Degen. (Und gyrt mir uum den de«gh-«n.)
These examples, which could easily be greatly multiplied, will
serve to shew how a living language deals with its final e's, and
Germans know that this treatment of e final is not a mere license
taken by the poet to help him out of difficulties, but is on the con
trary a source of great power of expression, giving force and cha
racter to many passages by omission, and softness and delicacy to
the others by the frequent use of the final e. Hence we are led to
look upon the use and disuse of this letter, (the feeling for which
has been entirely lost by Englishmen,) as a great resource for the
poet, and a great beauty in the language. To those whom long
custom has made familiar with the German language and the music
of its poetry, the idea of constantly clipping off these final e's in the
English fashion would be distasteful and barbarous to the last de
gree, and their frequency conveys no feeling of trailiness or weak
ness, as it does to the mere English reader.
Proceeding to French we meet with a new phenomenon, an
existing system of versification founded upon an obsolete system of
pronunciation (p, 119, note). In looking at French songs when
set to music, we see that all final e's are pronounced, except before
a following vowel or a mute h, and that the -ent of the plural of
verbs is also pronounced as e, (except in the combination -aient
where it is absolutely mute), although it is not elided before a fol
lowing vowel. But in common French discourse this final e and
many medial e's may be said to be entirely elided.1 The consequence
is that there is a great schism between the language of poetry and
that of common life. When singing, the French not merely pro
nounce these e's, but dwell upon them, and give them long and ac
cented notes in the music. This recognition is absolutely necessary
to the measure of the verse, which, depending solely upon the num
ber of the syllables in a line, and having no relation to the position
of accent, is entirely broken up and destroyed when these syllables
are omitted. And yet when they declaim, the French omit these
final e's without mercy, producing, to English ears, a hideous rough
shapeless unmusical result, which nothing but a consciousness of the
existence of the omitted syllables can mass into rhythm.2
1 In M. Jobert's Colloquial French poetry (in tragedies especially, and
(London, Whittaker, 1854), M. and principally in those which are con-
Mile. Theriat's Phonographe and Tour- sidered as standards of classic purity,)
rier's Model Book (4th ed. 1851, Lon- is seldom pleasant to English cars;
don, Nutt), will be found excellent but in the complaint which is gene-
rules for shewing when this e is or is rally made of the want of harmony of
not to be pronounced. the French verse, there is not sufficient
2 The late M. Tarver, of Eton, in his allowance made. One is too apt to
Choix en Prose et en Vers (London, forget that the Ear, accustomed to the
1833), says: "The reading of French rhyme and peculiar intonations of one's
CHAP. IV. § 4.
E FINAL — XIV TH CENTURY.
325
M. Feline, who endeavoured to introduce a phonetic system of
printing French as an assistance in teaching ignorant adults to read,
has, at the end of his Exercise de lecture Phonetique, Aventures de
Robinson Crusoe, (Paris, Didot, 1854), given an Exemple de Decla
mation, consisting of a fragment of Lafontaine's Fable (xi, 7), Le
paysan du Danube, which he has printed phonetically. We are thus
presented with a Frenchman's views of how French poetry should
he read, and as this is important in relation to the use of the final e,
I think it worth while to give the greater portion of it in ordinary
spelling and in a palaeotypic transcription of M. Feline's characters.
The lines are supposed to be spoken by a German peasant to the
Roman Senate* They are introduced by the following remarks :
" Get exemple nous montre que, meme dans la declamation, il est
des e muets qui ne se prononcent pas, quoique leur presence soit
necessaire a la mesure syllabique des vers. Cette suppression a lieu,
soit parce que les deux consonnes separees par 1' e muet s'unissent
facilement en raison de leur douceur, soit parce que le sens est inter-
rompu. II importe aussi de faire observer que, presque toutes les
fois que Ve muet est supprime, la syllabe qui le precede en acquiert
plus d'intensite ou de longueur.1 A la fin des rimes feminines,
quand il est precede d'une voyelle, cette voyelle devient plus longue.8
On remarquera, en outre, que, lorsqus le sens unit la fin d'un vers
au commencement du suivant, la liaison doit avoir lieu."
verbs, such as parlaient, parkraient,
the ent of aient does not form one dis
tinct syllable, because there is but one
sound uttered, par-laient, par-le-r aient.
Some diphthongs form two syllables,
and some one, at the option of the
author. The cesure is a rest which
comes after the sixth foot or syllable in
heroic verse, and after the fourth syl
lable in verses of ten syllables. — There
are no blank verses in French ; they
always rhyme. There are two sorts of
rhymes, the masculine which ends with
a consonant or combination of letters
forming one full sound, such as, lan-
gmssant, vanite, &c., the feminine with
an e muet. In heroic verses, the rhymes
must be regularly and alternately, two
masculine and two feminine. If a
stanza end with a masculine rhyme,
the following must begin with a femi
nine, and vice versiL" "Enjambement,
the running on of the sense from the
end of one verse to the beginning of
the following. It is a fault and to be
avoided," but is often designedly com
mitted by Victor Hugo and recent poets.
1 This Mr. Feline has not marked
particularly, I shall therefore place two
dots (..) in place of the suppressed "e
muet," in order to guide the reader.
2 This he has marked, and hence I
is not easily pleased by
foreign sounds ; — that want of habit of
hearing French read renders it a bad
judge in point of harmony ; that the
full and rapid comprehension of the
meaning of the author greatly influ
ences our finding the words harmonious
or harsh ; and how few there are who
can boast of so familiar an acquaint
ance with a foreign language!" The
following brief resume of the laws of
French versification given by M. Tarver
(ib.) may be useful. " Measure and
Rhyme constitute French verse. Mea
sure is. determined by the number of
syllables contained in the verse. The
longest French verses have twelve syl
lables, commonly called feet. When, in
the body of a verse, a word ends with
an e mttet, that is, an e not accented,
and is followed by a word beginning
with a vowel, the e muet is blended
with that vowel, so as to form one
sound, and consequently one foot only,
instead of two. When the e muet is
followed by an s, there is no elision.
The termination ent, of the third per
son of verbs, which, in prose, is gene
rally blended with the following syl
lable, if it begin with a vowel, must in
verse, be sounded as a distinct syllable
or foot, but, in the third person plural
of the imperfect and conditional of
326 E FINAL — XIV TH CENTURY. CHAP. IV. § 4.
LE PAYSAN DTJ DANTTBE. — FRAGMENT.
Craignez, Remains, craignez que le ciel quelque jour
Ne transporte chez vous les pleurs et la misere ;
Et mettant en nos mains, par un juste retour,
Les armes dont se sert sa vengeance severe,
II ne vous fasse en sa colere
Nos esclaves a votre tour.
Et pourquoi sommes nous les votres ? Qu'on me die
En quoi vous valez mieux que cent peuples divers,
duel droit vous a rendus maitres de I'univers ?
Pourquoi venir troubler une innocente vie ?
Nous cultivions en paix d'heureux champs ; et nos mains
Etaient propres aux arts, ainsi qu'au labourage.
Qu'avez vous appris aux Germains ?
Ils ont 1'adresse et le courage ;
S'ils avaient eu I'avidite
Comme vous, et la violence,
Peut-etre en votre place ils auraient la puissance,
Et sauraient en user sans inhumanite.
Celle que vos preteurs ont sur nous exercee
N'entre qu'a peine en la pensee.
La majeste de vos autels
Elle meme en est offense e ;
Car sachez que les immortels
Ont les regards sur nous. Graces a vos exemples
Ils n'ont devant les yeux que des objets d'horreur,
De mepris d'eux et de leurs temples,
D'avarice qui va jusques a la fureur.
Rien ne suflB.t aux gens qui nous viennent de Rome,
La terre et le travail de 1'homme
Font pour les assouvir des efforts superflus.
Retirez-les : on ne veut plus
Cultiver pour eux les compagnes.
Nous quittons les cites, nous fuyons aux montagnes,
Nous laissons nos cheres compagnes ;
Nous ne conversons plus qu'avec des ours affreux,
Decourages de mettre au jour des malheureux,
Et de peupler pour Rome un pays qu'elle opprime.
mark the prolongation by reduplication long vowels in French, and that I have
as usual. It is to be observed that M. strictly followed his system of notation,
Feline seldom admits the existence of except in his employment of the hyphen,
CHAP. IV. §4. E FINAL — XIV TH CENTURY. 327
L0 pe,izaA dy Danyb. — Pragma A.
Crenje, Rome A, crenje ks 10 siel kelk0 zhur
N0 traAsporto she vu le pbrz e la mizer.. ;
E metaAt aA no meA, par 8A zhysts rstur
Lez arms* doA ss ser sa vaAzh.aA.s9 sever..,
II ns> vu fas aA sa koler..
Noz esklav..z a votre tur.
JS'purkua som.. nu le votr.. ? K-OA ma dii..
AA kua vu vale mice k0 saA ps>pL? diver.
Kel drua vuz a raAdy metre d0 1-yniver ?
Purkua vmir trubler yn inosaAto vii.. ?
Nu kyltivioAz aA pe d-sroe shaA ; e no meAz
Ete proprsz oz ar, CAS! k-o laburazh..
K- ave vuz apriz o ZhermeA ?
Ilz OA 1- adres e \9 kurazh.. ;
S- ilz avet y 1- avidite
Kom.. vu, e la violaAs..,
P^t etr- aA votr? plas ilz ore la pyisaAS.. ,
E soret aAn- yze saAz inymanite.
Sel.. \9 vo prefer OA syr nuz egzersee..
N- aAtr? k- a pen- aA la paAsee..
La mazheste d0 voz otel
EL. mem- aAn- et ofaAsee.. ;
Kar sashe \9 lez immortelz
OA le rsgar syr nu. Gmssz a voz egzaApl.. ,
In n- OA dsvaA lez joe k0 dez obzhe d-orr^r,
D? mepri d- osz e ds br taApl.. ,
D- avaris.. ki va zhysksz a la fyrsr.
PtieA us syfit o zhaA ki nu vien.. da Bom.. :
La ter e la travalj d^ 1- om..
FOA pur lez assuvir dez efor syperfly.
Entire le : OA n& voa ply
Kyltive pur ce le kaApanj.. .
Nu kitoA le site, nu fyiroAz o moAtanj.. ;
Nu lesoA no sher.. koApanj.. ;
Nu n? koAversoA ply k- avek dez urz afroe,
Dekurazhe d? metr- o zhur de malsroe,
JE d^ p^ple pur Eom QA. pe,i k- el oprim.. .
which he places before a pronounced and which I employ in the usual pa-
final "« muet," or a consonant that laeotypic manner,
which runs on to the following vowel,
328 E FINAL — XIV TH CENTURY. CHAP. IV. § 4.
Notwithstanding that this passage does not offer numerous
examples of the disarrangement produced by modern speech in
French verse, yet it is evident that had French verse arisen in the
present day, or had it followed the usages of pronunciation, it could
not have taken such a form. Thus the distinction between the
masculine and feminine rhymes, which is so important in the con
struction of French verse, has entirely disappeared, severe, colere,
becoming (sever, koler), do not differ from divers, univers (diver,
yniver), though a French poet who attempted to make the first
rhyme with the second would be laughed from Parnassus. The
rhyme mains, Germains, has disappeared in (meAz, zhermeA), owing
to a "liaison" preserving the s in one case, while it was lost in
another. The open vowels, which are so strictly forbidden, crop
up, as in
Comme vous, et la violence.
(kom vu e la violaAs.)
This line also wants two syllables, which the singer would have
added as —
(konw vuz e la violaAsa).
Observe also how the lines
Elle meme en est offenses —
D'avaric* qui va jusques a la foreur —
suffer from the want of the italicized syllables.
The composition of French verse is as purely regulated by rule in
France as that of ancient Latin and Greek verse is at modern English
schools ; it is thoroughly artificial. The French have got to feel a
sort of rhythm in it as Etonians feel a rhythm in their own hexa
meters ; but that the former at all resembled the rhythm known
to the old French poets, can as little be imagined, as that the latter
resembled the rhythm that guided Virgil. Even the popular rhymes
of Beranger connot always imitate the speech of the people, witness
the italicized e's in the following first stanza of Paillasse ' —
J'suis ne Paillasse, et mon papa,
Pour m'lancer sur la place,
D'un coup d' pied queuqu' part m' attrapa,
Et m' ait : Saute, Paillasse !
T'as 1" janet dispos,
Quoiqu' t' ay' 1' ventr* gros
Et la fac' rubicond*.
N' saut' point-z a demi
Paillass' mon ami :
Saute pour tout \e monde !
From the French we learn then this lesson, that it is possible to
have a versification which requires the pronunciation of e final,
although it has disappeared from the language. Hence Chaucer
may have used an e final in poetry, which was unknown in common
speech. But the French e final, which has now disappeared, was
pronounced in general conversation as late as the xvi th century, as
^ (Euvres completes de P. J. de Paris, 1835, 2 vols. S2mo., vol. i. p.
Beranger, edition revue par 1'auteur. 232, written in 1816.
CHAP. IV. § 4. E FINAL XIV TH CENTURY. 329
we know both from Palsgrave, and from Meigret, and hence it must
have been so pronounced in Chaucer's time, and must have formed
part of the rhythm of the French verses with which he was well
acquainted.
This examination of German and French versification has led us
to two very different results. In German the final e is a living part
of the language and metre, affecting the music of speech, a real
element in prose and verse, in the loftiest and the homeliest discourse.
In French the final e, although the representative of other original
vowels, the note of feminine and of many parts of verbs, and of con
stant occurrence in writing, has died out as utterly in French as it
has in English speech, but forms an element of the commonest as
well as loftiest versification of the present day, any attempt to build
verses upon the theory of its disappearance, as in English, being
scouted as low and vulgar. What was the case with Chaucer ?
The foundation of our language is Saxon. The construction of
our sentences, the expressions of the relations of ideas by the order
of words, has undergone little or no change from a period when
French words were still unused. The only effect of the introduction
of French words was to enlarge our vocabulary, not to alter our
grammar. Hence it would seem more likely that while the Ger
manic e final was still in use in our language, it was employed by
English poets much in the same way that it is now used by German
poets. That is, we have every reason to suppose that it was gene
rally, as we have proved that it was occasionally pronounced,
whether it was a substitute for some other original vowel or was
merely inflexional, but that in both cases it was omitted,1 when not
destructive to the sense, before another vowel, or whenever its
omission gave dignity, force or precision.2
In French versification the rule for the elision of final e before a
subsequent vowel or h mute was absolute. We should therefore
expect to find this rule absolute in Chaucer at least for French
words. But it may have been only partially adopted. In this case
however we have no occasion to go to a French model. In Chap. Y,
§§ 1 and 2, we shall see that this was the rule of English versifica
tion, even in the xnr th century.
It is quite possible that, as the inflexional condition of our lan-
1 In German and French poetry the altogether even in reading Latin verse,
omission of the vowel is complete and Except in a few instances, as I', t', &c.,
absolute. It is not in any way slurred the French do not mark the elision of
over or rapidly pronounced in connec- a final e before a following vowel, and
tion with the following vowel, as is in old English the vowel was written
the case in Italian and Spanish poetry, even when elided,
and even in Italian singing. The a Occasionally, but less frequently,
Germans, like the Greeks, do not even the final e may have been also omitted
write the elided vowel. The Latins for the sake of the rhyme or the metre,
wrote the elided vowel as the Italians but in such cases the poet must have
do, and may therefore have touched it felt that the sacrifice would have been
briefly, as in the English custom of greater to turn his verse so as to render
reading Latin verse, whereas it is the the elision unnecessary.
German custom to omit such vowels
330 E FINAL — XIV TH CENTURY. CHAP. IV. § 4.
guage underwent a rapid degradation in the xv th century, and was
certainly much inferior in the xiv th to what it was in the YTTT th,
(several of the inflexional e's having perhaps disappeared even in
Chaucer's time), and as most of the manuscripts belong to a period
of at least a generation after Chaucer's death, this disuse of the final
e may have considerably advanced before the best copies of his writ
ings, which we possess, had come into existence. It may therefore
well be that the scribe has frequently introduced or omitted final e's
with rather an indistinct and uncertain feeling as to where they
ought or ought not to be pronounced.1
We know indeed that even in the xvith century, when the final
is had altogether disappeared from speech, they were considered an
indispensable ornament in writing, and were added on without any
knowledge on the writer's part whether their addition was or was
not historically justifiable.2
Before judging from the inner part of a line in Chaucer, whether
the final e's that are written should be pronounced or mute, it is
necessary to obtain some feeling as to the style and character of his
verse. We have no occasion to consider the shorter lines of Sir
Thopaz, nor the grouping of the lines into stanzas. The question is
only, of how many syllables did one of Chaucer's longer lines consist,
and where did the stress fall ?
The last question requires the position of the accent 3 in Chaucer's
words to be considered. Or rather the two questions must be con
sidered together, for there is no means of determining the position
of the accent but by the metre. We may assume that the rhyming
syllables had sufficient stress to make the rhyme fully audible, but
we must be aware of concluding that therefore they had the chief
stress. This rule would be generally true in German verse, — where
however it is sometimes transgressed,4 — but it is not at all true of
French verse. Many writers assert that French words have a fixed
accent. In the xvrth century Palsgrave marks the position of the
Trench accent and lays down rules for it. So does the very high
phonetic authority, B-app, in the xix th century. Nevertheless one
of the great peculiarities of French, as distinguished from Italian on
the one hand, (representing its Latin element,) and German on the
other, (representing its Frankish element,) is the absence of deter
minate stress upon any syllable in a word. French speakers do fre
quently put a stress, but that stress varies with the feeling of the
moment, and ithout affecting the intelligibility of a word. I have
1 See supra, \ . 0, note. ever, the present investigations make
3 See the latt'^lon rt of Salesbury's it requisite to reconsider. In these
observations on < disaj "Welsh pronun- pages I have strictly confined myself to
ciation, infra, Chn # fuf.I- § !• the smallest amount of discussion which
3 The followiig JTreri]ts on the very my object allowed,
difficult subject a j S and metre, 4 Compare etwas in the Maylied,
make no preten^nera* cSmpleteness. supra p. 323, a word which generally
The two volumes 'uest's His- has the stress on the et, as in other com-
tory of English Jtes de P. 838, shew pounds of et, but there has nearly an
the extent of the sue par 1'atfh, how- even stress on both syllables.
CHAP. IV. § 4. E FINAL — XIV TH CENTURY. 331
heard the last word in les champs Elysees pronounced with a distinct
stress on the first syllable on one occasion, on the second on another,
and on the third on another. A German speaker is apt to accent
the final syllable in French words, an English speaker the first. It
is the evenness with which a Frenchmen pronounces the syllables
that gives so much peculiarity to his pronunciation of English, and
reflects his national habit of speech, a habit also shared, as I am
informed, by the Turks. A simple example of the effect of this
evenness is that most Englishmen feel the French Alexandrine to
consist of four measures, of three syllables each, accented more or
less distinctly on the last syllable, whereas the English and German
Alexandrine founded upon it consists of six measures of two syllables
each, more or less distinctly accented on the last. That the French
allowed very evanescent syllables, as for example the final e, to fall
on the even places, may be seen from the italicised syllables in
Corneille's lines (Limitation de lesvs- Christ] :
Les tenebres iamais n'approchent qui me suit ;
Et partout sur mes pas il trouue vn iour sans nuit,
Qui porte iusque au cceur la lumiere de vie. — 1, 1, 1
Ne lui S9auroit offrir d'agreab/es victimes — 1, 1, 3
Et la vertu sans eux est de telle valeur,
Qu'il vaut mieux bien sentir la douleur de tes fautes,
Que s<jauoir definir ce qu'est cette douleur.1 1, 1, 3
We also find the same word differently placed in a verse with
respect to the odd and even places, which should therefore be dif
ferently accented according to any accentual theory. For example
(Corueille, Imitation) :
Et tu verras qu'enfin tout n'est que vanite. 1, 1, 3
Vanite d'entasser richesses sur richesses. 1, 1, 4
Le desir de S9auoir est naturel aux hommes. 1, 2, 1
Borne tous tes desir s a ce qu'il te faut faire. 1, 2, 2
Les Syauans d' ordinaire ayme«£ qu'on les regarde. 1, 2, 2
Qui puissent d'vn Sfauant faire vn homme de bien. 1, 2, 2
And so on, shewing that in the year 1651, when this was published,
there was no proper determinate stress on any French words. From
this to the xivth century is a great leap, but the very fact that
Chaucer employs his French words in the same way, leads us to
infer that he was accustomed to the same practice in his French
originals, thus :
Trouthe and honour, freedom and curtesie. 46
And evere honoured for Ms worthinesse. 50
Sche was so charitable and so pitous. 143
They fillen gruf and criden pitously, 951
Tathenes, for to dwellen in prisoun. 1025
Oure prisoun for it may non othir be. 1087
Fairest of faire, o lady min Venus. 2223
And ye be Venus, the goddess of love. 2251
1 If the text be correct we find precisely similar cases in Chaucer —
Ful wel sche sang the service devyne. 122
That often hadde been atte parvys. 312
As seyde himself more than a curat. 219
332 E FINAL XIV TH CENTURY. CHAP. IV. $ 4.
It is needless to heap up examples as the fact is well known. It
is dwelled upon by Mr. Skeat,1 but although he names the equable
French pronunciation, he seems to think the final stress in English
words to be due to the French and the change of accent to be en
tirely English. It is more probable that the words were always
pronounced with an equable stress, which allowed of their appearing
in either position, and this was altogether French.
There is at least one English termination which could be placed
either in an odd or even place, namely -ynge, thus in
Syngynge he was mflowtynge al the day. 91
-ynge occurs both in an even and odd place. This termination, as a
true participial form, is difficult to derive from Anglosaxon, where
the termination was -ende, -inde. In the Romaunt of the Rose we
have -ande in an even place —
Poyntis and sleeves be welle sittande
Eight and streght on the hande. 6*69
They shal hir telle hou they thee fande
Curteis and wys, and welle doande 6'83
And in the Canterbury Tales,
Touchand the cherl, they sayd that subtilte 7872
But it occurs in an odd place apparently in —
The God of Loue delyverly
Come lepande to me hastily. 6-59
and in the Canterbury Tales,
Ther is ful many an eyghe and many an eere
Awaytand on a lord, and he not where. 7635
His meyne, which that herd of this affray,
Com lepand in, and chased out the frere. 7738
and by the analogy of all Germanic inflexional syllables it ought to
be unaccented.2
As a verbal noun the -ynge came directly from Anglosaxon, and
it occurs in an even place so early as Genesis and Exodus.
pride and giscinge of louerd-hed. v. 832
Chaucer therefore apparently took the liberty of placing French
words, foreign names, and English words with heavy terminations,
as -ynge, -nesse, and some others,3 in any part of his line which
1 In the additions to Tyrwhitt's pre- The change of form of the present par-
liminary Essay, Mr. Morris's edition of ticiple is carefully noted in Koch, His-
Chaucer, vol. 1, 172-196. Bell and torische Grammatik der Englischen
Daldy, London, 1866. See the list of Sprache, vol. 1, p. 342, to which I am
words given hy Prof. Child in his indebted for the references to the
Essay, reproduced in the next section, Eomaunt of the Eose, the text of which
art. 99. Prof. Child cites as "Ex- however, is unfortunately very doubt-
amples of the French accent," which ful (p. 252). The form -ende is very
he evidently regards as lying on the common in Gower, and is generally
last syllable — accented. See Prof. Child's observa-
ther was discord', rancour', ne hevy- tions in the next section, art. 64.
nes'se. 8308 =» Prof. Child loc. cit. art. 99, also
glori and honour', regn'e, tresor' and notices felaw'e 2550, &c., fel'aw 650,
rent(e) 15697 melle're mylle're 544, 3167; mel'er
2 Mr. Skeat accents it (ib. p. 185). 3923, &c., yeman' 6962, ye'man 101.
CHAP. IV. § 4. E FINAL XIV TH CENTURY. 333
suited Ms convenience, most 'probably pronouncing them with an
even stress on each syllable, which in process of time became trans
formed into a double method of accentuating. For English words
generally the usual Germanic rule of the stress on the radical syl
lable apparently prevailed.
Chaucer's verse seems to consist generally of five measures, with
or without a final unaccented syllable, forming a "feminine rhyme,"
added at the pleasure of the poet. There is no trace of the strict
alternation of couplets with masculine and feminine rhymes which
distinguishes French verse of the classical period. Each measure
properly consisted of two syllables, with more or less stress on the
last, but each syllable might also have nearly the same stress. In
the first measure the chief stress was often on the first syllable, as
Bright was the day and bliew the firmament 10093
Mr. Skeat has pointed out (ib. 174) that the first measure might
consist of a single syllable, which then ought to have a certain
stress, or at least be followed by a decidedly unaccented syllable, as
May with all thyn floures and thy greene. 1512
Ther by aventure this Palamoun. 1518
Now it schyneth, now it reyneth faste. 1537
His example
I make pleynly my confessioun,
That I am the woful Palamoun. 1737
can scarcely be correct, as such a reading would be quite destruc
tive of the sense, for that, am, must be without stress, and /must
have the stress. The line is therefore corrupt. Tyrwhitt reads
ihilke for the, another mode of correction would be
That I am he, the woful Palamoun,
That hath thy prisoun broke wikkedly.
Probably Mr. Skeat is right in admitting a monosyllabic first
measure, but it should not be accepted in any particular case,
unless the single syllable it contains has a decided stress.1
In the modern verse of five measures, there must be a principal
stress on the last syllable
of the second and fourth measures
or of the first and fourth measures
or of the third and some other measure.
1 The first line of the Canterbury The Harleian 7333 has [swoote
Tales seems to belong to this category. "Whanne J>* Aperyll w* his shoures
The Harleian 7334 reads [swoote where whanne is an Anglosaxon form.
Whan that aprille with his schowres Caxton's first edition reads [sote.
where the italicised e has no authority, Whan that APP^1 ™th his shouris
compare Averil 6128, but is also found And Pynson's edition 1493, has [sote
in the Corpus MS. Oxford. The Whan that Aprille with his shoures
Hengwit MS. reads— [soote Marking the monosyllabic first measure
Whan that Aueryll wiw his shoures , T, , . T , , , r
by Italics, I would read [swote
Whan that April with his schoures
Whan that April!, w* his schoures swote
The Lansdowne 851 has [soote Similarly
Whan J>at April wy)>e his schoures Al bysmoterud with his haburgeon. 77
334 E FINAL — XIV TH CENTURY. CHAP. IV. § 4.
There is also generally a stress upon the last syllable of the fifth
measure, hut if any one of the three conditions above stated are
satisfied, the verse, so far as stress is concerned, is complete, no
matter what other syllables have a greater or less stress or length.1
It is a mistake to suppose that there are commonly or regularly,
five stresses, one to each measure.2
This rule of stress is necessarily not so strictly carried out in
Chaucer, who was provided with a number of words having even
syllabic stress. But on examination it will be found to hold toler
ably well. There are however many lines in which so many syl
lables come together, with little or no stress, that unless they are
read somewhat sylldbically rather than by measures, or stress, we
fail to feel their rhythm. Thus
That every of you schal go wher him lest. 1850
may be accented on the italicised syllables, (first and fourth mea
sures), in which case of you schal go would be passed over lightly, or
else the whole line may be read with an even stress like a French
verse, and this seems the more probably correct method.
Any measure may occasionally consist of three syllables, but in
this case the two first are always very light. In
"Wyd was his pan'scA, and houses fer asondur. 493
Biforn me sorwful wreccheA creature. 1108
the third italicised measure has three syllables. In such cases it
will be generally found that the first syllable is merely an in
flexional or derivative e, en, er.
It is not usual in modern verse to have two trissyllabic measures
in the same line, or if they do so occur they must be widely sepa
rated. It is also not customary in modern verse, but it is not un-
frequent in Chaucer, to give three syllables to the fifth measure, as
Than with an angry woman doun in a lious. 6361
As wel over hir houshond as over his love. 6621
I
1 The length of syllables has much lines of Lord Byron's Corsair, marking
to do with the force and character of the even measures by italics and the
a verse, hut does not form part of its relative amount of stress by 0, 1, 2,
rhythmical laws. we have —
2 Take for example the first sir
10120002 13
O'er the glad waters of the dark blue sea
1 1 02000202
Our thoughts as boundless, and our souls as free.
SOO 1020102
Far as the breeze can bear, the billows foam,
010200020 2
Survey our empire, and behold our home !
zoo i 21000 2
These are our realms, no limtV* to their sway —
1202011202
Our flag the sceptre all who meet obey.
The distribution of stress is seen to and others might think that it would
be very varied, but the action of the be sufficient to mark stress and no
rules given in the text is well marked. stress. The last line most nearly ap-
Different readers would probably differ preaches to haviug five principal
as to the raaos 1 and 2, in some lines, stresses.
CHAP. IV. $ 4. E FINAL XIV TH CENTURY. 335
If gentiles were plaunted naturelly. 6716
For vileyn synful deedes maketh a cherl. 6740
That will nought be governed after her wyves.1 6844
Besides the stress, the caesura plays an important part in modern
verse. This consists in terminating a word, at the end of the
second measure or in the middle of the third, or else more rarely at
the end of the third or middle of the fourth measure. Words
forming a logical whole must in this case be considered as parts
of the same word. Thus Chaucer's
That slepew al the night — with open yhe. 10
(where the even measures are italicised) has the caesura (marked by
a dash) after night, the end of the third measure, not at al, or the,
because al the night has the effect of a single word.
If we now read Chaucer's lines with the pronunciation obtained
in our previous investigations, we shall find it very difficult to say
in general where the final e, when written, may not be sounded.2
But the principle of economy would lead us to avoid the use of
trissyllabic measures where they are not agreeable, or where they
would be too frequent.
Final e arises in Chaucer3 from nearly the same sources as in
German :
1) as a substitute from some original final vowel — essential E
2) as a mark of plural, oblique case, or definite adjective — inflec
tional, oblique, definite E
3) as a mark of adverbs — adverbial E
4) as a mark of the infinitive mood and gerund, past tense of
weak verbs, and imperative mood — verbal E
5) as a representative of the French final e — French E.
1 The trissyllabic measures in 6621 precisely the same rhythm in a line in
are avoided by reading o'er for over, Goethe's Tasso, act 1 :
as in modern times, and in 6740 by ein neu Hesperien
reading mak'th. Uns dustend bildew, erkennst du sie
nicht alle
2 "It is difficult to point out in- FiirholdeFruchte einer wahrenLiebe?
stances where the -e final is not sounded (ain n°y Hespee-rim
but it appears to be silent in dore 2424, Uns dust'end bild-m, erkenst' du zii
feste 885, regne 879, and beste 1328." ni&ht al-e
Skeat, ibid. p. 183. The reference Fyr nold-e fry&ht-e ain-er bhaa-ren
numbers have been adapted. Now on lii'be ?)
examining these lines — IQ fac* when the caesura occurs in this
The rynSe, on the fcmpnl dor, <*««
on,y e™ a Ms.jUabic 3 —e,
comparable to the above instances before • follow™ vowel. Hence these
where ,1 „ formed mthont a find ,. four instances Jected bjr Mf gl(J
And of the feste that was at hire wed- from the whole of the Knightes Tale,
dynge. 885 come to nothing.
Ther as a beste may al his lust fulfille.
1320 3 Prof. Child's minute examination
have trisyllabic third measures, which of the final E's in Chaucer, is given in
haAre never a bad effect, indeed we have the next section.
336 E FINAL — XIV TH CENTURY. CHAP. IV. § 4.
The use of the final e seems to have been more regular in poetry
than prose, to judge by the prose tales in this manuscript, but this
may be erroneous ; the reason may only be that the scribe, to whom
many of the uses of e final had become obsolete, had no guide, when
writing prose, to correct his more modern spelling, or, as is more
likely still, at once used the orthography corresponding to his more
recent pronunciation.
The question now arises, was final e ever added on by the poet for
the sake of metre or rhyme, as Goethe apparently added on e in
Glucke as shewn above (p. 323) ? It is possible, but not probable,
as it would have been instantly detected as a weakness, unless it
could be justified as an archaism, like Goethe's, or a colloquialism,
as when zweie, dreie, is said in German, i But the scribe certainly
not unfrequently added on an e when it was not required, shewing
that the value and meaning of the final e was disappearing in his
time. Mr. Skeat calls this "orthoepic" and considers that it has
" solely to do with the length of the preceding vowel" (Ibid. p.
189). I am more inclined to consider it "ignorant," and as point
ing out a later date for the writing of the MS. See the observations
on the Lansdowne MS. 851, supra p. 320, note. It would be im
possible to suppose that the writer of that MS. added on an e in :
wy]?e, haje, suche, whiche, — examples which occur in the first four
lines, — to shew the lengthening of a vowel which was not lengthened.
The following examination of words with final E in the first 100
lines of the Canterbury Tales will give a clearer notion of their
origin and use. To each word is added the number of the line, with
an accent after it when the word is final. From the metre alone it
is of course generally impossible to determine whether the final E
at the end of a line is to be pronounced. Therefore we may, for
the moment, reject all such from consideration. When an apos
trophe is substituted for a final E, it shews that the e is written,
but not pronounced, and is followed by a vowel or enclitic beginning
with h. A double apostrophe shews that the e was written, but
should apparently be omitted for the sake of the metre. When the
word is in italics, it is essential to the metre in the middle of a
verse. Prof. Child's remarks in the next section should be con
sulted by means of the list of Forms of Words in Chaucer and Gower
referred to in Prof. Child's memoirs there appended.
1. Superfluous final E, that is, a final E not required by grammar
or by Anglosaxon usage. ApriHe 1, vertu' 4, nyn' 24, wey' 34,
all' 38, fiftene 61', hethen' 66, mek' 69. Here Aprille 1, is really
not essential to the metre, if we allow of a monosyllabic first mea
sure. Nyne 24, wnAfftene 61', may have assumed the e as numerals,
\5, art. 39. Weye 34, is written wegje in Orrmin, so that the e
was no more an addition of Chaucer's than the e of Gliicke was an
addition of Goethe's. The word occurs frequently without the e,
See Prof. Child on the cases where infra § 5, art. 13, 14, 16, 17, 30 ; and
final e is found in Chaucer in words my footnote on art. 13.
where it does not exist in Anglosaxon,
CHAP. IV. H- E FINAL — XIV TH CENTURY. 337
and should be so written here. Meke 69, frequently requires to
have a final e pronounced, but Orrmin writes meoc, mec without
a final e .
2. French final E, veyn' 3, melodie 9', natur' 11, straunge 13,
pilgrimage 21', 78', corage 22', hostelrie 23, companye 24', aventur'
25, space 35', 87', chyvalrye 45', curtesie 46', siege 56, viage 77',
statur' 83, chivachie 85', grace 88', servysable 99', table 100'.
3. Essential final E, that is, already existing in Anglosaxon or
used as a substitute for some other vowel or syllable in Anglosaxon ;
the Anglosaxon form is given immediately after the word : swoote
swete 1', swete swete 5, sonne sonna 7', ende ende 15', her" hira 32,
tym' tima 35, tale talu 36, inne innan 41', trouth' treow^e 46, werre
werre 47', ferre feorra 48', mayde maeden 69', son' sunu 79, hop"
hopa 88, mede, medu 89', goun" (old friesic gone) 93, nightingale
nihtegale 98'. In here = their 32, the e seems to have been scarcely
ever pronounced. Though hope 88 may have been merely (noop),
the e may have been sounded (Hoop'e) producing a trissyllabic second
measure
In hope to stonden in Ms lady grace. 88
In goune there is no Anglosaxon authority, the e was not required
and perhaps not pronounced.
4. Verbal final E, that is a final E which arises from the inflec
tions of the verb: they wende 16', to seeke 17', wer" thei 26,
wolden ryde 27', hadd' I 31', made 38, to aryse 33', I yow devyse
34', I pace 36', to telle 38, wol I begynne 42', he lovede 45, it was
wonne 51', he hadd" the bord bygonne 52', hadd' he be 56, he
sayde 70', he wente 78, I gesse 82', syngyng', flowtyng' 91, wel
cowd' he sitt', ride 94, cowde mak', endite 95', justn', daunc',
write 96', he lovede 97. Were 26, hadde 56, were frequently, or
generally monosyllabic ; portray 96 should be portraye, but the 0
would be elided ; lovede 45, 97 had the first e elided lov'de (luvde),
and similarly frequently.
5. Oblique final E, that is, e added to form a case or plural of
substantives : to the roote 2', in every holt' 6, in felaschip' 26, 32,
atte beste 29', to reste 30', of ech' 39, in hethenesse 49', for his
worthinesse 50', in presse 81', of lengthe 83', of strengthe 84', by
nightertale 97'.
6. Adjectival final E, that is, an e added to form the plural or
feminine of adjectives, or to make adjectives definite : the yonge
sonne 7', his halfe cours 8, smale fowles 9, feme halwes kouthe' 14,
whan that they wer" seeke 18, thei alle 26', weren weyde 28', our"
34, ful ofte tyme 52, alle naciouns 53, the grete see 59 ; this ilJce 64,
lokkes crull' 81, evene lengthe 83, fresshe floures white and reede 90',
sleeves wyde 93'. Ofte 52 seems here used as an adjective, for manye.
In oure 34 the e does not seem to have been ever pronounced.
7. Adverbial final E, used to form the adverb : off 55, evere*
mor' 67, late 77.
8. Contracted article, atte beste = at the beste, 29', 56.
22
338 E FINAL XIV TH CENTURY. CHAP. IV. § 4.
It is thus seen that if we omit the consideration of final e at the
end of a line, and allow final e to be elided before a subsequent
vowel, we have only 23 cases in the first 100 lines in which the
final e was essential to the metre. These are distributed as follows :
1. Superfluous final E (doubtful) ----- l
2. French final E 2
8. Essential final J?---------3
4. Verbal final E 6
5. Oblique final E ---------0
6. Adjectival final J?---------10
7. Adverbial final E--------- 1
—23
Shewing that the verbal and adjectival final E's were the most
important. When the final E was so seldom required to satisfy
the ear of a scribe who had ceased to use it in speech, we must not
be surprised if he often treated it as an ornament to be added or
omitted at pleasure. This seems to have been the case with all the
later manuscripts.
Now turning from verse, let us examine the use of the final e in
prose, as in the Tale of Melibeus. Here we do not find by any
means so many e's, or such regularity in their use. I refer to the
words by the number of the paragraph containing them, and give
two or three words together tq facilitate reference, italicising the
word under consideration,
mighty and riche 1 has the French e.
upon a day 1 for daye.
him to play 1, for to play e. ,
dores were fast i-shitte 1, pi. part.
olde foos 1, plural adj.
here feet, here, &c. 1, as usual.
nose 1, ags. nasu.
rendyng 2 for rendynge, the final e is here constantly omitted, and it
is not always inserted in verse,
gan wepe and crie 2, infinitive e, this is generally correctly inserted,
but the gerund e is often omitted,
as she dorste 2, verbal e.
of his wepyng to stynte 2, the gerund e is correct, the oblique « is
omitted, so again, of here wepyng to stinte 3 : but, what man
schulde of his wepynge stynte 4. The oblique e of the dative
we found most frequently omitted in German, and it is clear
that after a preposition which shewed the connection sufficiently,
the inflection could be readily dispensed with.
Remedy of Love 3 for remedye. We have already noticed in the
poetry many cases in which y final had been written for ye in
French words. It is very possible that in these words the use
of the final e rapidly dropped from speech, and that then the
words had final long (it). See p. 283. Love, ags. lufu, has
always retained its e, although the o may have been short (u)
in the xiv th century ; it is long in Orrmin.
CHAP. IV. § 4. E FINAL — XIV TH CENTURY,
of hir childe 3, oblique e, but childe is constantly found with e even
when not oblique.
hirfille 3, this seems a superfluous e, ags. fyll plenitudo.
diligence amyable 3, have the French termination,
hir housbonde 3, ags. husbonda, is regular,
in this wise 3, ags. wise.
youre self 3, usual form, but e not pronounced.
forsothe 3, adv. e, or else for sothe, oblique e.
to a wys man 3, ags, wis, distinct from the former wise. The
oblique e is here omitted.
such sorwe 3. Orrmin has serrghe, but there is no e in ags. eorg,
sorh, which should only form sorw, from sorwh — (sorkwh),
compare sorwful 4,
ye ne oughte nought 3, past tense,
youre silf destroys 3, infinitive e.
The wise man 3, definite adjective, compare the indefinite a wys
man above.
his owne persone 3, owne feminine 0, and persone French e.
answerde anoon and sayde 4, past tenses.
And whan thou hast for-gon thy frend, do diligence to gete another
frende, and this is more wisedom than to wepe for thy frend,
which thou hast lorn, for therein is no boote 4. The spelling of
frend is very careless, the first time it is right, the two following
times it is reversed, frende frend for frend frende. To gete, to
wepe are gerunds. Wisedom is an error for wisdom. Boote, old
norse byti.
out of youre hert . . . glad in herte 4, ags. heorte, hence the first
spelling is incorrect. Orrmin has heorrte, Jterrte ; hert would be
a stag. It is singular that heart, hart are now distinguished by
an e, but the e is put in the wrong part of the word. In German
herz is a contracted form, and herze is occasionally used in poetry,
o.h.g. herza, goth. hairto (Her 'too),
It is not necessary to continue this examination. Sufficient has
been adduced to shew that the system of final e is the same in prose
as in verse, so that it has not been invented by the poet or his scribe
to patch up a line where necessary. If an editor of Chaucer would
carefully examine all the final <?'s, restoring all those grammatically
necessary, and ruthlessly omitting, or at least typographically in
dicating, all those which neither grammar nor derivation allow,
when they were not necessary for the metre or rhyme, and then
submit the others to a careful consideration, he would do the study
of English great service. The elaborate researches of Prof. Child,
described in the next section, have smoothed the way for such an
edition, and in Chapter VII I have endeavoured to carry out this
suggestion for the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, in a method
there explained, and in an orthography which the present examina
tion has suggested. The careful examination of every verse thus
rendered necessary has resulted in convincing me that Chaucer and
Goethe used the final e in precisely the same way, with the solitary
exception of the consistent elision of e before a vowel and silent h.
340 E FINAL — XIV TH CENTURY. CHAP. IV. § 4.
This conclusion is in harmony with the historical position of
Chaucer. He was not the first or the only writer of smooth verses
in English. Orrmin's are as regular as any written at the present
day, and he treated his final e in precisely the same manner as
Chaucer, making the same elisions. "We shall find the same prin
ciple marked in the other versifiers of the XTTT th century. Gower,
Chaucer's contemporary, carries out the use of the final e even to a
greater extent than Chaucer. As Gower wrote also in French, this
greater regularity may be attributed to French influence, but we
must remember that the French final e at that time must have been
regularly and distinctly pronounced in common conversation as well
as in verse, or it would not have formed a part of Meigret's phonetic
prose in the middle of the xvi th century.
Although Chaucer, by the mere force of his genius, became the
apparent founder of our English poetry, — few ever thinking of the
equally smooth but insufferably tedious Gower, — he was in fact the
last, not the first of a period. The wave of civil war passed over
the country after his death, and when poetry again rose under
Spenser, the language was altered in idiom and in sound, and
Chaucer could only be 'translated,'1 not imitated. A new versi
fication suited to the new form of language rose to majesty in
Spenser, Shakspere, Milton. Hence we must not look upon
Chaucer as an innovator, and the justification of his final e must
not be sought for in an imitation of the French, but in the custom
of all the versifiers which preceded and accompanied him.
Acting upon this feeling I have examined what would be the
result of this theory upon the pronunciation of Chaucer's lines, and
the mode in which I have printed the Prologue to the Canterbury
Tales in Chap. VII, having given great facilities for performing
the calculation, I have drawn up the following table. It must be
remembered that the text in Chap. VII does not precisely accord
with any manuscript, a few simple alterations having been made where
the metre seemed to require it, but the general results will not be
at all affected by these changes. The enumeration is by no means
easy to make, as different opinions may be entertained of the cate
gories under which elisions or retentions should be classed, and it
is not possible to check it without taking far more trouble than the
results deserve. In the present case the enumeration has been made
twice, at considerable intervals, and the text was corrected between
the two enumerations. The results differed, but not in any way to
affect the conclusions to be drawn from them. The second series of
numbers are here given because they refer to the text as it stands, but
I would by HO means guarantee their absolute correctness, although
they were obtained with care.
1 Dryden's and Pope's 'translations' Eottome, blesse thee; thou are trans-
of Chaucer, remind one irresistibly of lated." — Mid. N. Dream, act 3, sc. 1,
Quince's exclamation: 'Blesse thee speech 41.
CHAP. IV. § 4. E FINAL — XIV TH CENTURY. 341
Final E was pronounced — Times.
Before a vowel, doubtful : th'olde Esculapius 429 - 1
Before a consonant - - 238
At the end of a line, that is, it is consonant with strictly
preserving the grammatical inflection, and the essen
tial final E, with the rhyme, and with the cases last
numbered, to suppose that it was pronounced in this
position - 420
Final ES was pronounced —
In the middle of a line - 87
At the end of a line - 37
Final E was elided —
Before a following vowel, always, with only one doubt
ful exception, v. 429 - - 315
Before Tie 92, his 22, him 13, hir' 6, her1 4, hem 1, hadde
7, have 1, how 1, with one doubtful exception before
he : that on his schyne a mormal hadde he 388, and
none for the other words, except hadde, how, have,
which have not been noted, total - - 147
Final ES was treated as simple S —
In the middle of a line - - 18
Final E was regularly elided —
In hadd' (with 12 exceptions: v. 253, 286, 310, 373,
379, 386, 447, 464, 554, 677, 700, 760, as num
bered in Chap. VII, where the numbers sometimes
differ by 2 from Wright's) -
In hir* = her, without exception
her* = their, without exception
wer' — were, one exception noted: woo was his cook,
but if his sauce were 351 -
our* = our, without exception
your1— your, without exception
Final E was arbitrarily elided —
as in modern German poetry, for the sake adding force to
the expression, for the metre or for the rhyme, either
at the end of a line or before a consonant—
when the mark of the oblique case 37
when the mark of verbal inflexion - - 17
when essential, or representing a final vowel in an
anterior stage of the language - - 13
Final E was arbitrarily added —
for the sake of rhyme or metre, in no case noted.
These enumerations enable us to lay down the following rules for
the pronunciation of final E, which would have to be verified by a
wider field of research, and as they agree essentially with the
results of Prof. Child's more elaborate examination, — see the next
section, arts. 74 to 92, — they probably represent the practice of
the court dialect in the xrv th century as nearly as we can hope to
attain. There is reason to suppose that the e final had been long
much neglected in the Northern dialect.
PROF. CHILD ON CHAUCER AND GOWER. CHAP. IV. § 5.
Final unaccented e, when essential or inflectional was re
gularly pronounced, except in the following cases :
1. It was regularly elided before a following vowel.
2. It was regularly elided before a following he, his, him,
hir', her', hem, and occasionally before hadde, have,
how, to which Prof. Child adds hath and her = here.
3. In the following words, e though generally written was
never sounded, hir' = her, Mr* = their, our' = our,
your' = your.
4. Final e was frequently not sounded in hadd, wer', tim,
mor'
5. Occasionally, but rarely in comparison to the other
cases of elision, essential or inflectional final e was
elided to render the expression terser, or to assist the
metre or rhyme, precisely as in modern German
poetry, but not so frequently as in German. The
oblique e and essential e were most frequently dropped,
as is also the case in German ; the e of verbal inflec
tion was seldom omitted.
By the elision of final e is meant its absolute suppression
as in German, Greek, and French, not its rapid or slurred
utterance as in Italian and Spanish. But there may be
many cases of the fifth exception in which the elision may be
saved by introducing a trissyllabic measure, without material
harshness, and it must remain an undecided question whether
Chaucer would or would not have elided the vowel in such
cases. Judging from the practice in German, the elision
seems most probable. For the effect of the action of these
rules in declaiming Chaucer and Gower, reference must be
made to the examples in Chap. VIL
§ 5. Professor F. J. Child's Observations on the Language
of Chaucer and Gower.
In the Memoirs of the American Academy, New Series,
Yol. viii, pp. 445-502, 3 June 1862, and Vol. ix. pp. 265-
314, 9 January 1866 (subsequently revised so that it may
be considered as dating from Nov. 1867), Professor Francis
James Child, of Harvard College, Cambridge, Massachusetts,
U.S., has given the results of an elaborate and searching
examination into the language of Chaucer's Canterbury
Tales as exhibited in Wright's edition of the Harl. MS.
7334, and Gower's Confessio Amantis as edited, from no one
manuscript in particular, and with an arbitrary system of
CHAP. IV. $ 5. PROF. CHILD ON CHAUCER AND GOWER. 343
spelling justified by no single manuscript, by Dr. Reinhold
Pauli.1 As a large portion of these investigations tend to
wards the discovery of the number of syllables in words, by
determining when the final e was or was not pronounced, or
should or should not be written, the present work would be
incomplete without a full account of them, more especially
as the memoirs themselves are not readily accessible.2
NOTTNS.
Art. 1. Nouns which in Anglosaxon end in a vowel terminate in
Chaucer and Gower uniformly in e.3
2.*4 First declension of Anglosaxon nouns. Neuters. (I. 1. Rask.)5
Ex. Chaucer — eere, yhe, ye. Gower — ere, eye, eie.
1 Supra p. 256, note 1. quently omitted altogether. The words
2 In the Memoir on Gower, for of the author have generally heen re-
§§ 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, tained. This re-arrangement is made
as printed, read 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, with the kind permission of Prof. Child.
28, 29, 30 respectively, as pointed out * In Prof. Child's papers e means
in the corrections to that paper. The an e pronounced, e ane elided, e and e
corrected numhers only are used here. written and not elided hut not forming
The memoirs have heen slightly a syllable in the editions used, [e] an e
abridged, chiefly hy omission, and added by himself, (e) an e which occurs
amalgamated. The long lists of words in Wright's edition, but which he con-
appended without references to certain siders should be omitted. The grave
articles, are given at length in a com- accent (') marks the accented syllable,
mon index at the end, for convenience 4 The asterisk appended to the num-
of casual consultation. When they do ber of an article shews that the full
not appear in this index references are references and explanations of the ex-
generally appended, but the whole of emplificative words are in given the
the references are not always given, final table of Forms of Words in Chaucer
and those to Pauli's Gower are fre- and Gower.
6 The following extract from B. Thorpe's Translation of E. Rask's Grammar of
the Anglo-Saxon Tongue, Copenhagen, 1830, p. 28, will explain these references.
" 49. The following tables will serve as a synopsis of all the regular declensions :
THB SIMPLE ORDER, OK IST DECLENSION.
1. Neut. 2. Masc. 3. lem.
Sing. Nom. -e -a -e
Ace. . . -e -an -an
Abl. & Dat. . -an -an -an
Gen. . . -an -an -an
Plural Nom. and Ace. . . -an
Abl. and D. . . -um
G. ... -ena
THB COMPLEX ORDER.
2nd. Declension. 3d. Declension.
r—
1.
Neut.
2. Masc.
3. Fern.
Sinj
j. Nom.
» (e)
Ace.
J?
»(•)
(e)
Abl. &
:Dat.
-e
-e
-e
Gen.
-es
-es
-e
Plural N. &
A.
5?
-as
-a
Abl. i
bD.
-um
-um
-um
Gen.
-a
-a
-a
1. Neut. 2. Masc. 3. lem.
(e) -u -u
(e) -u -e
-e -a -e
-es -a -e
» (e
» («
-u -a -a
-um -um -um
-a (ena) -a (ena) -ena."
344
PROF. CHILD ON CHAUCER AND GOWER. CHAP. IV. § 6.
3.* Masculines. (I. 2.)
Ex. Chaucer — ape, asse, balke, bane,
bere, bi-leeve, bowe, clifbe, crede, crouke,
cuppe, drope, dwale, fcne, feere, foode,
galle, grame, hare, harre, hawe, hiwe,
housbonde housebonde, hope, hunte,
hyne, knave, knotte, kyte, lappe, leere,
lippe, make, mawe, moone, mouthe,
name, nekke, oxe, poke, pope, pride,
prikke, reeve, schrewe, spearwe, stake,
steede, steere, sterre, stikke, tene, tyme,
wele, welle, wete, wille, wrecche. —
blosme, gere, schoppe, stele, webbe,
4.* Peminines. (I. 3.)
Ex. Chaucer — almesse, arwe, belle,
berye, cappe, cheeke, chirche, cloote,
cote, crowe, deepe, dowfe, erthe, flye,
glose, harpe, heepe, heire, herte, hose,
howve, larke, lilie, mare, masse, myte,
nightyngale, oule, panne, pipe, pirie,
pisse-myre, pose, rake, rose, scheete,
schere, schire, schyne, side, snare, sonne,
swalwe, targe, throte, tonge, tonne,
trappe, wake, wenche, wicche-craft,
wone, wright'. Gower — ape, asse, bere,
be-leve, bonde-man, bowe, crede, cuppe,
drope, dwale, fere, flete, fode, fole,
falle, gere, grame, hare, herre, hewe,
ope wan-hope, huse- (house-)bonde,
knape knave, lappe, like, lippe, make,
mone, name, necke, onde, oxe, pese,
pope, pricke, pride, see, shrewe, snake,
sparke, spore, stake, steede, stere, sterre,
stikke, swere, tene, thombe, time, wane,
wele, welle, wille, wone, wrecche. —
cope, hunte, like, wan[e], wrenne.
wise — birch', tapstere. Gower — almesse,
arwe, belle, blase, cheke, chirche, crowe,
crumme, deepe, erthe, harpe, herte,
hitte, kerse, lilie, lunge, masse, mite,
molde, nettle, nightingale, nonne, oule,
panne, pipe, resshe risshe reisshe, se
see, shete, side, sive, sonne, swalwe,
throte, tonne, tunge, wacche, weke,
wicche-craft, wenche, wise. — lappe-
winke, more, sale.
5.* In the following the final e has been absorbed by y or w. In the
following the final e seems to have been transposed from after I (as is
often the case after r). Gower* — The following may or may not be
correctly written. The combination of a liquid with e is unstable,
the vowel easily slipping from one side to the other of the consonant.
Ex. Chaucer — play, lady, sty : her- fithul, ladel, wesil, whistel. — nevew. —
berw herberwh herbergh, widow widw: Gower — throstel, nedder, adder.
6.* Exceptions to art. 3, 4.
Ex. Chaucer — pith, beech, kers, stot. Gower — laverock, to(e), roo.
7.* Second declension of Anglosaxon nouns. Masculines. (II. 2.)
Ex. Chaucer — awe, bale, cheese, mayd, mete, see. Gower — bale, breche,
ende, hate, hegge, herde, hyve, ire, brimme, chele, chese, ende, hate, herde,
leche, lye, mede, myre, pilwe - beer, ire, leche, love -drunke, mede, mele,
reye, skathe, tete, whete — come, mere- mete, shipe, slitte, stede, tete, tie, whete.
8.* Exceptions to art. 7. Termination -schipe. The length of the
words compounded with this termination may perhaps account for
the final e being soon dropped. Termination -ere in Saxon nouns
signifying for the most part an agent. It is quite as likely as not
that in 544, 3167, 2 the final e of mellere was pronounced. Gower —
Such representatives as occur of the Saxon noun in -ere, denoting
an agent, seem to want the final vowel. Nouns of this kind were
by no means as common in the old language as in the modern. I
have noticed but three fair cases in Gower. There are other in-
1 Paragraphs introduced, by the word
Gower followed by ( — ), are taken from
the memoir on Gower, the other being
from the memoir on Chaucer, but
occasionally paragraphs are headed
Chaucer — for greater distinctness.
2 The simple numbers refer to the
lines in Wright's edition, as through
out this chapter, supra p. 256.
CHAP. IV. § 5. PROF. CHILD ON CHAUCER AND GOWER. 345
stances without the final e, but in these cases the succeeding word
begins with a vowel, and it is supposable that the e may have been
elided. It is doubtful whether these words should be called excep
tions to art. 7 ; for, in the first place, the metre does not settle the
question of their form, inasmuch as clappere, for instance, would
suit the verse (which hath no clapper for to chime, ii 13 '), as well
as clapper ; and secondly, for few, if for any of them, can we show
a form in -ere in the Saxon dictionary.
Ex. Chaucer — felawschipe1, friend- founder, soth(e)-saier, speker in, fisher
schipe', lordschipe, worschip : carter, in, furtherer of, maker of, techer of,
hopper, loverS, mellere miller, outry- keper unarraied.
dere, sleper, wonger. Gower — clapper,
9.* Third declension of Anglosaxon nouns. Neuters. (III. 1.)
Ex. Chaucer — ale, ancle, mele, spere, riche worlde-riche, skille skill, spere,
werre, wyte — stree. Grower — ale, werre, wile, wite — kne, stre, tre — be-
chinne, inne, -riche heven-riche kinges- yete, winge.
10.* Masculines. (III. 2.)
Ex. Chaucer — lake. Gower — sone sone, wode.
11.* Feminines. (III. 3.)
Ex. Chaucer — breede, care, elde, dore, highte, mayne. Gower — answere,
fare, gappe, hele, hete, lawe, nave, brede, care, dore, elde, fare, heighte,
nose, sake, sawe, schame, schonde, hele, hete, lawe, leese, lode, love, nase,
schadwe schawe, scole, sowe, spade, nutte-tre, sake, sawe, schame, shawe,
tale, tal£ yit, trouthe trouthe, ware — scole, spade, tale, trouthe.
12.* Exceptions. It will be noted that the nouns sone and love
have the final e regularly in Gower, contrary to the apparent rule
in Chaucer. The same is true of the important word time, art. 3.
Ex. Chaucer — sone sone, woode woode" ; answar, love lovS.
13. Many nouns which in Anglosaxon end in a consonant have in
Chaucer and Gower the termination e, derived from an oblique case
the old inflection. A few familiar parallel formations in other
modern languages may be mentioned. Lat. radix, Ital. radice;
animal, animale ; cupido, cupidine ; imago, immagine ; nix, neve ;
latro, ladrone ; honor, onore ; libertas, libertate ; voluptas, volut-
tate. So in colloquial Eomaic, as compared with Greek : — Greek,
\a/ji7rds, Eomaic, Xa///7raSa; fflv, yfiva; vv%, vvicra.
Two forms not unfrequently occur ; one with, and the other with
out the vowel. By the dropping of this vowel in later English, the
primitive form is restord. Though this secondary, transitional form
in e is found in Layamon and the Ormulum (quite frequently with
Feminines of the second Saxon declension), yet it is by no means so
common as in Chaucer.
As it is possible that some may think the forms in e of the Mas
culine and Neuter nouns to be oblique cases of a nominative, which
(if it occured) would be found to end in a consonant, the gramma
tical relations of these words are always indicated, but this (pro
bably superfluous) trouble has not been taken with the Feminines.2
1 This mode of citation refers to 2 On examining Prof. Child's lists in
Pauli's edition of Gower, vol. ii, p. 13. §§ 14, 16, 17, 30, I have obtained the
346
PROF. CHILD ON CHAUCER AND GOWER. CHAP. IV. § 5.
14.* Masculines and neuters of the second and third declensions
(II. 1, 2, III. 1, 2). Gower — Most, if not all, of the following, and
many other nouns of the same declensions, are found in the primi
tive form without the vowel. In many instances the terminal e
might he explained as the Saxon dative inflection, hut it will he
found on inspection that ahout half of the nouns in the list occur in
the nominative or accusative case.
Ex. Chaucer — bedde, berne, bisse-
mare, bladde, borwe, botme, brede,
brembre, bronde, carte, childe, corne,
croppe, cultre, dale, donge, drynke,
feere, feme, folde, foote, fyre fyr, gate,
golde, grave, grounde, grove, -nede
bretherhede chapmanhede cbildhede
falsbede manbede maydenhede wom-
manhede, heede, herne, hevene, hewe,
bole, -bolme, house, kynne, leeke,
liche, londe, loode, loone, lyste, lyve,
morne morwe, mynde, othe, schippe,
sithe, sleepe, smoke, sore, sothe, spelle,
stalle, style, swyne, temple, tothe,
towne, wawe, wedde, werke, weye,
wbelpe, whippe, wife, wronge, yere —
arme, bore, cole, derke, dom£, fissbe,
keepe, mele, schepe, sigbhe, swoune,
teere, walle, wyne wyn. Gower —
bedde, bede, berde, berne, bore, bore,
borwe, bote, botme, browe, carte,
cbilde, clerke, cole, cope, dale, dawe,
dele, dethe, dome, drinke, fee, fere, fire,
flesshe, flete, folde, folke, fote, gate,
golde, grave, grounde, -hede -node
falshede godhede hastihede kinghede
knighthode knigbtlibede ladyhede lik-
lyhede maidenhede manhede susterhede
wif(e)bode womanhede, hewe, home —
the adverb should be spelt horn, ags.
ham, and not home ; at horn is also the
correct form, ags. at ham — horse, house,
kinge, kinne, leefe, liche, limme, life
live, lode, londe, lope, middle, minde,
monthe, mordre, morwe, mote, mouthe,
mule, rede, rore, scorne, sete, shape,
shippe, shotte, shrifte, sithe, slepe,
smoke, sore, sothe, stronde, temple,
thewe, thinge, towne, wawe, wedde,
weie, weighte, whippe, wisdome, wive,
worde, worthe, wronge, yere — sho, fo
— hie, kepe, lette, leve, swoune, were.
15.* The following merely drop a final n (compare Lat. and Ital.
acumen, acume ; certamen, certame ; vimen, vime).
Ex. Chaucer & Gower — eve, game, mayde.
16.* Feminines of the second declension. (II. 3.) These nouns
have in Anglosaxon all the ohlique cases of the singular in e.
Ex. Chaucer — beere, bene, boone, halle hallS, heede, helle belle1, helpe
boote, brigge, bryde, burthe, bynne, helpc", heste best, hyre huyre, keye,
dede, doune, drede, fille, gifte, gleede, kynde man-kynde, lengthe, leve, lisse,
following results for Chaucer — 1 have
not examined the instances in Gower
because of the great uncertainty of
Pauli's text. If we reject those nouns
which are only found in oblique cases,
those whose final e is elided before a
vowel, those which occur at the end of
a line where the final e of the rhyming
word may have been omitted for the
rhyme, those in which -re may have
been written for -er, those in which e
may have been a connecting vowel in
compounds as in lichewake 2960, and
those in which the authority of Orrmin
shews that a final e had long been as
sumed, the long list of masculines
reduces to the following : childe 5339,
14980, foote 11489, hewe 1366, lyste
1864 (which should apparently be
lystes as in 1861), morwe 14710, sothe
12590 (probably an adverb) swyne
16972, wawe 4888, wife 6648. In the
feminines we should also omit the ac
cusative which had an e in Anglosaxon.
They reduce to : bryde 9764, gifte
9167, lengthe, 17302, merthe 768
(plural ?), schipne 2002 (probably an
error for schipen), spanne 155 (the ac
cusative of dimension F), tyle 7687
(probably accusative), youthe 2381 and
frequently. The adjectives reduce in
the same way to : bare 8755 (feminine ?),
blewe 566, eche 1184 (ech would only
give a monosyllabic first measure),
longe 1575, lowde 10582 (feminine?),
merye 208 (Bosworth gives an ags.
form mirige), shorte 6206 (not in Harl.
7334), tame 2188, wete 2340.
CHAP. IV. § 5. PROF. CHILD ON CHAUCER AND GOWER.
347
bonde, bone, bote, brigge, cbeste, dede,
drede, egge, fille felle fulle, filthe, for-
gifte, glede, glove, halle, halfe halve,
hede, hele, belle, belpe help, heste,
hinde, hire, keie, kinde, kiste, kithe,
lengthe, leve, linde, lore, marche,mede,
merthe mirthe, mile, nede, -nesse be-
sinesse buxomnesse halinesse idelnesse
rightwisnesse sik(e)nesse sikernesse we-
rinesse wildernesse witnesse, ore, quene
queng, reste, rewe rowe, rinde, rode,
roode, salve, score, shelle, sighte sinne,
sieve, slouthe, sonde, sorwe, soule,
spanne, speche, stempne, stounde,
strete, strengthe, thefte, throwe, tilthe,
tide, warde, wede, wene, while, wombe,
wounde, wrathe, wreche, wulle wolle,
yerde, yifte yefte, youthe, — arist, fiste,
flight, ight, ladder, lefte, liver, nedel,
routhe, sherte, slaught, sleighte, stelth*,
welthe, wierd, wente.
loode-sterre, lore, lydne, lyvere, meede,
melle mylle', merke, merthe, myle,
neede, -nesse besynesse boldenesse
brightnesse clennesse cursednesse drun-
keanesse fairnesse falsnesse goodnesse
hardynesse hethenesse hevynesse holi-
nesse homlynesse lewednesse newefan-
gilnesse schamfastnesse seeknesse siker-
Hesse stedfastnesse warnmesse wikked-
nesse witnesse worthinesse wrecched-
nesse ydelnesse, besynes clennessS
goodnes lewednes lustynes worthines
•woodnes, ore, plyte, pyne, querne, rewe,
roode, schipne, sleeve, slouthe, sonde,
sorwe, soule soule, spanne, speche,
speche, stounde, streete, strenghte,
synne, throwe, tyde, tyle, upriste,
wede, werte, while, wolle, wombe,
wounde, yerde, youthe — asp, booke,
droughthe, lynde, rewthe, scherte,
gleighte, stevene, wilw, wreche. Gower
— banke, bene, berthe birthe, blisse,
17.* Exceptions to art. 16. Gower — Hand, might, night, wight,
are exceptional in Anglosaxon, having the accusative singular like
the nominative : so world, more commonly : lok (constantly mis
spelt boke) i 2, 5 : ii 58 : iii 65, 133, etc. ; lurgh, ii 232 ; iii
292 ; furgh, ii 245, all feminities, are also irregular in Saxon, and
have the accusative singular like the nominative. Chaucer — Nouns
derived from Saxon feminine nouns in -ung, -ing, or formed in imi
tation of such, terminate inLayamon mostly in -inge, rarely in -ing.
In the Ormulum the termination is almost invariably -inng, but one
or two have the nominative, and three or four an accusative in -innge.
The more usual ending in Chaucer is certainly -yng. The termina
tion -ynge occurs frequently at the end of a verse, and in most cases
rhymed with an infinitive. Gower — Nouns derived from Saxon
feminines in -ung, -ing, or formed in imitatiou of such, generally
have in Gower the termination -Inge, less frequently -ing : in the
latter case the accent is sometimes thrown back.
Ex. Chaucer— aldir, ax, bench, bliss werkynge all rhymed with infinitives
blisse, box, chest, curs, fann, fist fest,
fitt, flight, floor, hand hond, heeth,
hen, mark, might, milk, night, ok ook,
queen, sight, rest, soken, tow, wight,
world, nouns in -yng &xyng begynnyng
clothing coming cdnnyng dwellyng
fightyng hangyng harpyng huntyng
loking longyng makyng offryng r&n-
nyng smylyng teching wandryng wep-
yng wonyng writyng wynnyng, lernynge
turneynge, vanysschynge walkynge, ca-
rolynge connynge dawenynge enven-
ymynge felynge lyvynge moi-wenynge
oflrynge rejoisynge semynge taryinge
synge brynge stynge sprynge [and with
the exception of felynge 16779 all ob
lique]. Goiter — axel bench bride flight
flor(e) hen hond les might milk night
plite" sped(e') tow wight world, nouns
in -inge axinge bakbitinge carolinge
childinge cominge compleigninge
grucchinge knoulechinge lesinge lik-
inge lokinge mishandlinge spekinge
tidinge welwillinge weplnge writinge,
beginning knouleching teching, hunt
ing liking waning writing(e) ; excus
ing of, hunting as, sheding of are ap
parently cases of elision — steven.
18.* The following nouns, of etymons more or less uncertain, but
mostly of undoubted Gothic origin, are found in Chaucer and Gower
terminating in e.
348
PROF. CHILD ON CHAUCER AND GOWER. CHAP. IV. § 6.
Ex. Chaucer — brinke, cake, chaffare, dSw[e ?]. Gower — babe, bothe, brinke,
cloke, clowde, cope, daggere, deynte, bulle bolle, cake, chaffare, clowde,
dogge, drake, felawe felaw felawg creple, deinte, felawe felaw felaw
felaw£, gable, jade, knarre, know-leche, felowe, funke, gesse guesse, mone,
kyn-rede, marie, rote roote, sculle, slynge, packe, rote, sculle, snowte, tacle, were,
snowte, stalke, tare, wyndowe wyn- wicke, window.
19.* The unaccented final e of nouns of French origin is sounded
in Chaucer as it is in French verse. Exceptions, however, are fre
quent. Gower — Exceptions are by no means so common as in
("Wright's text of) the Canterbury Tales ; a few exceptions, after
the sounds r aud s, are cited under arts. 84, 9 1/. So in adjectives.
Chaucer — 'It is scarcely necessary to mention that an internal e in
French words is also pronounced, as, comaundement 2871, jug-
gement 780, etc.
Ex. Chaucer— Arcite Arcite", aunte,
best, bille, cause, centre, chambre
chambrg, couche, cynamome, dame
madame ma-dame, doute, Dyane
Dyane, eese, egle, entente entent,
experience experiens, face faas, feste
fest, force forcg fors, fortune, grace
grace1 gras 15242!, haunche, herbe,
heritage, homicide, hoste oste host ost,
joye, juge jugge, male, manere maner,
medecine, nece, persone person, peyre,
phisik, place plac£, plante, pompe,
regne regnS, remembraunce, requeste
request, Eome EomS, sauce, sege, ser-
vise, signe, spouse, tente, trumpe. Adj.
chaste, excellente, nice, pore, riche,
solempne. Gower — abbesse, adventure,
avarice, baptisme, beste, horde, bounde
bonde, bowele, chere, Constance, de-
faulte, deserte, egle, entente,1 envie,
feste, fortune, grace, haste, homicide,
houre, joie, justice, madame, magique,
manere, mappemounde, marriage, ma-
tere, medicine, merveille, message,
mewe, mule, multitude, nature, navie,
offrende, oile, pacience, passage, per
sone, pestilence, phisique, place, pompe,
Eome, spume, vice, virgine, ymage.
Adj. chaste, double, hughe, invisible,
nice = foolish, riche, solempne.
20. The accented final e of Freneh nouns (in modern English, y)
is of course preserved in Chaucer.
Ex. Chaucer — adversite, bounte", on e is due to the editors, and is not in
cherte", clarre', contre, liberte, perre, the MS.]
plente, pryvyte, renome. [This accent
21. The Genitive case, Singular, ends in -es.
Ex. Chaucer — schires 15, cherles iii 86, goddes iii 88, worldes iii 90,
7788, lordes 47, Cristes 480, pigges nightes iii 96, daie's iii 111, bulles iii
702, reeves 601, modres metes kynges 119, kinges iii 146, wives iii 73.
5433-5. Gower — loves iii 85, manne's
The following have, at least sometimes, no termination :
Ex. Dec, I. Chaucer — holy chirche
good 3981, holy chirche blood 3982,
holy chirches feith 11445; his lady
grace 88, oure lady veyl 697, his ladys
grace 9892; the sonne upriste 1053,
the sonne stremes 16240, myn herte
blood 10221, a widow sone 14913.
Gower — the chirche kei i 10, mone
light iii 109 ( perhaps compounds), the
mones cercle iii 109; my lady side i
160, this lady name ii 157, my lady
chere ii 213, my lady kith[e] iii 5,
my lady good iii 30, ladies lovers i 228,
.-hesti84, /- selve i 228, .. doughterii
227, /-mercy iii 18. So, Chaucer — fader
9239, 9012, 15670, 8772, 4036, 9389,
12757, 15423, but fadres 5883, 8738,
8685, 8747, 13626, 783?, 10175?,
14883 ? brothir 3086, 13360?, brothers
11478, modres 15004, philosophre
12790, heven 6763, 10281, 12470,
16282, 13017. Gower— horse i 40,
119, heven ii 187, helle ii 97, soule
i 39; fader i 209, faders i 157,
brother i 199, brothers i 214, mother
i 289, moders ii 354, dougltfer i 208,
doughters i 150.
CHAP. IV. § 5. PROF. CHILD ON CHAUCER AND GOWER. 349
So, many proper nouns in s, as in Anglosaxon and Modern English
Chaucer — Epicurus 338, Peneus 2066, phemus i 166, Bachus ii 358, Phebus
Venus 10586, Melibeus 15382, Phebus lii 250, etc.
17170, Marquys 8870. Gower— Poly-
22. Plural of nouns. Nominative. The Nominative Plural is
formed for the most part in -es ; occasionally in -us or -is, a dialectic
variety. Gower s only is frequently added, especially to nouns
terminating in a liquid or in -t ; sometimes when -es is added
(rightly or wrongly), only -s is pronounced.
Ex. Chaucer — ladies 900, bodyes pens 7158, lazars 245, sellers 248,
1007, knee's 1105, 1877, degrees 17298; achatours 510, pilours 1009, lovers
fowle's 9, domes 325, chiknes 382, 1533 — schoos 359, dys 1240; bisschops
bones 702, fyngres 129; croppe's 7, 4673, keverebefs 455, eaytifs 926;
robes 319, knobbes 635, wyfes 234, reliks 13764, lordyngs lordynge's 7250,
knyfes 368, kaytyves 1719, lewes 1498 ; 15725, yeddynges 237, prechings 6139;
lokke's 76, songes 95, braunches 1069 ; servantes 101, contracted 6890, vesti-
boote's 203, argumentes 4632, orna- mentz 2950, marcbauntz 4568, 4591,
mentes 8134, boundes 146, swerdes arguments 4648, maundementz 6866,
2028; stremes greves drope's leeves instrumentz 9587; greyhounde's 190,
1497-8, brawnes scbuldres armes stiwardSs 581, husbonds 2825. Gower
2137-8, Gower — weies, tirannies, — aungels, cardinals, nations; courts,
thewes, soules, hilles, formes, philo- points i 149, pointes i 151, elements,
sophres, fires, lores, sterres, droppes, jugements, arguments, tiraunts, Sara-
herbes, leves, lives, wives, turves, zins, complexions, masons ; saints,
bokes, clerkes, beinges, tbinges, notes, estat(e)s, craftes, climats, berts hertes
frostes, bestea, flodes, cloudes, hevedes i 325, lovers, flatrours, fethers ; words
= heads, monthes, mouthes. Chaucer i 176, wordes i 151, Grek£s ii 171,
— pilgryms 2850, naciouns 53, bar- Grekes ii 165, knes knees, tres tre£s.
gayns 284, sesouns 349, sessions 357,
23. The following have -en, -n, derived from the Saxon plural in
-an of the 1st Declension : asschen 1304, assen 5867, aissches 12735,
been 10518, bees 7275, eyen yen 152, fleen 16949, hosen 458,
oxen 5867, schoon 15143, schoos 459, ton 16348, toos 16817.
24. The following have -n, -en, by imitation, being of various
declensions in Saxon. Gower — The following, which have the
termination -u in Saxon, have superadded the -en of the 1st Declen
sion to a weakened form of the Saxon plural.
Ex. Chaucer — bretheren 13831, 16317. Gower — brethren, bretheren,
14192; doughteren 11741, doughtres bretbern, bretherne, children, [dought-
16315, sistren 1021, sustres 16353, eren sistren, do not occur] doughteres,
children 1195, 14908, childer 8031, doughter ii 172 ? susters.
14912, foon 16192, foos 15815, kyn
25. The following have no termination in the plural, according to
the rule of the Saxon neuters of the 2nd Declension : deer, folk,
hors, neet, scheep, swin, thing, yer. (The word good added in
Chaucer is corrected in Gower}. So night 7467, wynter 10357, and
probably freend 3052, 3053.
26. The plurals formed by change of vowel are the same in
Chaucer and Gower as in English : feet, gees, men, teeth.
27. The following plurals of French words are remarkable : caas
325, paas 1892, degre 1892, secre 6923 (?) orgon 16337, vessel
15634, but vessealx vesseals 15680, 15687, richesses and riches.
350
PROF. CHILD 0>T CHAUCER AND GOWER. CHAP. IV. $ 5.
28. The Genitive Plural in Chaucer and Gower is much the same
as in English, saving, of course, the use of es instead of s.
Ex. Chaucer — lordes hestes 8405,
lordes doughtres 13488, foxes tailes
15519, bestcs dennes 15749, seintes
lyves 6272, mennes wittes 4622, wym-
mens counseiles 16742, his eyghen sight
10134. Gower — the Grekes lawe, alle
mennes speche, mennes goodes ii 332,
out of all other briddes sight i 100,
princes hevedes, of the goddes pur-
veiaunce.
fire, grene, kinde unkinde, mete unmete,
milde unmilde, neisshe, newe, softe,
eterne, stille, swete, thicke, thinne,
trewe untrewe, un-wylde, yare — all-
(al-)one, one.
ArjjrECTTVES.
29.* Adjectives which end in e in Saxon end in e in Chaucer and
Gower. Several other adjectives might probably be inserted in this
list, but as they are found in the Canterbury Tales only in the
"definite form " (see art. 32), they have not been noticed.
Ex. Chaucer — blithe blithe", clene blithe, a-cale, clene, dere, derne, drie,
clene, dere, derne, drye, elenge, fremde,
grene, heende, kene, kynde, lene, newe,
proude prowd, ripe, scheene, softe,
stille, sterne, swete swote, thenne,
thikke, trewe, un-weelde, white — (all-)
oone, narwe, worthi worthy. Gower —
30.* The following adjectives and adjective pronouns, though end
ing in a consonant in Saxon, have sometimes, or always, the ter
mination e in Chaucer and Gower, resembling the nouns in art. 1 3
(compare Lat. atrox, Ital. atroce ; fallax, fallace, etc.). Gower —
But most or all of the following are found also in the older form,
without the -e. It will be observed that the adjectives in list (a\
are all from monosyllabic Saxon stems, or from contracted dissylla
bles. A few polysyllabic adjectives are also found in Gower with
the termination e. Chaucer — So, as if by dropping the final con
sonant (compare Lat. mortalis, Hal. mortale, etc.): haire 14151,
lyte lite 2629, moche 1810.
Ex. Chaucer — alle, bare, blewe, eche,
evene, faire, fawe, foule, fresshe, grete,
highe, longe, lowde, lowe, merye, olde,
rowe, shorte, suche, swifte, tame, wete,
whiche, wise, wylde wilde wild, ylle,
y-nowe — forme fader, apparently from
ags. frumfader — ware 16094 should be
voof, and chare (chariot) 16996 char,
Fot to be confounded with chare =
jhair 16099. Gower— (a) alle, bare,
bleche, blinde, brode, faire, false, gladde,
grete, leve, lewde, likeliche, longe, lowe,
olde, one [the common forms are on, o;
the misspelling one continually occurs
in Pauli's text], righte, sharpe, stronge,
suche, tame un-tame, thilke, whiche,
wilde, wise; so, moste i 92. — (i) wom-
manishe, bodeliche, diverse, comune,
devoute, secounde ; so, as if by dropping
the final consonant, golde, lite, moche.
31.* The following adjectives of uncertain derivation are found
terminating in e : badde, deynte, dronkelewe, meke, racle, wikke.
32. The Definite Form of monosyllabic Adjectives, including Par
ticiples and Adjective Pronouns (i.e. the Adjective when preceded
by the Definite Article, by any other Demonstrative, or by a Pos
sessive Pronoun) ends in Chaucer and Gower in e.
Ex. Chaucer — th^ yonge sonne 7,
his halfe cours 8, +' Is ilke monk 1 75,
atte (at the) fulle ( 53, thou felle Mars
1561, here hoote love 2321, that selve
moment 2586, thy borne man 9664,
thin false quorel 15932. Gower— the
wise man i 5, this foule greate coise i
100, my faire maide i 154, her dreinte
lord(e) ii 105, thy fulle mind ii 126,
min hole herte ii 277, that stronge
place ii 376, his owne lif(e) i 9 ; so, in
the derke i 190, in the depe i 194.
CHAP. IV. § 5. PROF. CHILD ON CHAUCER AND GOWER. 351
33. So, for the most part, the Definite Form of monosyllabic
superlatives.
34. Among Definite Forms of the Adjective are to be reckoned
adjectives occurring in forms of address (as in Anglosaxon, leofa
fader, etc.).
Ex. Chaucer— ye false harlot 4266, however, that some of these forms be-
indef. fals 1132, goode lemman 4245, long under art. 30. Gower — false
indef. good 514, hut, 0 good Constance cherl!, ha, gode suster ! thou foule
5237, leeve hrother 1186, 0 stronge heste, leve sir, 0 wise Diogene, thou
god 2375, indef. strong 752, 0 yonge proude clerk(e), 0 hihe fader, Oblinde.
Hughe 15095, indef. 79. It is possible,
35. The Definite Form of Adjectives of more than one syllable
has not (generally) the final e. There are however more exceptions
to this rule in Gower than in Chaucer. (a) Comparatives and
Superlatives. (J) Post Participles in -ed, -t, -en. (c) Adjectives
in -ed, -en, -ful, -isch, -ly, -y, etc. (d) Various adjectives of Latin
derivation and terminations.
36. The following exceptions to arts. 32, 33, 35, occur, but many
of the readings are suspicious.
Ex. (a) To art. 32. Chaucer— the 14239, at the, atte, last 11059, 10759,
gret 2387, 2525, 14402, his high 2539 P, 14259, for the best 1849, 9392, 11198,
9534 ?, 14328 ?, the dreynt 4489 ?, the the worst 1616. Gower— the best.—
right 8149, his fals 13001, this good (c) To art. 35. Chaucer— (c) the wo-
14503?, this proud 3167 ? (the proude fullere cheer 1 342, the sorwfulleste man
4311, 16245), this fiers 4720. Gower 9972, the semlieste man, 17051. Gower
his fals, her wrong, her glad, the bright, — (c) this tirannishe knight iii 256, her
the ninth, the seventh, his high lignage, wommanische drede ii 66, thy bodeliche
the high prowesse, his high suffrance, kinde i 271. the hevenliche might i
his sligh compas; but the highe god, 138. (d) the covetouse flatery, this
his highe worthinesse, his slie caste. — lecherous[e] pride iii 259, the parfite
(J) To art. 33. Chaucer — the first medicine, the secounde.
37. The distinction of the French masculine and feminine adjec
tive is preserved in one case, — seint, in Chaucer, seint Jon 5439,
seinte Mary 7186, and may perhaps be noticed in Gower in one or
two cases, — sovereine i 277, iii 360, gentile iii 352.
38. (a) The Comparative Degree of the Adjective is generally
formed in Chaucer and Gower, as in modern English, in -er (S. -re).
— (i) A few Comparatives of " irregular" Adjectives retain the
Saxon e : worse werse, lasse lesse, more bettre. These forms in
-re are all suspicious. Those of three syllables (if correctly spelt)
are contracted in reading, so that the metre does not determine
their validity, and er and re are easily interchanged. — (c] The vowel
change of the " ancient" comparison is found in the following:
lenger 332, elder 15746, eldest 15898, strenger 14240, strengest
15561. — (d) Some analytic forms of comparison are found: mo
slakke 14824, the moste stedefast 9425, the moste deintevous 9588,
the moste free 11926, the moste lusty 17039, the moste grettest.
39. The Plural of Monosyllabic Adjectives ends in e. The same
is the case with some of the Pronouns. So, also, bothe, fele, fewe,
and many of the Cardinal numbers. Those from 4 to 12, inclusive,
took an -e in Saxon when used absolutely except perhaps eahta,
nigon, endlufon.
352
PROF. CHILD ON CHAUCER AND GOWER. CHAP. IV. $ 5.
Ex. (a) Chaucer — blake 559, blynde
4973,colde 1 304, dede 7090, deve 12214,
dulle 4622, goode 3156, hore 7764, hote
9682, reede 90, sadde 17190, sharpe 475,
sclendre 9476, seeke sike 18, slakke
14824, smale 9, stronge 2137, wayke
889, wrothe 1181, wyde 28, yonge 213 ;
so, sworne brethren 6987, gilte cheynes
15850. Most of the singulars occur
without -e, as, blak 913, blynd 10214,
cold 1577, deed 1201, deef 448, good
183, hoor 3876, hoot 7018, reed 1912,
sad 17207, sharp 2005, sclender 16319,
sik 16323, smal 158, strong 637, weyk
14892, wroth 7743, wyd 493, yong 79.
Gower — sharpe notes softe highe lowe
iii 90, blinde, colde, gladde, grete, harde,
i-nowe, loude, olde, save, shorte, smale,
40. The Plural of Adjectives
syllable has no -e.
Ex. (a) Chaucer — corsed stories 4500,
countrefeted letters 5229, weddid men
8498, cered poketts 12736, sieves pur-
filed 193, broken sleepes 1922, colours
longyng 10353, they thankyn galpyng
10668. Gower — furred hodes i 63,
lered men iii 283, no other cases ob
served. (b~) Chaucer — skalled browes
629, lewed wordes 10023, wikked
werkes 5414, wrecched wommen 952,
wrecchede 923 ?, sacred teeres 1923,
golden clothis 5927, cristen men 4800,
open werres 2004, thinges spedful 5147,
woful wrecches 1719, synful deedes
6740, careful sikes 11176, blisful sydes
11971, seely clerkes 4098, mighty
werkes 4898. litel children 4493, bitter
softe, sothe, swifte. (b) Cftaucer —
bothe 1841, fele 8793, fewe 641, othere
othre 3232, but other 7369,suche 8216,
whiche 1015, the two last being occa
sionally used for the singular also.
Gower — bothe, fele, fewe, some, som
men i 21,suche, whiche. (e) Chaucer
— twayne 8526, foure 2141, fyfe 462,
sixe 14585, sevene 7587, but seven
16352, twelve, 4139, but twelf 7839,
threttene 7841, fiftene 61, eyghteteene
3223. Gower — tweine tweie, two iii
195, thre, foure, five, eighte, nine,
twelve, twelve" (twelf P) ii 68, thrittene,
fourtene, fiftene, sixtene, eightetene;
seven, ten, elleven, are undeclined ;
twenty, thritty.
and Participles of more than one
teeres 2227, wiser men 9443, other
men 12672, other 8312 absolutely.
Gower — no dedly werres iii 222, thes(e)
dredfull i 56, thes(e) wofull ii 323, wo-
full teres iii 260, dolefull clothes iii
291, other i 106, etc., these other i 20,
al other i 64, we find another care =
another's care i 167 ; other is some
times undefined in ags. (c) Chaucer —
certeyn yeres 2969, mortal batailles 61,
cruel bnddes 15586, gentil men 6693,
subtil clerkes 9301, parfyt blisses 9512,
jelous strokes 2636, eldres vertuous
6736, pitous teeres 12329, sightes mer-
velous 11518. Gower— hastif rodes ii
56, certein sterres iii 128, gentil hondes
U281.
41. Even monosyllabic participles standing in the predicate are
unvaried in the plural. The same is sometimes the case with mono
syllabic adjectives. Gower — Adjectives and Participles standing in
the predicate sometimes take e in the plural, sometimes are unvaried.
Ex. Chaucer — (a) were hurt 2710, saufe bothe two i 198, hem that were
en went 9575, were
been born 4706,
kept 10003, been maad 2091, ben knyt
11542, ben stert 11689, be brent 13335,
sworn were 13392, were slayn 15525. —
(b) quyk (they were) 1017, were glad
5804 were fayn 2709, which they weren
40, were wroth 8313, (were) lik 16354,
but: blake were 559, were seeke 18,
wayke ben 889, weren wyde, 28, ben
deve 12214, dede were 11493. Gower
— (a) that be greate i 5, ben to smale
i 6, ben un-ware i 17, wittes be so
blinde i 49, to him were alle thinges
couthe i 138, whiche are derke i 63,
they were glade i 79, weren dede i 76,
the gates were shette i 348, we be
him leve i 273, briddes been made ii
80, that him thought* alle women lothg
i 118, have be full ofte sithes wrothe i
52, they shull of reson ben answerde i
61 ; we have even : whan that these*
herbe's ben holsome iii 161, in thinges
that been naturele iii 133, of hem that
weren so discrete iii 167. — (b) hem that
ben so derk i 78, we ben set i 317,
they be shet ii 10, so ben my wittes
overlad ii 21, all men be left i 1 19, hem
that thanne weren good i 11, which
only weren sauf by ship i 38, the thre
were eth to reule 1 60, they were cleped
ii 165, they ben laid ii 245, they ben
corrupt ii 153.
CHAP. IV. § 5. PROF. CHILD ON CHAUCER AND GOWER. 353
42. Exceptions to arts. 39, 40, 41.
Ex. Chaucer— art. 390 brent bones felde" 2926, they be i-mette 5535, been
12687, — 39e enleven 17300,— 40a ler- sette 5538, were made 5702? been
nede men 577? lerned men 14389, maad 2091. Gower— 4Qc of golds and
eyen fast yschette 4980 ? Qu. feste preciouse stones ii 47, his bedes most
schette ? — 40c dyverse freres 7537, dy- devoute i 64, diverse occurs i 56, 252,
verse folk dyversely they seyde 3855, 256, ii 154, 325, iii 26, but is found
divers freres 7532, thay ben so dyvers also in the singular, see art. 30 Ex. b.
7588.— art. 41 been mette 1638? were
43. The following adjectives .(of French origin) exhibit the
French plural in s: places delitables 11211, necessaries as ben
plesynges 5131, waves espirituels, goodes espiritueles, but thinges
espirituel, travailes covenables. Even Palsgrave says (1530) pro-
nownes primytyves, verbes actyves parsonalles. Gower — til they
become so vilains i 28.
44. Of the Genitive Plural of Adjectives there remains a trace in
the word all: here aller cappe 588, your alther cost 801, oure
althur cok 825, alther best 712, alther first 10863; alther werst
i 53 : ii 224 : iii 9 : allthennest i 147, 224, altherbest i 106 : ii 20 :
althertrewest i 176.
PEONOTJNS.
(See also arts. 30, 320, 35c, 393, 44.)
45. Personal Pronouns and their Possessives. Chaucer — Yk,
3865, ich 10037, 3862, 12857, 14362; my, myn; sing, and pi. :
abs. form myn, myne. Thy, thyn sing, and pi., abs. form thyn,
thyne. Hir, hire = her, abs. form heres. Our, oure, abs. oures.
Your, youre, abs. youn?, youres. Her, hir, here = their, abs.
heris 7508 ; hem = them. The Saxon genitives min, ]nn, ure,
eower, are declined (like adjectives) for possessive pronouns, but
not the genitives of the third person. Of the above forms, some
of those in e must be regarded as adjectives declined. Gower — I ;
min, my, abs. min, mine ; me dat. & ace. Thou ; thin, thy, the dat.
& ace. He, his gen. masc. & neut., her gen. fern., abs. hers, ii 287,
her[e]s ii 358 ; him dat. mas., here her dat. fern., him ace. masc.
i 6 etc., hire, here, her ace. fern, commonly her. We, oure, our, us
dat. ac.c. Ye, youre, your, abs. youres, you dat. ace. Her = their,
abs. her[e]s, hem dat. ace. = them. They, their but seldom occurs
and wherever it is found we should doubtless read her ; i 111, i 245,
ii 48, iii 219, i 55, 59, 76, 115 ; them is not found.
46. In Saxon sylf, self, same, was declined like an adjective both
definitely and indefinitely, and agreed with the pronoun to which it
was attached ; as, ic sylf, or ic sylfa, I myself ; be me sylfum, by
myself. The forms ic me-sylf, ]m J?e-self, I myself, etc., also occur.
The following are the combinations of the personal pronouns with
self in Chaucer — myself, myselve, myselven ; thyselven, himself,
himselve, himselven ; hirself, hirselve, hirselven ; youreself, youre-
selve, youreselven; hemself — themselves, hemselven. Gower — my
self, myselfe ; myselfe, myselve, myselven ; thyself, thyselven ;
himself, himselfe, himselfe, himselve, himselven ; herself, herselve,
23
354 PROF. CHILD ON CHAUCER AND GOWER. CHAP. IV. $ 5.
herselven ; usself = ourselves ; hemself, themselves ; my ladies selve
i 228, should doubtless be my ladie, the s being caught from selve :
selfe, preceded by the article, means the same, as in Saxon; the
selfe prest i 48.
47. Demonstratives and others. — Chaucer — that = the, as in : that
oon, that other 1351, 1353, 7603, 9350, 9351, 12151, 12152,
14222, &c., tho = those; oon of tho that 2353; they (their and
them do not occur), thi 1755 should probably be they, thes = these,
this = these, thesS(?) 9150, etc, this«(?) 9110 ; whos genitive. 5062,
5438, 7350, everich, on oon, non noon, pi. noon, abs. noon. Gower —
that = the, the, that dem. sing., tho = those, this, thesg should
be thes, these = these, thilke = that, so = such. Relative that,
which, whiche, whos, whom ; that = that which, what = that
which, the which, which that, etc. = simple which, etc ; who that,
what that, etc. = quisquis, quicumque ; what = whatsoever. Inter
rogative, who, which, what, as in English ; whether = which of two.
Indefinite, somwho = aliquis (once only) i 15.
VEBBS.
48. Present Indicative. The First Person Singular of the Present
Indicative terminates in -e.
Exceptions. Chaucer — I bequethe 14208. Gowtr — hast ben er this I rede
2770 [?], trow 3665, 10527, trowe the leve iii 47, also i 117, though I tell
17312, answer 4892, echrew 7024, fel that I were ded(e) ; (probably incor-
2234 P felg 9332, 9338, hopS 9548 redS, rect) i 299.
49. The Second Person of the Present Indicative ends in -st as in
modern English. But sometimes in -s, in Chaucer not in Gower.
The Second and Third Persons occasionally, but very rarely, end in
Anglosaxon in is.
60. The Third Person ends generally in -eth, -th, occasionally (in
Chaucer not in Gower) in -es (is).
51. But Saxon verbs which have t or d for the last consonant of
the root, and one or two which have s, form the Third Person
Singular in t as in Saxon. Exceptions sometimes occur, a dissyl
labic form being used, as also in Anglosaxon, as sitteth, but this
hardly occurs in Gower.
Ex. Chaucer— sitt sit syt 3641, 3817, heetith, putteth. Gower — writ, smit
etc., set 7564, writ 6291, smyt 7998, let, betit, shet=shoots, spret= spreads,
light 5526, put 13788, bight 1974, byt beholt, put, set, bolt, get, byt, fret, sit,
(bids) 187, 9251, 10605, byt (abides) hit, abit, fint, bint, blent; in a few
13103, rit ryt 10483, 12536, 17011,slyt cases we find d instead of t, stond ii
126 10, chyt 12849, let 8465, stant stont 84, send iii 221, held iii 328; arist,
3677, 7615, etc., fynt fint 4069, 4128, lost lest = loses, wext ; le let it never
etc., grynt 5971, sent 9027, blent 13319, out of his honde, but get him more and
echent, hut 10825, holt halt 9224, ris halt it fast[e] ii 128, he taketh, he
ryst arist 3688, 4685, 5284, kyt(?) 4805. kepeth, he halt, he bint ii 284. Excep-
Exceptions: sittith 1601,byddeth364I, tions; lasteth overcasteth i 317, but
rideth 14734, stondith 14060, kissith we should probably read arist in: the
9822, ryseth 1495, 13662, bihetith, mede ariseth of the service iii 342.
52. The Plural of the Present Indicative ends in Chaucer in eth
CHAP. IV. § 5. PROF. CHILD ON CHAUCER AND GOWER. 355
(ith, tli) ; more commonly in -en, n (yn) ; sometimes in e ; in
Goiver, rarely in -eth, generally in -en, sometimes in -e.
53. Imperfect Indicative. Simple (or "Regular") Verbs, a.
The Imperfect of Simple Verbs is often formed by adding -ede, -de,
or -te to the root, with occasional change of vowel, — as in Saxon.
b. The Imperfect Indicative, in Chaucer often (pernaps more gene
rally), in Gower sometimes, drops the e of the above-mentioned ter
minations, c. The Second Person Singular of the Imperfect Indi
cative of simple verbs is formed in -est, like the Saxon and English.
But thou axid occurs 7064.
Ex. to (c) . The rhyme in several cases asterted converted (part.) 4857, ameevyd
•will shew conclusively that the final e agreeved (part.) 11748, redressed op-
was actually dropped, and not simply pressed (part.) 11748, aspyed allyed
left off by the copyists : brought nought (part.) 16014, ayled i-sayled (part.)
11585, went yhent (participle) 12462, 16586.
54. Imperfect of Strong, Complex or "Irregular" Verbs, (a)
Chaucer. — A few verbs have, besides the Strong Imperfect, a later
form of the other conjugations, e.g. : sleep 98, 5165, 9731, slepte
4192, slept 11033; weep 2823, 2880, 8421, wepte 148; creep
4224, 4258, crepte 4191. The following cases are suspicious, and
some, if not all of them, bad readings : bifelle befille fille 9771,
10390, 10007, 10883, dronke 7643, eete 15703, come (to) 1729
should be: com unto, badde (foure) 4911 (should be: bad the foure).
See has various forms, saw 11503, saugh 193, seigh 852, seyh 957,
say 8543 ; sihe 11162 (if correct) is an instance of an e arising from
the softening away of a guttural. Byngede (the tromp and clarioun)
occurs 2602 ; rong 14077. The conjugation of the Anglosaxon
hringan is uncertain, but it would be strange if a verb weak in
Saxon had become strong in English. Gower — Several Strong or
Complex Verbs have in Gower the Imperfect Tense in e, contrary
both to ancient and present rule ; but how as ever it felle so ii 67,
but: befell i 214, etc., he toke manifold(e) ii 231, he bonde both
her armes ii 318, I came fro ii 98, this ilke tale come iii 350.
(5) Chaucer — The 2nd Person Singular of the Imperfect Indica
tive of Strong Verbs (which in Anglosaxon terminates in e) has
commonly in Chaucer no termination or is the same as the 1st and
3rd, thus : thou bihight 2474, saugh 5268, swor 8372, bar 8944,
11976, spak 12422, 14168, dronk 15712, flough 16717, thou were
16146, 16718, were nere 4786, 13635, 15866, 15888, 15892, 17177,
gave 15937, songe 17226, the e is doubtful in were, gave, songe, and
especially in the two last ; but, knewest 4787, hightest 8372 ?,
bygonnest 12370. Gower — The Second Person Singular of the
Imperfect Indicative of Strong Verbs (which in Saxon ends in e) in
the few cases which occur, either has e, or is the same as the 1st
Person, as : thou sighe, were, were, knewe, come.
55. The Plural of the Imperfect Indicative (both of Simple and
Complex Verbs) ends (<?) in -en, or (i) in -e, or (c] has no termination.
Ex. to (c}. Chaucer — schuld 2543, sayd 7872, remued 11517, herd 14251,
4898, 14233, cried 2564, besought, used 14910, sawgh saugh seigh 4638,
rhymes with nought, 4116, had 6786, 7121, 9565,9678, 13034, began, rhymes
356 PROF. CHILD ON CHAUCER AND GOWER. CHAP. IV. § 5.
with man, 6767, bygon 7142, schon stood i 80, stood i 232, shuld iii 144,
9000, wan 11713, sat 14079, com ran iii 300, wold iii 355, had i 101,
16473, fond 16476, ran, rhymes with wist ii 163, fall ii 380.
man, 16867. Gower — let i 80, under -
56. Subjunctive. The Singular of the Subjunctive, both Present
and Imperfect, uniformly ends in e through all the Persons as in
Saxon. The Plural of the Subjunctive is in -en, -e.
57. Imperative. In Anglosaxon the 2nd person singular of the
Imperative consists of the root of the verb, and terminates therefore,
in what is called the characteristic consonant : except that verbs
whose infinitive is in -tan (1st Conj., 1st class) have the Imperative
sing, in a (as hifian, lufa\ while those which have a double charac
teristic drop one of the consonants and replace it with e (as sittan,
site). The plural of the Imperative is the same as that of the In
dicative, and ends in ath (iath\ when the pronoun or subject goes
before or is omitted, or in e, when the pronoun which is the subject
follows. In Chaucer the Imperative exhibits considerable irregu
larity. The a of the Saxon Imperative singular of the 1st conj. be
comes e, which e is sometimes shortened or suppressed. The full
plural form (in -eth) is of very frequent occurrence ; but sometimes
the 4h appears to be dropped, and very frequently the whole ter
mination. In this case the plural is not to be distinguished from
the singular form, and both are found together. Gower — In those
forms of the singular of the Imperative which end in a vowel, the
vowel is not well preserved in Gower. In Pauli's text an e is
generally appended to the forms which in Saxon end in a consonant;
erroneously, as the slightest inspection will shew.
58. Second Person Singular of Imperative.
Ex. Chaucer — (a) Simple conjuga- the words marked (?) is altogether
tion : aske axe 3557, herkne harke suspicious, and probably should be
9186 herk 7500, grope 7723, knokke dropped. (e) In the following cases
3432, thanke 16172, have 2421 ? have the final e is difficult to be accounted
2227, loke 7169 lok£ 3549, schewe" for, unless an abridged plural form is
7675, mak 3720, telle 7026 telle 3433 confounded with the singular : holde
tel 7345, bygynne 13049, fette 3492, thy pees 9606, (Tyrwhitt has hold
lef 1616 levS 7671 ?, fynd thou 2246, thou), werke by counseil and thou
speed 3562, stynt 3146, keep 6488, shalt nat rewe 3530, ... I praye the ...
red reed 17276, send 2327, plight 6591, as sende love 2319, ne with no wood
thenk 10039, thou bek 17278, recche man walke by the way 7669. Gower
12626?, yelde 13604, wrekg 15391 ? —(a) Forms which in Saxon end in a
(b) Complex conjugation : spek 3803, vowel : medle, loke, telle, but lokg
ber 7569, brek 16413, com 6015, et i 83, tel i 49, etc., tellg i 47, herken
15936, gif 2262, hold 2670, bihold i 53, etc., should very likely be herkne,
16501, awak 4260, awakg 4286 ?, tak herke, shewS. (*) Forms which in
2228 take1 9172? thou take 15937, far Saxon end in a consonant: list, let,
well 14675, let lat 923 letg 3713 P, yif yef, shrif shrive, drynk, kepg, rede",
do 2407, go 3431, wepg 2480? fynd leve1, spekg, take1, fare", come", abide1,
2246, drynk 7635, help 2088, smyt beholde1. (c) behold(e) and dome
17217, rys 13133, wyt 10051, abyd (demeth ?) my querele iii 196, for icite
5751, ches 1616 chesS 1697 ?, be 6488, (witeth ?) well that never man ii 242.
ryd£ 15413 ? The superfluous e in all
59. Plural (a) generally in -eth, (V) occasionally loses its final
consonant; awake 3700, hithe 7191, tritte 10642, holde 7779
CHAP. IV. § 6. PROF. CHILD ON CHAUCER AND GOWEK. 357
(rhymes with: he tolde), loke 11304, make 14837 (c) often
the termination is entirely dropped, (d~) sometimes the abridged
plural (if we should not rather say the singular) seems to be used
indifferently for the full and regular plural : in other words, the
singular and plural forms are entirely confounded: tel sparith 5768,
telleth let 6871, goth ley 2560, awake speketh 3700, stoupeth
helpeth put loke 13255-7, youre gentilnesse ... lat thou falle 922-3,
ryde brek 15413, cast armith 12312-3, voydith let schet 13064-5.
60. Infinitive. The Infinitive in Chaucer and Grower ends in -en
(Anglosaxon -an) often shortened to -e. In a few cases in Chaucer
the termination -e is dropped. A few contracted infinitives in
Chaucer are sometimes protracted (?): to seene 1037, to sayne 10628,
to doone 10648. The prefix y- (S. ge-) is found in at least one
case before the infinitive : y-knowe 11199. "We find in Gower the
infinitive without to after several verbs which now require that
sign, thus : thenke assaie, wende have said, assay desireth, they
crie begunne, gonnen say, is free defende, oughte put, were lever
have had. We also find the Infinitive with to or for to in the same
connections, and to and for to indifferently used.
61. Participles. The Perfect Participle of Complex (''Irregu
lar") Verbs terminates in -en. The -n is often dropped, especially
in Gower as printed by Pauli. The contracted Participle seems in
a few instances to be protracted (?), as : sene seene (S. segen) 134,
594, 926 ; slayne (S. slegen) 14115 ; sene i 42, 82 : be-seine i 54.
62. Participles. The Perfect Participle of the simple Conju
gation requires no notice. Send, which has Imperfect sende 4134,
has Participle send 10458. Some Verbs which are of the Complex
Conjugation in Saxon have become simple in Chaucer, according to
the well known law. Hence we have wist for witen 10574, 12210.
Dawet 5935, amendit 7757, &c., are trivial dialectic varieties. The
abbreviated forms annonciate, consecrate (like the above, common
in Scotch) occur 15501, 3, kidde 9817, should probably be kid.
63. Participles. The prefix y-, i-, (S. ge-) frequently occurs in
Chaucer, but not frequently in Gower, before the past participle.
64.* Participles. The Present Participle terminates for the most
part in -yng (Anglosaxon -ende). In some cases, however, it is
rhymed with the Infinitive Mood, and we must either suppose the
participle to end in ynge, or else the Infinitive to have lost its
termination. The older forms awaytand 7634, lepand 7739, touch-
and 7872 occur, all in the Sompnoures Tales. Gower — The Present
Participle terminates, with few exceptions, in -ende (S. -ende).
Many words of French origin adopt this termination. In innu
merable cases the elided e is not printed in Pauli' s Gower. Much
less frequently the accent is thrown back : comend after i 1,
touchende of i 52, etc. Only two suspicious cases have been ob
served where the participle ends in -end, where no elision could
take place. A very few cases occur of the later form of the par
ticiple in -inge, -ing, sailinge i 59, wisshinge and wtipinge i 45,
meving i 213, brenninge ii 29, sitting iii 253.
858 PROF. CHILD ON CHAUCER AND GOWER. CHAP. IV. § 5.
65. Anomalous verbs.1
CAN = know, be able ; ps. can canst ; ppl. connen conne konne
conne can ; imps, couthe cowthe cowde couthe ; impl. couthen ;
inf. conne ; pp. couth coud.
DAE = dare ; ps. dar dar(e) darst ; ppl. dare dar dor ; imps.
dorste dursest (?) ; impl. dorste durste
MAY = may ; ps. may, 2 might may mow mayst maist ; ppl.
mowe mow may mowen ; prs. (?) mowe mow ; imps, mighte
might mihte ; impl. mighten might ; inf. mow.
MOT = must (debeo), may ; ps. mot moot, 2 must most ; ppl.
moten mote mot ; prs. mote ; imps, muste moste most (=
English must as at present) ; impl. musten mosten moste. In
the sense of may : prs. mote mot; ims. most (= might); inf.
mote.
OWE = debeo ; ps. oweth = debet ; imps, oughte = debet, ought,
aughte aught ; impl. oughten oughte.
SCHAL = shall ; ps. schal shalt ; ppl. schullen schuln schul schal
sul (dialetic) ; imps, scholde schulde.
THAB, = need ; ps. he thar, 2 tharst ; ppl. thar ye.
"Woi = wot, scio ; ps. wot woot, 2 wost ; ppl. witen weten wite
wote wot woot woten ; imps, wiste ; prs. wite ; imperative wite
(witeth ?) ; inf. witen wite ; pp. wist ; pres. part, witynge.
66. The Verbs wil, fieri :
WIL ; ps. 1 wil wol wole ? wille, 2 wilt wolt wil wol, 3 wole
wol wille woll wolle ; ppl. woln wol wil wolle woll wol will ;
imps, wolde wolde, 1, 2, 3, wold; prs. wile wolle; pp. wolde !
STERT ; ps. stert start, (these might be Imperfect Tense but less
probably) ; imps, sterte ; impl. starte ; pp. stert ; pres. part.
stertyng ; inf. asterte; — -pp. ystert (astert?) 1594 ; imps, asterte
asterte^.
67. Some impersonal verbs : him deyned 15620, him falles (=
opus est) 4025, him gained 536, him lakked 10330, hem liketh,
me lyst list lest lust, me liste ; me mette (= me dreamed} 16380,
but he mette 16569, us moste (nobis opus est} 12874, us needeth ;
him oughte (oportet), me rewith (pcenitet), him semeth, him smerte,
the thar (opus est tibi) 5911, 5918, it thinkith me 16264, him
thenketh 3615, thursted him 15525. Gower — him hungreth, me
longeth, him nedeth, me quemeth (placet), him reccheth, me
thinketh.
68. Negative Verbs : AM, nam nys nas nerS ; HAVE, nath nadde
nad ; "Wnx, nylle nyl nolde ; WOT, nat not noot nyste nysten.
1 Contractions: ps. present indica- feet subjunctive; pp. past participle,
tive singular, ppl. the same plural ; These are not Prof. Child's abbre-
imps. and impl. imperfect indicative yiations. Chaucer and Gower are not
singular and plural ; inf. infinitive ; distinguished, and references are omit-
prs. present subjunctive ; ims. imper- ted.
CHAP. IV. § 5. PROF. CHILD ON CHAUCER AND GOWER.
359
ADVEBBS.
69.* Anglosaxon Adverbs have commonly in the positive degree
the termination -e, and this termination is preserved in Chaucer
and Gower.
Ex. Chaucer — brighte, clene, deepe,
evele, evene, faire, faste, foule, harde,
hye, inne, late, lighte, longe, loude,
nede, oute, rathe, softe, sore, stille,
swithe, uun-ethe, uppe, wide, yerne,
ylike, yoore. So : blyve, lowe, pore.
So in Layamon : clsene, ufele, efne,
feire, faste, fule, harde, hehje (hash),
inne (in), late, longe, lude, nede, ra)>e,
softe, sare, stille, swibe, une]>e, uppe
(up), wide, jeorne, iliche, geare. And
in the Orrmulum, sebe, depe, fasste,
fajgre, fule, harrde, heghe, ille, inne,
lannge, late, nede, ra]>e, sare, swi]>e,
uppe (upp), jeorne. Gower — clene,
depe, dimme, un-ethe, faire, faste, harde,
highe, note, inne, ther-inne, with-inne,
late, -liche a-liche besi-liche comun-
liche due-liche even-liche open-liche
parfit-liche prive-liche un-proper-liche
sodein-liche solempne-liche verri-liche,
longe, loude, oute, same pariter, smale,
softe, sone, sore, stille, swithe, uppe,
wide, highe. So, alofte, blive, lowe,
smarte, straite, wele. Halfing halving
occurs ii 65, iii 206, 353, 356.
70. Comparatives and Superlatives of the Ancient (" Irregular ")
Form. Compar. Bet better ; superl. best, the bet, the better. Fer
ferre. Lenger, the lenger. More. Ner, neer, neere. Nest, iii 121.
Lasse, the lasse ; super, lest. Compar. Wers, worse, the werse,
the werre. Note — bettre, ferre, lenger, more, neere, were originally
adj. forms. The following superlative forms are also noticeable on
account of the e in moste, etc. : 0 firste meving 4715, the moste
stedefast 9425, deintevous 9588, free 11926, grettest, lusty 17039,
the gentileste born 7948, but : the fairest hiewed 16355.
71. The following Adverbs have an internal e (i) which is not
found in Anglosaxon : boldely, fortheward, needely, oonely, softely,
trewely, worthily; redely ii 198. So semely, rudely, quytely.
72.* The following Particles, of various terminations in Saxon,
have -e more or less frequently in Chaucer and Gower. Those in
Italics have also a form in -s, see art. 73.
Ex. From Saxon forms in -an. ble), her heer heere, ther there, wher
where, nouthe, ofte. ofte-tyme oft-sithe
ofte sithes, selde, soone eft-soone, thanne
thenne than thanne, whanne whan,
thenne, therefore therfor wherefore, tille,
ynowe ; welle 1663 should probably be
dwelle as in Tyrwhitt, but welle, wele,
occur in Layamon, and wel is rhymed
with I fel (which possibly should be I
fele) 2233. Gower — al-gate, a-longe,
a-midde, a-monge among among(e'),
bothe, efte, ek£ eke, ferre fore, her
here, ther there" there, wher where"
where, nede, ofte ofte-time often-time,
selde selden, sone, thanne thenne than
Chaucer — aboven above above, abow-
ten aboute aboute", asondre asonder
asondur, atwynne, beside, biforn beforne
byfore, behynde byhynde', bynethe,
bytwene, by weste, henne, siththen
siththe sith seth, withouten withoute,
by-yonde". Layamon, abuten, abute,
biforen, bifore, bihinden, bihinde, &c.
Orrmulum, abutenn, biforenn, bihinn-
denn, &c. Gower — a-boven a-bove
above', a-bouie, a-twinne, be-hinde, be-
twene betwenS betwen, -forn -fore
a-forn a-fore to-fore tofor^ beforg, —
-nethe be-nethe under-nethe, -side
a-side be-siden be-side, sithen sithe,
withouten withoute, without i 8 ? — (b}.
Chaucer — betwix betwixe, bothe, eek
ek eeke eke, evere nevere, ever never
(generally contracted to a monosylla-
73.* The following Particles, of various terminations in Anglo
saxon, have in Chaucer and Gower the termination -es, -s.
then?, whanne whan, thenne = inde
whenne=ww^e whenne\ therefore, to
wards toward toward, wele, while
while whil.
360 PROF. CHILD ON CHAUCER AND GOWER. CHAP. IV. § 5.
Ex. Chaucer — ageyn agens ageins are, his thonkes, here thonkes, 1628,
agenst ageinst, algates algate algatS 2109, 2116, his willes 5854. Gower —
algat ?, amonges among, amyddes, in aboutes, algates, amiddes, amonges, be-
the middes of 16534, bysides, elles, sides, elles, nedes, ones, thries, twies,
hennes hens thennes whennes, needes, un-ethes, up-rightes, -wardes to-wardes
ones, synnes syns sins syn sin, thries, after-wards afterward, whiles while's,
togideres, towardes, twyes, unnethes, for-the-nones, now-on-daies, now-a-
whiles while wbil, now-on-dayes, daies, his thankes.
13324, other genitives used as adverbs
ELISION OF FINAL VOWELS.
74. Even if Chaucer followed invariable rules with regard to
the pronouncing or suppressing of the final e, it cannot be ex
pected that they should be entirely made out by examining one
single text of the Canterbury Tales, which, though relatively a
good one, is manifestly full of errors. A comparison of several of
the better manuscripts would enable us to speak with much more
accuracy and confidence. Tyrwhitt's arbitrary text may very
frequently be used to clear up, both in this and in other par
ticulars, the much superior manuscript published by Wright. Still
the question whether an e was pronounced would often be one
of much delicacy (as the previous question whether it actually
existed is sometimes one of great difficulty), and not to be deter
mined by counting syllables on the fingers. No supposition is
indeed more absurd than that Chaucer, a master poet for any time,
could write awkward, halting, or even unharmonious verses. It is
to be held, therefore, that when a verse is bad, and cannot be made
good anyway as it stands, then we have not the verse that Chaucer
wrote. But with regard to the particular point upon which we are
now engaged, it would often be indiiferent, or nearly so, whether a
final e is absolutely dropped, or lightly glided over. Then again,
as not a few gramatical forms were most certainly written both
with and without this termination, the fuller form would often slip
in where the other would be preferable or necessary, much depend
ing on the care, the intelligence, or the good ear of the scribe.
Very often the concurrence of an initial vowel, justifying elision,
with a doubtful final e, renders it possible to read a verse in two
ways or more ; and lastly, hundreds of verses are so mutilated or
corrupted that no safe opinion can be based upon them. Such
verses as these ought plainly not to be used either to support or
impugn a conclusion ; neither ought the general rules which seem
to be authorized by the majority of instances be too rigorously
applied to the emendation of verses that cannot be made, as they
stand, to come under these rules.
Gower — Unaccented e final may be elided (slurred) [but see above
p. 342].
I. before a vowel following :
II. before a few words beginning with h :
1 . before the pronoun he (his, him, her, hem) :
2. before hath (has) and hast ; before have, except perhaps the
Infinitive Mood ; sometimes before hadde (had}.
CHAP. IV. § 5. PROF. CHILD ON CHAUCER AND GOWER. 361
3. before the adverbs now and here (her}.
4. before two or three words of French origin, in which h is
silent.
"When one of these words beginning with h ends the verse, no
elision takes place before it.
The e final of a monosyllable generally does not suffer elision.
Elision seems frequently to be prevented by the cassural pause. '
75. Unaccented e final is commonly elided before a vowel 69, 81,
421, 498, 900, 7294, 7321, 9162, 9700, 12036, 13432, 13701,
14875, 15000 [and innumerable other instances].
76. Unaccented e final is elided before a few words beginning
with h :
a. Before the pronoun he (his, him, hire, hir, hem}. Gower — But
not when these pronouns stand at the end of a verse : wenende that
it were he i 243, and in this wise spedde he ii 74, hadde he ii 150,
saide his ii 383, tolde he iii 139.
b. Before hath (has}, and sometimes apparently before have, hadde
(had}, though with regard to these last two words the number of
cases is not enough for certainty. Gower — Before hath (has ?) and
hast : before have, except perhaps the Infinitive Mood ; sometimes
before hadde (had). Not often before have in the Infinitive. More
frequently not before hadde. Hadde often stands at the end of the
verse and then there is no elision.
c. Before how and her (heer}. [Exceptions, both in Chaucer and
Gower are queried, and the readings are doubtful.]
Ex. to (a). Chaucer — 106, 184, 696, have i 73, if I for love havS i 224,
949, 1364, 1370, 1483, 3954, 7462, etc. Thou might the more havg i 178,
10418 and innumerable other cases. he thoughts have1 iii 162, his lore havg
Ex. to (6). For hath, has the Ex. are iii 302. No elision at the end of the
innumerable, as: fortune hath 1088, verse: wolde have ii 358, herte have
1492, 15833, ful sone hath 2448, eelde ii 50, shulde have iii 139, i 127, mede
hath 2449, neede has 4024, nature hath have iii 88, yifte have i 170, i 323,
2760, 3009, 13424, peple hath 8869, mighte have iii 24, wolde have ii 211,
youthe has 9612, etc., but : and now ymage have ii 124.
so longe hath the tappe i-ronne 3891 ? For had, hadde. Chaucer — pope had
Gower — exceptions: som(e) cause hath 6002, chirch[e] had 7318, sonne had
whereof it groweth i 264, a sone hath 11328, routhe had 11573, w[h]itnesse
which as his lif(e) ii 324, men sain that hadde 12017, sorwe had 1361 ?, frere
nede hath no lawe iii 277, of love hath had 7315 ? hert[e] had 11819 ?, science
within her warde ii 354, (but in the had 12660 bad reading, worlde had
next verse: Phebus to love hath so 16151 bad reading. But: at many a
constreigned), which kinde hath and noble arive hadde he be 60, as Noe
reson can i 366. hadde 3560, namly on bedde hadden
For have. Chaucer — so longe havg 6989, though he no more hadde 9859.
11144, herte have" 11352, sorwe have" In Littowe hadde 54 ? atte siege hadde
12637 gaude have I 13804, peyne havg 56 ? Hadde he is sometimes contracted,
15527, couthe have 9308. Exceptions : and spelled as pronounced, had he,
acholde have 691, Arcite have 2260, hadde, as : a garland had he set 668,
drinke have 4918, frere have 7716, 319, 351, in termes hadde caas 325, 54,
poeple have' 8118, mighte have 8560, 578 ; he hadde is generally pronounced
I schulde han 15062, your tale hav£ he haddg (=he had?) as : fuloftetyme
be 16285, schredde han 8254 doubtful. he hadde1 the bord bygonne 52, for he
Gower — though I siknesse have, and haddg power 218, 85, 642. Gower —
longe have" had i 5, but I his grace for he his love had i 77, thus he which
362
PROF. CHILD ON CHAUCER AND GOWER. CHAP. IV. § 5.
lore had i 121, and of the senile had i
128, wherof the sone had i 285, the god
an eye had ii 149, this Adriagne had ii
308. Exceptions : was hote, hadde i
55, the sceptre hadde i 179, wher(e)
they the quene hadden do i 201, that
Rome hadde ii 196, a werre had ii
200, so as the quene had ii 271, a sone
had ii 302, victoire had iii 165, which
love hadde iii 364. Had final : a werre
had i 125, joie had i 167, time hadde
i 219, a sone hadde i 313, to sone
hadde ii 4, no love hadde ii 48, her
herte hadde ii65, his wille hadde ii 196.
Ex. to (e). For how. Chaucer — by
his clennesse how 508, than wol I clepe
how 3577, hut of my tale how 4510,
jugge how may this be 6234, thou wilt
algate wite how 7096, nought wold I
telle how 11628, unto this philosophy
how 11865, me mette how 16384, mette
a thing 16598; wiste how 1491 inde
cisive. Exceptions : I spak to him and
sayde how that he 6149, Tyrwhitt, said
him how; in myn office how that I
may wynne 7003, Tyrwhitt, how I may
moste winne. In the following the
infinitive should have an M: to telle
how 2823, dar I not telle how 14531,
and ye schal understonde how 15760.
Gower — the elision is very frequent, in
the exceptions : if no man write how
it stood i 4, and thoughts how(e) it
was not good i 269, and all the cause
how it went ii 122, we should probably
read how that, a phrase of frequent oc
currence in similar positions.
For 7t«r=here. Chaucer — that sterve
here 1296, plight me thy trouth(e) her
6591, bothe heer 8043, anoon for myn
ally* heer take I the 12225. Excep
tions: in erthe.heere 9521, lordings
ensample herby 15725, here ensample
may be pronounced ensampul as in
5594. Gower — her not final : we shall
befalle here i 3, and for to bear* herof
i 70, lo, sone her(e) might thou ii 50,
I not what fall* herafter shall ii 278,
of dedely peine here iii 37, my sone,
herafter iii 145 ; it is to be observed
that falle[n], beare[n], may be read as
monosyllables ; the other three cases
cannot be explained away, if the read
ings are correct. Her == here final :
penaunce here ii 43, saide here ii 45,
alive here ii 171, telle here ii 175,
erthe ii 269, i 37, iii 94, 38, iii 106,
etc.
For a few French words. Gower—
(a) the vein[«] honour i 11, for thilke
honour i 261, cause honest ii 9, of
armes thilke honour ii 64, that lov«
honest ii 78, of treble honour iii 165,
of pees richesse honour iii 273, may
never be to loves lawe honeste iii 352,
but: which techeth thilke honeste iii
141, but upon alle honeste iii 272,
where the elision is prevented by the
ictus. (b] to feign* humilite i 66,
and with low(e) herte humblesse sue
i 118. (c) thilk<r horrible sinne i
77, 76, that thilke horrible sinfull dede
i 365. (rf) dame Heleine ii 230,
quene Heleine ii 384, had wonne He
leine ii 387, compare ; after his moder
quene Eleine i 276.
We find also in Gower : an saide Ha
ii 320, and whan he wok(e) he saide,
Ha, wif(e) iii 310. But saide should
perhaps be printed said, as : and said
Ha, now thou art atake ii 338, or Ha
should perhaps be Ah. "We find :
receive til he saide ho ii 201, I woll
the telLr and thanne ho iii 274.
77. Except in the cases mentioned above, there appears to be no
rule that final e should be elided before h, as : 14, 146, 150, 535,
884, 1015, 1051, 1677, 1820, 2088, 2465, 2711, 3953, 4266,
4407, 5934, 6035, 6548, etc.
78. It is very probable that some liberty was allowed with
regard to elision of e before h. A few cases are added where the
practice (so far as it can be determined by a very few examples)
seems to have varied, and a few other instances, which, if the
reading is correct, are exceptions to art. 77 : 6034, 6062, 6035,
6085, 6169, 5599, 2273, 14512, 2369, 2791, 999, 4523, 8139,
11151, 12039, 17200.
79. An accented final e (including e coming from French e, even
when the accent has been cast back) is of course not elided.
80. The e of monosyllables is commonly not elided, except in the
CHAP. IV. § 5. PROF. CHILD ON CHAUCER AND GOWER.
363
case of the article the and, in Chaucer, not in Gower, the negative
particle ne.
81. The e of the is much more frequently elided than not, and
before e almost invariably. The ih is frequently united to the fol
lowing word, as also with the verb the = thrive in the forms : theek,
theech, 3862, 12857, 14362. The e of ne is perhaps less frequently
united.
Ex. for the Chaucer — but to the effect
1191, this is ^effect 1489, */*enchaunte-
ments 1946, 1958, 2279, 4570, etc.,
that is bitwise thesi 6829, tfAestat,
f/tarray 718, th« absence 1241, than
was ZAassembe 4823, 3078, etc., in
which tftoffice 2865, tftymage 14916, the
herneys 2898, of children to honour
9323. Exceptions : the olde clerkes
1165, when al the orient 1496, up to
the ancle 1663, on the auter bright
2427, only the intellect 2805, of which
the eldest 10344 ? the elf-queen 6442,
the ende is this, that he 6652. Gower —
no exceptions to the elision of the noted.
For ne Chaucer — he ne hath no
peyne 1321, alias I ne have1 2229, ne
abyde 3125, ne at Rome' 4710, prive
ne apert 6718, I ne held me 8694,
I ne have as now 11289. Excep
tions: ne oynement 633, ne of the
knobbes 635, no herd ne hadde he
691, fyr ne eyr 1248, young ne old
3112, ne in noon other 9963, in al the
world ne hadde be 15540, if that the
wynd ne hadde be 16555.
82. The caesural pause frequently prevents the elision of final e.
Ex. Chaucer —
a. that on his schyne — a mormal hadde he. 388
this was thyn othe — and myn eek certayn. 1141
withouten doute — it may stonde so. 1324
and lete him stille — in his prisoun dwelle. 1337
but how sche dide — I ne dar not telle. 2286
for thilke peyne — and that hoote fuyr(e). 2385
Some hadde salve — and some hadde charmes. 2714
and tyl he hadde — al that night i-seyn. 4377
than that it rote — al the remenaunt. 4405
ire is a sinne — oon the grete of sevene. 7587
to stonde in grace — of his lady deere. 13276
if that a prince — use hasardrie. 14014
I.
Gower —
no longer thanne — after Deth thay sought[e], 14187
the trespas of hem bothe — and here1 cause. 1766
I prey to God hir save — and susteene. 4580
for though that I be foule — old and pore. 6645
com forth my swete spouse — out of doute. 10018
in thende of which an unce — and no more. 13194
this Persoun him answerde — al at oones. 17324
he wepte — and with woful teres. i 143
with strengths — of his owne might i 236
supplant of love — in our waies i 241
in the cronique — as I finde. ii 82
kisse her eftsone — if I sholde. ii 96
with all min herte — I woll serve. ii 110
though he ne wolde — it allowe ii 146
and in worshippe — of her name. ii 171
and with spellinge — and her charmes ii 263
Jason bar(e) croune — on his hed(e) ii 267
her love is sone — after (aft'r) ago ii 300
with shame — and the nimphes fledde ii 337
which kinde — in her lawe hath set(te) i 268 etc.
83. Other vowels are occasionally elided as in modern verse.
[The examples cited 225, 294, 423, 929, 1111, 1830, 7285, 9212,
364 PROF. CHILD ON CHAUCER AND GOWER. CHAP. IV. § 5.
9284, 9394, 11669, 13734, 14874, 15112 are almost all simple
cases of trisyllabic measures, and similarly in Gower, see art. 92.]
SILENT FIKAI, E.
84. E final seems especially liable to become silent when it fol
lows r. The sound r is peculiarly unstable, and most languages,
in their successive stages or in their dialects, afford instances of its
being transposed, now standing before, now following a vowel, as
Saxon gsers, grses ; Ital. capre, Roman dial, crape ; Engl. iron,
apron, spectre, etc. In Wright's text of the Canterbury Tales we
often find the terminations re and er indifferently used, as asondre
5577, asonder (ur) 7256, 493. Of course we have no means of
determining to what degree, if at all, the pronunciation er had
begun to prevail even while the spelling re was retained. The
Comparative Degree of Adjectives is commonly spelled with er in
Chaucer (see art. 38), instead of the Saxon re, though both forms
occur; as bettre 526, 650, better 10416, lenger 332, lengere 823.
Nouns which anciently ended in -ere, generally or always end in
-er, as hopper 4034, miller 3923, sleper 16377, etc. (see art. 8).
We find many French words spelled both with re and er, as lettre
5228, 5229, 5241, letter 10415, cloystre oystre 181, 182, cloyster
oyster 7681, 7682; chambre 1073, chambur 13145, tendre 150,
9631, tender 9617, etc. "We also find the final e of some French
words absolutely dropped ; thus maner occurs most commonly with
out the final e, except at the end of averse, 71, 2546 ; 10501, 11737 ;
ryver (F. riviere] is rhymed 6466 with bacheler (F. lacheler], and
15148 with deer; cheer (F. chere) once 1342 with prisoner (F. pri-
sonnier], though commonly pronounced cheere. In these cases ryver
must have been pronounced like our revere (ryve-er) and cheer
che-er, instead of ryver-e, cheer-e, the r being in fact transposed.
Gower — The only cases which are supported by instances enough to
make silent final e of consequence are the words have, here (their),
were, more, and the termination -fore (to-fore, be-fore). We have also
the double forms cbmun, comune ; divers, diverse ; here the longer
form seems to be a license for the sake of rhyme. The Comparative
of Adjectives is always written in Pauli's text with -er instead of
the Saxon -re. French words are written indifferently with both
terminations. Slight reliance, however, is to be placed upon the
editor's spelling.
85. The only rule with regard to e being silent after r which
can safely be made general, is perhaps that
e final is silent in the pronouns hire, here (= Tier), very often
spelled hir, here (= their), oure, youre. Gower — The e final of
here (= their) is silent, that is, not forming a full syllable ; whether
the letter was absolutely mute, or slurred, or, in the words ending
in -re, pronounced before the r, I do not pretend to say. The dative
and accusative of the feminine personal pronoun often preserve the
Saxon e, see the forms hire, here, art. 45.
CHAP. IV. § 5. PROF. CHILD ON CHAUCER AND GOWER. 365
86. E final is in Chaucer frequently, in Gower sometimes, silent
in were.
Ex. Chaucer — were, indie. 2nd pers. 1966, 6893, 1238, etc., subjunctive
sing. 15866, 15888, 17177; plural of 9483, 10529, may be read: it werS
indie., 18, 26, 59, 81, 2169, 2185, etc., good that such thing were y-knowe,
etc. ; subjunctive, 584, 877, 1213, or : and 't were good that such thing
1216, 14229, 14570, etc., written wer were knowe. Gower — [17 instances of
10782,16280 (ner=ne wer). Excep- were1, and 60 of were are cited, and the
tions : were, mdic. 2nd. pers. sing. last are only a few out of many.]
4877, 16718, pi. of indie.' 326, 1705,
87. There can be no doubt, however, that e final was generally
pronounced after r. It is commonly in the body of a verse, and for
metre's sake, that the occasion is presented for dispensing with this
sound ; rarely is it dropped for the sake of rhyme, though very often
e is added on that account to words which ordinarily terminate in a
consonant, — or more properly speaking, of two existing forms, a
rarer one in -e is often employed when the rhyme demands the
final vowel, as yer by yere 4552, rhyming with heere. The final e
of deere (ags. deore) and of cheere (Fr. chere) was most distinctly
pronounced. We should therefore be justified in inferring that the
final e was pronounced in the following words rhymed with deere
and cheere, even if this fact could not be independently proved, as
can be done in the case of most of the instances cited.
Ex. Chaucer — deere 1236, 2455, which rhyme: eere 6603, tere 11206,
3361, etc., the only exception noticed 15664, gere 5220, there 5222. Again,
being 7334; with this rhyme: heere beere 15036, and above, with which
(adv.) 1821, 3502, 3774, prayere 2261, rhyme: were pi. 2901, 15662, tere
12 184, yere 8278, in feere 4815, 12308, 15664, there 15037. Again, eere
steere 4868, 5253, frere 6881, 13283, 6218 and above (ags. eare), with which
manere 7207, 8455, to leere 7098, rhyme: were pi. 8604, 12823, were
13277, chere 8017, 12232, 12310, ma- subj. 17131, there 7656, where 7634,
tiere 8198, 8467, were (subj.) 8758, to 10629. Gower — the examples cited in
heere 8963, cleere 12182, 15066, beere arts. 84, 85, 86, are the only cases of e
15091, (to) appeere 13060. cheere silent after er, except a few isolated
749,5422,8411,8554 (cheer 9889 in ones, as: ther halp(e) him nouther
a suspicious line) ; with this rhyme : sperS ne shelde i 125, for if thou herS
heere 7884, 8245, in feere 4815, 8989, my tale wel(e) ii 340, he yav(e) hem
frere 6847, 7739, manere 140, 10821, answere (answre ?) by and by iii 305.
leere (verb) 10418, deere 14739, 14836, It has been observed already that such
matere 729, 15409, to heere 915,2900, representatives as occur of the Saxon
cleere 8655, 9719, bere 6169, to re- noun in -ere, denoting an agent, want
peire 14737, all of which also occur in the final vowel, but none of the few
the former list. Similarly, feere cases that occur are worth much, see
2346, 2688, 2932, 7286, 16877, with art. 8.
88. Less to be relied on are the following :
spere 15289, ags. spere', and there- fore: were subj. 353, were pi. 1017,
fore: bere ursus 1642, were pi. 2950, there 5222, 8250. enquere, old fr.
to bere 4877, to dere Icedere 10554. enquerre, 9406 ? and therefore : en-
teere (art. 87) and therefore : were quere 3166, there 3165. requere,
pi. 4954, 11493, 15662, there 4956, old fr. requerre, 6634? and therefore:
were 2nd pers. 16146, schere 15542, there 6633. Fynestere, Fr. Finisterre,
yere 15545, enquere 9417. schere 410? and therefore • were pi. 409.
ags. sceare ; and therefore (?) : were mere (equa) 543, mellere ? 544.
pi. 15544, yere 15545, teere 15547. forbere 3168 myllere ? 3167.
gere ? ags. geara, 367 ; and there-
366 PROF. CHILD ON CHAUCER AND GOWER. CHAP. IV. § 5.
89.* On the other hand, we find many cases in which e final
must have been silent, or where it is actually dropped after er.
Chauntecler is most misspelt with -e, in the Nonne Prestes Tale.
That it ought to have no final e appears from the French derivation
(Chantecler], and from the rhymes her (tuli} and power (new £r.
poueir} 16822, 16830, also misspelt here, powere.
Ex. berg/«rre 1424, berg ursus 2060, baner, beerg, berg, chambrg, deerg, fereS
berg/m) 8760, werg vestiri8762, swerg frerg (often frere), maner, swerg, swer.
jurare 11101, 12076, all rhymed with See art. 72 for the double forms : here
the pronoun herg hirg. So : answerg, her, there ther, where wher, evere ever.
90.* With regard to final e after ir, ar, or, ur, it does not appear
to he more frequently silent in such cases than after other letters,
except in sire and more. Gower — E final is sometimes silent in
-fore and more. We find two forms sire and sire; = sir, correspond
ing to French sire, sieur, Italian ser, sere.
Ex. Chaucer — sirg sire, irg ire, bare, dore, thereforg therefor therfore, foure,
faire, spare, chare Fr. chaire, declarg ?? pure, vesturg. Gower forg to-forg
declare, haire, peyre, morg mor more, and -fore to-fore be-fore a-fore, morg
pore pore, biforg byfore, sorg sore, dorg oftener more.
91.* A considerable number of cases will now be given of e silent
after other letters than r without any attempt to explain the fact.
Many words of French origin are spelt in Chaucer sometimes with
a final ce, sometimes with s. Gower — The only important instances
of silent e final are the word have and some forms in -ce (se). Note
worthy instances of e final silent after other consonants than those
already mentioned are very few. By noteworthy instances is meant
cases in which a final e, that by general laws should be sounded, is
required by the metre to be silent. Some of the apparent exceptions
can be explained away. A few cannot.
Ex. Chaucer — e silent after I, m, n: fondg, woodg, lowdg, bruyd' — by-
allg, hallg, talg, tellg, hellg, fellg, wellg, quethg, mirthg, rewthg, trouthg,
felg, melg, welg, soulg, myllg, mylg, youthg. e silent after * (e) : nosg,
pylg — damg, madame, namg, claymg, prosg [the reference 466 is erroneous]
demg, come, welcomg, somg, tymg — clennessg besynes goodnes lewednes
pan', regng, cleng, begynng, nong, song, worthines, goadessg, blis' blys', wisg,
goung. e silent after w, y : dawg, cheesg, supposg, thesg thisg, praysg,
schrew', trewg, bowg, crow', ynowg, pres' Fr. presse, nobles'— gracg, forcg
trowg, widow', morwg, joyg, weyg. but force in the same line 3910, prince,
e silent after p, b, v : nelpg, felaw- malice, placg, Constauncg Constaunce.
schipg, worschip, hopg, popg, havg, experience experiens, plesaunce
savg, avg, receyvg, levg, givg, gevg, lyvg, pleisauns, norice noris, pacience paciens,
stryvg, lovg, grovg. e silent after fc, sentence sentens, force fors, solas solaas
ff, ch : sakg, seekg, bisekg, spekg — eolacg solace, allaas laas lace trespace,
mariagg, viagg, visagg, agg, tongg, trace trays harnays, face faas, preface,
bringg, segg — spechg, wrechg, chirchg. [In a large number of cases the g here
e silent after t, d, th, besides the cited may have been an e introducing
final e of the imperfect indie, of simple a trissillabic measure of no injury to
verbs, which is as often silent as pro- the metre, see art. 92,] Gou-er — e is
nounced [unless^ the -ed, for -ede be generally silent in havg except at the
read -'de, and the pint is doubtful] : end of a line, but : ne have whan I
hatg, betg, getg, mev.g, swetg, hertg, spak(e) i 296, ye have thilke vic« ii 55,
schcrtg, might', sigftt'-forbedg, dedg, have non(e) i 295, be so they have i
heed', ledg, redg, ste\dg, endg, fj-ndg, 316, have routhe i 47, and (infinitive)
kyndg, lyndg, holdg,^ hiusg-bondg, i 94, 170, iii 222, 702. The infini-
CHAP. IV. $ 5. PROF. CHILD ON CHAUCER AND GOWER. 367
tives and the plural forms of the indica- to us through the Fr. bourse ; it has
tive and subjunctive may have origin- dropped the e, like Swed. and Dan.
ally been written haven ; so written, bors, and Germ, bars, which is found as
the word might perhaps have been con- well as Horse. helpe" help 8 cases to
tracted at pleasure into a monosyllable. helpe 9 cases ; 2 quene" and 27 quene,
e is in a few words of Latin origin 2 sight and 6 sighte, 3 food and 5 or 6
silent, or absent where it might he ex- fode, 1 time" ii 167 but elsewhere al-
pected after c, s : grac£, rhymes with ways time, 1 nede" i 155 but elsewhere
encres, old Fr. a-crois ii 392, grace" i 9, always nede : 3 sped£ and about 3
etc., Boniface1, Morice", Moris = Maurice, spede, 2 I red£ and elsewhere rede, etc.
forc£, rhymes with hors ii 392, fallas [These cases all require examination
Fr. fallace rhymes with was, iii 158 : by manuscripts, and the remaining
avaricS ii 290 avarice ii 127, purse" doubtful cases are therefore not cited
purs, this word derived from Middle here.]
Latin bursa, probably does not come
92. For convenience sake the final e in the above citations has
been treated as silent. It is, however, a question which may be
called at least a difficult one to solve, whether the e in many cases
was absolutely dropped, or only slightly pronounced. In very
many lines the verse would be equally agreeable, whichever, of the
two should be done ; in some, the verse might be fuller to a good
ear, if the e were slightly sounded ; in some this sound would dis
turb the metre.
A considerable number of these exceptions might disappear on a
comparison of manuscripts, but very many would doubtless remain.
The vowel appears to be most frequently silent after the liquids,
after w and v, t, d, and s. Some of the most noticeable words are
the pronouns hire, here, oure, youre; the verb were; thew sire, more,
alle, tymo, sone (films), trowe, have, give, love, sighP , woode, bliss'.
Possibly, all that is to be said of this matter is, that the final e
might be dropped freely, as in modern German verse, as :
das Erst' war' so, das Zweite so.
der begehrt jede liebe Blum' fur sich,
und diinkelt ihm es war' kein' Ehr',
und Gunst die nicht zu pfliicken war'. —
hat er so aller Treu', so aller Lieb' vergessen.
&c., &c. — (Goethe's Faust.}
Of course we are not authorized, in the present state of our know
ledge, to drop the superfluous e and indicate the omission by an
apostrophe.
CONTRACTIONS.
93. The e in final er is very frequently elided, especially under
the circumstances in which e final would suffer elision. [Most
of the instances cited seem more properly to belong to the class of
trissyllabic measures. The words and a reference to the line in
Chaucer are here added, when the words begin with a capital
they occur in the lists given in both papers, when they are in
small capitals they occur in the Gower papers only, and no re
ferences are given.] ADDEE, After 162, 343, 527, anger 12847,
answer 1325, begger 252, BETTEE, CHAMBEE, coper 13236, delyver
84, Ever Never 50, 345, 1824, 9963, 1262, 8020, 8027, 9605,
368 PROF. CHILD ON CHAUCER AND GOWER. CHAP. IV. § 5.
9618, 10077, 10078, Fader 5613, fether 2146, fynger7472, HETDEE
v., LENGEB, LETTEB, LEVEE, maner 9755, MONSTEE, nedder 9660,
neyther 9413, 9962, ofter 16914, OTHEE, over 11967, persever 5730,
silver 82, 631?, sober 7484, somer 396, sowter 3902, SUSTEE, TEKDEE,
THTODEE, togider 826, water 402, 3815, 13244, Whether 1103,
15415, 9407, 15341, wonder 12531.
94. The vowel is elided under similar circumstances in the syl
lable -en. Chaucer : mooten 232, weren 1282, comen 803, riden
827, prisoun1 1231, faren 1263, wepen 1593, bringen 5384, risen
10697, y-comen 14908. Gower : shulden i 76, wolden i 79, treten
i 250, geten i 339, vengen i 345, stonden i 364, woman ii 46,
wepon ii 306, rehercen iii 19.
95. The third person singular of the Present Indicative ends
commonly in -eth, not seldom in -th. When the form -eth is used,
the e is often elided. Chaucer: answereth 1622, thenketh cometh
1645, cometh 8033, 14196, makth 5318, 7415, spekth 5646, clap-
pith 7166, lyveth 7944, takith 8178, loveth 8246, 8247, spedith
9801, bereth 10949, to-breketh 12835, abideth 14396. Gower:
speketh i 64, maketh i 68, 156, wepeth crieth i 120, kepeth i 126,
leseth i 305, eteth drinketh iii 39, taketh cometh iii 280, ariseth
iii 342.
96. Miscellaneous contractions. [Most of these are cases of tris-
syllabic measures.] Chaucer : purchasing 322, schirreve 361 (?),
parisshe 451, 496, parisch[e] 493, benedicite (bencite) 2117, 5823,
5862, 7038, 7166, 7752, 9211, 12556, we may therefore infer a
lacuna in 1787, certeynly 2761, candel 5916, so candlestick (canstick)
in Shakespeare, 1 Henry IV. 3, 1, speech 36 (Guest I, 54: canstick in
the quartos), litel 7256, vanyssh 10642, widow 14920, (similar forms
though not contracted are sorwe 1456, wilw 2924, morw 9622,)
woldist 15431, wicked 16909, this is an unusual contraction, but
by no means unparalleled, compare naked, Crashaw, ed. Tumbull,
p. 123. Gower — bible i 136,2 quarrel ii 223, devil iii 203, dis-
tempred i 281, heved iii 117, 376, augst iii 121, 370, Sortes (So
crates) iii 366. Benedicite is not contracted i 48.
97. Cases like the following, in which contiguous words are
blended, are not common in Chaucer, but there is no reason to
suspect the correctness of the lines : at his (at's) 295, and a ('n a)
56, I ne (I n') 766, endure it (endur't) 1093, whethir it (wher't)
9841. Contractions of the various kinds noticed in arts. 93-97 are
on the whole not so frequent in Chaucer as in Shakespeare and
Milton: see very numerous examples in Guest's English Rhythms
B. I. C. III. — Gower. Contiguous words are not often blended, but
some cases occur : fall it (fall't) ii 380, it is (it's) iii 348, I have
(I've) ii 61, that is (that's) iii 247.
1 The real division of the measures, name is bore, but Harl. MS. 3490,
indicated by italicising the even mea- 3869, 7184, and Soc. Antiq. MS. 134,
sures, in this line, seems to be : i-fet- all read his for this, giving a regular
er'd in his prisoun for ever' more. elision.
8 Pauli reads : yet in the bible this
CHAP. IV. § 5. PROF. CHILD ON CHAUCER AND GOWER.
369
970.1 Accent. Many words of French origin have two accents ;
sometimes on the final syllable, or the penult ; sometimes thrown
further back as in English. So also with nouns of Saxon origin in
-ynge, -yng (see art. 17) and felawe felaw (see art. 18). Gower —
Many words of French origin have a variable accent : the same is
occasionally true of native words. The eliding of final e often
causes the accent to be thrown back, [or rather conversely?].
Proper names of Latin origin have generally the French, or foreign,
accent : Cesar iii 366, Medea ii 212, Gower iii 373, Eneas Anchises
ii 4, Aprille ii 327. [The list of words is here given in alphabetical
order with single references, a capital initial (when the word is not
a proper name, and in that case an italic capital initial) points out
that the word is in both lists, small letters in Chaucer and small
capitals in Gower only.]
ACHILLES ii 62
ACHILLES ii 58
MANERE 1 96
JfXNER i 4
ANSWERS i 96
ANSWERE iii 305
MATERE i 343
M\TER i 146
APOLLO ii 366
APOLLO ii 367
mellere 544
meller 3923
Aprille, Averil 1,
'April 4426
nature 11
nature 1080
Arcita (?) [6128
'Arcita 2258
JVo& 3534
JVoe 3539
Arcite 1114
v Arcite 1154
PASSAGE 1 223
PASSAGE i 237
AYE1N i 81
AYEIN iii 61
Plato 19376
Plato 13381
bataille 990
benigne 520
batail 2099
benigne 8287
povert 4519
POVERTE i 357
povert 6749
POVERTC i 355
COLOUR i 225
COLOUR i 133
POWER i 345
POWER i 341
COMUNE i 20
COMUN i 7
prayer 2269
preyer 2423
Cresus 16245
CI-ESUS 1948
prisoun 1177
prisoun 1087
DAUNGER i 331
DAUNGER 1 331
PURPOS i 134
PURPOS i 238
discord 8308
rancour 8308
discret 8286
discret 520
regne 15697
ECHATES ii 260
ECHATES ii 262
Kesoun 37
Eesoun 1768
ENVIOUS i 171
ENVIOUS i 172
REVERS i 239
SEVERS i 167
FEiAw i 170
FELAW i 171
servise 2489
servise 122
FOREST ii 68
FOREST i 119
squyer 79
squyer 1500
Fortune 917
Fortune 927
SUPPLANT i 239
SUPPLANT i 239
Grisildes 8108
Grisildes 8086
tresor 15697
honest 14972
honest 246
Fenus 1906
Fenus 1920
honour 15697
Vertiie 4
Vertu 1438
JASON ii 251
JASON ii 250
victdrie 2241
victorie 874
Labour 14874
Labour 8093
visXoE i 237
visAGe i 227
LADY i 332
LADY i 332
WORTHY i 107
WORTHY i 226
LEO iii 121
LEO iii 120
yeman 6962
yeman 101
LOVERS i 64
LOVERS i 175
Gower — At this point it is proper to say that in all likelihood
some troublesome forms in Gower are to be explained as simple
licences. Such, very probably, are the causes of the singular of the
Imperfect of Complex Verbs which have an e (art. 54). So when the
vertu ii 38, 187, is stretched to vertue i 7, 18 : when the preposi
tion for is made to rhyme with bore ii 59, the pronoun min with
mine ii 130, the noun men(e] (Fr. moyen] with lene ii 351, (if thou
well) lethought with nought iii 357, (I) sigh with eye iii 370, oxes
(elsewhere oxen) with foxes ii 63, perhaps all that it is necessary to
1 This is numbered 99 in Chaucer,
and 97« in Gower, where the art.
numbered 99 in Chaucer is said to have
been put wrongly among the miscella
neous notes, and it is therefore re
stored here to its proper place.
24
370
PROF. CHILD ON CHAUCER AND GOWER. CHAP. IV. § 5.
say is that a clumsy poet has taken an extraordinary liberty.1
Such shortening of words as pusillamite for pusillanimite ii 12, 25,
iii 210, Climestre for Clytemnestre, Methamor for Metamorphoses,
is rather to be attributed to ignorance ;2 so Agamemon, Nanplus
for Nauplius, &c. The vowels are not infrequently3 freely treated
in the rhymes : e.g., minde ende ii 23, 67 ; ende kende (i.e. kinde)
iii 120, nine peine ii 261, seen eyen iii 18 ; say see iii 31, wit yet;
fell hill, men kin ii 158, iii 211, 280, kenne senne (i.e. sinne) ii 309,
spedde hadde ii 191, deth geth (i.e. goth i 345, Sax. gae^), ii 303 ;
i 220, 247 ; piche suche iii 312, &e.
MISCELLANEOUS NOTES.*
98. LETTEBS. (a) Ch for the Saxon c (k) before or after e, i, occurs
in several cases where the modern English has retained the primi
tive sound. (b~) Saxon g is changed to w both in Chaucer and
Gower instead of y, i, as in modern English, and to y where we
have retained g. (c~) Th is dropped after t or changed to t in con-
1 [Sometimes, not always, we may
say that an editor has been careless.
The following is the reading of these
passages after Harl. MS. 3869.
Tho was }>e vertu sett a boue. i 7
In whom )>at alle vertu duellejn i 18
That )>ing which I trauaille fore
0 in good time were he bore, ii 59
For certes if fche were myn
1 hadde hit leuere )>an a myn
Of gold, ii 130
For fo wel can ]>er noman slyke
Be hym no be non ojjer mene
To whom Daungw wol zive or lene
Of >at Trefor he ha> to kepe. ii 351
Mi fone if you be wel be)>oght
This tonchej) )>ee forjet it noght. iii 357
And taken hiede of )>at I fyhe
Wherinne anon myn hertes yhe
I caste, iii 370
"Wherinne anon in ftede of Oxes
He let go zoken grete foxes, ii 63]
8 [Yet Gower had certainly read
Ovid in the original, and shews by his
headings and his Vox Clamantis, that
he could write Latin. Some of the
errors are certainly due to the scribe ;
others may have been Anglicisms com-
?irable to our Ovid, Horace, Virgil,
ully, Pliny.]
3 [The interchange of t, e, short is
common in Chaucer, and must be ac
cepted as (i, e), supra pp. 250, 272.
The following are these passages ac
cording to Harl. MS. 3869.
Ne mihte I lete out of my mende
Bot if I £oghte vpon J>at hende. ii 23
The whos knyhthode is jit in mende
And fchal be to }>e worldes ende. ii 67
Ne to non oj>«r J>ing )>ei fyhen
Bot hire which to fore here yhen
Was wedded Jnlke fame day. iii 18
Sche fib no schip fche fih no barge
As ferfor}? as fche mihte kenne
Ha lord fche feide which a senne
As al )>e world fchal after hiere
Vpon )>is woful womman hiere [ii 309
This wor]?i knyht ha]) don and wroght.
Bot as we rede }>at he fpede
The which hir lordes befant hedde
And ]>ervpon gate non encreff. ii 191
That it be ferm wij? led and pich
Anon was made a cofre such, iii 312
Nine peine, should be ni/ne pyne, see p.
253. For say sey there is a deletion
in Harl. 3869, but Harl. 7184 reads —
Lo Jms mi fader as J seie
Of lust )>e which miny he hath feie. iii 3 i
The rhyme de]> ge)> occurs in all the
passages in Harl. 3869.]
* Of these Prof. Child says: Chaucer
— The purpose of this paper being to
do something towards ascertaining the
forms of words used by Chaucer (in
cluding inflections), the notes upon that
subject are intended to be complete, to
the extent of the information to be de
rived from the one text employed. Not
so with the Miscellaneous Notes, sub
joined to the others. Gower — It may
be observed that the subject of the
article [memoir] is really concluded at
art. 97«. The miscellaneous notes
which follow contain a few things
noticed in passing which may on some
occasion be useful ; but they are purely
incidental, and do not profess to be
complete. [lu this re-arrangement of
CHAP. IV. § 5. PROF. CHILD ON CHAUCER AND GOWER.
371
traded forms, and in Gower ags. d is retained, where we have
changed to the aspirate dh, spelt th. (d) The letters r and s were
unstable in the older English, and subject to frequent metathesis.
In the transition to modern English these letters have changed their
position more than once in some words. Gower — (e) Mis reinforced
by 6 or p, n changed to m before p, n not yet reinforced by d as in
English and s reinforced by t.
Ex. (a) Chaucer and Gower — seche
=seek 786, 7537, 7539, i 290, ii 190,
193; recche=reck 1400, 5911, reccheth
i 168, ii 284, wirche= work 2761, wor-
chen i 166, ii 142, thenche = think 3253,
Bchenche = skink i 263, yliche, liche =
like 7797, 10376, lich, liche i 118, 136,
258, 265, besi-liche ii 3, even-liche ii
179, etc., now -ly; ich=ik, I, 10037,
and in: theech 12857, 14362. So
rubriche «= rubric, Fr. rubrique 5928,
Chaucer— On the other hand, k is often
preserved where we have ch, as, biseke
=beseech 7251, etc. Gower — Saxon c
(K) not changed to t as in modern Eng
lish : make=mate i 45, 112, 367. cc
changed to tt when changed to ch in
modern English, fette, ags. feccan =
fetch ii 233, 237. We find : chever =
shiver iii 9. (b) Chaucer and Gower —
dawes=day, 11492, i 136, fawe, ags.
feah=faegan, fain, 5802, i-slawe=slain
14271, 16500, morwe, ags. morgen, E.
morn i 186, 205, wowe, ags. wag, E.
wall, wawes, ags. wsegas,- E. waves,
4888, i 141, 223, 312; gerarchie=
hierarchy iii 145 is old Fr. gieraucie,
Ital. gerarchia. wiltow=wilt thou,
woltow 1546, 6422, hastow = hast thou
3534, 3538, 11893, wostow 3544, slepis-
tow 4167, herdistow 4168, artow 4728,
hydestow 5890, schaltow . 6998, atte
beste = at the beste 29, atte siege 56,
atte fulle 653, atte laste 2828, ate laste
i 16, ii. 345, 377, atte boord 10393, ate
bord iii 299, atte halle 10394, etc., etc.
Gower — fader i 49, 60, 61, iii 260, 332,
father ii 174 is undoubtedly wrong ;
moder i 104 etc., weder i 112 etc.,
wether iii 295 is wrong, hider i 70,
thider i 186, winder ii 21, gader ii 293,
togider i 324. On the other hand we
have: rother, ags. ro'Ser = rudder.
(d} Chaucer — berstles, ags. bristl, E.
bristle, 558 ; brid, ags. bridd, E. bird,
Prof. Child's memoirs, some of the
completeness of the first part has been
necessarily sacrificed. Although the
Miscellaneous Notes do not in general
bear upon the subject of the present
17104; brast breste, ags. berstan, E.
burst, 2612, 2613; brent brenne, ags.
byrnan brinnan, E. burn, 948, 17161 ;
carte, ags. crset, E. cart, 2043 ; crispe
(crips, House of Fame iii 296, Morris
6-251), ags. cirps crisps, E. crisp, 2167 ;
crulle, E. curl, 81 ; kers, ags. cerse
cresse, E. cress, 3754 ; thirled, ags.
thyrlod thyrel, E. thrilled, 2712, (nose-)
thurles, E. (nos-)trils, 559 ; thridde,
ags. thridda, E. third, 14251, threttene
7841, thritty 14437 ; throp, ags. thorp,
E. -thorp, -throp, 8075, 8084 ; thurgh,
ags. thurh, E. through, 1098 ; axe, ags.
ascian acsian, 1349, 12354, axyng 1828,
aske 3557; crispe, ags. cirps (see above);
lipsede, E. lisped, 266 ; clapsud, E.
clasped, 275. Gower— brid birdi 112,
113 etc., bird i 206 ; hunderd hundred
ii 92, 249, 381 ; third third i 55, thritty
thirty iii 214, brenne burn i 334, brent
i 109; kerse cress i 229, 334; Adriane
Ariadne ii 307, etc. ; axe ask, i 334, ii
222, etc. (e) thombe, ags. Jmma, i
175, stempne, ags. stemn i 312 — wim-
pel, ags. winpel, i 326, 327.— kinled =
kindled iii 96, compare kin-d-red and
kind, ffenus, which is apparently from
Saxon cynn, not cynd. [The following
is from E. Matzner, Englische Gram-
matik, Berlin, 1860-1865, i 178 : an
unmeaning d is added on to a final » ;
hind— servant, ags. hina, old E. hyne;
fond, old norse fana, fatue se gerere,
old E. fon, still in Spenser, and fond ;
lend, ags. laenan, old E. and Scotch
lenen ; round with obsolete roun in
Skelton, Spenser, and Shakspere, ags.
runian, G. zuraunen ; sound, ags. «. son,
old Fr. son, sun, v. soner, suner, old
E. *. soun, v. souneu ; astound and
astonish, old Fr. astoner mixed with
ags. stunian, E. stun, etc.] lost, for loss,
ags. los, i 147, 238, ii 186, 277, but :
loss i 270.
treatise, they present so much that is
interesting to the Societies for which
it has been written, that it has been
thought advisable to give them nearly
in full.]
372 PROF. CHILD ON CHAUCER AND GOWER. CHAT. IV. $ 5.
99. See 97a.
100. SYNTAX FOE MEASURES, KINDS, ETC. (a) Nouns denoting a
substance measured, weighed, or numbered, are not followed by a
noun with of, as in modern English ; but are in apposition with the
noun denoting the measure, as in ags. sometimes, and in German
regularly. (5) Nouns denoting sort or kind are in like manner not
followed by a noun with o/1, but by a noun in apposition, as also in
German. (c] Things numbered are put in the singular after
numerals as in German and ags. (d) Sometimes numerals preceded
by the article a are treated like nouns, the thing numbered being
put in the plural number, but still without a preceding o/, compare,
a few pears, a great many men, a dozen books.
Ex. (a) a .peyre dys (G. ein. paar thousand score i 1 76, a thousand del(e)
"Wurfel) 4384, 14038, a peyre plates i 295. The ags. use of winter for year
2123 ; a barrel ale, G. eine Tonne Bier, is to be noticed, and also the of, sup-
15379, a hotel hay, G. ein Bund Heu, plying the place of the ags. gen. in old
16946 ; a busshelwhet 7328, 4310, half of nine hundred winter. .Might and
a quarter otes 7545 ; the beste galoun winter (ags. niht, winter) have com-
wyn 16956, a morsel bred 15920. monly the plural like the singular in
Sa maner deye, G. eine Art Milch- ags. (instead of nihta, wintra), but this
u, 16332, a maner sergeant 8395, so is not a peculiarity of inflection ; it is a
3681, 11742, 11745, no maner wight consequence of a principle of syntax.
71, 2546, a maner kinde i 88, 123, what Year (ags. gear) might have the plural
maner name i 206, such a manner wise like the singular, at any rate ; still the
i 342, what manner thing ii 142, what cases cited are fair instances of the rule,
mestir men 1712, no kyn monay 14749. Fortnight (fourtenight 931) has become
(c) syn thilke day that she was a compound noun, and so has twelve-
seven night old 16359, this fourtenight month (a twelve moneth 653), but these
931, thritty winter he was old 14437, forms properly come under (c) and
15545, 7233, a child of twelf month (d). (d) a seven bushels 14186, a
old 14895, foure yer 8487, 8612, 13445, twenty bookes 296 (Tyr. the rightread-
twenty winter age ii 226, of eigh(te)tene ing), a twenty thousand freres 7277,
winter age i 102, withinne seven winter Tyr., hir maistres clepeth wommen agtet
age i 267, ii 266, of nine hundred winter route, and up they risen, a ten other a
old(e) ii 265, of thre yer(e) age ii 22, twelve 10697, a thousand times i 330, a
of twelv(e) yer(e) age ii 68. So after a fewe yeres iii 246, seven yeres ii 9 ;
numerals preceded by a : of an hundred according to the same principle: a
winter age ii 343, of a ten yer(e) age ii certein frankes 14745, a certein yeres
17, a thousand winter (tofore, after) i 15663, a eerteyn of conclusions 3193, a
267, ii 266, a thousand yer(e) ii 9, a eerteyn gold 14815.
ten mile i 209, a thousand sithe i 160, a
101. GENITIVE CASE, (a) Some genitives are employed as adverbs.
(1) The genitive sign is not annexed to a compound phrase as in
English, (c) The genitiye of names of persons and titles of books
is sometimes used as a nominative in Chaucer, and in Gower the
genitive case of classical proper names is frequently so used ; Gower
also declines classical proper names, a custom still in use with some
oldfashioned Germans.
Ex. (a) his thonkes 1628, 2109, here daughter of Cecile i 104, 235. (c)
thonkes 2116, his willes 5854, needes Ccrces 1949, Judicum 15532, Encydos
1171, 7887, etc. (*) the wyves love 16845, Sibeles ii 265, Sibele ii 166,
of Bathe =wife of Bath's love 9046, Cereres and Ceres ii 168, Circes iii 49
my modres Ceres soule = my mother etc., Echatcs ii 260, Spercheidos ii 261,
Ceres's soul 10139, Goddes sone of the temple Apollinis ii 366, that he
hevene = God of heaven's son; in Vestes wolde upon knighthode Achillem sue
temple the goddesse ii 157, the kinges iii 212 Achilles norn. same page, Del-
CHAP. IV. § 5. PROF. CHILD ON CHAUCER AND GOWER. 373
boram hath Abel take iii 277, Debor- Judeam ii 191, Ephesim iii 335, Thel-
anom, same page ; till they Pentapolim machum ii 54, Thelmachus iii 60 ;
have take, and: for Pentapolim iii. 341, Methamor for Metamorphoses 155.
102. DATIVE CASE, (a) After to be, with: wel 2111 ; wo 1015,
14421, 10892, 353, bygoon 11628, 5338, schapen 1394, loth 1839,
lef 14175, loth 488, 11903, lever 295, 16955. NE. him hadde
lever 3541, 8320, have I lever 11672, 15379. (J) After verbs of
motion as in Saxon : goth him 3434, 4060, 13622, 14748; went hir
4213, 9653, 13038; rydeth him 1693, stalked him 8401, hy the
13223 ?, styrt hir 3822 ? (e) After other verbs : dreden hem 12252,
faUethTiim 5524, stele hem = from them 4008, us thoughte 786.
103. PERSONAL PRONOUNS. Me for I, once, 1810 ; his, gen. of it,
6726, 7838, it am I, as in ags. and German, 1462, 1738, 3764,
5529, 14625 ; he in the sense of one, indefinite, in the Persones
Tale; he, she, redundant with proper names 6225, 9594, 16880,
5360, 9608, 9912, 10564, 6080, 9242, 9247, 16627, etc. Both (as
in German) follows and does not precede, the genitive of the per
sonal pronoun, as: here bothe lawes 4641, etc.
104. EELATIVE AND INTERROGATIVE PRONOUNS, (a) That is fre
quently used in conjunction with the pronoun Tie so that both ex
press only the relative pronoun : that-he 44, that-his 2712, 14915,
that-him 3430, without the personal pronoun 12164, oon-his 4691.
Compare Mrs. Gamp's "a lady which her name is Harris," "she
being in liquor, which I thought I smelt her. " ( £) Which fre
quently has the signification of what, what sort of, like welch in
German : which a miracle 2677, which they weren 40, 2950, 3611,
5621, 6875, 10896, 11754, 16065. (e) Which that, the whiche that
is used for which in the prose tales, (d) What is used for why,
like Latin quid, German was : 184, 1382. (0) What is used in an
indefinite sense (like German etwas, was) wite ye what ? = wissen
Sie was? 10305, 17014; so apparently, at first, in the colloquial
" I'll tell you what (Ich will Ihnen was sagen)"; but the emphasis
put on the what shews that it is not now regarded as indefinite,
[compare German, Das sag' ich Ihnen]. (/) Whoso is frequently
used in the sense of if any one, 743, 4615, 9890, 13903. (g}
Gower — As who saith = one might say, so to speak, i 268, ii 131.
105. INDEFINITE PRONOUNS, (a) Peculiar uses of one 7587, 11046,
8088, 11499; iii 189, i 201, ii 70, ii 159, 259, iii 327 ; we also
find : in all this world ne mighte be a gladder woman then was
sche iii 51. one = only iii 231, all min one i 45, all him one
i 148, iii 285, 178. (5) Peculiar use of ought, like the German
etwa = perhaps : can he ought telle a mery tale or tweye ? 12525.
106. PREFIXES. The prefixes for- (German ver-, Lat. per-, con-}
and to- (Germ, zer-, Lat. dis-) have not lost their force in Chaucer
and Gower.
Ex. Chaucer — forpyned 1455, fordo trode, forslowith, forsluggitth, forlesith,
1562, 14538, fordrunken 3122, 4148, forletin, all in the Persones Tale,
forthinketh 9780, fordruye 10723, for- Gower -forstormed i 160, forblowe i
fered 10840, forbrosed 16100, for- 160, fordoth i 266, forgnawe i 326,
kutteth 17272, forkerveth 17272, for- forwept ii 15, forwaked ii 16, forshape
374
PROF. CHILD ON CHAUCER AND GOWER. CHAP. IV. § 5.
ii 100, forcast ii 167, fortrode ii 330, topulled i 61, todrave ii 330, tpswolle
forthenketh ii 276, forslouthen ii 190, ii 50, tothroweth iii 268, toclef in 296,
forsmite iii 308, fordrive iii 330, for- tobreke iii 334, tobreken ii 74, torof(e)
juged iii 192, forlain ii 234, forworth iii 296, etc.— bedecked i 81, bebled i
iii 10, forswey iii 224. Chaucer— to- 183, beflaifi iii 183, beshineth iii 242,
hewen 2611, toschrede 2611, tobroken bereined iii 126, besnewed iii 51, be-
2693, toskatrid 7561, totore 12563, to- knowe iii 10.
breketh 12835, totere 13889. Gower —
107. NEGATIVE SENTENCES. Chaucer and Gower follow the
Anglosaxon practice with regard to negatives, which was (like the
Greek) not, as in modern English, to negative the copula only, but
to give a negative character to as many words as were susceptible
of being thus affected. Two negatives are perhaps more common
than one, and verses can often be restored to good metre by re
storing a ne which had been dropped : ne — nought 74, nys no
1124, nas no — nolde 552, never — no — ne — no 71, nas no — ne no
7874, no — ne nil no 8522, neyther — ne noon — ne noon — never —
nolde 9964, etc. But = only, takes a negative as in Saxon and
vulgar modern English : I nam but deed 1 124, nys but Persones Tales.
108. VAJEIOUS PABTICLES.
all although ii 160.
alonge on along of because of ii 22
96, 121, 310.
as with the fundamental meaning of
considering, with respect to, so far as
concerns, is employed by Chaucer and
Gower in various shades of distinctness
and strength, decreasing to insigni
ficance. A similar loose use of as is
now reviving :
as in so litel space 87, as now (Ger.
als dann?) 887, 7899, 12872; so,
5623, 7557, 8370, 8282, 244, 7947,
9671, 6055, 3297, 3385, 6947, 7107,
6979.
as in supplicating phrases is often
absolutely redundant, 2304, 2319, 3172,
3775, 5773, 6642, 7253, 7883, 8761,
11201, 11371, 13581 ; and also in 7196.
In like manner so is redundant in one
instance 10772.
as is used as a relative in this one
case; there may be more, but others
have not been noted : his hundred as I
spak of now 1860.
as intensive = Latin quam; as blive
= immediately, not very different from
our as quick, ii 266, 313; als swithe
iii 306, als faste i 55, also faste ii 132,
156; also blive iii 49. als = as: for
als moche i 51, als fer as i 89, 132, als
well as ii 203, 379, iii 19.
as-that inasmuch as, seeing that,
quippe ; as he that i 245, ii 325, as ye
that ii 322, as she whiche ii 336.
at-after after : mete iii 41, 63. Still
used in the north of England. I do
not find the combination in Saxon, but
as set-foran occurs, aet-after probably
existed.
by about; tel I by this men, by
wommen 17120.
by of time as Germ, bet; by olde
daies i 67, by olde tide ii 132, by the
brode sunne iii 255, by the morwe 242,
by thritty mile ii 195, by times seven
i 138, by that = because that i 226.
[Compare (modern) betimes, by day
light, by the morrow.]
erst than before, 1568, 14077, erst
without than 8212 ; er than 12827.
ever among still, continually, i 149,
195, ii 15, iii 303, 328 ; ever in on(e)
iii 28, 29.
Jlrst then before 1157.
forth with with, i 194, 209, 216, ii
67, 154.
how that however that, although ;
how that ignoraunce be moder of alle
harm, certis negligence is the nonce
Persones Tale.
in aunter if if haply i 19 ; = lest, i
344, ii 147.
info until, mydeth i 117, now ii 278,
iii 188.
in with within 9818, 10216, 9268.
long on, ags. gelang, along of, because
of, 12850, 12858. See alonge on.
noon no=not: ornon 11090, 14492,
12544, i 230, 342, iii 322, etc.
nought forthy nevertheless, iii 365.
of representing the ags. gen., foryete
of i 157, nedeth of i 272, he thonketh
God (dat.) of his miracle i 210, iii 273,
lefte of ii 207, they drad him (dat.) of
vengeaunce iii 3-1, pray of iii 350, of
CHAP. IV. § 5. PROF. CHILD ON CHAUCER AND GOWER.
375
whom I mene iii 301, 302, touchend[e]
of i 19. In the following the reason of
the of is not quite so clear : call[e] of =
by the name of ? ii 331, of love to spede
ii 33, i 331, love spede i 334, 336, of
that shall spede iii 241, of which to
done ii 175, iii 353. I that lawe obeie
of which that kinges ben put under
1117.
of by, Fr. par; of that i 1, of knight-
hode ii 157, of drinke iii 4, etc., -etc.
of that because, why (pane que), i 56,
157, 161, etc.
other or, 9157, 10697,13730, 13731.
other while — otherwhile £\Aore — &\-
Xore ii 104.
outher — either either —or 1595, 1596;
outher — outher — or, 13077, 13078.
that with imperative = Fr. que, en
treaty; that ye not discover 9816, ne
that thy tale mak<? us for to slepe
7890 (?) ; that fpule him falle ii 318,
that it were do iii 182.
ther, tho relatively, where, when:
172, 224, 249, 7042, 8696, 10812,
ther(e) my lady is ii 372, tho this man
iii 324, 336, etc. ; theras ii 107, there
upon ii 136. [Compare Icelandic }>ar.]
till to, unto 12234, 1480, 7348, iii
98, 209, 370.
to unto, representing ags. and Lat.
dat. ; to nature obey i 291, i 288,
thilke man obeie i 247, serve to love
ii 50, thonke unto i 210, I thonke God
ii 94, renounced to heaven iii 46, to the
houndes-like i 261.
unto until 1146, 5211.
untoward toward : iii 127.
up upon, 6727, up a couche ii 132,
up amendement ii 373.
upponon; uppon he hadde 619; =
after the manner of; and she upon
childehod him tolde i 21 9.
yea — nay, yes — no. The distinction
between the two forms of the affirma
tive and negative particles insisted on
by Sir T. More, is not observed by
Gower : that is to say, it is not his
custom to use yea and nay exclusively
in answer to affirmative questions, and
yes and no in answer to negative ques
tions : hast thou ben ? ye ii 20, hast
thou nought ? ye i 60, i 201, 206, 308,
ii 275, 349, iii 24, 274, 281.
109. CERTAIN- PECTOIAR PHRASES.
at min (thin, her) above. This singular
phrase seems to signify, greater than I
am (she is) at present, in : as though I
were at mm above iii 9, as though she
were at her above ii 212 ; in : and how
they were at her above ii 378, perhaps,
they bore themselves as if superior to
what they really were ; in : thou might
not come at thin above of that thou
woldest not acheve ii 32, the meaning
is, thou canst not make thyself master
of what thou wouldst achieve.
can thank scire gratias, savoir gre :
1810, 3066, i 393,i 17.
do cause make, 2398, 2623, 16427,
ii 29, iii 94, = cause to be, Germ, lassen,
15638, 10075. Let do, 10360, 13588,
ii 63, 208, i 191.
gem as an auxiliary to form an im
perfect tense : she gan falle ii 381, 385,
etc.
gesse think, as in New England ; in
Persones Tale, ii 11, 59, 368, iii 180.
go walk, Germ, gehen ; ride or go
2254, 9964, 7 175, go walkid(Py-walkid)
7360 ; go ne speke iii 3, 5, etc.
hadde lever had rather, f aimer ais
mieux, ich hdtte lieber, i 295, ii 211.
levest wolde be i 96, ii 46, i 96 ; I
wolde rather ii 94. / had rather seems
to be an imitation of I had lever; when
the phrase came into use is not known
to me.
life being, person, iii 264, 253 ;
lives creature = living creature, 2397,
8779, ii 14.
many on(e) many a one i 56, ii 313.
moon masculine as in ags. : the mone
of silver has his part ii 84, iii 109 ;
but: ne yet the mone that she carie
ii 112 ; go tak(e) the mone ther it sit
i 86.
much great, moche 496, more 2826,
moste 897 ; more feith iii 326, morg
delit iii 335, moste joy iii 8, care iii
254.
nale alehouse 6931.
past participles used adverbially,
Germ, er kommt geritten ; ride amaied
i 110, goth astraied ii 132, iii 175,
goth astray, same page ; stonden mis-
beleved ii 152. He cam ride i 53, ii
45, 170, where ride looks more like the
infinitive than like the participle ; cam
ridend, pres. part, ii 180, 47 ; and left*
hem both[e] ligge so ii 150, is another
extraordinary case of the use of an in
finitive.
schal owes, is bound to, 12590,
11062P More distinctly in the sense
of owes, if the reading is correct, and
there is no ellipsis, in Court of Love,
376
PROF. CHILD ON CHAUCER AND GOWER. CHAP. IV. $ 5.
131 (Morris 4-5) : for by the feith I
shall to God.
sight in a peculiar American (?) use :
a wonder sight of flowers i 121.
slyde go by : let slyde 7958, iii 61.
sworn sworn the contrary : although
we hadde it sworn 1089-1090, 6222,
8279-81, 12609 (?) though al the world
had the contrary swore 10639, 1668.
the def. art. with abstract noun :
thexperiens 5706, 10112(?), experi-
ens, without the article, 5583. A fre
quent Gallicism in Gower : the man
I'homme ii 186, the men les hommes
i 9, the mankinde le genre humain
iii 1, thexperiens, the speche, the
blisse, the trouthe, the word, the derth,
110. PECULIAR ORDER OF WORDS.
repenting folk of here folies, Tale of
Melibeus ; digne fruyt of patiences,
but : workes worthy of confessioun,
both in Persones Tale, lerned men in
lore 14389, wrap in me 14151, that I
of woot 5441, that I of have1 sayd 7827,
upon he hadde 619, with kempe[d]
heres on his browes stowte 2136, on to
see 3247, ground(e) litarge on 12703,
al that a man bilongeth unto 9333, to
quyte with the knightes tale 3121, hele
with your eyen 10246, 10955, 13079,
and many cases in Gower. Of his visage
and seeth the make = and seeth the
make of his visage i 367, so iii 52, ii
the famine, the gold ii 135, the heven,
the helle, the God iii 177, 187, etc.
these curiously used somewhat like
the Latin iste, but in a fainter sense :
6142-3, 12587, 10961, 10962, 12995;
art. 104, used somewhat like Latin
ille, these olde wise i 300, 62, 63 ; iii
161, iii 246.
time, these expressions are somewhat
remarkable ; within a monthe day ii
27, within two monthes day ii 100,
sometime a (ags. on) yere iii 349.
wear on, upon, wear 6141, 660. .
who was who, 4299.
world, worldly lot, worldly happiness,
6055, i 116, 126, 323, ii249, 304, 313,
iii 152, 170.
298, etc., as thou might of to-fore rede
=rede of tofore iii 342, of gold that
I the mantel tok(e) =1 toke the mantel
of gold ii 368, but al this wo is cause
of man = man is cause of al this wo
i 34, to reule with thy conscience =• to
reule thy conscience with i 50, to rocke
with her child a slepe=to rock her
child asleep with i 196, o dampned
man to helle = 0 man ! damned to hell
i 189, on daies now=now-a-days ii 59,
in perle's white than forsake = than, in
white pearls, forsake ii 335, the kinge's
doughter Lamedon=the daughter of
the king Lamedon ii 375.
111. ELLIPSIS (a) of the relative pronoun, (i) of the personal
pronoun when subject, (c] of le, and other verbs, after shall, (d)
of have, (e) of it, (/) of to before the infinitive, (^) of with, but
note that the instrument, etc., are expressed in ags. with the abl.
either with or without the preposition mid = with, and that Gower
may have used the old construction, {h} of other prepositions.
Ex. (a) there was non auditor [that] [be] i 15, 222, ii 39, iii 88, 190, 351 ;
cowde on him wynne 596, and in a I wot never whider I shall [go] ii 21,
. _i? 'n_ fit. _ j.1! T- „ i_ • _T-_ JT i AT !ii- i- • * i- mi ^ _i_ - 1 1 ••
purs of silk [that] heng on his schert
9757, a pyn [that] stant in his ere
10630, he sent after a clerk [that] was
in the toun i 3555 ; unto the park
[that] was faste by ii 45, etc., so : men
beseche [what] his will is ii 25. (b)
us thoughte . . . and [we] graunted 786,
this thing was graunted, and [we] oure
others swore . . . and prayden 813, ye,
false harlot, hast [thou] ? 4266, ye,
schal [he]? 10138; it thought her
fain? and [she] saide here ii 45, slain I
have this maide Thais? and [she] is
begrave iii 325, he was rebuked of hem
and [they] saiden ii 150, etc. (c)
that is, or shal [be] whil that the world
wol dure 1362 ; it is said and ever shal
that they with him to Tharse sholde
[go] iii 327, which wepte as she to
water sholde [turn] iii 260, and what
she sholdS [become, come to] she was
alrad iii 321, [compare German, du
sollst dahin ; wohin muss ich ?"] (d)
he wold hir [have] hent anoon 3347.
(e] ner [were it not for] gingling of
the bellis 16280, nere myn extorcions,
I might not lyven 7021. (/) now
is tyme [to] wake al night 3672, he was
worthy [to] have his lif 6627. (ff)
thing which he said [with] his owne
mouth ii 310, iii 155, fightend, [with]
his owne hondes slain i 90, made cloth
[with] her owne hand ii 83, 190, 204,
i 346, 351, iii 305, where he [with] his
CHAP. IV. § 5. PROF. CHILD ON CHAUCER AND GOWER. 377
owne body lay ii 198, iii 208. (A) owne had ii 236, for in the plit(e) [in]
I not what thing it may amounte [to ?] which I the finde iii 354, perhaps mere
ii 191, 194, etc., he no childe [of?] his carelessness.
In an appendix Prof. Child refers to the following among other
lines as illustrating his observations, the numbers under 112 refer
to the articles, the others to the lines :— 129, 85 19 69. 230, 60 69
560. 456, 89. 610, 530 60. 673-4, 19 12. 822, 55 17. 956, 530
4 60. 1221-3, 16 19 4 60 50. 1299, 910 9lc 95. 1612, 89 91c
60. 1616, 585 365. 1805, 85 19. 2306, 19. 2521, 535. 2807, 60
4 530. 2960, 14 4 61. 3699-3700, 30 29 32 19 580". 4049-50,
385 52tf. 4052, 350. 4300, 2. 4649, 59. 5590, 910 86 85. 5859,
56 3 61, 5947, 910 90 3 91*. 7017, 48 60. 7026, 34 58 3.
7593-4, 7 30 16 11 565 60 14. 9475, 30 32 20 19. 11843,
350 33. 12221, 530 35c 15 29. 12621 585 22. 12991, 85 90
71. 14861, 10 86 563. 15037, 69 19 725. 16421-2. 22 40 73
22 60. Nearly every line will be found to furnish examples.
The wonderful industry, the acuteness and accuracy, of
Prof. Child could not have had justice done to them, without
inserting the above full account of his memoirs. It is to be
hoped that he will eventually himself put these papers, en
riched with the results of an examination of those MS. which
the Chaucer Society is now publishing, into a more accessible
form, as they ought to be studied by all students of Chaucer
and of the English language of the xiv th century.
It now remains to add the references to the words in arts. 2, 3, 4,
5, 6. 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 29, 30, 31, 64, 69,
72, 73, 89, 90, 91. These are arranged below alphabetically, ac
cording to the modern orthography of the word cited, if it is still in
use in the xix th century. This is placed first, with a capital if
found in both the Chaucer and Gower Memoirs, in small letters if
in Chaucer only, in small capitals if in Gower only. The word is
preceded by * if it occurs in the list of exceptions, by ** if it is also
only found in an oblique case in the Chaucer, and then few or no re
ferences are given ; by f if it is an adjective or participle, by J if an
indeclinable, by § if of uncertain origin. If the word is not now in
use the . roman word is omitted, and the article begins with the
number usually following the first word. This number refers to
the art. in both the Chaucer and Gower Memoirs in which (or in
the notes to which) the word is to be found, and on referring to
that number in the above account, the category under which Prof.
Child places the word is readily seen. Next comes the spelling as
found in Wright's Chaucer, or, if the word is not there found, in
Pauli's Gower, printed in Italics, with this exception, that when a
final e is there written but for any reason not pronounced, it is
replaced by an apostrophe. This deviation from Prof. Child's system
of notation, which has been followed in the preceding account
of his system, has been adopted here, because by this means all
written e's will have to be pronounced, and the index will be made
conformable to the illustration in Chap. VII. After the spelling
378 PROF. CHILD ON CHAUCER AND GOWER. CHAP. IV. § 6.
of the MSS., the word in roman letters give the Saxon original, and
an acute accent ( ' ) after any shews that it is a form in Lagamon,
hut a ( ° ) that it occurs in Orrmin. Then follow the references to
the lines in Wright's Chaucer, or to the volume and page of Pauli's
Gower, a final accent ( ' ) showing that the word cited is final in the
line quoted. Several of the references in the memoirs are omitted,
especially to the imperfect Gower text, and for oblique cases. Many
of the Chaucer references have been verified, and all been compared
with the original memoirs. Additions in brackets are generally
by the present writer, and the other observations are either in
the precise words used by Prof. Child, or their equivalents. Many
words in other articles, besides those enumerated above, have been
inserted, for the purpose of assisting the reader to turn to the
proper article, and for these the above information is not given, and
no references are added.
Thus the articles "ABBESS, About, against, algates" are to be
read as follows : —
"ABBESS," modern form, found in the Gower memoir only (in
dicated by the small capitals), "19" mentioned in art. 19, " abbesse"
form in Pauli's Gower at "iii 337," vol. iii, p. 337, "French"
derived from the French.
J Indeclinable ; " About," modern spelling, the word being found
in both memoirs (indicated by the capital), " 72" in the 72nd art.,
"abowten," the spelling in "Wright's Chaucer, " abutan" Anglo-
saxon form, " 3645" line in "Wright's Chaucer in which the spelling
abowten occurs; " aboute" another spelling with e pronounced oc
curring in "Wright's Chaucer, " 892' " line 892 last word indicated
by the accent ('), "2191 3554 4146," and also in these lines
but not as the last word, " about1 " the same spelling as before
but with the e not pronounced "2187" occurring in line 2187,
"art. 73" the word is also referredto in art. 73, under the form
" abotttes," in which it occurs in Pauli's Gower, "iii 162' " vol. iii,
page 162 last word (') in a line.
J Indeclinable, "against," modern form, the word occurs in the
Chaucer memoir only (indicated by the absence of capital), " 73 "
at art 73, " ageyn" the form in "Wright's Chaucer; "ongean, agean
togeanes" Anglosaxon forms, " ajsein' ageines' ajenest' " forms in
Lagamon (indicated by the acute accent), " onngsen0 onnjaeness0 "
forms in Orrmin (indicated by the °), &c.
J Indeclinable. " 72, 73" referred to in art. 72 and art. 73, not
existing in the xixth century, indicated by having no word in
Roman letters preceding these figures; " Algates" occuring in
both memoirs, indicated by the initial capital, the spelling in
"Wright's Chaucer, " 7096, 7393, 13024" at these lines, " alga? "
assumes the form algat with e elided, " 573, 7619" in these lines,
" algat (?)" the form algat which is doubtful, " 14422" in this
line, and " algate" occurs, "i25" in Pauli's Gower vol i, p. 25,
"[always]" this is the meaning of the word, which is always added
when the word is obsolete.
CHAP. IV. § 6. PROF. CHILD ON CHAUCER AND GOWER.
379
FORMS OF WORDS IN" CHAUCER AND GOWER REFERRED TO isr
PROFESSOR CHILD'S MEMOIRS.
See the Explanation of the Arrangement, pp. 377-8.
ABBESS 19 abbesse iii 337 French
JAbout 72 abowten abutan 3645, aboute
892' 2191 3554 4146 about" 2187,
art. 73 aboutes iii 162'
JAbove 72 aboven on-,a-,bufan 53 2771
7297, above 1802' 1905' 5789' abov'
2029 3213
f29 a-cale a-cele iii 296' [a cold]
[Accent] art. 97«
*ADDEK 5 nedder adder naedre iii 118
ii 72 260
[Adjectives] art. 29 to 44.
ADVENTURE 19 adventure ii 236, art.
108 in aunter if [if haply] French
[Adverbs] art. 69 to 73.
Jagainst 73 ageyn ongean agean to-
geanes ajaein' ajeines' a^enest' onn-
gsen0 oun^aaness0 66 4812, agent
ageins 1511 8046 8787 10371, agaynes
10199, agenst ageinst 8196 13597
*age 91 off' 13445
Jalas 91 allaas new French las 2391
alder 17 aldir alor air 2923
Ale 9 ale ealu ealo 343 669 13736 3130'
13730' i 294'
J73 Algates 7096 7393 13024 i 102,
algat 573 7619, algal (?) 14422, art.
72 algate i 25 [always]
Jalike 69 ylike yliche gelice 7797 7812
8630
*tAll 30 alle call all al' all0 alle° 1247
1686 2704 4586 9623 13589 14015
14472 &c al 7057 12613 12599 14091
14246 14376, art. 91 all' 210, 348 779
937 946 979 4541 &c alther aller
[of all] art. 44
JALL 108 [although]
Alms 4 almessf selmaesse allmess0 4588'
JALOFT 69 72 alofte ii 103' i 234'
fAlone 29 alloone 9200 9435 14256'
14707' is from the ags. definite form
ana=solus, ii 293
JALONG 72 alonge ii 22', art. 108
am 103 it am I
JAmidst 73 amyddes -middan -middes
amidde'amidden'2011 1072316215
in the middes (of) 16534, art. 72
amidde ii 58' 119'
JAmong 73 amonges gemang imong'
amang' amang0 9902 14639, among
6534, art 72 amenge ii 22' 310'
f64 -and old form of the present par-
participle awaytand 7634, lepand
7739,
ankle 9 ancle ancle 1662
[Anomalous Verbs] art. 65
Answer 12 answar andswaru answare'
anndsware0 6492, art. 89 answer'
9744, art. 11 answere i 96' 97 146'
Ape 3 ape apa 3933 7046' 13241' 15396'
appear 87 appeere
19 Arcite 1579 1582 &c. Arclt' 1147
1357 2317
ARIADNE 98 Adriane
*16 ariste arist i 320' where the e final
is omitted in Pauli [arising]
arm 14 arme earm 158 probably an
error, 2918 should be armes
Arrow 4 arwe arewe arewe' arwe' 11424
ashes 23 assan asschen assen aissches
ask 98 axe
as 188 [considering]
**asp 16 asp aesp 2923 ?
Ass 3 asse assa asse° 16798'
Jasunder 72 asondre on-, a-, sundran
5577, asonder 7256' asondur 493'
AT — ABOVE 109
at— after 108 [after]
Jatween 72 atwynne ontweonan 3589'
13098'
aught 105 ought
AUGUST 96 augst
aunt 19 aunte 5401 French
AVARICE 19 avarice ii 127 French
*ave 91 av' 14919 [extremely doubtful]
tawaiting 64 awaytand 7634
awe 7 awe ege eje' ajhe° 656' 16045'
axe 17 ax sex eax sex' axe° 2546
*AXLE 17 axel eaxl i 320 (?)
§BABE 18 babe old Swedish babe, Ger
man bube ? i 344
t§Bad 31 badde 9467 3157' 9482'
15908' ii 47
Bale 7 bale bealu balu' bale' 13409'
balk 3 balke balca bolca 3918'
*BAND 16 bonde bend also m. i 102'
bane 3 bane bana bona bone' bane' 1099
1683' 16446'
*BANK 16 banke bane i 164
*banner 89 baner French baniere 980
BAPTISM 19 baptisme i 276 French
*tBare 30 90 bare baer bare' bar' 8755
8771' 11884' 12660' ii 286
**Barn 14 berne bern baerne' berrne0
13812' i 162'
Be v. Ill [elided]
Be—, 106
• Exceptional. •» Exceptional oblique. •)• Adjective. J Indeclinable. \ Uncertain Origin.
380
PROF. CHILD ON CHAUCER AND GOWER. CHAP. IV. § 6.
*Bean 16 bene bean 9296 3770' 4514'
9139' ii 275'
Bear 3 bere bera 2144, 1642' ii 339, art.
89 ber'? 2060' [rh. A<re=her, pro
bably the e was pronounced in here]
art. 88
*bear 89 ber' (verb) 1424 9918 12264
all inf ; 2762 imperative, 8760 pres.,
to bere art. 88
* BEARD 14 berde beard iii 319
Beast 19 beat 7424 9413 10578 6616'
beste i 280 French
•beat 91 bet' 383 [wrong reference ?]
**Bed 14 bed bedd bed' bed0 bedde i 24
101' [all ex. in Chaucer oblique]
*BEDE 14 bede bed i 208' [prayer]
*beech6&wAboce beoce 12856' 2925?
bees 23 beon been bees
JBefore 72 90 fo/ombeforan 1108 1150'
1164' 1388 byfore 379' 3238', beforne
14405 bifor' 3602 14995 i 59 117
*begin 91 begynn' 17347
^Behind 72 behynde behindan 3239
7723' byhynde 1052
Belief 3 bileeve geleafa ileefe' laefe0 3456
11445' 11991' 12355' beleve i 356
Bell 4 belle belle belle0 171' 14077'
14407' 16266' ii 13'
Bench 17 bench benc benche' bennche0
5829 ii 274, see BANK.
Jbeneath 72 bynethe beniban 4039
benedicite 96, see p. 260
*bequeathe 91 byqueth' 2770
berry 4 berye berige berie 207'
*beseech 91 bisek" 7251, art. 98
Jbeside 72 beside be sidan 10688'
^Besides 73 bysides be sidan 13344,
besides ii 359
better 38 bettre betere bettre0 526 650,
bet adv. form in ags. 4534 4731
10914
^between 72 bytwene betwynan 2861'
3107' betwen' i 6, 9, 20 betwen i 12
Jbetwixt 72 betwix betweox 1707
3096, betwixe 1212 2172 9348 14247
Jbeyond 72 byyond' ? geondan geonda
geond 15130
BIBLE 96
**bier 16 87 beere baer bsere'0 15091
beer' 6179 [the cases in 16 are
oblique], art. 87
bill 19 bille 13585 13591' French
*binn 16 bynne binn 595'
birch 4 bireh\e\ birche hire 2923?
birch' asp.
bird 98 brid
*Birth 16 burthe beorft 4612, berthe
birthe ii 76 155
**14 bissemare bismer bisemare bise-
ma;re [abuse, filthiness] 3963'
*blade 14 bladde blaed 620'
BLAZE 4 blase blaese ii 244'
f30 bleche blac ii 21 som on for she
is pale and bleche
fBLiND 30 blinde blind i 8
bliss 17 91 blis blys 1686' rh. this, blisi
4453 rh. is 4842 &c blisse 1451 &c
oblique only
fBlithe 29 blithe blij>e bli«e'° 1880'
14210' blitV 848 blith 10652
blossom 3 blosme blostma blosma
blosstme0 3324 (blosm' upon)
*tblue 30 blewe bleoh 566
}69 Blyve bilife' blive' bilife" 2699'
5973' 7102', i 314' ii. 238' [quickly]
*Boar 14 bore bar 2072 iii 268'
*BOAT 14 bate bat i 2
f BODILY 30 bodeliche iii 14
BONDMAN 3 bondeman bonda iii 320
BONEFACE 91 Sonefae' i 258 261, but
rh. grace i 258
**book 16 booke boc hoc"3 6373 ob
lique, book 6251
*Boon 16 boone ben bene3 2271' 2671'
9492' 12162' &c [in all the cases
cited rh. soone] i 185' iii 223
*Boot 16 boote bot botero 426' 6054'
[both rh. roote] i 228' 235'
{BOOTH 18 bothe Ger. bude, Dut.
boede, iii 281'
borde 19 ofr bourde, i 304r French
**14 Borwe borg borh' [loan] 10910'
JBoth 72 bothe batwa bafte' bo'Se'
babe0 5895 6823 ii 229, art. 39 and
103
**Bottom 14 botme botm 13249
BOUNDE 19 bounde bonde mid. Lat.
bunda, old fr. bonde, iii 102' French
Bow 3 bowe boga 17044 108' 9888'
17061', art. 91 bow' 2897 [the
elision is not certain]
BOWEL 19 bowele ofr. boele iii 265'
French
box 17 box box 5165
* bramble 14 brembre brember 15157
** brand 14 bronde brond brond' 15313'
**bread 14 brede bread bred' 7422
BREECH 7 breche brice i 351'
Breede 11 brsedo 2918 1972' 13156'
16646' iii 66' [breadth]
* Bride 16 bryde bryd brude' brid0
9764, art. 17 brid' i 102 art. 91
5rwy<f9694 brid' i 102
•Bridge 16 brigge brycg brugge' 3920'
ii 201
Jbrightly 69 brighte beorhte 3352
* Exceptional. ** Exceptional oblique. + Adjective. $ Indeclinable. { Uncertain Origin.
CHAT. IV. § 5. PROF. CHILD ON CHAUCER AND GOWER.
381
BRIM 7 brimme brymme ii 293
*bring 91 bring' 10049
{Brink 18 brinke Icelandic bringr =
colliculus) 11472 9275' 11170'
bristle 98 berstle
IBROAD 30 brode brad ii 107
Brother 21 brother, bretheren ags.
brothru brothers' brethren' bro-
theres' brethre0, art. 23
**brotherhood 14 bretherhede 613
*BROW 14 browe breaw i 95'
§BULL 18 bulle bolle Icel. boli bauli, Ger.
bulle, age. bulluca iii 118 ii 72' (?)
burned 98 brent brenne
burst 98 brast breste
*busyness 91 besynes 13140
By 108 [about, of time]
J72 byweste bewestan 390' [westwards]
§Cake 18 cake, Danish kage, Swedish
kaka 4309' 13737
Can, and its parts, art. 65, art. 109,
can thank [scire gratias]
Candle 96 candel
cap 4 cappe cappe 588' 687' 3145'
Care 11 care cearu care'0 1491' 4934'
14611' 15170' i 339
*Cart 14 carte craet carte' karrte0
7123, cart 16522 7121 7136 16533,
art. 98
*carter 8 carter 7122 7124 7141
cases 27 caas
cause 19 cause 4142 5705 7056 French
centre 19 centre 10336 French
certainly 96 certeynly
§ 18 Chaffare 14696' 14751'
chamber 19 chambre 1073, art. 89,
chambr' 9696 French
chanticleer 89 chaun teclere French chan-
tecler 16336, mostly misspelt as above
in the Nonnes Prests Tale ; that it
ought to have no final e appears from
the French derivation, and from the
rhymes ber (tuli] and power (Nor
man French poueir) 16822 16830,
also misspelt bere powere.
**chapmanhood 14 chapmanhede
30 chare 16096' should be char =
chariot, not to be confounded with
art. 90 chare 16099 = chair
fChaste 19 chaste 2306 French
Cheek 4 cheeke cece ceace 6374' 15524'
cheek' 15529 bad verse
Cheer 19 chere i 55 French, art. 87
Cheese 7 cheese cyse cese 7329, art.
91, chees' 3628 suspicious verse
* Chest 16 kiste cist iii 316', art. 17,
chest cest cist 6084 14149 rh. rest,
6982 rh. lest
*16 cheste ceast ? i 294 [strife, con
tumely]
* Child 14 childe cild child' childe'
child0 5339 14930 15217' 8459,
child 15221 15228 15241 8488
15768 i 190 ii 16, children childre
childer ags. cildru cilde cild childere'
children' childres' chilldre0, art. 23
**childhood 14 childehede 14912'
CHILL 7 chele cele cyle ii 369'
CHIN 9 chinne cinne i 275'
Church 4 chirche cyrice chirche' kirrke0
7391 7775 13744 13793 &c, art. 91
chirch' 3984, art. 21
cinnamon 19 cynamome 3699 French
*claim 91 daym' 9176
* CLAPPER 8 clapper ii 13
clasped 98 clapsud
fClean 29 dene clsene clsene' clene0
606 12087 14288, art. 91 den'
12228
JCleanly 69 clene clsene clsenlic 12553
*cleanness 91 clenness' 508
clearly 87 cleere
cleft 3 clifte clyfa 7727'
* CLERK. 14 clerke cleric clerc iii 288
§ cloak 18 doke, Middle Latin cloca,
Flemish klocke, 2001'.
4 cloote elate 12505 [burdock]
§Cloud 18 clowde 16268'
*Coal 14 cole eol col' 13088'? 13124'
come 7 cyme cume' come'0 (noun)
12271 ? [coming, advent]
*come 91 com (verb) 689 14184
commandment 19 comaundement 2871
2981 12991 French
fcoMMON 30 comune iii 152 159 comun
i 216 284 French
[Comparison of Adjectives] art. 38
*Constance 91 Constaunce' 4698 4858
4866 4986 Constaunce 4684 4851
6320 5527, art. 19 Constance i 185
186
[Contractions] art. 93 to 97
*Cope 14 cope cop iii 102', art. 4
cappa ii 101 ? § art. 18 15435'
**corn 14 corne corn corn'0 14404'
cot cote 4 cote cota cote 2459'
couch 19 couche 7351 French
*coutler colter 14 cultre culter 3761
3783 3810
Creed 3 crede creda 12975'
*cress 6 kers cerse 3754', art. 4 kerse
i 299 344', art. 98
§ CRIPPLE 18 creple Icel. kryppill, Dut.
krepel, Ger. kriippel, iii 147
crisp 98 crispe
crock 3 crouke crocca 4156'
* Exceptional. ** Exceptional oblique. + Adjective, i Indeclinable. { Uncertain Origin.
PROF. CHILD ON CHAUCER AND GOWER. CHAP. IV. 6 5.
**crop 14 croppe cropp 1534
Crow 4 crowe crawe 17176 17062'
17294' 2694', art. 91 crow 17172
CRUMB 4 crwnme crume iii 35
Cup 3 cuppe cuppa cuppe' 134 10930'
curl 98 crulle
curse 17 curs curs 663 658 4347
§dagger 1 8 dagger e (a thing to dag or
pierce with ags. ending -ere ?) 14070
[bad line] 113', dagger 14245
t§ Dainty 18 31 deynte, (Welsh dant
= tooth ; dantaidd = toothsome,
Wedgewood) 4559 5790 9917 15122,
deyntelh 16321 ii 255
**Dale 14 dale dsel dal' dale'0 16248'
dame madam 19 dame madame 16382
16444 16686 madam! 11635 11830
16456, art. 91 dam' 4571 4604 6152
madam' 7786 7792 French
Dare, and its parts, art. 65
**dark 14 derke dearc adj 4336'
[Dative Case] art. 102
DAUGHTER 21 douffhter, pi. ags. dohtrn
dohtere' dohtren' dohtres' doughteren
doughtres, art. 23
*daw 91 daw' 10069
*DAY 14 dawe dseg i 113', art. 98
*DEAL 14 dele dsel iii 110
fDear 29 dere deore deore' dure' deore0
dere° 13593' 14921', art. 87, art. 89
deer' 7334 15538? [see peer]
*DEATH 14 dethe deaft i 202
*declare 90 declare 7061' 14939'
declar' 14893 extremely doubtful
*Deed 16 dede dad dede' deed0 4853'
5311 etc., etc., i 272
*deem 91 dem 3194
Deep 4 deepe dype deope 4875'
t Deeply 69 deepe deope 129' i 98
deer 25 deer deor pi.
DEFAULT 19 defaulte ii 206 French
[Definite Adjectives] art. 32 to 36
degrees 26 degre
88 dere derian [injure]
f29 Derne derne derne' dserne0 3200
3278 i 107' [secret]
DESERT 19 deserte ii 391 French
DEVIL 96
fDEvouT 30 devoute i 64 French
Diana 19 Dyane 2074 2348 etc.Ztyan'
2293 French
*did 91 ded' 14926
JDIMLY 69 dimme dimme ii 293'
toiVERS 30 diverse ii 85 77 125 iii 12
295, divers i 356' iii 3' 384' French
do 109 [cause]
§dog 18 doyae, Icelandic doggr, Dutch
dogghe 6951 9888
**Doom 14 dom' dom dom'° 11240,
dome iii 211'
Door 11 90 dore duru dyr dure"5 1989
3435 3499 13065 13145 14624 etc.
dor' 552 2424 3471 3482 3634 [all
these are doubtful, they might be
dore introducing trisyllabic measures]
IDOUBLE 19 double i 181 iii 187 French
doubt 19 doute 9959 French
dove 4 dowfe dufe 10013 13812
**down 16 doune dun dun0 15207'
§drake 18 drake 3576'
*Dread 16 drede dra3d dred' drede'
16648 9031' etc. i 139
* Drink 14 drynke drinc drinca drinc'
drinke' drinnc0 drinnke0 1617 3411
4918 7481 etc., art. 7 love drunke
iii 12 16
t§ 31 Dronkelewe 7625' 9407' [drun
ken] so costlewe [costly], Persones
Tale, De Superbia, 3rd par. near the
end. iii 5'
Drop 3 drope dropa drope' 12450 (131
bad line) ii 266, 286'
fDry 29 drye dryge dry dri^je0 16334
422' 15703' i 234
*drought 16 droughthe druga'S 10432
**dung 14 donge dung 16504, dong
532
Dwale 3 dwala 4159' [nightshade]
[E Final Silent] art. 84 to 92
*feach 30 eche selc selc' seche' illc°
1184 [doubtful, there may be only
a defective first measure, p. 333.]
Eagle 19 egle 2180 10437 French
Ear 2 ere eare sere3 6218 6603' 8603',
art. 87
Earth 4 erthe eorthe eorthe'0 erthe'8
1248 8079 8557 10707 erth i 25
ii 197 [doubtful]
ease 19 eese 971 French
*EDGE 16 egge ecg ii 251
J72 efle eft i 171 [after, again]
JEke 72 eek ek eac ec' eke' 5031 5612
5688 8818 eeke eke 4480 5136 6231
7075 7765 11692 15786 (all rh. with
seeke) ; 6373 7445 15522 (allrh. with
cheeke], 16873 (rh. with breke)
Eld 11 elde yldo yld relde' aeld' elde°
6789 6797 3883' iii 365
f29 elenge elleude = peregrinus, and
therefore miser, as in other lan-
fages, see Dieff. Goth. W. 1, 37,
being changed into g, as in the
modern English form of the pre
sent participle? 14633 6781' [rh.
challenge and hence pronounced
(elen-dzhe), and consequently not
• Exceptional. ** Exceptional oblique, t Adjective, i Indeclinable. { Uncertain Origin.
CHAP. IV. § 6. PROF. CHILD ON CHAUCER AND GOWER.
383
analogous to the change of the par
ticiple from -inde to -ynge, as sug
gested by Prof. Child]
[Elision of Final Vowels] art. 74 to 83
[Ellipsis] art. Ill
JElse 73 elks elles aelles' elles0 1230
9410 11209i 1 ii203
End 7 ende eude ende'° 1867 4901 7037
15' etc. ii 61 186, art. 91 end' 197
64 -ende, usual termination of the pre
sent participle, even of French verhs,
in Gower, accordende i 213', comende
i 88 133' 220', touchende i 243,
wepende i 74, criende i 137, kne-
lende i 155, praiende i 345, suende
i 278 213', spekende ii 6', thenkende
ii 369, thonkende ii 297, ridende i
191 ii 46, amblende ii 45, winkende
ii 189, boilende ii 201, swounende i
188, sailende i 200, bledende iii 60,
unsittende iii 143, continuende ii 18'
etc., all with the accent on -end.
The accent is occasionally thrown
hack, comend i 1, touchend' i 52, be-
longendi 12, wailend i 144, walkend
i 185, wepend i 236, knelend' ii 96,
slombrend ii 103 etc.
Jfenough 30 72 ynowe genoh inoh'°
inowe' 12788', art. 91 ynow' 4675
ENVY 19 envie i 223 French
*-er 8 -er -ere -ere, [see carter hopper e
lover1 mellere outrydere sleper wonger ;
generally -er]
erst than 108 [before]
Eve 15 eve sefen, aefen' heve' efenn0
832 4993' i 70' ii 332' ; at 5914'
*feven 30 evene efen efne' efenn0 83
8316
Jevenly 69 evene efne 1062
jever never 72 evere nevere aefre sefer
sefre' sefer' aefre0 50 676 1231 1347
1408, ever never 70 1135 1354 2397
2414, generally contracted to a
monosyllable, art. 108 ever among
[still]
Jevilly 69 evele yfele 1129, ylV 3715
fexcellent 19 excellente 10459 French
*experience 19 91 experience 7099', ex-
periens 5583 10112 (6050 rh. defens
which in Old French is spelt both
with and without a final e) French
Eye 2 yhe ye eage ejhe0 10' 3018'
4700' 8109' etc. eyen yen, ags. eagan,
art. 23
*face 19 91 face Norman French face,
9710 rh. trespace 1580 16252, faas
rh. Aaas=has 13117'?
fain 98 fawe
*fFair 30 90 faire fseger fceir' faeire'
fa^er0 2388 2665 4021 12043 [all
these are fern.] 234 2596 [these two
are plural], 884 1687 [these two are
definite], 12060 [probably an adv.],
ii 253 [a faire knight, probably in
flectional], fair 165 575 3233 7835'
9147' 9431' 14432'
JFairly 69 faire fsegere 94 12060'
^lf alias Fr. fallace, iii 158 rh. was,
f alias inne ii 85 [deceit, cunning]
fFALSE 30 false fals ii 329
**Falsehood 14 falsehede 13101 i 216
fan 17 farm fann 3315 16974 (?)
JFAR 72 ferre feor ii 19
Fare 11 fare faru fare' fore' 1811'
4989' ii 173' 271'
JFast 69 faste fseste 4192 6552 11159
13033 13351 i 55
Father 21 fader, art. 98
*t 30 fawe, feah (=fa3gen as in feahlic)
5802' [fain]
*Fear 14 89 fer' faer 11172 [oblique],
feere 2346 2688 2932 7286 [oblique,
all for feere'] i 57' 90', art. 87
Feast 19 feste 908 6660 8067 8072
8145 8886 i 182, fest 6658 French
*FEE 14 fee feoh iii 293 [cattle] mo
nosyllable contracted
*feel 91 fel' 9332 pres., 9338 pres.
feere see fere
SQfele fela 8793 [many]
*fell 91 fell' '2112 subj.
§Fellow 18 Icelandic felagi feldwe
2550 16512 397' 655' 1527' 4248'
4366' 6967' 16499'/etew 650 1194
2626 2657 4257 7605 7624 7668
16489 16514 16516 16527 16531,
feldw' 652, felaw' 892
*fellowship 8 91 felaivschip' 476 430
3 Fere feere fera gefera ivere' 4748'
4815' 6506' 8989' [in all these
cases the word means companionship
rather than companion; it is the
German gefahrte, properly der mit-
fahrende, compare English wayfarer}
[Feminine of Adjectives] art. 37
**fern 14 feme fearn 10569'
FETCH 98 fette
few 39 fewe feawe feawa 641 7432'
*fiddle 5 fithul fithele 298
*Fill 16 file fyll 1530' 7282' i 254
FILTH 16 filthe fyl« i 174
*fmd 91 fynd' 15408
Finisterre 88 Fynestere
*Fire 14 fyr fyr fur' fir0 2921 2935
2948 [fyre fuyre seem to be oblique
forms only]
• Exceptional. *» Exceptional oblique, t Adjective, t Indeclinable. \ Uncertain Origin.
384
PROF. CHILD ON CHAUCER AND GOWER. CHAP. IV. § 6.
**fish UJisshe? fisc fisc' fisce' 180
[oblique, with omitted e : is likened
to a nssh that's watirles]
Fist 17 fist fest fyst 6374 4273 rh.
brest, 6216 rh. list, 14217 rh. best,
17329 rh. lest, art. ISfiste i 175 obi.
fit 17 fltt fitt 4182 6624 rh. wit
fleas 23 fleanyfcew
FLEET 3 fiete flota i 314, art. 14 flete
fleot i 197
•FLESH 14 flesshe flaesc ii 342
Flight 17 flight flyht fluht' fliht' flihht0
990 rh. knight, ii 327 rh. night, art.
16 flighte ii 378' printed flight
Floor 17 floor flor flor'0 3471, flor(e] ii
326 rh. swor(e) iii 337, art. 91 flor'
iii 337, probably belongs to art. 17
and should have no final e.
fly Iflye fleoge flyge 4350 14582' 10178'
FOAL 3 fole fola iii 314
*Foe 14 fo ffah fa ii 116, pi. foon
foos ags. fa, Bosw., art. 23
*Fold 14 folde falud fald 514' i 16'
*Folk 14 folke Me ii 165, art. 25
*fond 91 fond' 9284
Food 3 91 foode foda fode° 7463', rh.
good ii 362' iii 26' 30' fode five or
six times in Gower
*Foot 14 foote fot fot'° 11489 iii 149',
pi. feet ags. fet, art. 26
JFOR 72 fore for ii 59 to rhyme with
bore, ii 239 to rhyme with forlore,
iii 308 rh. more
forbear SSforbere
*forbid 91 f orbed' 9635
Force 19 force 3910, art. 91 fore'
3910 [for leeful is with force fore'
to schowve], art. 91 fora 7771 9171
9709 10214 10304 13548 13718'
17000 (rh. cor*) French, ii 392 rh.
hors
For-, 106
J-FORE 72 -forn -fore, aforn onforan
iii 32', afore i 364, tofore toforan i
204 tofor' i 59, be/or' i 138, art. 90
-for' i 59 117 138 etc. -fore i 32 204
FORTH WITH 108 [with]
Fortune 19 fortune 15487 15727 15943
16209 i 22 (4 cases) French
Jfoully 69 foule rule? fullic 16964
•tfoul 30 foule fill ful' fide'0 6645
6664'
•FOUNDER s. 8 founder ii 161
ffour 90 foure 2141 3883 13388
fFREE 29 fre freo fri i 107'
\fremde 29 fremede 10743
*tfresh 30 fresshe faersc freche' frech'
fressh0 2388 9656 2733 10698
•friar 89 frer' 208 7315, frere 7252
7254 7258 7264 etc., art. 87
friend 25freend pi.
•friendship 8 friendship' freondscipe
430
§funke 18 Ger. funke iii 18' [spark]
§ gable 18 gable Gothic gibla, German
giebel, Danish gavl 3571'
Gall 3 galle gealla galle0 6522' 1198C'
12725' 15833' i 303' ii 177
Game 15 game gamen gamen' gome'
game' 3405 14701', ace. 855', in
14244' i 94', gam' 2288 3741
gan 109 [auxiliary]
gap \\gappe geapu (Bosw) 1641 1647'
•Gate 14 gate geat ja3t' jate° 14144'
GATHER 98 gader
Gear 3 gere gearwa geara 367 ? 354 ?
ger 2182' ? art. 88
[Genitive Case] art. 101, [Genitive of
Nouns] art. 21 and 28
get 91 get' 9819
•Gift 16 gifte gift jeff 9187 5685'
12203', yifte i 276', for-yifte iii 372'
•give 91 giv' gev' 223 7455 7456 7457
9401 9403 14319
fGLAD 30 gladde glsed i 211
•16 Gleede gled 1999' 15870' i 280
[red hot coal]
gloss 4 glose glose 7374' 7502'
•GLOVE 16 glove glof i 351'
go 109 [walk], art. Ill [elided]
•goddess 91 goddess' 930
•GODHEAD 14 godhede i 364
••Gold 14 golde gold gold' 12138,
nom. ii 356'
tooLDEN 30 golde golden ii 356'
•goodness 91 goodnes 7395
goose pi. geese 26 gees ges
•gown 91 ffoun' 93
Grace 19 91 grace 16219 3071' 14132'
i 9, art. 91 grac' 1175, 6842, gras
15242' ! rh. Thopas French
Grame 3 grama grame' 13331' [grief]
••Grave 14 grave grarf 2780' li 114'
•fGreat 30 grete great grset0 4754
9100 9848 10783 15885 i 125 ii 345,
gret 341 439 749 1189 1247 1401
2485 4814 5100 etc. great i 70
tGreen 29 grene grene grene' 2937 3876
** Ground 14 grounde grund grund'0
grunde' 5573' i 111
•grove 14 91 grov' graet 1690, grove
[oblique only]
guess 109 gesse [think]
§ GUESS 18 gesse guesse Dutch gissen,
Swed. gissa, iii 211' i 105'
had liefer 109 hadde lever
* Exceptional. ** Exceptional oblique. + Adjective, i Indeclinable. J Uncertain Origin.
CHAP. IV. § 6. PROF. CHILD ON CHAUCER AND GOWER.
385
fhairy 30 90 haire haeren 14151
*HALF 16 halfe halve healf i 8' 17'
on other half i 77
J69 halfing healfunga iii 206 [halfwise]
*Hall 16 halle heall halle' 10394 ii
205' art. 91 hall' 9962 10400
*Hand 17 hands hande hand bond
hand'3 hond' 13788 [this is ace. and
all the other instances cited are
ohlique, so that this is not properly
an exceptional word, hand hond are
the common forms] hand fand 4113
hond fond 5026 hond bond 10065
JHard 69 harde hearde i 220
Hare 3 hare hara 191' 686' 1812'
15167' ii 93'
Harp 4 harpe hearpe harpe' 6039
3 Harre heorra 552' [hinge] herrt i 36'
HASTE 19 haste i 252 French
*14 hastihede ii 245
Hate 7 hate hete haete' hete° 6331'
13826' 16074', art. 91 hat' 13640
haunch 19 haunche 3279 French
*have 91 hav' 888 909 921 1257 2774
9210 9277 9308 10371 10594 10853
11359 11456 11530 14140 14142
and almost always ; generally hav'
in Gower, except, of conrse, at the
end of a line
haw 3 hawe haga 6240' 14270'
he 103 [one indefinite and mark of
gender], art. Ill elided
*head 14 heed heafud haefd' haefde'
hsefedd0 10404 heved 12294 {heede
seems to be only oblique]
hear 87 heere
Heart 4 herte heorte heorte' heorrte'
herrte0 955 956 1146 2651 6354
etc. (40 cases), art. 91 hert 10526
8062 16301 9113 (7 cases), art. 21
Heat 11 hete haeto hate' haste0 12448'
12506' 13336' 13453'
heath 17 hceth haeS 6'
**heaven 14 hevene heofon heovene'
heoffne0 heffne0, of 7588', in 9513',
art. 21
hedge 7 hegge hege 16704
*Heed 16 heede hyd 305' 8511' 10926'
12363' 13178', art. 91 heed 7483
12987, i 82'
*HEEL 16 hele hel hela i 17' ii 210'
f29 heende gehende ? hende' 3199
3401 3487 [courteous]
Height 11 highte heahtfo 2921', rh.
bright (brighte?) 4432, rh. right
17298 [this is an error, it rhymes
with to my sight, which may have
been an error for sighle\
4 heire haere here' 12061' [hair-cloth]
11 Hele haclo hele' haele' 1273' 3104'
13531' [health]
*Hell 16 91 hell' hell helle'0 660 ? ii
119', art. 21
*Help 16 91 helpe help hellpe0 9202
i 236, art. 91 help' 10773 help 11983
i 30
Hen 17 hen henn 178
Jhence 73 hennes hens heonan heonane
heonene' henne' hinries' 10972 14102,
art. 72 henne heouan 3887'
herb 19 herbe 11344 French
*herberg 5 herberw herberwh herbergh
hereberge herberwe' herrberrjhe0
405 767 4117 4143 11347
Herd 7 herde hirde hirde0 605 12120,
art. 16 hierd i 340 should be hierde
JHere 72 her heer her her" here'0
6583 6591 6595 6624 14346' heere.
1821' 3774' 7730', art. 87
heritage 19 heritage 10046 11867
French
**14 heme ern 11433' [eagle]
*Heste 16 haes heste' ha3se° 3588 by-
fieste4.45T i 85 hest H376 8004'?
[behest command]
9 hevenriche heofourice i 265' [king
dom of heaven]
3 Hewe hiwa 9659' [servant]
*14 A««higPii9' [haste]
HIERARCHY 98 gerarchie
*t high 30 highe heah bach' heehje'
heh° hejhe0 7474 8011 8082 12436*
14055 high' 11047 11085 high
14202 14867
Jhigh 69 hye heahe 2077 3243' highe
ii 35'
HILT 4 hilte i 328'
hind 3 hyne hina 605' 13247' [servant]
*HIND 16 hinde hind ii 45' [deer]
hip 4 heepe heope hiope 15158' [berry]
*Hire 16 hyre huyre byre hure' 659C?
7555' 16938' iii"352
his 103 [of it]
HITHER 98 hider
hive 7 Aywhyfe (inc. gen.) 16878 7275'
hiwe see hewe
*hold91 hold' 9364
**hole 14 hole hoi hoi', in 13209
** -holm, 14 -holme -holm, of 4284
*HOME 14 home ham ii 7
Homicide 19 homicide 14978 French
** -hood 14 -hede -hod -bode' -ede'
-had0
Hope 3, 91 hope hopa hope0 12798
2437 10802 12606' i 227, art. 91
hop' 88 9548
* Exceptional.
** Exceptional oblique, t Adjective. $ Indeclinable. \ Uncertain Origin.
25
386
PROF. CHILD ON CHAUCER AND GOWER. CHAP. IV. § 6.
•hopper 8 hopper hoppere 4034 4037
*HOKSE 14 horse hors iii 259, art. 21,
pi. ags. hors hors' horses', art. 26
JHOTLY 69 hote ii 28' 301'
hose 4 hose hose hose' 3931', hosen ags.
hosan, art. 23
host 19 hoste oste 753 6868 16936.
host oat 829 3116 12591 12625,
11007 12580 rh. wost, 16988 rh;
ffost, French
HOUR 19 houre ii 9' French
••House 14 house hus bus'0 5934 i 294
how that 108 [however that]
4 howve hufe 3909' [hat cap]
•Hue 14 hewe hiw heowe' hew3 1366
•{•HUGE 19 hughe French ahuge i 236
hunter 3 hunte hunta hunte' hunnte0
2020 [a line not in the Harleian
7334] hunt 2014 bad line, 2630
hunt' as
Husband 3 housbonde housebonde hus-
bonda husbonde' hosebonde' 6034'
6062' 14578' 5612' 5959' hombond
6085 8597 (6107 ?) housebond 16850,
art. 91 hous'bond' 8574
I 45 yk ich etc., art. 98
•16 iff hie seht ii 378' printed iff fit,
[possession]
•fill 30 yllc yfel ufele' uvel' ille8 4182
IMAGE 19 ymoge i 34 ii 178 French
[Imperative] arts. 57-59
[Imperfect Indicative] arts. 63-55
[Impersonal Verbs] art. 67
Jin 69 inne inne 41' 10891 12809
ther-inne i 224, with-inne i 30
[Infinitive] art. 60
-ing 17 -yng -ynge -ung -ing, ing'
rarely -inge' generally, -inng° almost
invariably. The more usual ending
in Chaucer is certainly -yng. The
termination -ynge occurs frequently
at the end of a verse and in most
cases rhymed with an infinitive
vanysshynge [ace.] 2362 rh. plur.
pres. ind., envem/mynge [ace. after
thurgh'] 9934, felynge 16779, re-
joisynge 17178, fthe other cases cited
are oblique]. In Gower the termi
nation is generally -inge, less fre
quently -ing ; in the latter case the
accent is sometimes thrown back,
axinge i 17 1, bakbitinge i 213', caro-
linge ii 63', childinge iii 211, comings
ii 29' 53', compleigninge i 327', gruc-
chinge i 234, knoulechinge i 123' ii
25' iii 34', lesinge i 65' 213', likinge i
68' 173', lokinge i 65', mishandlinge
ii 189, spekinge iii 252, tidinge i 327,
ii 243' 385, welwillinge i 355', wep-
inge ii 122, writinge i 4 iii 104 ; be
ginning rh. spring iii 104, knoulech-
ing i 3^', teching i 95, all accented
on the last syllable ; hunting i 53,
liking iii 319, wening i 107 108,
writing i 6 accented on the first ;
excusing of i 107, hunting as i 53,
sheding of i 316 364 accented on the
last, are apparently cases of elision.
t -mg, 64 -yng -ynge, -ende, for the
most part -yng ; in some cases how
ever it is rhymed with the infinitive
mood, and we must either suppose
the participle to end in -ynge, or else
the infinitive to have lost its termi
nation. [Probably -ynge is the old
and -yng the abridged form] wonyng
390, lyggyng 1013, romyng 1073,
dwellyng 1421, rayhyng [several
MS. read naylyng} 2505, wynsyng
3263, sensing 3341, abydyng 3595,
walkyng 3955, knowyng 4223, yma-
ginyng (rh. thing) 8474; romynge
10092, fastynge 13778, sittyng' 802?,
lyvyng' 903' ?, lotynge 12114'?, thun-
derynge (rh. to sprynge) 2 1 76', gliter-
yng(e?) rh. bryng(e) inf. 2892, styr-
yng(e) rh. to spryng(e?) 3673, wep-
ynge rh. brynge inf. 8790, swellynge
(rh. brynge inf.) 12207, lernynge
rh. synge inf.) 14927. See -and.
INN 9 inne inne inn iii 314'
inquire 88 enquere
Intent 19 entente. 1489 7138 14986
7212' 8610' 8737 11934' etc. entent
3173 4567 13234 5350' 15123' i 101
French
into 108 [until]
tiNvisiBLE 19 invisible ii 247 French
in with 108 [within]
Ire 7 90 ire yrre (inc. gen.) irre3 1661
1764 7593 14072 17210 17220 »>'
7575? rh. squire? 7671
§jade 18 jade 16298'
Joy 19 joye 1873 1875 12507, art. 91
joy 9929 French
judge 19 juge jugge 12317 12391
13540 13573 French
judgment 19 juggement 780 820 etc.
French
JUSTICE 19 justice iii 201 French
fkeen 29 kene cene kene'° 2878' 9633'
15745'
•keep 14 keeps 8934 keep 400' 102727
kep' 6207 ; at 505' should certainly
be keep
•Key 16 keye ca;g 9918' 13147' ii 188
• Exceptional: »• Exceptional oblique. + Adjective, t Indeclinable. } Uncertain Origin.
CHAP. IV. { 5. PROF. CHILD ON CHAUCER AND GOWER.
387
**kin 14 kynne cynn cun' kinn" 4036'
ii 267'
•Kind mankind 16 kynde mankynde
cynde cnnde' kinde0 1309 3521 6298
etc. (16 cases), art. 91 kynd' ,5263
11080,i265
tKind 29 kynde cynde 649' 8728'
15008' unkinde ii 145'
KINDLED 98 kinled
§kindred 18 kijnrede 12S8' L1047'
kine 23. kyn cy
*KING 14 kinge cyning i 117
9 kingesriche cyningrice ii 268' [king
dom of the king]
*14 kinghede iii 144'
kite 3 kyte cita cyta 1 181 10938 10939
•KITH 16 kit he cy5 iii 71 [country,
patria]
§18 knarre 551'
Knave 3 knave cnafa cnapa cnave'
cnape0 3434 3469 5135 5142 8320
8323 etc. iii 321' ii 16
KNEE 9 kne eneo cneow i 24 may be
regarded as contracted
*KNIGHTHOOD 14 knighthode i 246
*14 knightlihede iii 212
knot 3 knotle cnotta 10715 10721
{knowledge 18 knowledge 14441. Can
the termination -leche he the same
as -legje in the Ormulum= there, to
-ness ?
*Lace 91 laas old French las 2391, rh.
allaas, rightly written ; lace 1819 rh.
trespace both wrongly (?) written
[see solace]
•LADDER 16 ladder hlaeder iii 330
*ladle 5 ladelUssdle 2022 16983
*lady 5 lady hlaefdige Iffifdi' laffdij0
1145 1351 14885, art. 21
*LADTHOOD 14 ladyhede ii 40'
lake 10 lake lacu lagu lake' Isec' 5851'
16698'
**Land 14 londe land lond lond' land0
4942' i 220
Lap 3 lappe 688' 8461' 10949' 11940'
LAPWING 4 lappewinke hleap wince,
-winge, ii 329
Lark 4 larke lawerce laferce laferc
1493 2212, *art. 6 laverock ii 264'
JLately 69 fate late 77 i 211'
Law 1 1 law e lagu lag laje' lawe'
311 4177 4178 7471
*lead 91 led' 9308
**LEAF 1 4 leefe leaf i 1 7
tlean 29 lene laene 9727' 16299'
*LEAP 14 lope hleap i 310'
•jieaping 64 lepand 7739
LEAS 1 1 leese Ia3su ; 1 7 [pasture]
•Leave 16 leve leaf lefe'° 4005 6490
13653 etc., art. 91 lev' 5694 9715
9330 14263
Leech 7 leche laece lece laeche' 3902'
7474' 7538' 11984' 14331'
*leek 14 leeke leac 12723,' leek 3877
3 teerelira 15268' [skin]
87 leere [teach]
•16 lefte lyft i 276' [air]
•Length 16 lengths lengi? 17302
less 38 lasse lesse laesse lasse"" 14280
17268 14895' 15357'
*14 lette ags. ? ii 88' 249' [hindrance]
[Letters] art. 98
tLEWD 30 lewde laewed iii 2
•lewdness 91 letvednes 10537 12415
•Liche 14 lie lie'0 lich" 2960 [dead
body] iii 311'
lie 7 lye lyge 3017' 3391' 5609' 12527'
13055'
fLiEF 14 30 leve leof i 343 ii 324, art.
109 hadde lever
•Life 14 lyve lif lif'° 9111' i 199 309'
lifl 174', art. 109 [being, creature]
Jlightly 69 lighte lihte 6724
3 like lica [corporis forma, cf. swin-
lica, Ettmiiller, not in Bosworth]
lice0 i 143' iii 70' [shape]
fLike 30 like liche -lie i 25' 261' 268'
ii 124' 379, art. 98
•LIKELIHOOD 1 4 liklyhede ii 1 47'
Lily 4 lilie lilie 2180 12019 12015'
11 955' iii 249
•LIMB 14 limme lim ii 10
••Linden 16 lynde lind, on 9087', art.
91 lynd' 2924, linde ii 46'
Lip 3 lippe lippa 133
lisped 98 lipsede
•16 Lisse liss 11550' [forgiveness], art.
17 to iii 379' (?) [comfort]
•list 14 lyste list 1864
fLittle 30 li/te lite lytel 2629' 3861'
7182' litel 1527 3860 14635, art. 96
•live 91 lyv' 9157 14258
•Liver 1 6 lyvere lifer livere' 7421'
•Load 14 loode hlsed 2920'
*load- (stone) 16 loode-sterre lad ladu
lade0 2061
••loan 14 loone lam Isen'
11 lode, liv(e)lode=\ife'B journey, ladu
ii .293'
•fLong 30 longe lang long long' lang°
157553995591 6206 11393 14141
long 619 1189 2561
Ex ceptional. *• Exceptional oblique. + Adjective, i Indeclinable. 1 Uncertain Origin.
388
PROF. CHILD ON CHAUCER AND GOWER. CHAP. IV. § 5.
JLong 69 longt lange 1645 14847
15596', art. 108 long on [along of,
because of]
•lordschip 8 lordschip' hlafordscipe
1627, rh. felawschipe
**Lore 16 fore lar larera 4762' ii 81
loss 98 lost
•floud 30 lowde hlud 10582 [inflec
tional]
JLoudly 69 loude hlude 716', louthe
(from another Saxon form, hleo^S)
17026', art. 91 lowd' 15024
Love 12 love lufu lufe lufe' love' lufe°
260 674 6096 6336 14569 (5 cases),
art. 91 lov' 1137 1756 1807 2226
2262 2308 2316, etc., etc, (17 cases).
In Gower e is regularly pronounced
*lover 8 lover' 1381 ?
*fLow 30 lowe lah loh' laih' laje'
3696' 6783' i 84' ii 294'
JLowly 69 lowe lage? loh' 1407'
17297
LUNG 4 lunge lunge iii 100
J-LY 69 -liche, aliche i 268, besiliche
ii 3, comunliche ii 226, dueliche iii
245, evenliche ii 179', openliche ii
328, parfitliche ii 185, priveliche ii
336, privelich iii 252, unproperliche
ii 129, sodeinliehe ii 336, solempne-
liche iii 329, verriliche i 72
**16 lydne Iseden lyden [speech] 10749
*Madame 91 madam' 7786 7792 [see
dame], art. 19 Madame iii 300
MAGIC 19 magique iii 128 French
Maid 15 mayde maegden maeden
maiden' maide' majgdenn,0 nom.
8253 12055 14878, ace. 6468 i 154,
mayden 3202 2307 6469 i 154
•Maidenhood 14 maydenhede majj-
denhad0 4450' 5651' 8713' 8742'
12054' ii 55' 230'
3 Make maca macche0 make0 5667,
2558' 5120' 12152' 15203' [mate,
spouse] ii 204' [form]
male 19 male 12494 French
*malice 91 malic' 8950 9098
•Manhood manhede 1287' i 82' 144'
Manner 19 manere 10501' 11737' maner
10452 11742 11745, art. 89 maner'
71 2546 3681 8395 16332, etc.
French
many 11 mayne meigne menigeo men-
geo maene0 1260 7627' 10310' 14459'
many one 109
MAPPA MTJNUI 19 moppemottnde iii 102'
French
Mare 4 mare mere myre 17010' 4053'
693' mere 643'
••Mark 16 merke mearc marke'
merrke0 1192' marche i 245, art. 17
mark marc [money] 12954
§marl 18 marie, German mergel, Latin
marga, French marne, 3460
•Marriage 91 mariag' 9550 9560 9663,
art. 19, i 101' French
MARVEL 19 merveille i 327 ii 236
French
Mass 4 masse maesse masse' messe0
7331 9768 14662 15047
mate 98 ma fee which see
MATTER 19 matere i 43' 146' 343 365
ii 207 383 iii 157 French
MAURICE 91 Moric' Moris i 206 211
213 191
Maw 3 mawe maga 4906' 15234' 14411'
may 65 [all its parts]
me 103 me for I
Mead 7 mede meadu 89' 6443' 10105'
11459' [the last three instances are
oblique]
meal 9 mele melu mele [flour] 4040
3937' 4243', art. 90 meV 4051?
4068?
•meal \±mele meal mael' mele' [repast]
4886, mel meel 7356' 16319'
§MEAN 18 mone Old Fris. mene, ohg.
meina i 97' iii 285' 333'
[Measures, Kinds, etc., Syntax for]
art. 100
Meat 7 mete mete mett mete"0 127
15910 10932*, art. 91 met' 136 345
9795 10384
Medicine 19 medecine 10254 French
•Meed 16 meede med mede'0 772' 3380'
f§ Meek 31 meke 3202 6Q1& 14653'
Gothic muks, North Friesic meek
fMEET 29 mete maete ii 166', unmete
i 163
7 mele mele iii 21' [cup]
men 26 men pi.
mermaid 7 meremayd mere mere'
16756?
•fmerry 30 merye mirig murie' rnuri'
208' 8491'
MESSAGE 19 message i 288 French
MEW 19 meive Fr. mue, i 326' French
*MIDDLE 14 middle middel iii 120
•Might 17 91 might, miht mcuht
mihte' mihht0 mihhte0 1789 2237
and almost always, mi p lit' 10447?
fMiLD 29 milde milde mild, i 195, ««-
milde i 84'
•Mile 16 myle mil mile'0 12816 14687
14127', art. 91 mil' 14102
Milk 17 milk mile meolc mile' millc"
360 rh. silk
• Exceptional. ** Exceptional oblique, t Adjective, t Indeclinable. } Uncertain Origin.
CHAP. IV. § 5. PROF. CHILD ON CHAUCER AND GOWER.
389
*mill 16 mellt mylen 3921', mitten
4309, art. 91 mylV 4019
*miller 8 mellere 547 P 4044 ? 544 rh.
mere, 3167 rh. forbere; miller 3923
3993 3998 4008 4094
*Mind 14 mynde mynd minde0 13347
4947 i 6' ii 55'
mire 7 myre myre 510' 6554' 16937 '
Mirth 16 merthe mehrft murthe' 768
[pi.?], 5981' [rh. of birthe which
should probably be of birth'], art. 91
mirth' 9613
[Miscellaneous Notes] arts. 98 to 111
Mite 4 myte mite 1560' 7543' 12439'
12561'
•MONTH 14 monthe mona'S montf ii 27
iii 117 119 124 125
Moon 3 moone mona rnone'0 3515 4296,
art. 109' mas. 9759 11599, mone
i 65', art. 21
*tjmore 90 mor' mare mare0 98 827
976 1124 2742 7453 7679 9372
9489 13219 14791 14842, frequently
in Gower, mor 7485 10648, 16255,
more 306 785 1577 2826 4049 4050
9107 14563; 804 3222 3519 6023
6313 9110 13352 14560 15774
16790 16813 16915 17072, more fre
quent than mor' in Gower, mor more
occur in successive lines ii 44, art. 38
MORE 4 more more i 98' [mulberry P]
*Morning 14 morns morgen morn
morjen' morje' morwe' 360 3236,
morwen 10099 morwe 832 14710
1494, i 186 205
*morrow 91 morw' 824 [see morning
art. 98
fMOST 30 moste i 92 112
60 mot =• must [all its parts]
*MOTE 14 mote mot i 179
MOTHER 98 moder ; art. 21 modres =
mother's
MOULD 4 molde molde i 217'
MOUTH 14 mouthe nur$ i 149' 295'
[mouth of an animal]
mouthe 3 mouthe mutha Dertemouthe
391' [mouth of a river]
fMuch 30 moche micel mucel 1810
9114 9117 9298 16256 mochil(-el)
17269 17270, art. 109 [great]
*MULE 14, mule mul, 19 mule Fr.
mule i 210
MULTITUDE 19 multitude ii 201 French
*MURDER 14 mordre niorfter i 270
myself 46 myself 11735, myselve 9334
11674, myselven 805 14590
109 nale [alehouse]
Name 3 name nama name' nome' name0
1439 1588 12030 12384 etc. nam'
was 15128 perhaps we should read
nam' is, art. 91 nam' 14864 15128*
fnarrow 29 narwe nearu 627 7385
NATURE 19 nature ii 17 French
nave 1 1 nave nafu 7848' [of a wheel]
NAVY 19 navie i 197 French
neat 25 neet pi.
JNEATH 72 -netJte, benethe beni^an i
35, undernethe underni)>an i 258
Neck 3 nekke hnecca 238 1220 3916
5859 etc., nekbon 6488 ? nekkebon
16548
Need 16 neede nead neod' neode' ned°
306' [rh. heede which should be heed,
all the other instances are oblique]
*NEEDLE 16 nedel nsedl iii 20 perhaps
should be nedle
JNeeds 72, 73 needes neade neades
neode' nede° 1171 7887 10179 13127
16720, i 108, art. 69 nede 9208
9825' 13208, ned' 14520, art. 72
nede i 147
t29 neisshe hnesc nesc ii 284'
[Negative Sentences] art. 107. [Nega
tive Verbs] art. 68
*nephew 5 nevew 15890, 'is from the
French neveu not from ags. nefa,
whence comes the old English and
modern colloquial form neve, nevie.'
* -ness (termination) 16 -nesse, -ness
-nes -nis -nesse" (uniformly) besy-
nesse 14636 ii 11, besynes 13140,
boldenesse obi., brightnesse 12089',
buxomnesse i 87, clenness* 608 ? eur-
sednesse obi., drunkennesse 5196, fair-
nesse obi., falsnesse 12904', goodnes
7395, goodnesse obi., halinesse ii 374',
hardynesse 1927, hethenesseobl.,hevy-
nesse 5565' 8308, holinesse obi., hom-
lynesse obi., idelnesse ii 41, lewednes
12415, lustynes 1941' ? newefangil-
nesse 10923', rightwisnesae i 7,
sehamfastnesse 842', seeknesse obi.,
sikenesse i 105', sikernesse obi. i
105', stedfastnesse obi., warmenesse
obi., werinesse iii 195, wikkednesse
5043', wildernesse iii 193, witnesse
obi., witnesse ii 223, worthines 2594,
worthinesse obi., wrecchednesse obi.,
woodnes 2013 13911 should be wood-
nesse, ydelnes ydelnesse 1942 11930'
NETTLE 4 nettle netle i 173
fNew 29 newe niwe niwe' 430 888'
fNice 19 nice 12421 12770 12575' ii
22 [foolish] French
* Exceptional. *» Exceptional oblique. + Adjective. $ Indeclinable. J Uncertain Origin.
390
PROF. CHILD ON CHAUCER AND GOWER. CHAP. IV. § 5.
niece 19 nece 14511 14536 14744
French
•Night 17 nighte niht niht' nihht"
" 16704 [12746' is oblique, and pro
bably the rhymes should be night'
hiyht might; night is the common
form], art. 25 night pi.
Nightingale 4 nightyngale nihtegale
98' 3377' 15245' 17068' i 54'
•91 nobles French noblesse 15504
Jnone 1Q8 [not]
TNONES 73 for the nones ii 72'
Nose 11 «os«nasunosu 152 659 7846,
art. 91 nos' 123 [omit/w/] 705 2169
nought forthy 108 [nevertheless]
[Nouns] arts. 1 to 28
JNow a days 73 now on dayes 13324
fnow then 72 tiouthe nu]>a nuj;e' 464'
NUN 4 nonne iii 281'
•nurse 91 norice 6881, noris 8494
NUT 11 nutte-tre hnutu hnut ii 30,
nutteshak ii 20'
oak 17 ok ook ac 2292
*OAR 16 ore ar iii 322'
*oath 14 otht a« a«' 1141, oth 3291 ?
ooth 120 should probably be othe [?,
supra p. 264]
Jof 108 sign of gen., of = by ; of that
= because
19 o/rende i 73' French
JOfte 72 ofte oft (Gothic ufta, Danish
ofte) ofte' offte0 1269 9541 ; ofte-
tyme 52 358, ofte-tymes 1314 ; oft-
rithe 1879; ofte sithes 487 ags.
oftsrS offte-sij>e° often-time ii 287 ?
on, 19 oile iii 168 French
*f01d 30 olde eald aid aid' aide' olde'
aid0 4470 9830 11465, old 12129
14128 14166 14160, art. 38 elder
eldest
JOnce 73 ones ane ene' aenes' seness0
7269 16767 i 106
3 onde onda i 76', ii 260' [hatred]
foNE 29 one iii 231 from ags. definite
form ana = solus; iii 213 ? art. 30 ii
265 every ch-one ii 45, art 105
[Order of Words, Peculiar] art. 110
* 16 ore ar are' ore' are0 3724' [honour,
favour]
organs y7 orgon pi.
Bother 108 [or], otherwhile [at one
time and at another]
JOut 69 ouie ute ut 11407' .
•outrider 8 outrydere utridere ridere'
166?
owe 60 [all its parts]
Owl 4 oule ule 66C3'
Ox 3 oxe oxa oxe° 8083 13769 16490
16513, art. 23 oxen
§PACK 18 packe Dan. pakke, Swed.
packa, Ger. pack, ii 312' 393'
pair 19 90 peyre 4384 2123 French
Pan4j9aww^panne 13243 13138' 7196',
art. 91 pan rh. man 1167 15438
[in the two last cases = brain-pan,
head]
[Participles] arts. 61 to 64, [Parti
ciples, past, used adverbially] art. 109
[Particles, Various] art. 108
PASSAGE 19 passage i 223 French
Patience 19 91 padence 1085', i 302
paciens 16312
PEASE 3 pese pisa ii 275'
peer 89 peere 4023 10989 rh. here
which should probably be her, 16336
rh. chaunteclere which should have
no -e, 15540 rh. deere, but probably
in all cases it should be written peer
as in 12907
Person 19 persone 15428, person 10339
French
PESTILENCE 19 pestilence ii 346 French
philosopher's 21 philosophre
[Phrases, Peculiar) art. 109
Physic 19 phisik 413 2762 phisique i
265 French
pillowbeer 7 pilwebeer pyle 696
Pipe 4 pipe pipe 567
4 pirie pirige 10091' 10099' [peartree]
pismire 4 pissemyre -mire 7407'
•pith 6 pith pitha 6057'
Place 19 place 7262 9963, art. 91 plac'
15024 French
plant 19 plante 11344 French
*play 5 play plega plaeje' 1127' 8906'
9404' 14528'
•pleasaunce 91 plesaunee French plais-
ance 8840', pleisauns 8794
••plight 16 plyte pliht plihf plihte'
plihht0 12880', art. 17 plif This
word is always a monosyllable in
Gower, but is continually spelt with
a final e, as are also (wrongly) the
words rhymed with it, e.g. appetite,
spirite, parfite ; i 129' 259'
[Plural of Adjectives] arts. 39 to 44,
[Plural of Nouns] arts. 22 to 28
poke 3 poke poca 3778 4276'
Pomp 19 pompe 8804 French
•tpoor 19 90 par 4536 4540 16308
pore 232 480 490 539 704 13594
14128 16307 French
[Jpoorly 69 pore 8919 ?]
Pope 3 pope papa pape' 8678 263' 645',
art. 91 pop' 6002
* Exceptional. »* Exceptional oblique, t Adjective. t Indeclinable. } Uncertain Origin.
CHAP. IV. § 6. PROF. CHILD ON CHAUCER AND GOWER.
391
4 pose gepose (Bosw. after Somner)
4150' 16994' [cold in the head]
*praise 91 prays' 9420
•preface 91 prefas French ' preface
12199
[Prefixes] art. 106
[Present Indicative] arts. 48 to 52
*press 91 pre* French presse 10503
Prick 3 prikke pricca 4539'
Pride 3 pride pryta pryt prude' prute'
897' 9867' 14314' 15674' etc.
*prince 91 prints' 4642
[Pronouns] arts. 45 to 47, [Indefinite]
art. 105, [Personal] art. 103, [Eela-
tive and Interrogative] art. 104
prose 91 pros' 466 [wrong reference
prose 15342 15345']
fproud 29 proude pryte prut 7809,
prowd 3863 3167 ?
PURCHASE 91 purchas ii 331 351 (old
French pourchas), is not to be con
founded with the verb
tpure 90 pure 1281 12016
PURSE 91 purs' iii 155, purs ii 298,
this word derived from the Middle
Latin bursa probably does not come
to us through the French bourse ; it
has dropped the e, like Swed. and
Dan. bors, and Germ, bors, (which is
found as well as borse)
*91 pyV 6944 [pillage]
*16 pyne pin pine'0 6369' [wo, grief,
pain]
* Queen 17, 91 queen generally, queene
cwen quen' quene' cwen° 15834 973'
4581' 6630' 11358' 14892' 15834 etc.
[all the other instances cited are
oblique and queen is the common
form], art. 16 quene i 46 [27 cases
in Gower] quen' ii 212, iii 388
**quern 16 querne cweorn 15560
f§ 31 racle 17210 17271 17221 [rash]
rake 4 rake race 289'
+69 rathe hra>e 3766 14510 [quickly]
•receive 91 receyv" 9576
*14 Rede rsed i 45', art. 91 red' 14205
[advice]
reck 98 recche
reeve 3 reeve refa reve' 589 617 3901
4323
reign 19 regne 4813, art. 91 regri 1626
French
remembrance 19 remembraunce 9855
French
request 19 request 8061', request 7980' *
French
*rest 17 [generally rest] reste rest
resste0 9729 [ace.] 11548 [ace.] rh.
leste imperf , 8722'?, art. 16 restt i
75' and generally in Gower
fEich 19 riche 866 1913 4814 French
riches 27 richesses riches pi
tRiGHT 30 riglde riht iii 129
*RIND 16 rinde rind i 152
tripe 29 ripe ripe 17015
*HOAD 16 rode rad i 110 (?)
*ROAR 14 rare rar iii 74'
*HOE 6 roo raha ra ii 95
Home 19 Rome 673' 4576 5388 10545
etc., i 282' ii 195 196, Rom' 5386
French
•rood 16 roode rod rode'0 6078 i 198
§Root 18 rote roote Icelandic rot, Gothic
vaurts, ags. wrot 13389, 2', 329' 425'
rose 4 rose rose 1040 13448
•trough 30 rowe hreow hreoh rseh'
rsege' ruhh° 12789'
**Jlow 16 rewe raw 2868' i 50
rubric 9 8 rubriche
RUDDER 98 rother
BUSH 4 resshe risshe reisshe resce risce
i 160' ii 97' 284'
*Kuth 16 rewthe rout he (as if from)
hreowft rou~oY Icelandic hrygft 916
8438 etc., art. 91 rewth' 10752
rye 7 reye ryge (Bosw.) 7328'
tsaint 37 seinte fern, [supra p. 264,note]
Sake 11 sake sacu sake'0 10039 6945'
7299' 7314' 8131', art. 91 sak' 539 ?
1319? 1802
SALE 4 sale selle ? old German sala, ii
29
•SAI/VB 16 salve sealf i 8'
JSAME 69 same same =pariter, ii 240'(?)
sauce 19 sauce 129 353 French
•save 91 sav' 7289 7449 7857 13717
14133
Saw 11 sawe sagu saje' 1165' 1528'
6241' 12619'
scathe 7 skalhe scae'Sj) (inc. gen. Bosw.)
448' 9048'
t29 scheene scene scene' shene0 115'
1511' [bright]
*16 schipne scypen 2002 [shed, stable]
11 scJionde scandu scondu shande
15316' [harm]
School 11 scale scolu 7768 9443 14909
14915
•SCORE 16 score scor i 176
•SCORN 14 scorne scearn Icelandic
skarn, old German scern, iii 226
Sea 4, 7 see sse (inc. gen.) sae'° always
monosyllable 278 700 4914 4963'
etc., art. 3 i 35
tsECOND 30 secounde i 159 but the
form seconde is found in old French
* Exceptional. *» Exceptional oblique, t Adjective, t Indeclinable. { Uncertain Origin.
392
PROF. CHILD ON CHAUCER AND GOWER. CHAP. IV. § 6.
secrets 27 secre pi.
•seek 91 seek' 14109, art. 98 seche
^Seldom 72 selde seld selde' 10125
8303', seldewhanne ii 93, selden ii 96
self 46 self selve selven
•sentence 91 sentence 308' 14974',
sentens 17352
service 19 servise 122 French
•SET 14 sete slot set ii 155'
Shadow 11 schadwe shawe sceadu 4430
4365' 6968' schadw' he 4430 ii 45
shall 60 [all its parts], = owe art. 108
Shame 11 schame scamu shame0 12433
13335 1557' 3052'
•SHAPE 14 shape sceap iii 28
fsHARp 30 sharpe scearp ii 82
she 111 omitted
shear[s] 4 schere sceare 15542'
•sheep 14 schepe scaep shep° 506'
should certainly be scheep, cf. 6014
13766 where the same rhyme occurs
608 16137, art. 25 scheep pi.
Sheet 4 scheete scyte scete 12807'
•SHELL 16 shelle shale seel ii 20'
shin 4 schyne seine 388 ?
•-ship 8 -schip -schipe -scipe [generally
-whip'], the length of the words
compounded with this termination
may perhaps account for the final e
being soon dropped, felawship' 476,
friendship* freondscipe 430, lord-
schipe hlafordscipe 1627, wor schip
weorthscipe 12560. 7 -SHIPE dron-
keshippe iii 17 worshipe ii 65 kinde-
ship felaship occur in a couplet i 170
but doubtless should have a final e
••Ship 14 schippe scip scip' schip' 5032
iii 295
shire 4 schire scire 358' 586'
•Shirt 16 scherte schurte (as if from)
sceort scyrt 15608 ; 1568 and 9859
(rh. herte) ; schert 6768 (rh. povert)
16606 (rh. hert doubtful), art. 91
schert' 748 2548 6768
SHIVER 98 chever
•SHOE 14 sho scoh sceo i 15 iii 236 is
a contraction, art. 23 schoon sclioos
•hop 3 schoppe sceoppa ? 4376 4374' [it
is very uncertain whether this is the
same as the ags. sceoppa, treasury]
•fshort 30 sehorte scort sceort' shorrt0
6206, schorf 748 2548, schort 93
•SHOT 14 shotte scot i 234
Shrew 3 schrewe screawa 17083, art. 91
shrew 7024
•SHRIFT 14 shrifte scrift i 66
•16 sibrede sibraeden [relationship] iii
284' merely drops final n, like art.
15, so apparently met-rede iii 68
Side 4 side side side0 1277 2736 9808
9821, etc.
J-SIDE 72 -side, aside onsidan ? ii 85',
besiden besidan ii 379, beside iii 82
siege 19 sege 939, art. 91 seg' 15865
French
SIEVE 4 sivt sife i 294 (?)
••sigh 14 sighhe sic ? 10811'
•Sight 17, 91 sighte sihS siht' sihh)>ea
2118 2335 3949 10280, art. 91
sight [a common form] 3395 7653
etc., art. 16 ii 243', art. 108 [mul
titude]
sign 19 signe 10024 10087 French
[Silent Final E] arts. 84 to 92
•Sin 16 synne synn sunne' (ace) sinne"
5010 6773 etc.
JSince 73 synnes syns sins siS^an 8V$)>a
6551 8047 9341 9396 14284 14822,
tyn sin 10181 12226, art. 72 siththen
6826 15597, siththe 4478, sith 8225
8721, selh 5234
•Sir 90 sir' French sire, 9542 12527
13030 13035 16274 16428 16516
etc., sir 7056, sire 16253, 357 (rh.
schire) both forms occur in Gower
•SISTERHOOD 14 susterhede iii 278'
sisters 24 sistren sustres
*14 Sithe srS sift' si>e° 9183 5153'
5575' i 1 60 [time turn]
SKILL 9 skillescile i 16 skill found only
when rh. will probably should have
the e; art. 91 skill i 42 49, 8 cases
rhyming to will, elsewhere ski lie (11
cases) wille, i 277 etc., so that we
should probably read tkille wille in
the other instances
skink 89 schenche
§ Skull 18 skulle Old German sciulla
ags. scell ? 3933' 4305'
Jslain 98 islaaw
•-SL AUGHT 16 -slang ht man-sleaht i
364' should be -slaughte
••Sleep 14 sleep* slscp slacp0 1046
16498 i 81'
•sleeper 8 sleper slsepere 16377'
••Sleeve 16 «fe/13152' ii 213'
•Sleight 16 sleight sliS Icelandic slseg'S
1950 [the cases cited for skighte are
all oblique] i 238 ace. ii 198 nom.
§sling 18 slynge, as if from ags. sling,
15240'
SLIT 7 ilitte slite 115'
**Sloth 16 slouthe slewiS 4950' i 372
J69 smale smale ii 279'
JSMARTLY 69 smarte iii 113'
•Smoke 14 smoke smec srnec0 5860' i
211'
• Exceptional. *• Exceptional oblique. + Adjective, t Indeclinable. } Uncertain Origin.
CHAP, IV. § 5. PROF. CEIILD ON CHAUCER AND GOWER.
393
SNAKE 3 snake snaca iii 118'
snare 4 snare sneare (Bosw.) [the word
is not in Bosworth's large dictionary,
but is given in his small one on the
authority of Leo's Sprachproben
1838] 1492' 4991' 17009'
§ Snout 18 snowte Danish snude, Swed.
snyte, 14816', snowt 16391
fSoft 29 tofte softe soft softe' soffte0
6994
J Softly 69 softe softe 2783
17 token socn socen 3985 [right of
search, privilege]
*eolace 91 solas solaas solac' Norman
French solas, is rh. with cans 800,
16689 alias 9149 (French cas, alas, las
from lassus was in the older French
Tariable according to the sex of the
person uttering the exclamation, as
lasse ! fait ele : halas ! fait-il. Pals
grave has both forms also. The distinc
tion is not preserved in Chaucer, but
the diversity in the spelling of the
word may possibly be owing to the
the existence of these two forms).
11114 rh. was, 3654 rh. Nicholas;
solace rh. place, Norman French place,
4144 15193
fSolemn 19 solempne 209 French
•Some 91 som' 9345
Son 10, 12, 91 song sunu sune' sone'
sune° 1965 11000 15669 son' 6733
7655 8524 8552 12345 15016 15889
16597 17250 ete, etc [none of these
are convincing, the most so are 8524
& 16597.] In Gower e is regularly
pronounced, son' i 317 ?
*16 Sonde sande sonde' 4809' 4943'
6246' 5469' etc, etc. i 21 2; etc. [mes
sage]
JSoon 72 soone sona sone0 15769, eft-
soone 16082' eftsones 6390, art. 91
ton' 6733 7655 and almost always,
art. 69 ii 250
* Sooth 14 sothe soft soS' softe' sob0
12590 rh. to the, but perhaps adverb,
6183' sothe i 31
•SOOTHSAYER 8 soth(e)saier iii 164
*sore 14 90 sore sar sar' sor' 2745',
i 310'
*tjsore 14 69 sor' f2697 J3462, +sore
230 1396 6810 12657 12799
* Sorrow 16 sorwe sorh sorhje' serrjhe0
953 1221 etc.
*Soul 16 soule sawel saule' sawle' 2788
8435, etc (13 cases) [of the 5 speci
fied, 3 are oblique] i 203 256, art. 91
soul' 658 14355
sovereign 37 sovereine fern,
sow 11 sowe sugu 2021 bad line
Spade 1 1 spade spadu spad 555'
•Span 16 spanne spanu 155 [ace. of
dimension ?] i 79'
spare 90 spare 739
SPARK 3 sparke spearca i 258
sparrow 3 spearwe spearwa 628' 7386'
•speak 91 spek' 9742 9747
Spear 9 spere spere spere' sper' 15289
1641' 4879' sper' 2712 ?
•Speech 16 speche spa3c spaeche'0 1373
2800 etc. [two instances cited are
oblique], art. 91 spech1 16978
•SPEED 17 sped' sped i 88, specie i 90',
art. 91 sped' spede about equally
often ags. sped
••spell 14 spelle spell spel' spell0
15301'
spouse 19 spouse 12072 12125 French
SPUME 1 9 spume ii 265 French
SPUR 3 spore spura i 321 [Chaucer
spores 475]
Stake 3 stake staca 8580' 669'
fstalk 18 stalke Icelandic stilkr, Swed
ish stjelk, 3917'
•••stall 14 statte steall stall0 8483'
Star 3 sterre steorra steorre' sterre'
sterrne0 2061'
start 61 [all its parts]
STEAD 7 stede stede styde i 60 f.
•STEALTH 16 stelthe [as if from an
ags.] stelS ii 349
Steed 3 steede steda stede' 2159 2729
10484 15162, etc., art. 91 tteed'
10438?
3 Steere steora ster° 4868' 5253' [helm
rudder]
3 stele stela stele stel 3783' 6531'
[handle, stale is given in the dic
tionaries]
•16 stempne stemn stefn i 312 [voice]
see stevene, art. 98
fStern 29 sterne sterne sterne' stirne"
8341
•16 Stevene stein stefne' steffne0 4381
[?pl.] 1526' [oblique?] steven 10464
16777 (all doubtful rh.heven) [voice]
see stempne
Stick 3 stikka sticca 13193 13199
fStill 29 itille stille stille'0 stilT 10810'
11782' 16929'
J Still 69 stille stille 7782
•stot 6 slot stotte 7125 7212 617'
•16 Stounde stund stunde' stunnd0 1214'
[short space of time] i 90'
JSTRAITLY 69 straite Lat. stricte ii 354'
iii 47'
* Exceptional. *» Exceptional oblique, t Adjective. J Indeclinable. \ Uncertain Origin.
394
PROF. CHILD ON CHAUCER AND GOWER. CHAP. IV. § 5.
•STRAND 14 stronde strand i 185
Straw 9 stree strea 2920 2935', ee pro
nounced as e, straw straw 11007
*Street 16 streete straet street' stoete'0
14904 15025 [both after thurgh,
which may be ace., the other cases
cited are after I'M]
* Strength ISstrengthe streng^S strengftu
strengbe'strenncbe0 1950 2403 15550
*strive 91 stryv' 7568
•f Strong 30 stronye strang iii 4 [in
flexional], art. 38 strenger strengest
*sty 5 Kty stige 7411'
••style 14 style stigel 10420'
[Subjunctive] art. 56
•fSuch 30 suche swylc swilc' sulche'
ewUlc0 8613 13800 15628, i 319,
swich 3 2824
Sun 4 sonne sunne sunne' sonne' sunne0
30 1511 2524 10484 etc., art. 21 gen.
•suppose 91 suppos' 8223
Swallow 4 sivalwe swalewe 3258
*swear 89 swer' swer 456 8045 8238
swer' 11101 12076 inf.
fSweet 29 swete swote swete swet° 2429
5967 6041 15344, art. 91 swef 2782
3 swere sweora ii 30' [neck]
•fswift 30 swifte switt swifft0 2870
*swine 14 swyne swin swin'° 16972,
swyn 13971', art. 25, swin pi.
J69 Swithe swibe 13222 [quickly]
**Swoon 14 swoune swunP 13668 i
204
fsworn 109
§TACKLE 18 tacle Ger. takel, Dan. tak-
kel, Swed. tackel, i 312
Tale 11 tale talu tale'0 36 3128 4466
6545 7253 (29 cases), art. 91 tal' yit
13875 e elided before y ?
*fTame 30 tame tarn 2188 untame i
287'
tapster 4 tapstere tseppestre 241', tapster
3336
§tare 18 tare 1572'
targe 4 targe targe targa 473' 977'
*tear 14 teere tear 15547' 16148' ?
Teat 7 tele tite tit 3704'
Teen 3 tene teona teone' tene° 3108'
*tell 91 tell' 38 inf. 10043 inf. [both
before yow]
** Temple 14 temple tempel ii 157
tent 19 tente 16055 French
JThanks 73 his thonkes, here thonkes
his Dances, hira Dances 1628 2109
2116 ii 211
60 thar = need [all its parts]
fthat 47 Ma<=fche : art. 104, art. Ill
omitted, \that art. 108 with impera
tive = French que
fthe 98 -te, atte=a,i the ; art. 109 with
abstract noun
98 thee = io prosper
•THEFT 16 thefte beofS ii 159'
JThen 72 thimne bonne benne banne
J>on )>an banne'0 ban^)'0 1655 13987
15404 16762 16988 i 11 49 62 69
etc., thenne 13121' iii 36 rh. brenne,
than 640 3052 i 6 7 224, thann 12
638 2936 2937 2938 7722 then?
i 17
Jthence 73 thennes banon banone bon-
nen' banene' 4930 5463 10640, 10641
art. 72 thenne 6723' ii 185
JThere 72 (her baer bere bara baer"
>a;re'0 313 323 328 4215 9863 9872
10341 there 4956' 5222' 7650' 15037'
(less common) i 56' 60' 112' etc. ;
art. 108 [where]
^Therefore 72 therfore Jerforen' )>er-
fore' J>aerfore° 3506' 8035' 8188'
9023; therfor 7374 10571 10647;
art. 90 therfor1 therfor 777 7374
• 10571 10647
•these 91 thes' this' 9110 9127 9150
9297 10041 ete., art. 47, art. 109
singular use
*THEW 14 thewe beaw iii 5'
fthey 111 omitted
fThick 29 thikke )>icce bicke' 651
f30 thilke bylc i 2 [the like]
fThin 29 thenne jiynne 4064' 9556'
thinne i 102'
•Thing 14 thinge bing ii 207 251, no-
thinge ii 337, art. 25 thing pi.
think 98 thenche
fthird 98 thridde
^THITHKR 98 thider
108 tho [when]
-thorp 98 throp
fthose 47 tho
thou 111 omitted
-thou 98 -tow -ow, wiltow, hastow
wostow etc.
JThrice 73 thries briga briwa brie'
brien' bries' >ri33ess° 63 564 14963
fthrilled 98 thirled
Throat 4 throte brote 2460' 3218'
"THROSTLE 5 throstel brostle i 54
Jthrough 98 thurgh
•Throw 16 throwe brag bragu browe'
braejhe0 5373' 7397' etc.
THUMB 3 tliombe buma i 175, art. 98
•Tide 16 tyde tid tid° 5554' [the other
instances cited are oblique] i 326'
TIE 7 tie tige ii 246'
•tile 16 tyle tigel 7687
Jtill 72 tille tille til till0 10811', til
10838, art. 108
• Exceptional. •• Exceptional oblique. + Adjective, i Indeclinable. { Uncertain Origin.
CHAP. IV. § 5. PROF. CHILD ON CHAUCER AND GOWER.
395
•TILTH 16 tilthe til$ ii 168
Time 3, 91 tyme tima time'0 44 722
864 4056 4448 etc. (24 cases), art.
91 tint 9678 10327 10790 12976
etc. (14 cases) rh. byme i 227 309
370 etc. In Gower e is regularly
pronounced except only in ii 167
[Time, expressions for] art. 1 09
Jto 108 [unto], sign of dat.
106 To- tohewen, toschrede etc.
•Toe 6 to' ta ii 143', art. 23 ton toos
^together 73 togideres togaedere toga-
dere' togaderes' togeddre0 14117
Tongue 4 tonqe tunge tunge'0 3894
5319 7232 '13813, art. 91 tong'
10349 tunge i 295
•tooth 14 tothe to« to»° 6184', art.
26 teeth pi.
ftouching 64 touchand 7872
*Tow 17 tow tow 5671, ii 315
JTowards 73 towardes toweardes to-
wardes' toward' towarrd0 11883
14121, toward 13534 14220 art. 72
toward ii 13, toward i 122
•Town 14 toun tun tun'0 7936 11713'
[towne appears to be only oblique]
i 205 ii 293
•Trace 91 trace Norman French trace
trasse, 1953 rh. alias; trays 2141
rh. harnays Norman French harnas,
harnois
trap 4 trappe treppe trapp0 11653'
11939'
TKEE 9 tre treow treo tre i 137
*trow 91 trow' 526 1803 3665 9092
9111 10850 etc.
fTrue 29 trewe treowe treowe' trowwe3
533 961, art. 91 trew' 10043, un-
trewe ii 224
trump 19 trumpe 2176 French
Truth 11 trout fie treowSo treoufte'
troww>e 3502 6595 6633 6986 etc.
(16 cases), art. 91 trout h' 10959
11071 11905, trouth 10262, in aU
4 cases'
Tun 4 tonne tunne tunne' 1996 5759
3892' 8091' i 321
JTwice 73 twyes twiwa twigges ' twie'
twien' twi' twinges0 4346 5478 14958
JUneasily 69 unease unsafe unnae)>e°
unnethe 11659 13318 15037, art. 73
unnethes 5976 11048
Junto 108 [until]
t Unwieldy 29 unweelde unwylde = im-
potens 16187 3884 is pi. unwylde, i
312' iii 147'
JTJp 69 uppe uppe up 10929' i 15', art.
108, [upon]
^UPRIGHTLY 73 uprihtes i 35'
•*16 upriste uparist serist0 1053 [aris
ing]
USE 91 us' ii 132 should be us rh.
vertus(e) i 15 56, jus(e) ii 266, re-
fus(e) iii 298
vane 3 fane fana 8872'
[Verbs] arts. 48 to 68
vessels 27 vessel vessealx vesseals pi.
•vesture 90 vestur' 10373
VICE 19 vice i 157 French
VIRGIN 19 virgine ii 186 French
•visage 91 visage1 630
•voyage 91 viago' 794
wake 4 wake waecce wecehe0 2960 2962
[liche-wake waking of the body, mo
dern watch]
«*Wall 14 watte weall wal' 1970',
1911' rh. coralle which should be
coral, old French coral [both may
have an oblique e], wall' 1990, wal
1921 1977 1936', art.' 98 wowe
WANE 3 wane wana iii 304 wan a de
fect ? rh. Adrians ii 307
3 wanhope ii 115 117 [despair]
War 9 werre werre weorre' werre' 5972
47' 1449' werr' 1289 ?
•WARD 16 wards weard iii 55'
-WARDS 73 -wardes, to-wardes i 5 122
159 etc., after-wards ii 356, afterward
iii 37 39
ware 11 ware waru (Bosw.) 4560'
14467'
fware 30 ware 16094' should be war
•*wart 16 wert' weart 557
WATCH 4 wacche wsecce ii 96 [see
wake]
•Wave 14 wawe wseg 4888 ii 105',
art. 98
•Way 14 weye weg weie' wai' wej^e0
793' 4805' ; contracted, art. 91 wey'
34, way 7118 14176' i 29
we 111 omitted
Weal 3 wele wela wele' 1274' 3103'
13530', art. 91 wel' 4542 8350 8847
•WEALTH 16 welthe [as if from an ags.]
wel* i 39'
•wear 89 wer' 8762 inf., art. 109
wear on
•weasel 5 wesil wsesle 3234
3 webbe webba 364 a welb' a dyer
[weaver]
•14 Wedde wedd 1220' i 249 [pledge]
**Weed [dress] 16 wede waed wede'
wsede0 1008' 8739' i 221'
WEEK 4 weke wice wuce iii 116'
•WEIGHT 14 weights wiht ii 276'
» Exceptional. *• Exceptional oblique. + Adjective. % Indeclinable. } Uncertain Origin.
396
PROF. CHILD ON CHAUCER AND GOWER. CHAP. IV. § 5.
•WEIRD 16 wierd wyrd i 340 should
be wierde
•welcome 91 welcom' 764 856 7382
7393
"Well 3 welle wella wylle well welle'
6597 7924 1535' 11689', art. 91 well'
8091
JWELL 69, 72 wele wela wel Hi 149'
[art. 72 welle 1663' is dwelle in the
Landsdowne, Cambridge, Petworth
Corpus and Ellesmere MSS.]
"Wench 4 wenche wencle wennchell0
3971 4165 4192 6944 etc.
*16 wene wen wena ii 88' [doubt con
jecture expectation weaning]
*16 wente ags. ? 161' [way manner]
•14 were as if from ags. wer iii 253'
[defence]
§w>ere 18, i 107' 318' [worry]
wet 3 wete wseta wsete wsete0 13115'
*fwet 30 wete wset wet' 2340
fwhat I04:=w'hy
"Wheat 7 whete hwaete 6725 4312'
13863' 14278'
* whelp 14 whelpe hwelp whellp0 259'
JWhen 72 whanne hwonne hwenne
hwanne wliannen' whone' etc.whanne"
whann0 11718 14695 i 212 [seldom
in Gower], whan 1 5 762 782 803
824 915 3054 3055 [frequent in
Gower
J whence 73 whennes hwanan hwana
whannen' whone' 12175 13750, whens
8464, art. 72 whenne i 198 when
ii 46 iii 308
JWhere 72 wher hwar hwser wha?r'
whaere' 323 344 9873 10341 etc.
where 4556 7634' 9462 (less common
both in Chaucer and Gower)
Jwherefore 72 wherfore 13631'
^WHETHER 98 weder
*fWhich 30 whiche hwylc while'
woche' whillc0 15896, which 4 2677
etc. i 135 ii 177 395, art. 104
'"While 16 while hwil while' whil"
4226 8899 10904 etc. [all the cases
cited are oblique, but as etc. is put
after them there may be others
direct] i 282 ii 54 79
J While Whilst 72, 73 whiles >a hwile
whil0 6352 13067 13854 15047
i 26 whils 13065, whiVt ii 345, whil
1362 6350 i 12
•"Whip 14 whippe hweop 5757' 9545'
i 283'
*whistie 5 «>/w<eZhwistle'4153
fwhitc 29 white hwite hwit white'
whit' ±775, the common form is
whit 17065 238 3238 2180'
JWHITHER 98 whider
fwho 109
t\\'!iDso 104
f§Wicked 31 wikJce 1582' 5448', ap
parently allied with ags. wicce =
witch, i 295 306
§wicke 18 pride is the worste of alle
wicke i 154, 176
I Widely 69 wide wide 4556 8589 iii
208
*widow 5 91 widow widw widuwe wi-
dewe' widewe0 widdwe0 6609 6626
7166 7201 14913 14920 r6307, wi-
dowe widewe 14997 255, art. 21 gen.
•Wife 14 wife wif wif'° wive' 6648
wive ii 217'
*WIFEHOOD 14 wifhede iii 51
"Wight 17 wight wiht wuht, wiht' whit'
wihht0 1427 2108 2487 etc. ii 149
* JWild 30 wylde wilde wild wilde"*
4170 5858 5955 7742 15166 15402,
wild 10126 (?) i 236 290
WILE 9 wile wile ii 227
Will 3 wille willa wille wille" 2671
7986 8202 10315 etc. another form,
will will iwill' will0 3875 3878 3885
8052' will' 11016?
will 6 1 [all its parts]
•willow 16 wilow wilig 2924 doubtful
Jwills 73 his willes 5854
§ Window 18 wyndowe, Icelandic vin-
dauga, Danish vindue, Swedish vin-
doga, 3358' 3676' 3695', wyndow(e ?)
3708 3725 3730 3738, window ii 347
*wine 14 wyne win win'0 10016' [as
it here means vine or bunch of grapes,
perhaps it is an error for vine French
vigne] wyn 637 14212 639' [and
generally
winter 25 wynter pi.
•WISDOM 14 wisdome wisdom iii 217
Wise. 4 wise wise wise" 9927 17309
5312 5692 etc., art. 91 wis' 2189
*fWise 30 tcise wis wis"0 wise'0 11183,
i 156 [fern. ?], wys 67 787 853
Witchcraft 4 wicche craft wicce wicche0
6885 iii 44
^Without 72 withouten wvSutan 463
640 810 823 1851 1856, u-ithoute
785 788 950 8208', without i 8 ?
•Womanhood 14 wommanhede 8951'
i 333'
fwoMANisn 30 womanisshe i 58 72
iii 304 338 [all inflectional ?]
*»Wonib [stomach, belly] 16 wombe
wamb womb wombe' wambe0 7470
15923 15970
* Exceptional. ** Exceptional oblique, t Adjective, i Indeclinable. } Uncertain Origin,
CHAP. IV. § 6.
CHAUCER S PRONUNCIATION.
397
*wonger 8 wangere 15320' rli. destrer,
French destrier [pillow, head rest]
"Wont 3 wone wuna wune' 337' ?
14915'? art. 91 won' [misprinted
none} 1066 ?
"Wood 12, 10 woode wudu wude' wode'
wude° 110 15181, ii 264 art. 91
wood' 2932 7755 10727? 15742
wood 1620
•Wool 16 wolle -mill wulle0 13863
14325' [both ace. and therefore hav
ing e in ags.l wulle wolle i 17 ii 83
98' 129
•WORD 14 worde word iii 256
••work 14 werke weorc waerc weorrc
werrc° 5797 13439 11191', art. 38
wirche
* World 17 worlde weorold weorld
weorlde' weorelld0 16151 [aec. and e
only preserved by caesura : that all
the worlde had iu his demeigne ; the
other case cited 10376? is oblique ;
world is the usual form ; so in
Gower, but worlde in i 245 iii 286 ?],
art. 109
9 worlde riche weoruldrice i 118' [king
dom of the world]
fworse 38 worse werse wyrse wurse
wurs' werrse0 8551 9667 17252
10914' werse 1226 ? wars wers 8503
3731'
•worship 8 worschip weorthscipe 12560
•WORTH 14 worthe weor$ i 25
*worthiness 16 91 worthines 2594
fworthy 29 worthi worthy as if from
weorjng, really weor^e wyrj>e 285 461
wot 60 [all its parts]
** Wound 16 wounde wund wunde'
1012' i 90' 289'
•WRATH 16 wrathe wraet! i 280
•Wreak 16 wreehe wrsec wrsccu
wreche' wraclie0 5099 i 179 351'
art. 91 wreck' 16089 [vengeance]
WRENN 3 wrenne wreuna iii 349
Wretch 3 wrecche wrecca wraecche'
wrecche0 933 7645' 12396' 13014'
wright 3 wright(e] wyrhta wurhte'
616?
** Wrong 14 wrongs wrang wrong
11096 ii 324'
9 wyte wite wite° 12881' [blame, suf
fering, punishment]
•Yard 16 yerde gerd geard jerd'
jerrde0 1052 [the other cases cited
are oblique, and this may be the
accusative of dimension]
IYARE 29 yare gearu ii 237
jyea-uay 108
•Year 14 yere year jer'° 4552', yer'
to yere i 53', yer by yere 8278'
14909', yer yeer 1035 1445 1731'
8487' etc., art. 25 yer pi.
J69 yerne georue 13813' [willingly]
Jyes-no 108
Jyore 69 yoore geare geara 3895' 13484
•Youth 16 youthe geogo'S jujejje'
2381 4583 7996 14139, art. 91
youth' 9612.
§ 6. Chaucer's Pronunciation and Orthography.
Although, much doubt must necessarily attach to the
system of investigation here followed, and although in some
few cases it has been necessary to help out research by
theory, it has enabled us to arrive at a very definite and
detailed result, which may be put to the test of practice. I
have made the experiment of reading several hundred lines
of Chaucer's prologue to large audiences, according to the
system of pronunciation to which I have been here led, and
it has been to me a considerable confirmation of my results,
that these audiences generally, and those among them in
particular whose previous studies had made them best quali
fied to judge, have expressed themselves satisfied with the
oral effect, as giving a new power of appreciating the lan
guage and versification of the old master. It will be difficult
to convey the proper impression by mere symbols, which the
* Exceptional. »* Exceptional oblique. + Adjective. { Indeclinable. \ Uncertain Origin.
398 CHAUCER'S PRONUNCIATION. CHAP. IV. § 6.
reader will have to study, and which he will perhaps mis-
render, or at least occasionally stumble over, so that he will
not so readily appreciate the system of pronunciation here
advocated, as would be desirable for proper judgment. But
to enable the reader who dares to face such an essay as the
present, and breast the difficulty of a new notation, to un
derstand in connection the isolated results here obtained, I
shall in Chap. VIE. give the whole of the familiar prologue
to the Canterbury Tales in palaeotype as an example, inter
leaving it with a text in which I shall follow the Harleian
MS. 7334 as closely as possible, in a systematised ortho
graphy. Before explaining this method, which might pos
sibly be adopted with advantage in popular editions of
Chaucer, and other authors of the xivth century, I shall
give a short account of the results obtained in the preceding
sections.
PROBABLE SOTJNDS OF THE LETTERS LN HARLEIAN MS. 7334,
AND HENCE GENERALLY IN THE XIV th CENTURY.
A long, (aa) or Italian a in padre, English a in father, psalm, far ;
possibly (aa} as in French dge, and German mahnen, aal, when
broadly pronounced.
A short, (a) Italian a in anno, or as some pronounce a in cask, past,
quite distinct from a in cat, man.
AA the same as A long, (aa).
AI, (ai) as in Isaiah, aye, Etonian pronunciation of the Greek Kai,
the German ai, Italian ahi ! French paiten.
ATI, (au), the sound of (aa) followed by the sound of (uu), German
au in haws, distinct from English ou in howse.
AW, (au) the same as AU.
AY, (ai) the same as AI.
B, (b), as now, never mute.
C, (k) before a, o, u-, (s) before e, i; ci is (si), never (sh) as in mo
dern English.
CH, (tsh), as in snch, match, Italian ci, Spanish ch, German deufacA.
D, (d) as now, never (dzh).
E long, (ee) English chair, dare, there ; very nearly the same as
French e in meme, and Italian e aperto (EE), not the same aa
English in ale, fate (ee, ee\) ; but this last sound may be used
by those who have a difficulty with the others. Never (ii), as
in modern English supreme.
E short, (e) as now in met, pen.
E final, when pronounced, (e), same as E short, but generally
elided before vowels and he, his, him, hire, here, etc., and not
sounded in oure, youre, hire, here, seldom sounded in hadde and
sometimes mute in other words.
CHAP. IV. § 6. CHAUCER'S PRONUNCIATION. 399
EA, (ee) same as E long, very rarely used.
EE, (ee) same as E long.
El, (ai) same as AI.
EO, (ee) same as E long, rarely used.
EU, has two sounds, (yy) or French u long, in words derived from
th French where the modern French orthography is u ; and (eu)
or Italian .Ewropa, the sound of (ee) followed by the sound of
(uu), in all other words. Eu is never to be sounded as (iu) as
in modern new.
EW, (eu) the same as ETT.
EY, (ai) the same as AI.
F, (f ) as at present ; never (v) as now in of.
G, (g) before «, o, u and in Anglosaxon words before e, i ; in French
words before e, i it is (dzh) as the present $rem, gentle.
GH, (kh), as the Scotch loch, Irish lou^A, German loch ; after an
(u) sound (]s.wli) ; when the sound was (H'), (wh), or omitted,
it was otherwise written. It was never sounded as (f ).
H, (H), as in Aome ; it may have been mute in some accented
words, as host, honour, and in the unaccented he, his, him, hire,
here, hem, have, etc. When a vowel is elided before these words,
the h should be disregarded, otherwise it is most convenient to
follow the present usage. When following a vowel in the same
syllable, as in nouht, it was a gentle (kh), or (H').
I long, («) the drawled sound of i in still, heard in singing, and
quite distinct from (ii) or ea in steal, but the latter sound (ii)
may be substituted for it, by those who find the former (n) too
difficult. It may have been occasionally almost (ee) and then
rhymed to (ee). It was never pronounced (ai), or as the modern
pronoun I, or as ei ey, ai ay (ai), with which it is never found
to rhyme.
I short, (»'), that is, as * in the English fmny (fnr«), and not as (i),
that is, i in the French ^/ww (fini).
I consonant, (dzh) usually printed J.
IE, (ee) same as E long. Rare.
J, (dzh), frequently printed for I ; MSS. seldom distinguish »,/.
K, (k) as now.
L, (1) as now.
LE, ('!) as now in tempfe. It is frequently run on as (1) to the
following vowel.
M, (m) as now.
N, (n) as now.
NG, (q) or (qg) according to the same rules as now, or (ndzh) as
in strange.
0 long, (oo) that is English ore, cross when lengthened, not (oo) as
in English home as usually pronounced, but as it may be heard
in the provinces ; Welsh and Spanish o long ; Italian o aperto ;
French chose when lengthened, no trace of tapering into a final
u. Those who cannot readily say (oo) may use (oo), the usual
o in home.
400 CHAUCER'S PRONUNCIATION. CHAP. IV. § 6.
0 short, had two sounds (o, u) ; generally (o) the short sound of
the last letter, not heard in usual English, the French homme,
German holtz, Italian o aperto. Different from (o) in English
hot, which however may be used for it when the speaker cannot
reach the other sound, just as (oo) in home may be used for (oo),
but (poop pop) do not form a pair, as is the case with (poop pop).
Occasionally o short was sounded as short u, apparently in those
cases in which it was thus sounded in the xvi th century pro
vided it corresponded to Anglosaxon u ; generally it was (u)
in words which now have (o) as wonder.
OA, (oo) if used, but no instance is known.
OE, (ee) same as long E, very rare.
01, (ui) as some persons call buoy, almost like ooi in woomg ; not
(oi) as in English joy, but at most (oi) as in a provincial pro
nunciation of boy.
00, (oo) the same as long 0.
OU, has three sounds, (uu, u, oou) ; generally (uu) as in boot, but
occasionally (M) as in pwll ; in words derived from Anglosaxon
aw, ow it is (oou) nearly as in the modern know, which may be
used for it. See OUGH.
OTJGH, (uukh, uukwh) when derived from Anglosaxon words
having u before a guttural, as in ynough, plough, drought, other
wise (ooukwh, oukwh) or (okwh) as in though, foughten, oughte.
0"W, (uu, u, oou) same as OU, but used more frequently than OU
for (oou), especially when final.
OY, (oi) the same as 01.
P, (p) as now.
PH, (f ) as now.
Q,U, (kw) as now.
E, (r) only trilled, as in present red herring ; never as in modern
ear, hearing, serf, surf.
EE, (er) same as EE, sometimes run on as (r) to the following
vowel.
EH, (r) as now.
S, (s,z). Probably the (s) and (z) sounds were used much as at
present, but was appears to have had (s). SI was (si) and
never (sh) as at present.
SCH, (sh), present sh.
T, (t) as at present, -tioun was (si,uun).
TH, in two syllables (th, dh) distributed as at present.
U long, (yy) the true French long u, which it represented.
U short, had three sounds (w, i, e) ; the general sound was (u} as in
pwll, but (i) or (e) was heard occasionally, and possibly had
been original (y) or short French u.
U consonant, (v), usually printed v.
IJI^ UY, a very rare combination, sometimes written for oi, oy, and
then pronounced (ui) most probably ; sometimes, perhaps,
written for French ui, when it may either have been (ui) or
(yy), most probable the latter.
CHAP. IV. § 6. CHAUCER'S ORTHOGRAPHY. 401
V, (v) as now, seldom distinguished from U in HSS, both, forms
u, v being used, but v being generally chosen for the initial,
whether vowel or consonant.
W, («>), as now, and also occasionally the simple vowel (u), as
in Borwfbl.
WH, (wh) as now.
WE, (rw) as in French rot, or else (wr, w'r).
X, (ks) as now.
Y, long, replaced I long, and had the same sound.
Y, short, (i) the same as I short.
Y, consonant (j) as now.
Z, (z) as now.
This gives a complete system of pronunciation, with only
a few doubtful points, chiefly as to the pronunciation of 0
short as (u).
On this view of the signification of the orthography of the
Harleian MS. 7334, we may proceed to systematize the same
thus, —
SYSTEMATIZATION OF THE OETHOGRAPHY or HAUL. MS., 7334.
A when followed by a single consonant, which is in turn followed
by a vowel or an apostrophe, will be long, otherwise short.
AA will represent long A in other cases.
AI will be disused.
AW will be used as the diphthong (au) to the exclusion of AU.
AY will be used to the exclusion of ai, ei, ey, for those diphthongs
(ai) which had an a in the Anglosaxon or French original.
E when followed by a single consonant, which is in turn followed
by a vowel or an apostrophe, will be long, otherwise short.
EA will be disused.
EE will represent long E in other cases.
EI will be disused.
EO will be disused.
EU will represent the diphthong eu when of French origin = (yy).
EW will represent the diphthong ew when not of French origin,
and = (eu).
EY will be used to the exclusion of ai, ay, ei for those diphthongs
(ai) which had not an a in the Anglosaxon or French original.
I will represent short (i) when not final, and will be used for the
pronoun I. See Y vowel.
IE will be disused.
0 when followed by a single consonant, which is in turn followed
by a vowel or an apostrophe, will be long, otherwise short, and
the two sounds of short o will not be distinguished.
OA will be disused.
OE will be disused.
01 will be disused.
00 will represent long 0 in other cases.
26
402 CHAUCER'S ORTHOGRAPHY. CHAP. IV. § 6
OTJ will represent the long sound (uu), never the short sound (u)
or the diphthong (oou).
OW will represent the diphthong (oou) exclusively.
OY will represent the diphthong now written oi, oy.
U long and TJ short, though having different sounds will not be
distinguished, the first occurring only in French, and the latter
only in Aiiglosaxon words, but the use of U as I and E will be
discontinued.
"W vowel will only be used in diphthongs, in other cases it will be
replaced by OU long as herlerou for herlerw, or U short.
Y vowel will be used in diphthongs, and for long i or (M),
— except the pronoun /, which will continue to be written /, —
for either long or short final i or y, and for the prefix y- or i-
of the past participle.
The consonants, including W, WH, Y, will be used as at present,
the two values of C and G not being distinguished, and J, V being
exclusively used for I and U consonant. • When C, G have to be (s,
dzh) before a, 0, u in French words, an e is inserted which is not
pronounced, as habergeoun 76. GH medial or final, Y initial will
replace 5 uniformly instead of partially, and TH will replace \.
The two sounds of TH will not be distinguished. H will be
written uniformly in those words where it generally appears initially.
The doubling of consonants to indicate short vowels will follow
the usual orthography.
E final or medial will be treated in such a way as to shew its
nature. When it should be sounded according to the laws of
grammar or from historical derivation, but is elided for the sake of
the metre, whether before a vowel or consonant, it will be replaced
by an apostrophe, precisely as in modern German, and all elisions
will be treated in the same way. Hence c\ g1 final must be read as
(s, dzh). When it is superfluous, having no claim to be written,
but required for the metre, it will be replaced by S. In other cases
it will be simply written as e, so that every written e will have to
be pronounced, except when it is used after c, g and before another
vowel, merely to indicate that these letters are to be pronounced as
(s, dzh). When the authority of Orrmin can be given for a final e,
it will not be considered superfluous.
When the first measure of a verse is deficient in a syllable, it
will be preceded by three dots, thus (...) to mark the deficiency.
"With the exception of the (...), e and ('), which are intro
duced for the convenience of the modern reader, the ortho
graphy would be perfectly well understood by the person
who wrote this Harleian MS. and appears to be the ideal
which he aimed at. This orthographical system will be used
in the subsequent transcript of the prologue. It requires
occasionally some etymological knowledge in which I may
be deficient, but such trips I hope will be readily forgiven,
and corrected.
CHAP. iv. § 6. CHAUCER'S ORTHOGRAPHY. 403
When a language has to be studied from its sources by
scholars, its monuments should be presented in the form in
which they exist. Hence the value of the exact reprints of
several MSS. of Chaucer which have now been undertaken
by the Chaucer Society, and which will inaugurate an en
tirely new system of studying ancient forms of language.
We shall no longer echo opinions, perhaps hastily formed,
by scholars in past days, who, deserving of all praise for
what they did in their time, had not the advantages which
their own labours have given to the present generation.
Each scholar will be enabled to study the sources themselves,
to compare the different forms they assume, and to conjecture
the probable reality which they partly conceal. But how
shall that result be expressed ? Speaking for the English
language only, it is evidently impossible to print the writings
prior to Caxton, in modern orthography, without presenting
a translation — to which, except linguistically, there is of
course no objection — instead of the apparently best form of
the original. Not to mention the organic difference of an
inflectional system which would be thus concealed, and the
destruction of poetical rhythm by the excision of final E, we
have the simple fact that many words found in those authors
have no similar modern form,1 and hence that if we adopted
a modern orthography, we must either replace them, or leave
them as an old patch on a new garment.
For general purposes of teaching, the great diversity of
orthography which medieval scribes indulged in, is undesir
able, as tending to confuse the mind, and in no respect re
paying the young student for the trouble it costs. Hence
some uniform systematic orthography is desirable, and that
which has just been explained, seems to combine every
necessary requisite for the xiv th and xv th century. For
writings which date from after the disappearance of our
inflectional system, and the silencing of final E, or say, from
after the close of the xv th century, the modern orthography,
which is now systematically employed in reprints of Shak-
spere and the Authorized Version, is the only one which
1 The vocabulary on pp. 379-397 liche s., like s., lode, lydne, make «.,
furnishes the following examples : — mele, mot, nale, neisshe, nohles *. s.,
a-cale, algates, -and (in participles) offrende, onde, pirie, pose, pyle, pyne,
ariste, horde, borwe, *., breede, hyweste, racle, rathe, rede, scheene a., schipne,
chare, cheste, come «., dere, derne, schonde, sibrede, sithe, smale, steere,
dwale, elenge, -ende (in participles), stele, stempne, stevene, stounde, swere
fallas, fawe, fele, fere, fremde, funke, s., swithe, thar #., thee v., thilke, tho,
grame, halfing, harre, heire, herne, upriste, wanhope, webbe, wedde, wene
heste, hevenriche, hewe, hie «., hiwe, s., wente «., were *., wicke, wyte *.,
howve, yk ich, ighte, kingesriche, wonger, worldericlie, yerne.
knarre, leere s. and v., lefte *., lette,
404
CHAUCER S ORTHOGRAPHY.
CHAP. IV. § 6.
has a claim to be used except in designedly diplomatic
editions. Before the use of ou was introduced for (uu) at
the end of the XIH th or beginning of the xiv th century, the
complete Anglosaxon system alone has any right to be em
ployed. Hence for school and general editions of English
works, the following systems of orthography are suggested :
1) Anglosaxon period to the close of the xm th century, —
the received Anglosaxon spelling.
2) From the beginning of the xiv th to the close of the
xv th century, — the system explained on p. 401,
which may be briefly termed Chaucer's orthography.
3) From the commencement of the xvith century — the
orthography now in use.
But in the last period, and even in the most recent times,
circumstances may arise where a diplomatic representation
of MSS. may be desirable.1 Such cases are however not con
templated in any of the above suggestions, although in the
citations made in this work, diplomatic correctness has
almost always been attempted.
1 As for example, when the peculiar
orthography of the writer is of more
importance than his matter. Thus the
following reproductions of letters actu
ally written on business within the last
three years, one by a private soldier in
a very clear and legible hand, and the
other by the keeper of a servant's regis
try office in a rapid scrawl, are valuable
as shewing how difficult our present
orthography and punctuation are to
acquire. Several names have been re
duced to initials, but otherwise the ori
ginals have been carefully imitated.
1. To Capt. S. Esqr
Dear Sir I wish to Informe you of a
place No 17 Eosemary Lane ware a
Drunkin woman name of Buttler Lives
her husband aD to Leive her for Idal
ways Sergent Atkinson was Letter
Eighter for her to her Husband to
return back again and other Smoal
Favours as promised to send her 6 or
8 mitilia men he will send to Lodge
with her their is her own famley and
her Daughters famley all Crouded in
2 smoal rooms with a Varity of Other
Companey and filth . a Servay is
very much needed
Yours Eespectfuley
and yurs mens Fremd
May 22/1866
2. "Warckington.
if i had nown Last tuesday i Could
have Sent Mrs S. a good Waitresf She
as been 5 years 6 Months at Mrs D.s
of Cockemth but Mr S. of C. Hall as
been here About her and i think he
"Will have Engadged her if thay Could
Agree for Wages I have nown her for
12 years and She as been Eeckomend
by Me for thatt Lenth of time I Shall
See her in Person at Cockermouth to
Morrer Monday and if not Engaged I
Shall Get her to Meet Mrs. S. She is
a Good needle "Woman She only Gave
[looks like Gone, this writer does not
always distinguish o a, and writtes u,
v, «, r, and sometimes * in the same
way] her place up Last tuesdy I have
My Boock
on 2 Good Coocks and 2 very nice Girls
for House Maids i "Will Dow My best
to Get one but i Must have A Little
time if M. A. C. is Engeged S/ie as no
Parents here they Are Gone away [?,
written upon another word which is
illegible] She Lived 2 years "With Mrs.
J. S. in our own town her Age is 27
She is tall and a fine Loockg Girl as a
Good Head and fine Eye Whath i Call
a nobel Loocking Woman She is very
Steady and Con have a Good Caracter
[looks like Icnccten at first, capital C
is always like J,] from Mrs D Ob B
Peason i hope i Shall Get her to
Morrar [looks like dlonwv] 5 years
6 Months at Mrs d.
CHAP. IV. § 7. PRONUNCIATION OF THE XV TH CENTURY. 405
§ 7. Change of Pronunciation during the Fifteenth Century.
Comparing the results just obtained for the close of the
xiv th century, with those found in Chap. Ill, § 6, p. 225, for
the xvi th century, we are able to estimate the action of the
xv th century upon English pronunciation, and to give some
rough and practical indications for reading works of that
transition period.
The pronunciation of the combinations employed may be
considered as having been practically the same at the close
of the xiv th and during the first third or first half of the
xv th century, except in the points here enumerated.
Final E in the XTI th century was retained in writing, but had
absolutely ceased to have any sound, and had come to be regarded
mainly as an ortboepical symbol for indicating the length of the
next preceding vowel, unless it was itself preceded by a double
consonant. How soon tbis final e was lost it is impossible to say,
but great irregularities already occur in the Thornton MS. of
Lincoln, about tbe middle of the xvtb century.1 Hence it will be
safest to omit it altogether in reading works of that and later periods.
Gross and frequent irregularities in the use of e final in any manu
script seem to point to the copyist's having lived about or after the
middle of tbe xv th century.
Short U, from being frequently used for (y) and pronounced («)
or (e), became established for tbe latter sounds in a very few words,
as busy, bury. In other cases therefore it bad best be read as (u).
Long E split into two sounds, retaining its sound of (ee) in many
words, but becoming (ii) in others, in which tbe single e was gene
rally replaced by ee in the latter part of tbe xvi tb century. There is
no means at present of discovering which of tbe words now spelled
with ee, were at any given epoch during tbe xvth century pro
nounced with (ee) and which with (ii). Tbe probability is tbat the
two sounds coexisted in tbe moutbs of different speakers for many
years, just as we have seen tbat both sounds were for several years
given to tbe combination ea at the beginning of the xvm tb century.
Hence if in reading works printed by Caxton we uniformly pro
nounced long e and ee as (ee) we should have probably a very
antiquated pronunciation, similar in effect to the use of (griit, briik)
for great, break at tbe present day, and if we uniformly pronounced
(ii) where tbe spelling ee was employed in tbe xvitb century,
(avoiding the iotacism of the present day), we should have been
thought to bave a strange affected effeminate way of speaking. It
will be most convenient however to use tbe xiv tb century style up
1 See Rev. George G. Perry's edition apply the same rhythmical principles
of the Morte Arthure (Early English as in Chaucer. But see the irregula-
Text Society's publications, 1865), pre- rities of the Lansdowne MS. 851 in
face p. viii. As however this is an respect to final e as pointed out in
alliterative poem, it is impossible to § 4, p. 320, note.
406 EARLIER PART OF THE XIV TH CENTURY. CHAP. IV. $ 8.
to the issue of Caxton's first work, and the xvith century style
afterwards. This is of course an arbitrary, but still a convenient
distinction, and some such rule is necessary or we should not be
able to read xv th century books at all.
Long I, which interchanged with ey in a few words in the xrv th
centuiy, as dry, die, high, eye, became uniformly (ei) or (ai) in the
xvi th. It will be convenient after the death of Chaucer's contem
porary Gower and his follower Lydgate, that is after the middle of
the xv th century, to adopt the (ai) uniformly. This is no doubt an
anticipation, but there seems to be no means of controlling it. We
have indeed seen the probability of long i having been occasionally
(ii) or(w') to the middle of the xvrth century. (Supra pp. 110, 114.)
Long 0 like long e split into two sounds, (oo, uu), the latter of
which had the spelling oo assigned to it. It will be best to follow
the same law with respect to it as with respect to e, and use (oo)
only up till Caxton's time, and then (oo, uu) as in the xvi th century.
EE, 00 must follow the same laws as long e and long o, for
which they were only substitutes.
01 probably gradually changed from (ui) to (oi), but, as we have
seen, the old (ui) asserted itself in many words even in the xvi th
century. It will be most convenient to use (oi) after Lydgate or
the middle of the xv th century.
EO followed the fate of long e.
EU, E"W still formed two series in the xvith century, but, as we
have seen, with different divisions from those used in the xrvth
century. The safest way is to adopt the xrvth century pronun
ciation till the close of the xv th century. Most probably we should
only run the risk of being slightly archaic in a few words.
OTJ, OW, where sounded (oou, ou) retained its sound ; but as
even Palsgrave 1530, and Bullokar 1580, acknowledge the (uu)
sound in other words, it will be quite legitimate to do so till the
beginning of the xvi th century.
GH may have changed slightly ; the (kt0h) and (wh) sounds of
GH were probably entirely lost in (f), but (kh) was retained.
We are thus enabled to read xv th century writings, not
with great confidence certainly as to catching the pre
vailing pronunciation of any period, but with a tolerable
certainty of pronouncing intelligibly, although occasionally
in an antiquated and occasionally in an affectedly modern
manner.
§ 8. Pronunciation during the Earlier Part of the xiv th
Century.
The difficulty that besets us in attempting to determine
pronunciation from orthography is the difficulty of deter
mining the age of the MS. The tendency of writers at all
times, and even in the present day, with some important
exceptions, to disregard the orthography of the original
CHAP. IV. § 8. EARLIER PART OF THE XIV TH CENTURY. 407
which they are copying, and adopt that to which they are
themselves accustomed, is so strong and so difficult to check,
that even if we supposed the older copyists to have set to
work with an intention of giving a faithful transcript of
their originals, we could not hope to obtain one.1 The older
copyists indeed never seem to have entertained the least
notion that they had to give a faithful transcript, or at least
confined their notion of fidelity to a rendering of words and
not of orthographies. We may, however, lay down this
principle, for M8S. before the invention of printing : —
The Scribe always intended to make his Orthography indicate
HIS OWN pronunciation.
There was no notion of any historical or etymological spell
ing, but certain definite senses were attributed to certain
combinations of letters and by means of them the scribe
endeavoured, with more or less success, to express himself.
Now throughout the xiv th century it appears to me, on
examining the best reprints, and especially those furnished
by Mr. Morris in his specimens2 that the alphabetical system
of all the scribes was essentially that which has been de
scribed and systematised in § 6 of this Chapter. It will be
seen at once that this was not a definite and complete system,
but admitted of many ambiguities, and many varieties of
spelling several important sounds. Thus, confining ourselves
to the vowels, we may expect to find —
the sound
(a)
(e)
(i)
(o)
to
(y)
The special mark of this system 6f spelling, that which
distinguishes it from the orthography of the xvi th century
on the one hand, and the orthography of the xm th on the
;ten as
the sound written as
the sound written as
a
(aa) a aa oa
(ai) ai ei ay ey
e
(ee) e ee ea eo oe ie
(ui) oi ui
i y u
(ii) » y
(au) au aw
0
(ou) o oo oa
(ou) ou ow
U 0
(mi) ou ow o
(oou) ou ow
u
(yy) u eu ew
(eu) eu ew
1 Having lately had occasion to have
a portion of the Canterbury Tales
printed by a printer who was unac
customed to facsimile work, I have
had painful experience of the obstinacy
of compositors and the blindness of
printers' readers in serving up and
passing over modern rechauffes of
ancient spellings. We cannot suppose
that the old copyists behaved better.
We know that the older printed books
are full of the grossest disfigurements
of their originals, and yet there is
a better chance of correctness in a
printed book, which must be diligently
revised and can be easily altered, than
in a MS. which is read and corrected
with difficulty.
2 Specimens of Early English se
lected from the chief English authors,
A.D. 1250 — A.D. 1400, with Gram
matical Introduction, Notes, and Glos
sary, by E. Morris, Esq., Oxford, Cla
rendon Press Series, 1867.
408 EARLIER PART OF THE XIV TH CENTURY. CHAP. IV. § 8.
other, is the expression of the sound of (uu) by ou, ow with
scarcely any exception. We have not lost that method of
spelling in a few instances even at the present day.1 And
occasional instances of ou for (uu) probably occurred, before
the general use was established. Throughout this period
also, and down to the present time simple o is occasionally
used for (uu) as well as for (u).2 But it is the general and
regular use of ou or ow for (uu) that characterises this system
of spelling. The words f>ou, now, how, oure may be taken as
convenient marks of this orthography as distinguished from
the more ancient spelling to be presently considered, so that
where we find these words thus written we may expect to
find the rest of the system of orthography just explained, a
system which may be, and probably often is, much more
recent than the date of the work to which it is adapted. In
Mr. Morris's specimens, this test will include under this
system, the whole of his book, from the Romance of King
Alexander downwards, although this Romance itself, Robert
of Gloucester, and the Metrical Psalter belong to the xin th
century, in which a different system prevailed, and the
Proverbs of Hendyng, Robert of Brunne, "William de Shore-
ham, the Cursor Mundi, Sunday Sermons in Verse, Dan
Michel and Richard Rolle de Hampole, belong quite to the
beginning of the xiv th century. The MS. of Havelock the
Dane, as we shall find hereafter (Chap. V. § 1, No. 5.) be
longs to the transition period, containing both pu and pou.
It is not to be supposed that these ancient authors pronounced in
the same way as Chaucer, or that writers like Kichard Eolle de
Hampole near Doncaster, and Dan Michel of Northgate in Kent,
had the same method of speech or pronunciation. Far from it. All
that is meant is that they used a similar system of orthography, and
that by interpreting their letters according to this system we can
recover, very closely if not exactly, the pronunciation their tran
scribers meant to be adopted.
Dan Michel's orthography3 is very peculiar, marking a strong
provincial pronunciation. The consonant combination ss evidently
1 The following list of words in italics are Anglosaxon. The use of ou
which ou = (uu) is taken from Walker : for (w) is a recent formation in : would,
Bouge, croup, group, aggroup, amour, could, should; cowde had a long vowel.
paramour, house, bousy, boutefeu, ca- z Walker gives the following list
pouch, cartouch, fourbe, gout (taste), for (uu) : prove, move, behove, and
ragout, rendezvous, rouge, soup, sous, their compounds, lose, do, ado, Rome,
surtout, through, throughly, toupee or poltron, ponton, sponton, who, whom,
toupet, you, your, youth, tour, contour, womb, tomb. And the following for
tournay, tournament, pour, and route (u) : woman, bosom, worsted, wolf,
(a road), accoutre, billet-doux, agouti, Wolsey, Worcester, Wolverhampton.
uncouth, wound (a hurt), and routine 3 At the beginning of this 31 S.
(a beaten road). Those words in (Arundel 57) we read : ]>is hoc is dan
CHAP. IV. § 8. EARLIER PART OF THE XIV TH CENTURY. 409
represents sJi, and has been constructed on the same principles as
the "Welsh dd, ff, II for (dh, f, Ihh) as distinct from d, f, I = (d, v, 1).
In precisely the same way the Spaniards wrote II, nn (the latter
being contracted in the usual way to n, but the uncontracted form
occurring also L) for (Ij, nj), and so many writers have proposed M,
U, dd, ss, 23, for the Arabic (h, t, d, s, z). Probably Dan Michael
finding no sound of ch in sch, objected to use it. But ss is really
ambiguous ; thus in yblissed = blessed, ss can only mean double s.
We find, the same orthography ss at an earlier period (see Chap. V,
§ 1, No. 3) so that Dan Michel did not invent it. Other writers
have employed the same notation.2 His use of a, e, i, ai are clear.
The rhyme : bread dyad, seems to point to (eaa) or (ea) with the
stress on the last syllable as the value of ea. Since u is clearly used
as (u) in pus, and as the substitute for w after h, in huo, and ou is
employed in ous = us, ou, u must have had their usual sounds (uu,
«), so that short o probably always represented (o) and not (u),
although it is constantly employed for an ags. u. When u was
long, which only happens in a few French words, it of course had
the sound (yy), but this was apparently unknown to the dialect,
an important remark when we recollect that Wallis was a native
of Kent, and at the same time the last writer who insisted on the
pronunciation of long u as (yy) in received English, (pp. 171-6).
The constant use of u as a consonant (v) often renders words difficult
to recognize. The use of by for be, and final y in the infinitive of
verbs would be quite inconsistent with an (ai) pronunciation of i,
and hence is corroborative of the conclusion before arrived at (p. 297.)
The examples on p. 412, render this clear. They are taken from
the preface and the end of the book, just before the final sermon,
Ayenbite of Inwyt, p. 262.3 The Lord's Prayer and Creed may
be compared with other earlier versions in Chap. Y. § 1, No. 3,
and Wilkins's version in Chap. IX, § 1.
Michelis of Northgate, ywrite an englis 1) CH for K, the Southern forms
of his ojene hand. "We have therefore being named first, as chele for kele =
the author's actual orthography, a most cold. 2) V for F, now disused in the
important fact. South East. 3) Z for S, found alone
1 See supra p. 193, note 3. in the Ayenbite of all writings of the
2 Thus in Thomas de Erseldoune's xiv th century. 4) Vowel before B, in
prophecy of king Edward II, in the place of vowel after B, as berne for
same MS. fo. 8b, we find ssal ssel for brenne burn. 5) PS for SP as haps
shall. for hasp. 6) G for Y, as begge for
3 Dan Michel's Ayenbite of Inwyt, bye, segge for saye. (7) B for V as
or Eemorse of Conscience, in the Kent- libbe, habbe, hebbe for live, have, heve =
ish Dialect, 1340 A.D. Printed from heave. B. Vowels. 1) 0 for A, as ban
the Autograph MS. in the British for ban. 2) E for A, as a^en for agan
Museum, with an introduction on the = against. 3) AW for AI=ags. ag,
peculiarities of the Southern Dialect as f awe for fain. 4) U for I, as fust,
and a Glossarial Index, by Richard hul, sun for fist, hill, sin. 5) EO for
Morris, Esq., London, 1866, 8vo., pp. E, as breoste for breste. 6) An inserted
c, 359. Early English Text Society. y before e and a, as byeam byam for
The following orthographical points of beam, and dyad for dead. 7) An in
difference between the Southern and serted u before o, the only words of this
Northern dialects, are noticed by Mr. kind in the Ayenbite being buon, guode,
Morris in the " grammatical introduc- guo, guos, zuolf, for bone, good, go, goose,
tion" to this work. A. Consonants. and Dorset zull, a plough.
410
EARLIER PART OF THE XTV TH CENTURY. CHAP. IV. § 8.
Bichard Eolle dc Hampole, an Augustine monk near Doncaster,
who died 1349, left many writings in the Northern dialect, pre
senting a strong contrast to the Kentish, just considered. The ma
nuscript is however not so carefully spelled, and there are many
final E's written, which were clearly not pronounced, so that we
must either assume a much later date for the actual writing, or
suppose that on account of the general omission of the inflectional -e
in Northern speech, the habit of writing had become lax there at an
earlier period, precisely as it became lax in the South during the
xv th century as the final -e became discontinued. In the pre
sent case, probably, both causes were in action. The Pricke of
Conscience^- is in verse, with very perfect rhymes,2 and there can be
no difficulty in reading it. The verse, however, is so "hummocky "
that no conclusions could be drawn from it respecting the number
of syllables in a word.
A short extract will suffice to shew the action of our rules for
pronunciation. Many liberties have been taken with the pronun
ciation of the final E's, to reduce them to order, but the orthography
of the text is Mr. Morris's. The e before « in the plural of nouns
and the third person singular of nouns, has been considered mute
whenever the rhythm would allow, in deference to the opinion of
Mr. Murray, who has made the Northern dialects his peculiar study.3
1 The Pricke of Conscience Stimulus
Conscientiae), a Northumbrian Poem,
by Eichard Eolle de Hampole, copied
and edited from MSS. in the library of
the British Museum with an introduc
tion, notes, and glossarial index, by
Eichard Morris, published for the Phi
lological Society, 1863. This edition
chiefly follows Cotton. MS. Galba, E.
ix. Six out of the other MSS. are
adaptations of the poem to a more
southern dialect. This MS. is sup
posed not to be later than the begin
ning of the xv th century, and is there
fore much more recent than Eolle de
Hampole himself, and hence no reliance
whatever can be placed on the final e.
z In v. 1273 we find for tone for for
tune (which occurs in T. 1286), so
that probably buke v. 2300, which may
have represented the northern pronun
ciation (byyk) should be altered to boke
to rhyme with lake in the following
line. I have not noted other faulty
rhymes.
3 The -es has been preserved in v.
480. The final -e in for.mefather v.
483 has also been retained for the
rhythm, although Mr. Murray prefers
form, referring to formkittd, formbirth,
formdays. Mr. Murray thinks that ai,
ay had in Scotland the sound of (ee) at
the beginning of the xvi ±h century, at
least a century before it was recognized
in the South, although we learn from
Hart that it was well known in 1569
(supra p. 122) or rather in 1551, the
date of his first draft (infra Chap. VIII,
§ 3, first note). Mr. Murray's opinion
is based upon the sudden appearance of
the orthography ay about 1500 in Ga-
wain Douglas, who uses it where an
intermediate (ai) between the old (aa)
and modern (ee) is hardly conceivable,
and his often interchanging a and ay
in the same word, as bray, bra. Again
thare, thair, thayr are regularly con
founded, and bath, bathe, bayth, baith
all occur. "We have the rhymes : Ida
lay, say Ortigia, Cassendray away, gaif
haif=gave have, rais face, say ischay
=esche. Possibly this was a period of
transitional sound from (aa) or (aa) to
(aah) or (sese), and Douglas, if tfie spel
ling is really his, which of course is
doubtful, strove to mark it by the same
device which was known to him pos
sibly by the pronunciation of Greek
(the Erasmian system not having been
yet introduced), namely the addition of
t, or else from the growing habit of
calling French ai (ee). There seems
to be no doubt that in the instances
named, and in : twa tway, ma may mo
=plures, wraith = wroth, maid = made,
CHAP. IV. § 8. EARLIER PART OF THE XIVTH CENTURY. 411
It cannot be supposed that this mode of reading the writing of
Dan Michel, and Richard Rolle, precisely renders the pronunciation
of the dialect which they followed. We know how slightly dialects
are at present represented, and how very insufficient our pronun
ciation would be if derived from the usual orthographical and ortho-
epical rules. It is not likely that writers five hundred years ago
should have been more accurate. They had however the advantage
of an alphabet in which the value of each combination was settled
with remarkable exactness, and hence they were able by their ortho
graphy to make a near approach to the sound of speech around them.
But their alphabet only having an accurate representation of the
simple and compound sounds: (a, aa, ai, au, b, d, [dh], dzh, e, ee, ei,
eu, f, g, H, i, n, j, k, kh, 1, '1, m, n, o, oi, oo, oou, p, q, r, TW, s, sh,
t, th, tsh, u, uu, v, w, wh, yy), although far superior to that now in
use, which only professes to represent in a very lame, confused, and
uncertain manner, the simple and compound sounds : (aa, AA, a?, b,
d, [dh], dzh, e, a, ee, ai, au, f, g, H, *', ii, n, iu, J, k, 1, m, n, o, oi,
oo, p, q, r, x, s, sh, t, th, tsh, u, uu, v, w, wh, z, [zh]), — the same
in number but differing in value, — must have been as inadequate to
represent our provincial sounds of that time, as our present ortho
graphy is to write our present provincial dialects, as may be con
cluded from an inspection of the key to Grlossotype, p. 16. The
writer probably refined the dialect and selected his sounds, giving
an approximation which would have been understood by a native.
It is also possible that he may have pressed some combinations and
letters to do a double duty. Writers were already familiar with
double uses. Thus *', u were vowels or consonants ; o = (o, u),
u = (yy, u), ou = ow (uu, oou), eu = (yy, eu), and long and
short vowels were written with the same sign. But if in their
dialectic writing they took such liberties, we have no satisfactory
means, if indeed we have any means of detecting them. Such an
approximation however as results from the preceding examination
of Chaucer and Grower must certainly be far nearer the truth than
any hap-hazard reading, founded upon modern analogies without
historical investigation, and as such is worth the study and ac
ceptance of the scholar. "We may indeed feel some confidence that
Hampole and Dan Michel would have at least understood the above
conjectured pronunciation. But the usual modern English sounds
would have probably sounded as strange to their ears, as an or
dinary Frenchman's declamation of Shakspere to ours, or our own
Southern pronunciation of Burns to an Ayrshire peasant.
aith=:oath, ai could not have been(ai). dialects, both. Scotch and English, and
"We cannot hut feel rejoiced to know an antiquarian research into their form
that the long neglected Scotch dialects, and history, joins an extensive ac-
which are in fact those of Northern quaintance with those languages, both
England, are undergoing a thorough European and Oriental, which have
examination by one so well qualified in chiefly engaged the attention of philolo-
eyery respect as Mr. Murray, who to gists, and a long theoretical and practi-
his local knowledge of the Border cal familiarity with phonetics.
412
ILLUSTRATIONS FROM THE EARLIER CHAP. IV. § 8.
EXTRACTS FROM DAN MICHEL.
Ayenbite of Inwyt.
PREFACE,
Holy archanle Michael.
Saynt gabriel. and Raphael.
Ye brenge me to Jo castel.
Jer alle zaulen varej wel.
Lhord ihesu almijti kyng.
Jet madest, and lokest alle
Me Jet am Ji makyng :
to Jine blisse me Jou bryng.
Blind, and dyaf. and alsuo domb.
Of zeuenty yer al uol rond.
Ne ssolle by drage to ]>e
grond :
Yor peny, uor mark, ne nor
pond.
ich wille ]?et ye ywyte hou
hit is y-went :
]?et Jis boc is y- write mid engliss
of kent.
J>is boc is y-mad uor lewede
men,
Yor uader, and uor moder, and
uor o]>er ken,
ham uor to berge uram alle man-
yere zen,
Jet ine hare inwyttte ne bleue
no uoul wen.
Huo ase god is his name yzed,
Jet Jis boc made god him yeue
Jet bread,
of angles of heuene and Jerto
his red,
and onderuonge his zaule huanne
Jet he is dyad.
Amen.
Ymende. Jet Jis boc is uol-
ueld ine Je cue of Je holy
apostles Symon an • ludas, of
ane brojer of Je cloystre of
sanynt austin of Canterberi, Ine
Jc yeare of oure Ihordcs beringe.
1340.
Ajen'bn'te of In'wit
p. 1.
Hoo'K ark'aq'gle Mn'kaa'eel',
Saint Gaa'brw'eel', and Raa'faa*-
eel',
Jee breq'e mee to dhoo kastel*
Dheer al'e zaul'en faa'reth wel.
Lord Dzhee'syy' almi£ht't kz'q,
Dhet maadst, and loo'kest al'e
theq.
Mee dhet am dim maa'kzq*,
To dlm'ne bltVe mee dhuu brz'q*
Blind, and djaf, and al'swo domb,
Of zeventzr Jeer al vol rond,
Ne shol'e bn draagh'e to dhe
grond,
Yor pen'V, vor mark, nee vor
pond.
p. 262.
Nuu itsh wil'e dhet Je
HUU H^t *s i-went,
dhet dim book is i-iwiit'G
Eq'Ksh of Kent.
Dh«'s book is «-maad vor leu'ede
men,
Yor vaa'der, and vor mod'er, and
vor odh'er ken,
Ham vor to bergh-e vram al'e
maraee're zen,
Dhet in-e Haar in'w^t'e ne
blee've noo fuul wen.
' "Whoo aa'se God ?' *s HJS naam
i-zed',
dhet dh»s book maad'e. God
mm jee've dhet breaad
of aq'gelz of Heeven, and dher-
too' HIS reed,
and on'dervoq* His zaul'e whan
dhet nee is djaad.
Aa'men.
/mend'e. dhet dhis book is
volveld' in'e dhe eev of dhe
Hoo'b' apos't'lz S/rmoon' and
Dzhyy'das, of aa'ne broo'dher of
dhe kluis'ter of saint Au'stin of
Kan'terber'/, «re dhe jcaa'rc of
uur Lhord'es becr'i'q'e. 1340.
CHAP. IV. §8. PART OF THE XIV TH CENTURY. 413
EXTRACTS FROM DAN MICHEL.*
Pater noster
Vader oure J?et art ine he-
uenes, y-harged by ]?i name,
cominde ]>i riche. y-wor]?e J?i
wil, ase ine heuene : and ine
erj>e. bread oure echedayes : yef
ous to day. and uorlet ous oure
yeldinges : ase and we uorlete}?
oure yelderes. and ne ous led
najt : in- to uondinge. ac vri
ous uram queade. zuo by bit.
Pat'er nos'ter
Vaa'der uure^ dhet art in'e
Heevenes, «-Hal'gwhed bzY dim
naanre. Koo'mmd'e dlmm'tshe.
/-wordh'e dlu wil, as m-e neev-
ene, and in'e erth'e. Breaad uur'e
ee'tshedaies jef us to dai. And
vorleet' us uure Jeld^'q'es, as'e
and wee vorleet'eth uur'e jeld'-
eres. And nee us leed nakbt in-
too* vond'i'q'e. Ak vm us vram
kweaad'e. Zwoo bw rot.
Ave Maria
Hayl Marie, of fonke uol.
Ihord by mid ]>e. y-blissed
]?ou ine wymmen. and y-blis
sed ]?e ouet of fine wombe.
zuo by hit.
Aa'vee
Hail Marz're, of tboqk'e vol.
Lbord \>ii m«d dhee. /bKs'ed
dhuu in-e w«m-en, and *bbs-ed
dhe oo-vet of dhwh'e wom'be.
Zwoo \)ii Hit.
Credo
Ich leue ine god, uader al-
migti. makere of heuene, and
of er]?e. And ine iesu crest,
his zone on-lepi oure Ihord.
Jet y-kend is, of ]>e holy gost.
y-bore of Marie Mayde. y-
pyned onder pouns pilate. y-
nayled a rode. dyad, and be-
bered. yede doun to helle.
Jiane }>ridde day a-ros uram
J?e dyade. Steaj to heuenes.
zit a]?e rigt half of god ]?e
uader al-migti. Cannes to com-
ene he is, to deme ]>e quike,
and }?e dyade. Ich y-leue ine
J>e holy gost. holy cherche
generalliche. Mewnesse of hal-
gen. Lesnesse of zewnes. of
ulesse arizinge. and lyf eure-
lestinde. zuo by hyt.
Kr ee'doo
/tsh lee*ve in God, vaa'der al-
im'kht'M, maa-ker'e of neevene
and of erth-e. And m'e Dzhee--
syy Krz'st, H^'s zoo'ne oon'leep'j
uur'e Lhord, dhet -/kend' is of dhe
Hoo'ln Goost, iboo're of Mam'-a
Maid'e, «peVn*ed ond-er Puuns
Piilaa-te mail'ed aa roo-de, djaad,
and bebered, jee'de duun to
sel'e, dhan'e thr«d-e dai aroos*
vram dhe djaad-e, steaagh to
Heevenes, zit adh-e r/kht Half
of God dhe vaa'der alme'kht'M.
Dhan'es to koom'ene He is, to
deenre dhe kw^'k'e, and dhe
djaad'e. /tsh ilee've m-e dhe
Hool'M Goost, Hool'M tshertsh'e
dzhen-eralbV'tshe, meen-nes'e of
nal'ghen, lees'nes'e of zen'es, of
vlesh'e arn'zzq'e, and liif ever-
lest'm'de. Zwoo bw mt.
For the translation of pages 412 and 414, see p. 416.
414 ILLUSTRATIONS FROM THE EARLIER CHAP. IV. § 8.
EXTEACTS FROM ElCHAUD EoLLE DE HAMPOLE.
The Pricke of Conscience, v. 464-509.
And [when man] was born til f is werldys light,
He ne had nouther strenthe ne myght,
Nouther to ga ne yhit to stand, 466
Ne to crepe with fote ne with hand.
pan has a man les myght fan a "beste
"When he es born, and es sene leste ;
For a best, when it is born, may ga 470
Alstite aftir, and ryn to and fra ;
Bot a man has na myght f ar-to,
When he es born, swa to do ;
For fan may he noght stande ne crepe, 474
But ligge and sprawel, and cry and wepe.
For unnethes es a child born fully,
pat it ne bygynnes to goule and cry ;
And by fat cry men knaw fan 478
"Whether it be man or weman.
For when it es born it cryes swa :
If it be man it says "a. a,"
pat f e first letter es of f e nam, 482
Of our forme-fader Adam.
And if f e child a woman be,
"When it es born it says " e. e,"
E es f e first letter and f e hede 486
Of f e name of Eve fat bygan our dede.
parfor a clerk made on fis manere
pis vers of metre fat is wreten here : 489
Dicentes E. vel A. quot-quot nascuntur ab Eva.
" Alle fas," he says, " fat comes of Eve,
pat es al men fat here byhoves leve,
Whan f ai er born, what-swa f ai be,
pai say outher a. a. or e. e." 494
pus es here f e bygynnyng
Of our lyfe sorow and gretyng,
Til whilk our wrechednes stirres us,
And f arfor Innocent says f us : 498
Omnes nascimur eiulantes,
ut nature nostre miseriam
exprimamus.
He says, " al er we born gretand, 502
And makand a sorrowful sembland,
For to shew f e grete wrechednes
Of our kynd fat in us es." • 505
pus when f e tyme come of oure birthe,
Al made sorow and na mirthe ;
Naked we come hider, and bare,
And pure, swa sal we hethen fare. 509
CHAP. IV. § 8. PART OF THE XIV TH CENTURY. 415
CONJECTURED PBONOTCIATION OF RICHAUD ROLLE DE HAHPOLE.
Dhe Pr^k of Kon-siens' v. 464-509
And [when man] was born til dim werld'/s liKht,
Hee nee Had nudlrer strenth ne im'&ht,
Nudlrer to gaa, ne obit to stand, 466
Nee to kreep with foot ne with Hand.
Dhan Has a man les mikht dhan a beest
When see es born, and es seen leest ;
For a beest, when it es born, mai gaa 470
Als'toYt aft'i'r, and rm too and fraa ;
Bot a man Has naa im'&ht dhartoo ;
When nee es born, swaa to doo ;
For dhan mai He nokht stand ne kreep, 474
Bot lig and spraul, and km and weep.
For uneedhz* es a tshild born fal'lii'
Dhat it nee loiginz' to guul and km;
And })ii dhat km men knaau dhan 478
Whedh-er it be man or woo'man',
For when it es born it km'es swaa ;
If it bee man it saiz " aa ! aa ! "
Dhat dhe first let'er is of dhe naam 482
Of uur fornve-faa'der Aa'daam*.
And if dhe tslu'ld a woo'man* bee,
When it es born it saiz " ee ! ee ! "
Ee es dhe first let'er and dhe need 486
Of dhe naam of Eev dhat bigan uur deed.
Dharfoor a klerk maad on dhis maneer
Dhis vers of mee'ter dhat is rt^ee'ten neer : 489
Diisen'tees E. vel Aa. kwot-kwot naskun'tur ab
" Al dhaas," nee saiz, "dhat koomz of Eev, [Ee'vaa'
Dhat es al men, dhat Her bcsoovz' leev,
When dhai er born, what-swaa* dhai bee,
Dhai sai udlrer aa ! aa ! or ee ! ee ! " 494
Dhus es Her dhe btirgnrtq'
. Of uur liif soru and gree'ti'q',
Til wh«lk uur rwetsh/ednes stirz us,
And dharfoor /n'osent saiz dhus : 498
Onvnees nas'imur eedzhyylan'tees
ut naa'tyyree nos'tree m«ser-iam
eksprt'maa'mus.
Hee saiz : " al er wee born greet'and* 502
And maak'and' a sor'uful sem'bland',
For to sheu dhe greet rwetslrednes
Of uu-r kmd dhat in us es." 505
Dhus when dhe tnm koom of uur birth,
Al maad soru and naa mirth ;
Naak'ed wee koom nid'er and baar,
And pyyr, swaa sal wee nedh'en faar. 509
416
TRANSLATIONS OF ILLUSTRATIONS. CHAP. IV. § 8.
TRANSLATION OF DAN MICHEL.
Preface.
Holy Archangel Michael,
Saint Gabriel and Eaphael,
May ye bring me to the castle
where all souls fare well.
Lord Jesus, almighty king,
That madest, and keepest all things,
Me, that am thy making,
To thy bliss bring thou me.
Blind and deaf and also dumb,
Of seventy year all full round,
Not shall be dragged to the ground,
For penny, for mark, nor for pound.
E Envoy.
Now I will that ye wit how it has
gone (happened),
that this book has-been written with
English of Kent.
This book has-been made for un
learned men,
for fathers, and for mothers, and for
other kin,
them for to save from all maner (of)
sin,
that in their conscience may remain no
evil thought.
" (Mil) Who, (khAA) like (Eel) God ?"
i.e. Michael, is his name called,
that this book made. God give him
the bread
of angels of heaven, and thereto his
advice (help),
and receive his soul when that it is
dead.
Amen.
Note, that this book is fulfilled in
the eve of the holy apostles Simon and
Judas, (27 Oct.), by a brother of the
Cloister of St. Austin of Canterbury,
in the year of our lord's bearing (birth),
1340.
TRANSLATION OF RICHARD ROLLE
DE HAMPOLE.
And [when man] was born to this
world's light,
He had not neither strength nor power,
Neither to go nor yet to stand, 466
Nor to creep with foot nor hand.
Then has a man less power than a
beast,
When he is born and is seen least ;
For a beast, when it is born, may walk
Immediately after, and run to and fro ;
But a man has no power thereto, 472
When he is born, so to do ;
For then he may not stand nor creep
but [must] lie and sprawl and cry and
weep. 475
For hardly is a child born fully,
That it begins not to howl and cry ;
And by that cry men know then 478
Whether it be man or woman.
For when it is born it cries so ;
If it be man it says Ah ! Ah !
That is the first letter of the name 482
Of our first-father Adam.
And if the child a woman be,
When it is born it says, Eh! Eh!
E is the first letter and the head 486
Of the name of Eve that began our
death.
Therefore a clerk made on this manner
This verse of metre that is written
here : 489
Saying E. or A. as many as are born
of Eve.
"All those," he says, "that come of
Eve,
That is, all men that it behoves to
live here,
When they are born, whatsoever they
be,
They say either Ah ! Ah ! or Eh ! Eh !"
Thus is here the beginning 495
Of our life's sorrow and weeping,
To which our wretchedness stirs us,
And therefore Innocent says thus : 498
We are all born howling,
that the misery of our nature
we may express. 501
He says : " All we are born weeping,
And making a sorrowful semblance,
For to shew the great wretchedness
Of our nature that is in us." 505
Thus when the time came of our birth,
All made sorrow and no mirth-;
Naked we came hither and bare, 508
And poor, so shall we fare (go) hence.
STEPHEN AUSTIN, PRINTER, HERTFORD.
ON
EAELY ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION,
WITH ESPECIAL REFERENCE TO
8HAKSPERE AND CHAUCER,
CONTAINING AN INVESTIGATION OF THE CORRESPONDENCE OF
WRITING WITH SPEECH IN ENGLAND, FROM THE ANGLOSAXON
PERIOD TO THE PRESENT DAY, PRECEDED BY A SYSTEMATIC
NOTATION OF ALL SPOKEN SOUNDS BY MEANS OF THE ORDINARY
PRINTING TYPES.
INCLUDING
A RE-ARRANGEMENT OF PROF. F. J. CHILD'S MEMOIRS ON THE LANGUAGE OF
CHATJCER AND GOWER, AND REPRINTS OF THE RARE TRACTS BY SALESBTTRY
ON ENGLISH, 1547, AND WELSH, 1567, AND BY BARCLEY ON FRENCH, 1521.
ALEXANDER J. ELLIS, F.R.S.,
IBLLOW OF THE CAMBBIDGE PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY, HEHBEB OF THE LONDON MATHEMATICAL
SOCIETY, MEMBER OF THE COUNCIL OF THE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY, SOBMEBLY
SCHOLAR OF TBINITY COLLEGE, CAMBBIDGE, B.A. 1837.
PART II.
ON THE PRONUNCIATION OF THE XIII TH AND PREVIOUS CENTURIES,
OF ANGLOSAXON, ICELANDIC, OLD NORSE AND. GOTHIC, WITH
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLES OF THE VALUE OF LETTERS AND
EXPRESSIONS OF SOUND IN ENGLISH WRITING.
LONDON:
PUBLISHED FOB THE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY, BY
ASHER & CO., LONDON & BERLIN,
AND FOR THE EARLY ENGLISH TEXT SOCIETY, AND THE CHAUCER SOCIETY, BY
TRUBNER & CO., 60, PATERNOSTER ROW.
1869.
ADDITIONAL CORRIGENDA IN PART I.
p. 13, 1. 7 from bottom, omit But for convenience, a very brief key is given on
p. 16.
Cancel p. 16, which is replaced by pp. 614-5.
p. 105, n. 2, 1. 6, for bolt readmit).
p. 107, 1. 4 from bottom of text, for (A) read (AI).
p. Ill, 1. 6, for (ai, ou) read (ai, au).
p. 118, 1. 6 from bottom, for tEMS read tEms.
p. 119, 1. 15, for aryl read ray I.
p. 141, 1. 8 from bottom, omit as we sounded lyke.
p. 153, 1. 9 and 3 from bottom of text, omit and which, and that the change,
p. 254, n. 1,1. 6, omit (possibly a reference to St. Mary le bon) ; n. 3, add at the
end of this note : See note on v. 672, Chap. VII. § 1.
p. 265, 1. 24—26, omit But susteene . . . 8323.
p. 309, n. 1, 1. 3, for z read g.
p. 333, 1. 26—29, read " Tyrwhitt, and the MSS. of the Six-Text Edition of
Chaucer, read thilke for the." Omit another mode . . . wikkedly.
p. 333, n. 1, 1. 8, for Hengwit read Hengwrt.
p. 336, n., supply *.
p. 347, art. 17, 1. 10, for -innge read -innge.
p. 355, art. 53, for Ex. to (c], read Ex. to («).
p. 371, Ex. col. 1, 1. 28, before wiltow insert (c}.
p. 388, after Manhood insert 14.
p. 407, table col. 2, 1. 4, for "(ou) o oo oa" read "(oo) o oo oa." Note that
" (ou) ou ow" in col. 3, I. 4 is correct.
. CORRIGENDA IN PART II.
p. 473, n. col. 2, 1. 1, for p. 446 read p. 447.
p. 477, n. 2, 1. 3, omit more.
p. 506, n. 2, last word, for (riiHe) read (ruu-le), See p. 573, under IU.
p. 562, translation, verse 13, 1. 4, /or yon, read yonder.
STEPHEN AUSTIN, PRINTER, HERTFORD.
NOTICE.
ON account of the unexpected length of the present inves
tigations, the Societies for which they are published have
found it most convenient to divide them into four parts,
instead of two as previously contemplated. The present
second part concludes most of the researches themselves.
The third part, containing Chapters VII. and VIII., is in
the press, and will be ready by January, 1870. Chapter
VII. will contain an introduction to the specimen of Chaucer;
a critical text of the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, with
especial reference to final e, metrical peculiarities, and intro
duction of French words, together with the conjectured
pronunciation; a passage from Gower, printed for the first
time, according to three MSS. with the conjectured pronun
ciation ; and a specimen of WyclifFe. Chapter VIII. will
contain Salesbury's and Barcley's works ; specimens of
phonetic writing in the xvi th century, by Hart, Bullokar,
Gill, and Butler ; a Pronouncing Vocabulary of the period ;
an account of French and Latin pronunciation in the xvi th
century ; an examination of Spenser's and Shakspere's
rhymes, and Shakspere's puns ; and an attempt to restore
Shakspere's pronunciation. The fourth part, will treat of
English pronunciation during the xvn th and xvm th cen
turies, and of dialectic usages, and will contain full indices
to every part of the work, but the time of its appearance
cannot yet be announced.
A. J. E.
KENSINGTON,
1 AUG., 1869.
CONTENTS OF PART II.
CHAPTER V. ON THE PRONUNCIATION OF ENGLISH DURING THE THIR
TEENTH AND PREVIOUS CENTURIES, AND OF THE TEUTONIC AND SCANDI
NAVIAN SOURCES OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.
§ 1. Khymed Poems of the xm th Century and earlier, pp. 417-485.
No. 1. The Cuckoo Song (with the Music), circa A.D. 1240,
pp. 419-428.
No. 2. The Prisoner's Prayer (with the Music), circa A.D.
1270, pp. 428-439.
No. 3. Miscellanies of the xm th Century, from the Reliquiae
Antiquoe, Early English Poems and Political Songs,
with an Examination of the Norman French El, AI,
pp. 439-466.
No. 4. The Story of Genesis and Exodus, circa A.D. 1290, pp.
466-470.
No. 5. Havelok the Dane, circa A.D. 1290, pp. 470-479.
No. 6. King Horn, circa A.D. 1290, pp. 480-483.
No. 7. Moral Ode, Pater Noster and Orison, xii th Century,
pp. 484-485.
§ 2. Unrhymed Poems of the xm th Century and Earlier, pp. 486-497.
No. 1. Orrmin's Ornnulum, end of the xii th Century, pp.
486-495.
No. 3. Layamon's Brut, beginning of xmth Century, pp.
496-497.
§ 3. Prose Writings of the xm th Century and Earlier, pp. 498-508.
No. 1. Only English Proclamation of Henry III., 18 Oct.
1258, pp. 498-505.
No. 2. The Ancren Riwle, xm th Century, pp. 506-507.
No. 3. Old English Homilies, XH th Century, pp. 507-508.
§ 4. Teutonic and Scandinavian Sources of the English Language, pp.
508-564.
No. 1. Anglosaxon, pp. 510-537.
No. 2. Icelandic, pp. 537-553, and Old Norse, pp. 554-560.
No. 3. Gothic, pp. 560-564.
CHAPTER VI. ON THE CORRESPONDENCE OF ORTHOGRAPHY WITH PRONUN
CIATION FROM THE ANGLOSAXON TIMES TO THE PRESENT DAY.
§ 1. The Value of the Letters, pp. 565-588.
§ 2. The Expression of the Sounds, pp. 589-606.
$ 3. Historical Phonetic Spelling, pp. 606-618.
§ 4. Etymological Spelling, pp. 618-621.
§ 5. Standard or Typographical Spelling, pp. 621-623.
§ 6. Standard Pronunciation, pp. 624-632.
For the intended contents of the whole work, see Part I.
417
CHAPTER V.
ON THE PRONUNCIATION or ENGLISH DURING THE THIRTEENTH
AND PREVIOUS CENTURIES, AND OF THE TEUTONIC AND
SCANDINAVIAN SOURCES OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.
§ 1. Rhymed Poems of the Thirteenth Century and Earlier.
It remains for us to apply the method employed for as
certaining the pronunciation of English during the xiv th
century, to the discovery, if possible, of that of the xm th
century, and for this purpose it is necessary to examine the
rhymed poems of this date in manuscripts which seem to
belong with certainty to that period. Poems composed in
the xm th century, but transcribed in the xiv th, and there
fore presenting the peculiar orthography of the latter period,
are of little use for our purpose. This will account for the
rejection of many rhymed poems which belong to this period.
The following cases have been selected with some care.
The CUCKOO SONG and PRISONER'S PRAYER, which stand
first, have their antiquity well established, and possess the
great advantage of a contemporary musical setting, which is
of considerable assistance in determining the pronunciation
or elision of the final e. As the old notation of music re
quires especial study to read, faithful translations into the
modern- notation, preserving exactly the number and pitch
of the notes, have been printed. This is precisely similar to
reducing the manuscript letters to the form of Roman types,
extending the contractions and pointing. In the first piece
the time of each note is accurately determined in the original,
and is strictly observed in the transcript. In the second,
which is in plain chant, this is not the case, and hence such
time has been assigned as was suggested by a careful ex
amination of the notes in connection with the words.
In approaching these earlier poems we stand already upon,
very secure ground. The values of a, ai, au, e, ei, eu, i, ie,
o, oi, ou, as (aa a, ai, au, ee e, ei ai, eu, ii i, ee, oo o,
ui, oou ou) have every appearance of being the most ancient
possible, and the only doubtful points turn on such fine
27
418 RHYMED POEMS — XIII TH CENTURY. CHAP. V.
distinctions as (a a, e E, i i), which it would be impossible to
determine from the rhymes alone with certainty, since the
necessarily strongly provincial character of all early poems,
will certainly admit of rhymes apparently lax, which only
represent peculiar pronunciations. In fact there was no
longer a common or a recognized superior dialect, for the
English language had long ceased to be that of the nobility.
From the Anglo-Saxon Charters of the Conqueror down
to the memorable proclamation issued by Henry III. (see
below, p. 498), and for a century afterwards, the English
language was ignored by the authorities, and was only used
by or for " lewd men."1 But there was a certain amount of
education among the priests, who were the chief writers, and
who saved the language from falling into the helplessness of
peasant dialogue.
The chief points of difficulty are the use of ou for (uu, u),
the use of u for (yy, y) and even (i, e), and of eu for (yy).
The meaning of ea, eo, oa, practically unused in the xiv th
century, has also to be determined. The result of the pre
sent investigation may be conveniently anticipated. It will
be found that ou was not used at all for (uu, u) till near the
close of the xm th century, when the growing use of u for
(yy) or (i, e), rendered the meaning of u uncertain. But in
the pure xm th century writings u only is employed for (uu),
and becomes a test orthography (p. 408). The combination eu
or ew, does not seem to have been used except as (eu). The
combinations ea, eo, so frequently rhyme with e, and inter
change with it orthographically, that their meaning was
probably intentionally (ea, eo), with the stress on the first
element, and the second element obscure,2 so that the result,
scarcely differed from (ee') or even (ee). The combination
oa was either (aa) or (aa). The consonants seem. to have
been the same as in the xiv th century, although 5 may pos
sibly have retained more of the (<?h) than the (j) character.
1 Man og to luuen $at rimes ren, which case, according to some writers,
fle Wiffed wel iSe logede men, the first element falls into (j, w), which
hu man may him wel loken however, others deny. In (iu, ui) the
•Sog he ne he lered on no boken, stress is properly on the first element,
Luuen god and feruen him ay. as also in most provincial diphthongs
Genesis and Exodm, 1-5. beginning with (i), as (stiaan, mtm)
J>is hoc is y-mad nor lewede men. = stone, mane. Bnt in Italian chiaro,
AyenUte of Inwyt, supra p. 412. ghiaccio (iiaa-ro, yiat'tshio) the (i) is
2 The general rule for the -stress upon touched quite lightly, and is almost
the elements of diphthongs is that it evanescent, so that (kjaa-ro, gjat--
falls upon the first, but this rule is tsho) would generally be thought
occasionally violated. Thus in many enough. A method is therefore re
combinations with initial (i, u) the quired for indicating the stress, when
stress falls on the second element, in difficulty might arise, or when it is
§ 1, No. 1. CUCKOO SONG XIII TH CENTURY. 419
1. THE CUCKOO SONG (WITH THE Music), ciEcX A.D. 1240.
The Harleian MS. 978, in the British Museum, was a monk's
album or commonplace book. It is a small vellum MS. entirely of
the XTTT th century, but evidently written by many hands at dif
ferent times. The contents are very miscellaneous. It begins with
several musical pieces, some with and some without words, Latin,
French, and English; it proceeds to give an account of musical
notation and tones, then suddenly commences a calendar, of which
only the first two months are complete, though the others are
blocked in. Then comes a letter to Alexander the Great on the
preservation of health, Avicenna on the same, account of the
seasons, melancholy, etc., all in Latin. On fo. 24, the language
changes to French, and we have recipes for oxymel, hypocrase, etc.
On fo. 32, the hand changes, but the recipes are continued. The
language reverts to Latin on fo. 325, and the hand changes again
on fo. 335, col. 2, line 2. Without pursuing the catalogue further,
we may notice a change of hand again on fo. 37 and fo. 38, where
a beautifully written French Esop commences. ~We have again a
different hand on fo. 665, and so on. In the later part of the
volume is a Latin poem of (twice) 968 lines on the Battle of Lewes,
14th May, 1264, (printed by Mr. T. "Wright in his Political Songs,
pp. 72-121), in which the cause of the Barons against Henry III.,
is so warmly taken,1 that it must have been composed, and pro
bably also transcribed, before they were utterly routed and ruined
abnormal, and for this purpose the * Compare the opening lines —
acute accent may be used, as (£iaagro, Calamus velociter
^iat'tshio), and similarly (ea, eo) in scribe sic scribentis,
some theoretical pronunciations of Lingua laudabiliter
anglo-saxon, and this accent may be te benedicentis,
used in all cases if desired. In Ice- Dei patris dextera,
landic I have heard the triphthong domine virtutum,
(ioou) with the unusual stress on the Qui das tuis prospera
first, and (ie) when apparently (ie) was quando vis ad nutum ;
written, and in such cases the mark is In te jam confidere
indispensable. In Icelandic, I have discant universi,
also found it necessary to symbolize a Quos volebant perdere
very faint pronunciation of a letter, qui nunc sunt dispersi.
rather indicated than pronounced, Quorum caput capitur,
rather felt by the speaker than heard membra captivantur ;
by the listener, by prefixing [_ a cut [ , Gens elata labitur,
to such a letter, as the symbol of evanes- fideles laetantur.
cence, so that we might write (e[a) for Jam respirat Anglia,
.(ea) that is (ea), or (A^iaa-ro, ^[iat1- sperans libertatem ;
tsh[io) if preferred. If it is wished to Cui Dei gratia
shew that a whole word or phrase is so det prosperitatem !
spoken, then it should be enclosed be- Comparati canibus
tween \J\; thus, clergymen will fre- Angli viluerunt,
quently faintly indicate words preced- Sed nunc victis hostibus
ing an accented syllable, as (|_'n it"l caput extulerunt.
•kee^'m |_t'"l pahs) =and it came to pass. "Wright prints each pair of lines in one,
These symbols must be considered as as in the original MS., but the rhymes
appended to the list of palaeotypic signs, point out this present division, which
supra p. 12. doubles the number of lines in the
420
CUCKOO SONG XIII TH CENTURY.
CHAP. "V.
at Evesham, 4th Aug. 1265. This is therefore important in fixing
the date of the MS., but Sir Frederick Madden assigns to the first
portion of the MS. a date twenty or thirty years earlier, and believes
that the writer, that is, transcriber, — by no means, necessarily,
author — was a monk of the Monastery at Heading, founded by
Henry I, 1125.1
poem. It was be seen from these lines
what smoothness of versification the
monks in the xm th century were ac
customed to, with only some slight
accentual liberties, and what perfect
rhymes they formed in Latin. We
shall find the same smoothness in a
very similar metre in Orrmin, and
hence must expect that the English
versification of the present period will
also run without stumbling, unless the
writer is very uncultivated.
1 The following notes are written in
pencil at the beginning of the volume.
" The whole is of the thirteenth cen
tury, except some writing on ff. 15*-
17. F.M."— "In all probability the
earlier portion of this volume was
written in the Abbey of Reading, about
the year 1240. Compare the Obits in
the Calendar with those in the Calen
dar of the Cartulary of Reading, in
MS. Cott. Vesp. E.V. F.M. April
1862." Mr. William Chappell has
kindly favoured me with the inspection
of a letter from Sir F. Madden, in
which he gives the grounds for this
opinion, and as the date of the MS. is
of considerable importance to our in
vestigation I add an abstract of the
same, which Sir F. M. has politely re
vised. 1. It is certain that the first
part of the MS. (say the first 30 folios)
is considerably older than the second,
which contains the poem on the battle
of Lewes composed 1264. 2. In this
first part is a portion of a calendar,
containing the obits of Abbots Roger
19 Jan. [1164]; Auscherius 27 Jan.
[1135]; Reginald 3 Feb. [1158];
Joseph 8 Feb. [circa 1180]; and Sy-
mon 13 Feb. [1226]. In Browne
Willis's History of the Mitred Parlia
mentary Abbies, etc., 1718, vol 1, p.
159, all these Abbots are named, as
Abbots of Reading. 3. The complete
calendar, left unfinished in Harl. 978,
is found [with the exception of Dec.]
in the Cartulary of Reading, Cotton
MS. Vesp. E.V. fo. 11* to fo. 16*. The
latest obit recorded in the old writing
of the months after Feb., is that of Abbot
Adam de Latebury, 6 April 1238, all
later obits are in a clearly marked later
hand. The part of the Cartulary coeval
with the Calendar was written about
1240, for fo. 22* contains a charter
dated 24 Henry III., 1239-40, and at
fo. 33* is a marginal note written sub
sequently to the text, and dated 29 Hen.
III., 1244-5. In Jan. and Feb. the
obits are the same as in Harl. 978,
[with this difference that in the Harl.
MS. Abbot Roger's obit is given under
19 Jan., and in the Cotton MS. under
20 Jan.] From these facts Sir F.
M. "considers it proved by internal
evidence, First, that the Calendar in
both MS." and consequently the pre
ceding parts, "was written in 1240 or
very little later. Secondly, that the
Calendars . . . were undoubtedly written
at Reading, by a monk of that house.
Lastly," he adds, "there is a remarkable
entry in the Calendar of Harl. 978 (but
omitted in that of Vesp. E.V.) on St.Wul-
stan's day, 19th Jan., as follows : — Ora,
Wulstane, pro nostro fratre Johanne de
de Formete. I am strongly tempted-
to regard this John de Fornsett, (who,
from his name must have been a native
of Norfolk), as the Scribe of the MS.,
for I cannot otherwise account for the
odd introduction of his name in the
Calendar." The entry referred to is
literally as follows, the italics indi
cating extended contractions : — " xnu
kalendas Wlstam episcopi obiit Rogmw
abbas. Ora Wlstane pro nostro fratre
Johanne de fornfete." The omission
of the u after W, as in Wulstan is not
uncommon, but it is noteworthy in
this place, because in the Eng
lish Song, which will be presently
given at length, wde for wude occurs,
and this a priori connects the two
writers together, but of course the per
son who wrote that entry, which is in
exactly the same handwriting as the
rest, could not have been John of
Fornsett. Hence I should consider
this entry as making it highly probable
that this monk was not the scribe,
and the singular insertion may be due
to his having been an intimate friend
§ 1, No. 1.
CUCKOO SONG XIII TH CENTURY.
421
This MS. contains on fo. 10#. the music and words of the CUCKOO
SONG, which, Mr. "W. Chappell says, "is not only one of the first
English songs with or without music, but the first example of
counterpart in six parts, as well as of fugue, catch, and canon ; and
at least a century, if not two hundred years, earlier than any com
position of the kind produced out of England." 1 This song which
of the scribe. The MS. was evidently
one for private use, and this note of a
friend's death is anything but surprising.
" You are probably right as to John de
Fornsete not being the scribe," re
marks Sir F. M., " still the introduc
tion of his name is very singular, and
I do not recollect any other instance
of a, friend Toeing thus commemorated."
The above historical external evidence
of the real date of this MS., is rendered
the more important because Hawkins
2, 93, and Burney 2, 405 in their His
tories of Music, attribute it to the
xv th century, "misled," says Sir F.
M., " by an ignorant note of Dr. Gif-
ford on the fly-leaf of the volume," and
by the nature of the musical composi
tion, which they supposed could not
have been written before the time of
John of Dunstable in the xv th century,
an opinion refuted by Mr. W. Chap-
pell, who quotes Walter Odlington,
1228-1240 (Scriptorum de Musica
Medii JEvi novam seriem a Gerbertina
alteram collegit nuncque primum edidit
E. de Coussemaker, Paris, 1863, 4to.,
B245) to this effect : " Habet quidem
iscantus species plures. Et si quod
unus cantat omnes per ordinem reci-
tent, vocatur Eondettus, id est, rotabilis
vel circumductus." We also know
that the English spelling of Cuckoo in
the xv th century was Cuckow, not
Cuecu, which could only have been
used in the xm th.
1 W. Chappell, F.S.A. Popular
Music of the olden time, a collection
of Ancient Songs, Ballads, and Dance
Tunes, illustrative of the National
Music of England, etc. The whole of
the airs harmonized by G. A. Macfar-
ren. (Printed 1855-9) p. 23. Mr.
Chappell has given a facsimile of this
song as the title page to his work, and
says, in the explanation of that plate :
" The composition is in what was called
' perfect time,' and therefore every long
note must be treated as dotted, unless
it is immediately followed by a short
note (here of diamond shape) to fill
the time of the dot. The music is
on six lines, and if the lowest line
were taken away, the remaining would
be the five now employed in part
music, where the C clef is used on
the third line for a counter-tenor
voice. . . . The Round has been re
cently sung in public, and gave so much
satisfaction, even to modern hearers,
that a repetition was demanded."
He adds in another place, p. 23 : —
" The chief merit of this song is the
airy and pastoral correspondence be
tween the words and music, and I
believe its superiority to be owing to
its having been a national song and
tune, selected according to the custom
of the time as a basis for harmony,
and that it is not entirely a scholastic
composition. The fact of its having a
natural drone bass would tend rather
to confirm this view than otherwise.
The bagpipe, the true parent of the
organ, was then in use as a rustic in
strument throughout Europe. The
rote, too, which was in somewhat better
estimation, had a drone, like the modern
hurdy-gurdy, from the turning of its
wheel. When the canon is sung the
key-note may be sustained throughout,
and it will be in accordance with the
rules of modern harmony. But the
foot or burden, as it stands in the
ancient copy, will produce a very in
different effect on a modern ear, —
we ought perhaps to except the lover
of Scotch reels — from its constantly
making fifths and octaves with the
voices, although such progressions were
not forbidden by the laws of music in
that age. No subject would be more
natural for a pastoral song than the
approach of summer, and, curiously
enough, the late Mr. Bunting noted
down an Irish song from tradition,
the title of which he translated ' Sum
mer is coming,' and the tune begins
in the same way. That is the air to
which Moore adapted the words, ' Rich
and rare were the gems she wore.' "
This resemblance is perfectly fortuitous,
and does not extend beyond the first
three notes, the fourth note of the Irish
422
CUCKOO SONG XIII TH CENTURY.
CHAP. V.
is so great a musical curiosity, is also a valuable contribution to our
knowledge of early English pronunciation. In order to make the
song more readily legible, it will be here interpreted into the
ordinary musical notation,1 the English words in Roman type, and
below them the Latin hymn, by which .it perhaps obtained its in
troduction into the monk's commonplace book,2 in Italics, (which
when used for entire passages will indicate red ink,) and a literal
translation of the notes into modern music. On the opposite page
will be given the metrical arrangement, conjectured pronunciation,
and literal translations.3 See pp. 426, 427.
air runs into a totally different chord.
The fact that the song was in »ix parts,
has occasioned some persons to sup
pose that it was alluded to in the last
stanza of the ' Turnament of totenham,'
Harl. MS. 5396, fp. 310, the hand
writing of which is referred to A.D.
1456. As the stanza is not printed
quite correctly in Percy's Reliqu.es, 2nd
ed., ii, 15, it may be added here as
transcribed from the original MS. It
is scarcely right to suppose, however,
that the Cuckoo Song was the only
six part song known.
At Jat feft Jay were fcruyd wttA a
ryche a ray
Euery .v. and v had a cokenay
And fo Jay fat in jolyte al )>e lang day
And at Je laft Jay went to bed witA
ful gret deray
mekyl myrth was Jem amang
In v\\ery corner of Je hous
Was melody delycyous
For to here precyus
of vj menys fang.
Dr. Kimbault has published a modern
version of this song in his Ancient
Vocal Music of England, Novello, No.
13, in which he says: "the editor
has followed an ancient transcript in
the Pepysian Library, which omits the
two bass parts forming the burden,
in the Museum copy, and has added an
Accompaniment upon a drone bass.
The effect produced is considerably im
proved." Dr. Rimbault has politely
informed me in a private letter to Mr.
G. A. Macfarren, that he obtained his
copy of this transcript from the late
Prof. Walmisley of Cambridge, in 1838.
Mr. Aldis Wright kindly made a search
for the original in the Pepysian Library,
but was unable to find a trace of it.
1 Hawkins and Burney (supra, p. 420,
note 1, near the end,) have given
translations with all the parts written
at length, but have not arranged the
words properly. In the present inter
pretation the arrangement of the ori
ginal is followed, and for one deviation
from the former translations I am in
debted to Mr. William Chappell.
2 Mr. G. A. Macfarren, the com
poser, in reply to my question whether
he considered the English or Latin
words to have been the original, says :
"I am strongly of opinion that the
music was composed to the English
words, and the Latin Hymn afterwards
adapted to it, because it was a common
practice to adapt sacred words to secu
lar tunes (as for instance, Thomas,
archbishop of York in the xith cen
tury and Richard Vichys of Ossory in
the xiv th wrote many such), but it
would have been regarded as a dese
cration to appropriate a church theme
to a secular subject. Witness also the
many masses set to music, throughout
which the French song of L'homme
Arme is employed as a canto fermo,
and Josquin de Pr6's Mass on this Song
in praise of Chess, in proof of this same
church practice." To this we may add
that there are no Latin words to the
Pea or Burden, which is an essential
part of the harmony.
3 This arrangement is reprinted from
the work cited below, p. 498. As re
spects the language, all the words are
ags. except cuccu, stert, uert.
The first cuccu as we shall see is
onomatopoetic (imsonic, or mimetic),
the second stert, and its diminutive
startle, is fully at home in the German,
old sturzan, new stiirzen, and Scandi
navian, Danish styrte, Swedish storta,
and may be a development of stir, or
may be related to the same root as ags.
steortau to erect, steort a tail, steart a
spine, see Dief. Goth. W. 2, 304, 315,
333, Wedgewood, Etym. Diet. 3, 314.
As to the third uert, Dr. Stratmann
suggests fart, which would be the
§ 1, No. 1. CUCKOO SONG — XIII TH CENTURY. 423
The musical notes, with their precise value in time, and the Latin
hymn, determine the number of syllables. As we find however the
Latin accent occasionally violated (non parcens, mte dondt it secum,
cordndt), we cannot be surprised at a similar violation of the Eng
lish, in Wei singes ]>u. Taking the notes as interpreted on p. 426,
it would seem easy to rearrange the words so as to avoid this false
accentuation, but the ligatures of the original, corresponding to the
slurs in the translation, forbid this rearrangement, which, with
other liberties, Hawkins and Burney have not hesitated to adopt.
Hence we find that this termination -es, might be, and probably
was, fully pronounced. On the other hand, the termination -e]>,
although fully pronounced in growefy, lhwe}>, was elided, either
after a vowel or consonant, when convenient for the metre as in
spring^ ; or for the music, as in lhou]>. In the latter case the metre
would require the syllable -e]> to be fully pronounced, compare
Awe bletej> after lomb
LoueJ? after calue cu,
but the musician ventured not only to dock a syllable, but to put the
whole heavy truncated word lhou]> to a short note. This may teach
us that our older and ruder poets did not hesitate to lay words on a
Procrustean bed. In med, lulluc, ags. medu, buttuca, the poet took
the same liberty, and elided the final -e, for the rhyme in the first
case, for the metre in the second. This precisely agrees with what
we determined to be the occasional practice of the xivth century
(p. 342, No. 5), and shews that the omission was absolute, not a mere
slurring over or lightly touching of the sound. We must consider
that the words were felt to be as really truncated as Buh' for Ruhe
appears to be in modern German speech, for we have the essential
-e preserved in wde, awe, luclce, the dative -e in calue, the adverbial
-e in IJiude, murie, all of which have a distinct musical note assigned.
In the last word, however, both vowels in -ie are given to one note,
as many a time would be given to three notes only in modern ballads.
The principal fact, however, that we learn from this song, as to
the pronunciation of the letters in the xmth century, is that long
(uu) which was represented generally by ou and occasionally by 0,
but never by u, in the xrv th century, was now invariably repre
sented by u. This is deduced from the word cuccu, which is mani
festly an imitation of the cry of the bird,1 as in French coucou, old
French coucoul, Italian cucuh, German kukuk, kuckuk, Dutch koekoek
(kuu'kuuk), Latin cuculus, coccyx, Greek KOKKV^, Sanscrit Icokila?
ags. feortan, pedere, but this change such an interval in connection with the
of / into v, although frequent in old cry, being in v. 6, where in sing cuccu
MSS, is not confirmed by any other he first descends and then ascends a
usage in the present poem, and the use of minor third, the notes being / df.
a Norman word vert in a hunting phrase 2 " Cuckoo in English is clearly a mere
seems natural. The use of the word as imitation' of the cry of that bird, even
a verb, however, requires confirmation. more so then the corresponding terms
1 The musical interval of the cry is in Greek, Sanskrit, and Latin. In
a descending minor third, which the these languages the imitative element
composer has not imitated, the only has received the support of a derivative
instance in which he has introduced suffix ; we have koki*, in Sanskrit, and
424 CUCKOO SONG — XIII TH CENTURY. CHAP. V.
The sound must have been (kuk'kuu1) or (kwk'kuu') or simply
(kwk'u), as at present. The orthography may be compared with the
cuckow of Chaucer 17174 (supra p. 305), where the short (u) remains
the same, but the long (uu) is represented by ow. Agreeing with
this we have Ihude, nu, cu, }>u which were lowde loude, now, cow,
thou in Chaucer. And thus the characteristic difference between
the orthographies of the xmth and xrvth centuries (p. 408,) is
established by reference to a bird's cry, which cannot have changed.
But u in the xin th century did not always represent the sounds
(uu, u), as we see by the word murie, which however is not enough
in itself, or even when compared with the ags. mirige, to establish
the second sound of u as (i) or (e), or originally (y) as previously
suggested (p. 299). In Hali Meidenhad l we constantly find u for i
or y. Thus in the first page, Ui^eluker ags. bli^eHce, blithely,
lustni ags. lystnan, listen, brudlac, ags. brydlac, marriage gift, clup-
pinge ags. clyppan, clip embrace, hwuch ags. hwilc, which, ]>uncke^S
ags. tyncan, seem ; euch each, in which last word the sound (eutsh)
is almost unthinkable. The town of Hertford is so spelled in the
French version of the English proclamation of Henry III, but
appears as Hurtford, in the contemporary English version, 1258.
The conclusion seems to be rather that the u, which was properly
and generally employed as (uu, u), was coming into use to replace
the ags. y (y), which it succeeded in doing by the end of the xm th
century, thereby necessitating the recurrence to ou for (uu). Was
this double use of u, then, due to the Norman influence ? In the
French version of the Proclamation already cited,2 we have Cunte,
tuz, nus, pur, sicum, iurz, sunt, etc., in which u was most probably
(uu, u), while in Due, saluz, greignure, esluz, iurgent, desuz, etc.,
the sound could hardly have been other than (yy, y). The
Norman u derived from Latin u may have been frequently (yy), and
that derived from Latin o, may have been generally (uu). The
point is not yet satisfactorily established,3 and the English and Nor-
Jcokkyx in Greek, cuculus in Latin, as other names for the cuckoo, old Sla-
(Pott, Etymologische Forschungen, i. vonic gz'egz'olka, Lithuanian ge'guz'e,
84 ; Zeitschrift, iii. 43). Cuckoo is, in Lettish dfeggufe and Lithuanian ku-
fact, a modern word, which has taken k6ti, to scream like a cuckoo, old Norse
the place of the Anglosaxon geac [geek], gaukr (gcecezkr) etc., and gives other
the German Gauch (gaukwh), and, examples of names of birds from their
being purely onomatopoetic, it is of cry. Cumberland (gauk), Scotch (gauk).
course not liable to the changes of 1 Hali Meidenhad, from MS. Cott.
Grimm's Law. As the word cuckoo Titus D. xviii.fol. 11 2c ; an alliterative
predicates nothing but the sound of a ho'mily of the thirteenth century, edited
particular bird, it could never be applied by Oswald Cockayne, M. A., once of St.'
for expressing any general quality in John's College, Cambridge ; published
which other animals might share ; and for the Early English Text Society,
the only derivatives to which, it might 1866. 8vo. pp. 50.
give rise are words expressive of a me- 2 Both versions are given below,
taphorical likness with the bird. The pp. 500-505, accurately printed from
same applies to cock, the Sanskrit kuk- the originals in the Public Record
kura." Max Muller, Lectures on the Office.
Science of Language, 1861, p. 347. 3 Mr. Payne is of opinion that the
Pott, in the passage referred to, gives Norman u, ui, were always (uu). Com-
§ 1, No. 1. CUCKOO SOKG XIII TH CENTURY. 425
man orthographies derive so differently, that in the xrrr th. century
they can scarcely be held to influence each other. Hence the in
troduction of ou for (uu) into English may be a native development,
as already stated, and not due to French customs. The frequent
appearance of u, where * would be expected, in Western English,
as in dude, lute for dide, lite, may at most indicate a wider geo
graphical extension of that sound (y) which is now nearly con
fined in the west to Devonshire. In our inability however to
determine the last, especially in Eastern and Southern English,
where we find the orthographies u, i, e interchanging, we have
no choice but to pronounce as i, e (i, e). See the remarks on the
same use of u in the xivth century, supra pp. 298-300. Numer
ous examples will occur in the following pages of this section.
"We gather then from the Cuckoo Song : 1 ) that ou, ow were
used for (oou) only, as in lhou]>, growelp, ags. hlowan, growan, and
never for (uu, u) which were uniformly represented by u, but u
itself was probably ambiguous, and also represented an actual or
older (yy, y), which was interchangeable with i, e • 2) that e final
was regularly pronounced, but might be suppressed even not before
a vowel, when required for the metre or rhyme ; 3) that -ep might
be pronounced or suppressed; 4) that -es might be so distinctly
pronounced as to be sung to an accented note.
As regards the remaining letters and combinations no information
is given, but on the other hand there is no reason to suppose them
different from the sounds already obtained for the xiv th century.
The words are practically the same. The consonants no doubt had
not altered. The vowels a, e, o had already received their most
ancient powers (a, e, o). The only doubt affects i, which in the
xrv th century we concluded to be (ii, i}. There can be little doubt
that the Latin value of these letters was (ii, i), but it does not
follow that when the Saxons changed their runic for the Eoman
alphabet, they actually said (ii, i). If they had said (ii, i} it would
have been near enough. In subsequent examples we shall frequently
find *', e short confused, which would still lead us to suppose that i
short was (i} rather than (i). But from this time forth the evidence
is not strong enough for long * being (ii). It certainly could not
have been (ai), if we were right in concluding that it was (ii") in
the xiv th century (p. 297). In this doubtful state of the case, I
shall adopt (ii, i) as the long and short sound of i, in all my indi
cations of the pronunciation of the XTTT th century and earlier, and
content myself with recording here once for all that I consider the
short i to have been certainly (i), and that the time when long i
passed from (ii) into (ii), if there ever was such a time in England,
is unknown. Upon these grounds I have drawn up the pronun
ciation exhibited on (p. 427).
pare : bure mesaventure, bure couver- u had almost certainly the sound of (yy),
ture from King Horn, infra p. 480, and and it is possible that this later ortho-
the spelling huis muis, p. 449. When graphy may be a guide to the oldest
the spelling ou was established for (uu), pronunciation.
426
CUCKOO SONG — XIII TH CENTURY.
CHAP. V.
[Pastorale.]
THE CUCKOO SONG.
From tfa Hcrleian MS. 978, fo. 10 b.
' "H
v-mer if i - cu-men in. Lhud-e fing cuc-cu. Grow-e}> fed and blow-e"jj
Per-fpi - ce christ -\-co-la. que dig-no, - ci - o. ce - h - ctts a • gn - co-
med andfpring|> J>e w - de nu. Sing cue - cu
la pro ui-tif vt - ct - o. ft - h - o
Aw- e ble-te}> af- ter
non par - cenf ex - po - fu-
JO. PC
IStt— — 2
loznb.lb.ou}> af-ter cal-ue cu.
tt. mor - 'Ci» ex - t - ci - o •
Bull-uc ftert - e)». buck - e uert - ej>
Qui cap - ti - uos fe • mi - tti - vot
-&-
JEJL.
• -^-. -e
—35!
Mu - rie f:ng cue - cu Cuc-cu cue - cu Wei fin-gef j?u cuc-cu ne fwik
a fup - ph-ci - o Ft - te do - nat et fe-cumcor-o - nat in ce~
Hanc rotam cantare poffunt quatuor focij. A paucio-
-, _|-f~ 4; ribuf autem quam a tnbus uel falteni duobus now debet
uici. preter eof qui d'.cuwt pedem. Canitwr autewt flc.
h fo-h'O tibtw cetcnfunu« inchoat cum hijfqwttenewt pedem. Etcumuenerit
ad primam notam post crucew 5 inchoat aliuf. & fie de cetens
flngwli uen> repaufent ad paufacwmer fenptas 4
:; : now alibi '. fpacio uniuf longe note—
cuc-cu nu. S'rg cue-cu.
lioc repetit wims quocienf opus est '
facienj ' •pauj'aaonem in fine.
hoe dint o^us. pavfans (n media & non (n
ing CUC-CU. S5ng CUC-CU nu fine. £ed immediate repetent pnnctpium.
§ 1, No. 1.
CUCKOO SONG — XIII TH CENTURY.
427
THE CUCKOO SONG.
From the Harleian MS. 978, fo. 105.
Conjectured Pronunciation.
Suu-mer is ikuirmen in.
Lhuu'de siq, kuk-kuu- !
Grooireth seed,
And blooireth meed,
5 And spriqth dhe uud-e mm.
Siq, kuk-kuu- !
Au-e bleet'eth af-ter lomb,
Lhoouth af-ter kal-ve kuu.
Bul'uuk stert'eth,
10 Buk-e vert'eth,
Mer-ie siq, kuk-kuu !
Kuk'kuir ! kuk-kuu- !
"Wei siq-es dhuu, kuk'kuu* !
Nee swiik dhuu naver nuu.
Pees.
Siq, kuk-kuu-, nuu ! Siq, kuk--
15 kuu- !
Sing cuccu. Sing cuccu nu. Siq, kuk'kuu- ! Siq, kuk-kuu*,
nuu!
Early English Original.
Svmer if icumen in.
Lhude fing cuccu.
Growe]? fed
and blowej> med
and fpring]? ]>e wde nu.
Sing cuccu
Awe bletej? after lomb.
IhouJ? after calue cu.
Bulluc fterte]?.
bucke uertej?
Murie fing cuccu.
Cuccu cuccu
"Wei fingef ]?u cuccu
ne fwik ]?u nauer nu.
Pes.
Sing cuccu nu. Sing cuccu.
Verbal Translation of the Early English. — Summer has come in, Loudly sing,
cuckoo ! Grows seed, And blossoms mead, And springs the wood now. Sing,
cuckoo ! Ewe bleats after lamb, Lows after (its) calf (the) cow. Bullock leaps,
Buck verts (seeks the green), Merrily sing, cuckoo ! Cuckoo, cuckoo ! Well
singest thou, cuckoo, Cease thou not never now. Burden. Sing, cuckoo, now !
sing, cuckoo ! Sing, cuckoo ! sing, cuckoo, now !
Latin Hymn to the same notes. — Perfpice Xp'icola.~que dignacio. — cehcus —
agncola — pro uitif vicio. — fiho — non parcenf exposuit — mortis exicio — Qui
captiuos— femiuiuos— a supplicio— vite donat— et secum coronat — in cell folio.
Verbal Translation of the Latin Hymn. — Behold, Christ-Worshipper (Christi-
cola] What condescension ! From heaven The husbandman For the fault of the
vine, His son Not sparing has exposed To the destruction of death, Who the
captives Half-alive From punishment Gives to life, And crowns with him In
heaven's throne.
428 PRISONER'S PRAYER — xui TH CENTURY. CHAP. v.
Three peculiarities will here be noticed (aire, lomh, naver),
corresponding to awe, lomb, naver, in the MSS. Since, then, the
scribe is supposed by Sir F. Madden to have been a Norfolk man,
I endeavoured to write the song in the present Norfolk pronun
ciation, and having submitted the following to competent revision
I believe that it is sufficiently correct to shew that if the old pro
nunciation, already given (p. 427), has any claim to consideration,
there is no ground to suppose that the song was written in an
East Anglian dialect. The East Midland form singes, which may
have been a scribal error for singest, is the only East Anglian
point of grammar, and nauer of sound.
Norfolk Pronunciation of the Cuckoo Song.
(Sam-j iz kam m. Bwl'ak stait'eth,
LEud'H s/q, kwkuir! Bak wait'eth,
Graau'eth seed, Mer'«l* sz'q, kwkmr !
And blaau-eth meed, Kwkuu-, kwkuu1 !
And spn'qth dhe wd nEu. WE! szq/est dhEu, kwkuu' ! .
Se'q, kwkuu*! Not sees dhsu na3VM nEu).
Joou bleet'eth aft'i lam,
Laauth aft'i kalf
2. THE PRISONER'S PRAYER (WITH THE Music), CIRCA A.D. 1270.
In the Record Room of the Town Clerk's Office in the Guildhall
of the City of London, is preserved an old quarto vellum manuscript
known as the Liber de Antiquis Legilus, of which a re-arranged
transcription was made by Mr. Stapleton for the Camden Society,1
and a translation has been more recently published by Mr. Eiley.2
Neither of these works mention a poem in Norman French and
English, with musical notes, which is inserted at the end of the
volume, although Mr. Stapleton gives passages which occur imme
diately before and after it, and upon one of the pages of the song.
Both transcriber and translator seem to have considered the song as
worthless, or as irrelevant to the other matters in the book. No
doubt it did not form part of the work. It seems to have been in
serted as a useful piece of parchment, and the old numbering of the
folios does not go so far. But it is entirely in a XTTT th century
hand, exactly similar to that of the Cuckoo Song, and the musical
notes, although not written in strict time, are of precisely similar
forms. It would seem to be a piece of parchment and writing older
than many parts of the book itself, and probably coeval with the
Cuckoo Song.3 The music is adapted to the French words, which
1 • De Antiquis Legibus Liber. a Henry TJwmas Eiley, Chronicles
Cronica Maiorum et Vicecomitum of the Mayors and Sheriffs of London
Londoniarum et quedam, que contin- A.D. 1178 to A.D. 1274. London. Triib-
gebant temporibus illis ab anno ner. 4to. 1863.
MCLXXVIII ad annum MCCLXXIVM ; cum 3 The following notes will enable
appendice. Nunc prinium typis man- the reader to insert this song correctly
data curante Thoma Stapleton. 1846. in Stapleton's transcript. The numbers
§ 1, No. 2. PRISONER S PRAYER XIII TH CENTURY.
429
are carefully placed under their notes, but the English translation,
written under the French, is not kept strictly under the correspond
ing notes and often runs to a considerable length beyond the French.
Both begin together at the beginnings of stanzas. There are several
mistakes in the English, and one word deleted in the French and
not restored. This and the absence of musical notes to the few last
words, shews that the manuscript was not properly revised. It is
therefore necessary to add a corrected text (pp. 435, 437), which is
that followed in the subsequent remarks.1
The notes, which are now first published (pp. 432-3), presented
considerable difficulty, from their being written in plain chant, and
therefore without any division of time, the length of the notes being
left to the feeling of the singer, as in modern recitative. In the
following edition I have duly translated the pitch of each note, and
expanded the ligatures into slurred notes, placing the French words
in brackets are those of the folios
numbered in an ancient hand, the
other numbering is modern and in
pencil. I have to thank the courtesy
of Mr. Town Clerk for allowing me to
inspect the book and make such ex
tracts as were necessary.
Fo. [157], a. Fuit vir quidam, Stap.
238. This ends on fp. [158], «, last
paragraph. This folio contains, Iste
vero. A. natus fuit anno domini mo.
ducentesimo primo, Stap. 239. The
Mem., 1586, Stap. 253, ke la Reyne
Isabel etc. L'an E. xx. is in a totally
different hand.
Fo. [159], a, the six Latin lines, Stap.
253, In hoc folio continentur etc.
Fo. 159, b, is blank, but both 159, a
and b are ruled for double columns
and for writing.
Fo. 160, a, is blank and not ruled, ap
parently an old piece of parchment,
used and put in.
Fo. 160, #, and 161, a, the words and
music of the Prisoner's Prayer.
Fo. 161, b, the last words of the same
Prayer, viz. " ei jor et doint ioye
certeyne," and " we moten Ey and
o habben the eche blifle," without
either musical notes or staff. This
page also contains the notice : Cum
de edifices, Stap. 253.
Fo. 162, a, the five lines, Una Nero
die, Stap. 253.
Fo. 162, b. A hymn consisting of ten
lines and a half of musical staff,
with Latin words : In translatione
beati thome, the whole crossed out
with one cross.
Fo. 163, « and b. The notice of Thed-
mar, Stap. 239, Fo. 163 b, is the last
written page, there are however
three other blank folios, and one
with scribbling upon it, which ends
the book.
The handwriting of the Prisoner's
Prayer corresponds with that in the
best and oldest writing in the book,
and cannot be later than 1250.
1 The English text of the Prisoner's
Prayer appears to have been first pub
lished in the Reliquse Antiquae i, 274,
from a transcription by J. 0. Halliwell,
which reads, incorrectly, v. 1, nun
for m i n, v. 16 1 i c t h for 1 i c 1 1 i, v.
26 p r s u n for p r i s u n, v. 38 us for
hus and v. 39, misse for milse,
and arranges v. 13, 14 thus
For othre habbet misnome
Ben in this prisun i-broct.
The present copy is re-printed, from
the work cited below, p. 498, n. 1, with
an improved stanza III, and the cor
rection v. 41 wu fit go for wn fit.
go, the result of renewed inspection.
The corrected text has also been re-cor
rected, especially in the verse last cited,
where Dr. Stratmann's conjecture that
go wu fit go stands for go hu so
it go has been adopted, wu=whu,
being a not unfrequent form of h u in
the xin th century, (infra p. 440,)
and the contraction sit for so it
being partially justified by Orrmin's
3 h 6' t for 3 h o i 1 1 = she it, and
h e' t for he i 1 1. Most of the other
corrections are evident enough. The
only difficult word i p e 1 1 is illus
trated below, p. 448. See also : )>at
wer for sin in helle ipilt; of paradis
hi wer ute pilt; fort godes sone in rode
430
PRISONER'S PRAYER — xm TH CENTURY. CHAP. V.
under the notes as indicated in the original.1 But I have taken the
liberty of reducing the time to a modern system, and have added
bars accordingly.2 As frequently happens in translations, the Eng
lish words do not in all cases exactly correspond to the notes written
for the French. This has occasioned much difficulty in adjusting
the corrected text of the English words to the notes, and such
changes in the music as have appeared necessary are indicated by
smaller notes. "When two sets of notes appear in one bar, the
direction of their tails shews in the usual way to what version they
refer. It is evident that no stress can be laid on any passages in
which such alterations have appeared necessary, as regards the
pronunciation of the syllables.3 Enough passages remain in which
final -6 was undoubtedly pronounced, to establish here as well as in
the Cuckoo Song, the general rule for pronouncing it. At the same
was pilt, Furnivall's Early English prisun in v. 4, and the word Christ in
Poems, p. 13, v. 8 and 35 ; p. 14, v. v. 7, have each in the MS. two identi-
56, from Harl. MS. 913. The French cal repeated noteswritten close together.
text has heen printed by M. Jules Del-
pit, in his Collection Generale des Docu
ments Franc,ais qui se trouvent en
Angleterre, Paris, 1847, 4to. vol. 1,
p. 28, No. LXVII. This transcript is
faulty having cPanguste for dangusse
v. 2, dur for d u z v. 6, en sait for
enset v. 12, E sires Deus ke for
Sire deus ky v. 15, I eel for
i c e 1' v. 23, morteu for m o r t e n 28,
fort for f o r s v. 30, gude for g u i e
v. 34. The u and v are also modern
ized, the stanzas not divided as in the
original, some contractions expanded
without notice and others not, the
omission of et v. 39 not perceived and
v. 6 made to end with tres puts instead
of Ihesu, in defiance of the metrical
point, the metre and music. In citing
the Rel. Ant. for the English version,
M. Delpit prints Hallewett, Shraps,
Pikering for Halliwell, Scraps, Pic
kering. He says of this poem (ib. p.
cxcn) : " Le No LXVII est le plus
ancien document en vers publie dans
ce volume. Je 1'ai trouve BUT les
feuillets de garde d'un manuscrit du
xiii6 siecle, connu dans les archives de
la mairie de Londres sous le nom de
Liber de antiquis legibus ; mais sa com
position peut remonter a une epoque
beaucoup plus ancienne que celle de sa
transcription .... il m'a paru important
par son ancieunete, et de nature a four-
nir quelques remarques utiles sur les
regies qui presiderent a la formation
de la langue que nous parlous."
1 In three instances only have I
deviated from the original. The se
cond syllable of pleynte in v. 1, and of
In each case I have reduced these to
a single note, as I have been unable to
obtain any explanation of this doubling.
z The key is the ecclesiastical mode
of which the scale ran from G, thus G
A B c d e f g, without any sharps or
flats. Each stanza is treated as a sepa
rate composition, and the second half
of each stanza repeats the music of the
first half, almost precisely. This has
enabled me to supply the missing notes
of the fifth stanza, answering to the
French words : " et jor et doint ioye
certeyne," with almost perfect cer
tainty. I am indebted to Mr. "Wm.
Chappell for much information respect
ing the meaning of the old musical no
tation, and for an acquaintance with
the important works of E. de Cousse-
maker : (Scriptorum de Musica Medii
JEvi novam seriem, 1864, 4to., and
L'Art Harmonique aux xn et xnies
siecles, 1865, 4to.) without which I
could not have translated the music at
all. But for the barring of the Pri
soner's Prayer, I alone am respon
sible, and I have been guided entirely
by the symmetry of the musical pas
sages and the rhythm of the words,
not at all by any possible indications of
length in the notes themselves, as was
the case in the Cuckoo Song, in which
the time is accurately indicated.
3 Thus we cannot be quite sure that
the singer pronounced shame v. 4 in
two syllables, although there seems to
be no doubt that he said name v. 5 in
two syllables. Similarly some, misnome,
v. 11, 13, may have omitted the final
-e for the music.
§ i, No. 2. PRISONER'S PRAYER — xm TH CENTURY. 431
time other passages occur in which it seems to have been un
doubtedly omitted, not only before a vowel, but elsewhere, and
these are all indicated by an apostrophe in the corrected text.1
The rhymes are generally quite regular, but there are a few
anomalies which prepare us to look out for assonances intermixed
with perfect rhymes in poems of the xrrr th century and earlier.
Thus : man am 7, 9 ; hem men 21, 22 ; live bilive stije 27, 28,
29 ; mildse blisse 39, 44 ; are all assonances (p. 245, note). But
they are assonances which many ears mistake for rhymes, because
the differences of the consonants are not obstrusive. The French
version has also the assonance : deus mortels, 15, 16 ; and perhaps :
euayn heim, 37, 38.
As regards the orthography in the uncorrected text, the use of d
for ft is common enough in other MSS. not to need explanation ;
the he for ch is an occasional carelessness, compare ihc 4, with ich
1, 2, 3, found also in the Proclamation of Henry III. ; and the
occasional insertion of h is frequent in Layamon, and may indicate
a doubtful pronunciation, compare vs 20, with hus 40, 41. More
noticeable is the invariable use of th for \ at so early a period, and
gh or occasionally yh (forghef 21, yhef 23) for 5 ; the use of ct for
g£ (noct 12, ibroct 14) is not otherwise uncommon. The orthography
yh seems to point to a (yh) or (jh) as preceding the use of (j), where
5 occured in ags., as already suggested (p. 313). Wos 24 for whos,
and, if Dr. Stratmann is correct, wu 42 for whu and that for hu, may
be assimilated to the cases of inserted h, as shewing a lack of appre
ciation of the aspirate. The use of c for s in such words as blisce
31, 44, is not uncommon, compare Gen. and Ex. 3518. Mai 28,
for the older form ma.%, and maiden 35, indicate that the diphthong
had been completely formed from 0% (ag, agh, ayh, ajh, ai) ; and
ey 43, compared with Omnin's 055, shews that a writer did not
feel any difference between the diphthongs (ei, ai), which Sir
Thomas Smith found it so hard to distinguish three centuries later
(p. 121) and which were constantly confused in the xrvth century
(p. 263). These are the only words in the English text bearing on
these diphthongs. But in the French we have, souerein, mayn,
euayn, heim 35, 36, 37, 38, rhyming together, and we have plest,
forfet 24, 25, indicating an unpronounced s before t, and a degene
ration of ai in certain words into (E) even at this early period.
The Prisoner's Prayer never uses ou for (uu), but employs u as
in kuthe 1, nu 2, thu 8, prisun 9, ut 10, luten 34. The sume 11,
and misnome 13, are either errors for sume, mismtme, or some, mis
name, probably the latter, as same, some are the ags. forms. There
is no instance of u being employed for i, e or ags. y. The French
text, to which the notes were primarily adapted, raises the question
of the pronunciation of Norman. See p. 438.
1 Final -e, elided before a vowel, a consonant, )>in' 5, hop' 27, bar' 35,
ku)?' 1, sor' 3, bal' bal' 17, wel' 31, son' 36, liv' 42; internal e omitted,
but' 34 (this is a conjectural emenda- much'le 4, hev'ne 18, 35 ; and if Dr.
tion), habb' 37, bring' 40 ; before an Stratmann' s correction is adopted we
H, o]>r' habbe)> 13, ray be 32 ; before have s'it for so it, v. 42.
432
PRISONERS PRAYER — XIIITH CENTURY.
CHAT. V.
THE PRISONER'S PRAYER.
From the Liber de Antiquis Legibus, fo. 160 b.
Note. The French as in the Original MS., the English according to the Corrected Text. The
slurred and joined notes represent the original ligatures. The time and bars are modern, the
original being in plain chant. The last five bars are not in the MS., but have been supplied
from the parallel passage commencing with the bar marked *.
\_Adagio, affettuoso.]
[TENOR.]
j r Eyns ne soy ke pleyn - te fu o - re pleyn dan - gus - se tres -
* \ Ar ne ku£' ich sor - je non. Nu ich mot ma - nen min
Irtl -I
r
,
• *
, j
I
- '*-*-J-
• • • «» ! »
"V. t
0
',• *
• r \ \ "f f
9 m
J o -4- / j/ U-J 1 l '
su trop ai mal et con-trey-re Sanz de - cer - te en pri-sun sui. car may-dez tres-
mon. Kar-ful welsor' ich si-che. Giltles ich tho-liemuch-lescha-me Help God for thin
pu-is Ihe-su. duz deus et de-bon-ney-re.jy ( Ihe-sucristveirsdeuueirshom.preng-e
swe-te na - me, King of hev-en - e ri-che. ' ( Je-su Crist,'so}j God,*so)3 man, Lnoverd,
vus de mei pi - te. Je-tez mei de la pri-sun v ie sui a-tort ge-te. lo e
rew Jju up - on me ! Of pri-sun Jmr-in ich am Bring me ut and mak-ie fre ! Ich and
mi au-tre com-paign-un deus en-set la ue-ri - te. tut purau-tremes-pri-sunsu-mes
mi - ne fe-ren so-me (Godwotjichneli^-eno^t,) Foroj5r'habbeJJbenmis-no-me[And]in
[Maestoso.']
- dun
a hun-te li-ue-re. JTJ ( Sire deus ky as mor-tels es de par - dui
this pri - sun i - bro^t. ' ( Al-mi^ - ti }?at wel li^t - li Of bal' is hal
«Zlt
ue - i - ne. su - cu - rez de - K-ue-rez nus de ces - te pei
and bo - te. Hev'-neking! Of }>is won-ing Ut us brin - gen mo
§ 1, No. 2. PRISONER S PRAYER XIII TH CENTURY.
433
ne Par-don - ez. et as - soy - lez. i - eel' gen - til si - re.
te, For - }ef hem j?e wik - ke men God }if it is jn wil - le.
Si te plest par ki for - fet
For whos gilt We beo}? i - pilt
[Allegretto.'}
nous suf-frun telmar - ti - re.
In )ns pri-sun il - le.
f. — *7V\ • -fT*"' l~i — j~T — \ — N i TTZT
IV.
I Fous est ke se a - fi - e en cest-e mort-en u - ie. ke tant nus con-tra-
(Ne hop' non to his live! Hernema^he bi - li-ve He - ^e J?ej he
li - e Et v nad fors hoy - di - e. Ore est hoem en le - es - se et ore est
sti - ^e dejj fel-lej? him to grunde. Nu ha{> man wel' and hlis - se, EaJ>' he schal
en tris - tes-ce ore
J?ar - of mis-se World
. [Con Forza.~\
le ga
-es we-le,
- rist ore hles-ce for - tu-ne ke le gui-e.
mid i - wis-se Ne las-tej> hut' on stunde.
9—9
H
( Vir - gine. et mere au so - ue - rein, ke nus ie - ta de la ma- yn Al mau-fe
\ Ma^-den Jjat bar' }>e hev'-ne king, Bi-sech }nn son', }>at swe-te Hng> IP3^ ^e habb*
*
ki par e - uayn nus ont tres-tuz en sun heim a grant do-lur(et) pein-e.
of us rew - sing And bring' us ut of f>is wo - ning For his mu-chel-emild-se
Re - que-rez i - eel sei - gnur ke il par sa grant dul-cur nus get de ces-te
He bring' us ut of {>is wo, And us ta - che werchen swo In )>is liv' go hu
do - lur. v nus su-mus nuyt et Jor et doint ioy - e cer - tey - nc.
s'it go, J>at we mo-ten aj and o, Hab-ben J?e ech-e blis - se.
28
434
PRISONER'S PRAYER — xm TH CENTURY. CHAP. v.
From the Liler de Antiquis Legibus, Guildhall, London, fol. 160J.
Norman French Original.
I.
Eynf ne foy ke pleynte fu
ore pleyn danguffe treffu
trop ai mal et contreyre
Sanz decerte en prifun fui.
car maydez trefpuif ihefa..
duz deuf et deboneyre.
II.
Ih<9/u crift veirf deu ueirf horn.
prenge vuf de mei pite.
Jetez mei de la prisun
v le fui atort gete.
lo e mi autre compaignun
deus enfet la uente.
tut pur autre mefprifun
fumes a hunte liuere.
10
14
III.
Sire deuf
ky af mortels
ef de pardun uefne.
fucurez
dehuerez
nuf de cefte peme.
Early English Translation.
I.
AT ne kuthe ich forghe non.
nu ich mot mauew miw mow.
karful welfore ich fyche.
Geltles ihc sholye muchele fchame
help god for thiw fwete name
kywg of heuene nche.
II.
Jefu cnft fod god fod man
louerd thu rew vponme
of pnfun thar ich in am
briwg me vt and makye fre.
Jch and mine feren fume
god wot ich ne lyghe noct
for othre habbet mif nome ben
i» thyf preliin ibroct.
III.
Al micti
that wel lictli
17 of bale if hale and bote.
heuene king
of this womwg
20 vt vs briwsre mote.
Verbal Translation of the Norman French. — I. Once (I) knew not \vhat
affliction was, Now, full of anguish, tormented (tres sue}, Too much (I) hare (of)
ill and misfortune. "Without guilt in prison am (I), Wherefore help me right
boon (tres puts) Jesus, Sweet God and gracious. II. Jesus Christ, true God, true
man, Take you pity on me, Cast me from the prison, Where I am wrongfully
thrown. I and my other companion, God knows of it (en sail) the truth, All for
other mistake (in mistake for others), Are delivered to shame. — III. Sire God,
"Who to (««#) mortals Art of pardon source (veine), Help, Deliver Us from this
pain.
$ i, No. 2. PRISONER'S PRAYER — xm TH CENTURY. 435
Corrected, Text. Conjectured, Pronunciation.
I. I.
Ar ne ku]?' ich serge non, Aar ne kuuth itsh sorghe noon,
"Nil ich mot manen min mon. Nuu itsh moot maa-nen miin
moon.
Earful wel sor' ich siche. 3 Kaarful' wel soor itsh siitsh-e.
Giltles, ich folie much'le schame. GilHes, itsh thoo-lie mutsh-le
shaa'me.
Help, God, for ]?in' swete name, Help, God, for dhiin swee-te
naa*me,
King of hevene riche. 6 Kiq of nee'vene riitsh-e.
II. II.
Jcsu Crist, so]? God, so]? man, Dzhee'su Krist, sooth God, sooth
man,
Lhoverd, rew ]?u upon me ! Lhoverd, reu dhu upon- mee !
Of prisun Jarin ich am, Of priisuun* dhaarin* itsh am,
Bring me ut and makie fre ! 10 Briq me uut and maa-kie free !
Ich and mine feren some, Itsh and mirne fee'ren soo -me,
(God wot, ich ne lige nojt,) (God wot, itsh ne lii-^rhe
nokht,)
For o]>r' habbe]? ben misnome For oo'dhr- -ab'eth been mis-
noo -me
[And] in Jis prisun ibrogt. 14 [And] in dhis priisuun- ibrokht-.
III. III.
Almigti, AlmUh'tii',
pat wel lijtli Dhat wel liiht'lii'
Of bal' is hal' and bote, 17 Of baal is naal and boo-te,
Hev'ne king ! Heevne king !
Of Y\s woning Of dhis woo-niq;
Ut us bringen mote. 20 Uut us briq-en moo*te.
Verbal Translation of the Early English (corrected text). — I. Erst not knew I
sorrow none, Now I must moan (ags. mcenan] my moan. Ful of care right
sorely I sigh. Guiltless, I suffer much shame. Help, God, for thy sweet name,
King of heaven's kingdom. — II. Jesus Christ, true God, true man, Lord, rue
ttiou (have mercy) upon me ! Of (the) prison wherein I am, Bring me out and
make (me) free ! I and my companions (plural here, singular in the French)
together (God knows, I not lie nought). Have heen for others mistaken, i.e.
wrongfully taken, [And] in (to) this prison hrought.— III. Almighty, That well
easily Of harm is healing and remedy, Heaven's king, Of this affliction May (he)
bring us out.
436
PRISONER'S PRAYER — XIIITH CENTURY. CHAP. V.
Norman French.
Pardonez.
et afibylez.
icel' gentil fire. 23
si te pleft
par ki forfet
nuf fuffnw tel martire. 26
IV.
Fouf eft ke fe afte
en cefte morten uie.
ke taut nuf contralie.
Et v nad fors boydie. 30
Ore eft hoem en leefle
et ore eft en triftefce
ore le ganft ore blefce
fortune ke le guie. 34
V.
Virgrae. et mere au fouerefn.
ke nuf icta de la mayn
al maufe ki par euayn
nuf ont treftuz en fun hefm
a grant dolur [et] peme. 39
Kequerez icel feignwr
ke il par fa grant dulcur
nuf get de cefte dolur.
v nuf fiimus nuyt et Jor
et doint loye certeyne. 44
Early English.
Foryhef hem
the wykke men
god yhef it if thi wille
for wof gelt
we bed ipelt
in thof pnfun hille.
IV.
Ne hope non to hif Hue
her ne mai he biliue
heghe thegh he stighe
ded him felled to grunde.
Nu had man wele and blifce
rathe he fhal thar of mifle.
worldes wele midywifle
ne lasted buten on ftunde.
V.
Maiden that bare the heuen king
bifech thin fone that fwete thing
that he habbe of hus rewfing
and bring hus of this womng
for his Muchele milfe.
He bring hus vt of this wo
and huf tache werchen fwo
in thof Hue go wu fit go.
that we moten ey and o
habben the eche blifce.
Verbal Translation of the Norman French, continued. — Pardon And absolve
Him, gentle sire, If (it) thee please, By whose crime We suffer such martyrdom.
— IV. Mad is (he) that has confidence In this death in life (mart en vie,") Which
afflicts (contralie— contrarie, Roquefort) us so much, And where (there) is nothing
but deceit (et ou «'a=il n'y a, Aors=que, boydie = boisdie =voisdie, from
versutia). Now is man in joy, And now (he) is in sorrow, Now him heals
(guerit), now wounds, Fortune who guides (guide) him. — V. Virgin and mother
to the sovereign Who cast us with his (/a, lit. the as in modern French) hand To
the devils (aux malfaits), who through Eve (Evairi) Have us right all (tres tous)
on their hook (heim, haim, hain — Latin hamus, modern hameqon) In great grief
and (supply et, wanted for the construction, metre, and music, the word originally
written has been erased,) pain. Beseech that Lord, That he by his great sweet
ness (douceur) May cast us from this grief, Where we are night and day, And
give (donne) sure joy.
$ 1, No. 2. PRISONER S PRAYER — XIII TH CENTURY.
437
Corrected Text.
Forjef hem
]pe wikke men,
God, sif it is j?i wille, 23
For whos gilt
"We beoj? ipilt
In )>is prisun ille. 26
IV.
Ne hop' non to his live !
Her ne maj he bilive.
Heje Jeg he stige, »
DeJ? felle]? him to grunde. 30
NU ha]? man wel' and blisse,
Raj?' he schal J>arof misse.
"Worldes wele, mid iwisse,
Ne lastej? but' on stunde. 34
V.
Magden, ]?at bar' ]>e hev'ne king,
Bisech }?in son', ]>at swete ]?ing,
J?at he habb' of us rewsing,
And bring' us of this woning,
For his muchele mildse. 39
He bring' us ub of this wo,
And us tache werchen swO|
In Jis liv' go hu s' it go,
J?at we moten, ag and o,
Habben ]>e eche blisse. 44
Conjectured Pronunciation.
Forjeef- Hem
Dhe wik'e men,
God, jif it is dhii wil'e,
For whoos gilt
We beeuth ipilt*
In dhis prii'suun iTe.
IV.
Ne Hoop noon too His lii-ve !
Heer nee mai nee bilirve.
Hekh-e dheekh ne stii-yhe,
Deeth fel'eth mm to grund'e.
!N"uu nath man weel and blis-e
Raath ee shal dhaarof mis-e.
World'es weel'e, mid iwis'e,
Ne last*eth buut oon stund-e
V.
Maid-en dhat baar dhe neevne
kiq
Biseetsh- dhiin soon dhat sweet-e
thiq,
Dhat HO nab of us reusiq-,
And briq us of dhis woo%niqi
For nis mutsh-el'e mil-se.
Hee briq us uut of dhis woo
And us taatsh'e wertslren swoo,
In dhis liiv goo HUU s- it goo,
Dhat we moo -ten, ai and oo,
Hab-en dhe eetsh-e blis-e.
Verbal Translation of the Early English (corrected texf), continued. — Forgive
them The wicked men, God, if it is thy will, For whose guilt We (have) heen
thrust In (to) this vile prison. — IV. Let none have trust in his life! Here
may he not remain. High though he rise, Death fells him to (the) ground.
Now hath one weal and bliss, Suddenly he shall miss thereof. (The) world's weal,
with certainty, Lasteth not hut one hour. — V. Maiden, that hare the heaven's
king, Beseech thy son, that sweet thing, That he have of us pity, And bring us
out of this affliction, For his great mercy. May he bring us out of this woe,
And so to act teach us, In this life go how so it go, That we may, aye and ever
Have the eternal bliss.
438 NORMAN PRONUNCIATION. CHAP. V.
An examination of the pronunciation of old French, especially of
the Norman dialect, is also almost forced upon our attention by
the close connection of the two languages during the formation of
English proper. The researches now being instituted by Mr. J.
Payne into the persistence of Norman forms1 have given the
pronunciation of Norman a still greater interest. The investigation
is fraught with difficulty, as will appear at once from the present
attempt to resuscitate early English sounds. It must be conducted
separately, first by an examination of all the documents tending to
throw a light upon early French pronunciation ; secondly, by a careful
study of the living dialectic pronunciation in the North of France ;
thirdly, by a review of Norman French poetry, either in original ma
nuscripts of known dates or in trustworthy editions of the same,
such as M. Michel's edition of Benoit.2 To assume that old Norman
was pronounced as modern Norman,3 or modern French, or modern
English, would be against all historical precedent, and the most
probable hypothesis is that it differed from all of these in many
respects, but that we may find indications of the existence of all of
the latter forms in particular cases. Such an investigation is
entirely beside the present, although both have been occasionally
brought in contact, through Palsgrave in the xvr th century, and
such translations from the Norman as the Prisoner's Prayer, and
the rhymes of English and French in Chaucer and the Political
Songs. It would be difficult for any but a Frenchman to conduct,
1 " The Norman element in the speech, says : " On ne pent, a mon
English, spoken and written, of the avis, generaliser aucune assertion sur
xni th and xiv th centuries, and in the les points de detail, attendu que 1'ex-
provincial dialects," is the more ex- pression et meme 1' accent se localisent
tended title which Mr. Payne has extremement .... Ce qui est vrai ici,
adopted for his papers read before the peut ne pas 1'etre la. . . . Chez nous
Philological Society in 1868 and 1869. (dans le diocese de Rouen) on trouve
2 Chronique des Dues de Normandie deux dialectes completement differents
par Benoit, trouvere anglo-normand du d' accent : le hrayon, parle dans la
xn e sifccle, publiee pour la premiere portion orientale du departement (ou
fois d'apres un manuscrit du Musee diocese) surtout dans 1'arrondissement
Britanmque par Francisque Michel, de Neufchatel, et une portion de celui
1836-1844. 3 vols. 4to. Published by de Dieppe. L' accent est picard, par
order of the French government. The consequent bref, et avec le systeme de
MS. followed is Harl. 1717, and the syncopes propres au picard: »' veul'-
printed text was compared with the tent bien, mats t" n' peuv'tent pas,
original by Sir P. Madden. There is ils veulent bien, mais ils ne peuvent
a copy in the Reading Room of the pas. Du reste pas de mots originaux.
British Museum. Le cauchois, parle" dans tout le plateau
s It would be as wrong to suppose occidental allonge extremement la der-
that there is a Norman dialect, as that niere ou 1'avant derniere syllabe du mot,
there is a Scottish dialect. Both of prononcel'atresouvert: le dialecte cau-
them admit of separation into several chois est riche en mots originaux, mais
distinct forms, requiring different forms ces mots sont fort localises." The "has
of writing to be intelligible. M. I'abb6 Normand" speaks, again, a different
Delalonde, professor of history at the set of dialects. Hence, although we
faculty of theology at Rouen, who has may find remnants of old pronunciation
most kindly replied in writing to in all these dialects, it would be hazard-
several questions which I took the ous to infer the old pronunciation from
liberty of putting to him on Norman any one of them.
§ 1, No. 3. MISCELLANIES XIII TH CENTURY. 439
and we may probably have to wait for a considerable time, before a
properly qualified investigator devotes himself to the task. May
this last anticipation prove incorrect ! 1
3. MISCELLANIES OF THE xin TH CENTURY FROM RELIQUIJE ANTIQUE, EARLY
ENGLISH POEMS, AND POLITICAL SONGS, WITH AN EXAMINATION OF THE
NORMAN FRENCH El, AI.
Under this heading some brief notices will be given of short
rhymed pieces belonging to the xm th or the earliest part of the
xiv th century, contained in the Reliquia Antiques, 3 Early Eng
lish Poems,3 and Political Songs.*
The most considerable poem in the Beliquice Antiques is the
BESTIARY, i, 208 ; 5 it is only partly in rhyme,0 and the rhymes are
not unfrequently broken by non-rhyming couplets, or fall into mere
assonances, so that no reliance is to be placed upon them for deter
mining the pronunciation. Thus we cannot be sure that s, which
is used throughout the poem for sh, was pronounced (s), from the
rhyme : fis is, p. 220, v. 499, 529, for between them we have :
biswiken bigripen, v. 515. Other parts are alliterative and there
fore of no assistance, but they burst out occasionally in rhyme for a
few lines. This poem uses u consistently for (uu), and ou, ow for
(oou, ou) as in : out p. 223, v. 645 = aught, nout p. 209, v. 18 =
nought, occasionally written nogt, p. 212, v. 187, sowles p. 211,
v. 118, soule p. 213, v. 206, knowe'S p. 211, v. 121, knov p. 212,
v. 165. There seems to be no use of u for i or e throughout the
poem, thus we have : mirie p. 221, v. 570, pit p. 226, v. 761 ; this
consorts properly with the consistent use of u for (uu). Similarly
1 Diez, Grammatik der romanischen British Museum by F. 3. Furnivall,
Sprachen, 2nd ed. 1856, vol. 1, pp. 1862, for the Philological Society.
404-454, investigates the meaning of 4 The Political Songs of England
the old French letters, hut leaves much from the reign of John to that of
to be desired. The commencement of Edward II, edited and translated by
an investigation into the values of Thomas "Wright, Esq. London, 1839.
Norman ei, ai, together with a few 4to. pp. iviii, 408. Camden Society,
other casual remarks on old and modern ' The text of this was especially read
Norman pronunciation, will he found by the MS. Arundel 292, fo. 4. for the
below, p. 453. See also the extracts Rel. Ant. It has been reprinted with
from Dr. Eapp, below, p. 509, n. 1. extensive notes, and a few conjectural
„ T> v • ,. emendations, in : Altensrlische Sprach-
2 .Ee^F» Antaque. Scraps from proben nebst einem Worterbuchef unter
Ancient Manuscripts illustrating chiefly Mitwirk von Karl Goldbeck heraus-
Early English Literature and the gegebeu von Eduaid Matzner. Berlin,
English Languge. Edited by Thomas fgf ?> L 8y0- d { 5?_
Wright and James Orchard fialliweU, 6 The f^owi •£ ^ rh
?£r X ?P; ?7 i'i S. the Pages refer to the Rel. Ant., the
1843 The text has generally been nuXr of the lines are taken from
carefully transcribed and printed but Goldbeck and Miitzner . 209 y 40_
Borne mistakes occur as pointed out 45 21Q 54_8? . * ' ^ g9_
S' A ?' n, I ' P' ' n°te ' H9 ^rnate rhyme> $? ^ 307 to
p. 217, v. 384, with a few short inter-
3 Early English Poems and Lives of ruptions, p. 218, v. 424 to p. 219, v.
Saints (with those of the Wicked Birds 455, p. 220, v. 499 to p. 221, v. 654,
Pilate and Judas). Copied and edited p. 222, v. 588, to p. 224, v. 694, p. 225,
from manuscripts in the Library of the v. 733 to p. 227 v. 802 and last.
440 MISCELLANIES — XIII TH CENTURY. CHAP. V.
we rarely find o for either (uu) or (u), thus : sunne = sun, p. 209,
v. 19, cunne p. 210, v. 69, come p. 209, v. 35, but: cume^ p. 210
v. 67, sumer p. 214, v. 236, hule p. 214, v. 253, but : hole p. 217
v. 394, p. 226 v. 769, and the rhyme : cul ful p. 225 v. 741 =
cowl full,1 may be considered as establishing the value of long u as
(uu) in opposition to the modern opinion that it is (ou) or (ou).
The spelling is generally good and consistent,2 but it presents
certain peculiarities. Thus s is always employed both for « and sh,
and the rhyme, as already pointed out, ought to determine that (s)
was the only sound. Also g is used throughout, generally as pure
5 with the guttural effect after vowels, as in : sigte p. 211, v. 107,
rigten p. 211, v. 117, drigtin p. 211, v. 119, ^urg p. 211, v. 119,
inog p. 211, v. 142. Sometimes the resolution into (j) or (i) seems
indicated by a prefixed i, as : leige^ p. 216, v. 359, maig p. 210,
v. 80, p. 220, v. 516, p. 221, v. 548, but the g is then most generally
omitted as in : mai p. 211, v. 129, mainles — without power, main
force? p. 211, v. 128, dai p. 210, v. 63, but dei p. 215, v. 305,
meiden p. 209, v. 37, shewing that ai, ei were confused. Initially
the g was simply (j) to judge by: ging = young, p. 213, v. 214,
gu = you p. 244, v. 700, ge = she p. 214, v. 243, but it may have
been (#h). After * it disappears altogether as: sti p. 213, v. 198.
The aspirate h is treated very irregularly, being sometimes start-
lingly inserted, as hac for ac p. 226, v. 792, and frequently omitted.
After w it generally disappears, as : wit, wel = white, wheel,
p. 225, v. 737. The form wu for whu = hu = how (supra p. 429,
note 1,) is frequent, as p. 209, v. 36 and v. 55, but: hu p. 210,
v. 56, in the next line. The pronunciation of ch seems intended
for (tsh), and such apparent rhymes as : riche ilike = rich alike
p. 222, v. 604, must be considered as assonances, unless we suppose
-like to be an orthographical error for -liche. The use of % is
general, but we have bicumeth p. 210, v. 91, unless it be a mis
print. After s, t, d this ¥> becomes t, as in Ormin, the instances
are collected by Matzner at v. 22.
The diphthongs ai, ei appear to be (ai) by the cases already cited.
Forbroiden p. 211, v. 124, seems to stand for forlrogden and should
imply therefore oi = (oi), but it is uncertain, and similar oi diph
thongs are unknown, so that we cannot infer generally oi = (oi).
In : newe p. 225, v. 724, spewed p. 211, v. 139, 'Sewes p. 212, v.
183, reufulike p 223, v. 652, we can hardly take eu for anything
but (eu). In : taunede p. 226, v. 767, middle high German zounen
to shew, (au) seems to be implied.
1 Wor so he wuneft "Sis panter, diversis pastus venatibus. The ags.
he fedeS him al mid ofter der, cufle (JElf. gl. 20), cugle («'£.), cuhle,
of 'So "Se he wile he nime'S 'Se cul cowl is remarkable for the early in-
and fet him wel til he is ful. terchange of (f, gh) which has not
=Whereso he dwelleth, this panther, descended. If cul, is to be thus inter-
he feedeth him all with other deer preted, it has lost a final e. But is not
(beasts), of those that he wil, he taketh rather cul the French word meaning
the cowl (skin P) and feedeth him wel rump, the prime piece ?
til he is full. This is Matzner's inter- 2 The handwriting of the MS. is
pretation of cul. The Latin has only : particularly beautiful, large, and careful.
§ 1, No. 3. MISCELLANIES XIII TH CENTURY. 441
On the whole this poem, though presenting some peculiarities, fully
confirms the conclusions derived from the two preceding old poems.
In none of the others does the orthography seem so trustworthy.
The FAMILY PRAYER, PATERNOSTER, etc., vol. i, p. 22, mixes as
sonances with its rhymes freely, as : lif siche, hunden wndes ; king
dom don ; wndis hunde. Of these : lif siche = sickness, is useful in
establishing the value of the long i as (ii) or (ii). The u is consis
tently used as (uu), and ou in troue as (oou), once erroneous spelled
true, but au is also used in sank, which, if correct, is an early and quite
unusual transformation of suk. The rhyme to this word : bysuak
seems to imply some error in the MS., which is here correctly tran
scribed. Another unusual form is : leyse for lese, and fleyes for
flesh, compare supra p. 265, and infra p. 473, n. 4. Although Marie
occurs fully in : Heil, Marie, ful of grace ! = (Hail Marire ful of
graa'se !) it is abbreviated to Mart, in
Moder of railce,1 and maidin Mari, (Moo'der of mils, and maidin Marii',
Help us at ure bending, for ]>i merci. Help us at uur end-iq for dhii mersir.)
No doubt this was a very ancient occasional abbreviation of a
name so common on the lips of all worshippers : thus in Germany
(Maarir) is fully as common as (Marire) in addressing persons of
that name. See p. 446, Ex. 3. The aspirate comes in curiously in :
hart = art, hus — us, as well as house, hending = ending, herde]?e
= earthe, hure = our. The guttural is evidently expressed by ch
in : J?ich,2 halmichtende, licht, richt, which is very unusual.
The CREED and PATERNOSTER, vol. i, p. 57, are not in the pure
xm th century orthography. We have indeed : ure, wijmten, but :
Pounce (written Punce = Pontius, in the last example), ous, foule.
This shews a period of transition, which will be especially noticed
inHavelok, infra p. 471, occasioned by the growing use of u as (yy)
or (ii, i, e), compare in the Creed : y-buriid, and in the Paternoster :
als we forgivet uch ofir man. Other peculiarities here are : sshipper
= schipper, ags. scyppan, create ; and : fleiss = fleisch,flesh ; steich
= steg, ascended. The rhymes in the Paternoster are correct,
except : don man.
Another CREED, PATERNOSTER, Ave, etc., are given in vol. i, p.
234, in which the u long is perfectly preserved for '(uu), and :
biriedd, iche, are used. Pontius appears as Ponce, which compared
with the first Punce, shews the use of o for short (u). The Pater
noster is chiefly in assonances, and we cannot feel sure that : deadd
so'Sfastheedd, in the next prayer, is a rhyme or an assonance, that
is, whether the first word is (deed) or (deeth), or (deead). The last
little moral has some assonances :
If man him biftocte (If man -im bithokh-te,
Inderlike and ofte Ingerliik and offc-e,
"Wu arde is te fore Huu Hard is te foo-re
Fro bedde te flore, Fro bed'e te floo-re,
1 Tbis is the MS. reading, the compare ipeagh in a sermon of the
printed text has milte, ags. mildse, see xm th century, from MS. Trin. Coll.
supra p. 429, note 1. Cam. B. 14, 52, in Rel. Ant. i, 129,
* Imperative of }eon to prosper, 1. 2 and 14.
442 MISCELLANIES — XIII TH CENTURY. CHAP. V.
Wu reuful is te flitte Huu reu-ful is te flite
Fro flore te pitte, Fro floo-re te pit'e,
Fro pitte to pine Fro pit'e te pii-ne,
"Sat neure sal fine Dhat never shal fii'ne,
I wene non sinne Ii wee-ne noon sin-e
Sulde his herte winnen. Shuuld -is Hert win-en.)
But we might suppose that (bithof'te) was already occasionally
pronounced, as in the "West of England (supra p. 212). The French
fine, finir, end, establishes the pronunciation of pine. Fore for fare
is a North-countryism, and te for the usual to, seems to indicate an
indistinct utterance, perhaps (te). I have ventured to pronounce :
sal, sulde, with (sh), but I do not feel quite certain, for reasons
named above, p. 440.
Immediately preceding this moral is the following in which : I
ne, occurs in Mr. Wright's text, but : ine, in one word, occurs in
the MS, just as in the old high German quoted by Graff, (supra
p. 292, n. 2), and clearly shewing the (in'e) or (irne) pronunciation.
"Wanne I ftenke "Singes "Sre, (Whan i theqk-e inures three,
Ne mai hi neure blifte ben ; Ne mai i never bliidh-e bee ;
•5e ton is dat I sal awei, Dhet-oon is dhat i shal awai1,
fte tofter is ine wot wilk dei Dhet-oodlrr is in-e wot whilk dai,
fte 'Sridde is mi moste kare, Dhe thrid-e, is mi most-e kaa-re,
Ine wot wider I sal faren. In-e wot whidh-er i shal faa-re.)
In this pronunciation I have taken some necessary liberties with
the text, as the omission of an Infinitive n for the rhyme, rectifi
cation of the aspirate, w for wh, d for 'S, etc.
The three first Paternosters, Aves, and Credos, are here given for
comparison with those of Dan Michel, supra p. 413. They have
been read with the original MSS.,1 and are printed accordingly,
with the exception of capitals, punctuation, undotted i, and long f.
Titles, where wanting, are added for convenience. The pronun
ciation is adapted to a slightly amended text, as the manuscripts
are often very faulty, but the different provincial characters are
not disturbed. The whole writing and versification is very rude
and uncouth.
MS. Cotton Gleop. B. vi.fo. 201 v°. Conjectured Pronunciation.
Eel. Ant. 1, 22.
PATER NOSTER. Paa-ter nos-ter.
ZTre fadir }>at hart in heuene, Uirre faa-der dhat art in nevene,
halged be ]>i name with giftis seuene nal-ghed bee dhi naa-me with gift-is
sev ene,
eamin cume )>\ kingdom, Saa-min kuu-me dhi kiq-doonv.
]>i wille in her)>e'. als in heuene be don, Dhi wil in erth, als in hevne be don.
vre bred >at lastes ai Uu-re breed, dhat last-es ai,
gyue it hus bis hilke dai, Giiv it us, dhis ilk-e dai,
and vre misdedis ]>u forgyue hus, And uu-re misdeed-is dhuu forgiive us
als we forgyue ]?aun )>&t misdon hus, Als wee forgiive dhaim dhat miis-doon-
and leod us in tol na fandinge, And leed us in til naa fan-diq-e, [us.
bot frels us fra alle iuele }>ihg. But freels us fra al iivle thiq-e.
Amen. Aa-men.
1 The printed text of the Eeliquice were again compared with the originals
AntiquaE was first read by me with the by Mr. Brock.
MSS., and the proofs of these pages
§ 1, No. 3.
MISCELLANIES XIII TH CENTURY.
443
ATE
JETeil Marie, ful of grace,
be lauird bich be in heuirilk place,
oilseed be bu mang alle wimmem,
and blisced. be be blosme of bi wambe.
Amen.
CREDO
Si true in God, fader hal-micht-
tende,bat makedeheuen and herdebe,
and in Ihesuc Krist, is ane lepi sone,
hure lauerd, bat was bigotin of be
hali gast, and born of be mainden
Marie, pinid under Punce Pilate,
festened to be rode, ded and duluun,
licht in til helle, be bride dai up
ras fra dede to Hue, stegh in tU.
heuenne, sitis on is fadir richt
hand, fadir al-waldand, be ben
sal cume to deme be quike an
be dede. Hy troue by beli
gast, and bely kirke, be samninge
of halghes, forgifnes of sinnes, vp-
risigen of fleyes, and life wib-hutin
hend. Amem.
A a- v e
Hail, Marii-e, ful of graa-se, [plaa-se
Dhe laa-vird thi&h dbe in evrilk
Blis-ed be dhuu maq al-e wim-en-
And blis-ed be dhe blosm- of dhi
wamb. Aa-men-.
Kr e e- do
li troou-e in God, faa-der al-mi£ht'-
end-e, dhat maa-kede neven and erth-e,and
in Dzhee-sus Krist, ms aa-neleep-i soo-ne,
uu-re laverd, dhat was bigot-en of dhe
Haa-li Gaast, and born of dhe Mai-den
Marii-e, pii-ned un-der Puns-e Pilaat-e,
fest'ened to dhe roo-de, ded and dulven,
li&ht in til nel-e, dhe thrid'e dai up-
raas- fra deed-e to lii-ve, stee?h in til
nevene, sit-es on His faa-der ri&ht
Hand, faa-der al-wald-and-, nee dhen
shal kuu-me to dee-me dhe kwik-e and
dhe deed-e. li trou-e [in] dhe Haa-li
Gaast, and baa-li Kirk-e, dhe sanrniq-e
of Hal-ghes, forgif-nes of sin-es, up--
rii-si^hen of flaish, and lii-ve withuu-ten
end-e Aa-men.
Sari. MS. 3724, fo. 44. Eel. Ant. 1, 57. Camden's Semaines, p. 24. Lyttelton's
History, 4, 130.
PATER NOSTER IN ANGLICO Paa-ter nos-ter
Vre fader in heuene riche,
bi name be haliid euer iliche
bu bringe vs to bi michil blisce,
bi wille to wirche bu vs wisse,
Als hit is in heuene i-do
Euer in eorbe ben hit al so,
bat holi bred bat lesteb ay
bu send hit ous bis ilke day,
Forgiue ous alle bat we hauib don,
Als we forgiuet uch obir man
Ne lete vs falle in no fondinge,
Ak scilde vs fro be foule binge.
Amen.
CREDO
I bileue in God fadir almichty,
sshipper of heuene and of eorbe, and
in Ihesus Crist, his onlepi sone,
vre louerd, bat is iuange burch be
holy gost, bore of Marie Mayden,
bolede pine vnder Pounce Pilat,
picht on rode tre, ded and yburiid,
licht in to helle, be bridde day fram
deth aros, steich in to heuene, sit on
his fadir richt honde, God almichti,
benne is cominde to deme be quikke
and be dede. I bileue in J>e holy
gost, al holy chirche, mone of
alle halwen, forgiuenis of sinne,
fleiss vprising, lyf wibuten ende.
Amen.
Uu're faa-der in hev-ne riitsh-e,
Dhi naam'e be Halved ever iliitsh-e
Dhuu briq us too dhe mitsh-el blis-e,
Dhi wil-e to wirtsh-e dhuu us wis-e,
Als nit is in hevn- idoo1
Ever in erth-e ben it al-soo-,
Dhat Hoo-li bred dhat lest-eth ai
Dhuu send nit us dhis ilk-e dai,
Forgiiv us al dhat wee navth doon,
Als wee forgiveth eech ooth-er man,
Nee leet us fal in noo fon-diq-e,
Ak shild us froo dhe fuu-le thiq-e.
Aa-men-.
Kr e e- do
li bileev in God, faa-der al-mi&ht-i,
ship-er of nevene and of erth'e, and
in Dzhee-sus Krist, nis oon-leep-i soo-ne,
uu-re loverd, dhat is ifaq-e thurkh the
Hoo-li Goost, boo-ren of Marii-e mai-den.
thoo-lede pii-ne un-der Pun-se Pilaat-,
piA;ht on the roo-de tree, deed and iberied,
li&ht into nel-e, dhe thrid-e dai from
deeth aroos*, staiAh into nevene, sit on
His faa-dir ri^ht nond-e, God al-mi&ht-i,
dhen-e is kuum-end-e to deenve dhe kwik-e
and dhe deed-e. li bileeve in dhe Hoo-l»
Goost, al Hoo-li tshirtsh-e, moon-e of
al-e Hal-wen, forgivnes of sin-e, flaish
uprii-siq-, liif withuu-ten end-e.
Aa-men-.
444
MISCELLANIES XIII TH CENTURY.
CHAP. V.
Arund. MS. 292, fol. 3. Eel.Ant. 1, 234
PATER NOSTEE.
Fader ure ftatt art in heuene blisse
"Sin hege name itt wurfte bliscedd,
Cumen itt mote iSi king dom,
'Sin hali wil it be al don
In heueiie and in erSe all so,
So itt sail ben ful wel ic tro ;
?if us alle one ftis dai
Vre bred of icbe dai
And forgiue us ure sinne
Als we don ure wifierwinnes ;
Leet us noct in fondinge falle,
Ooc fro iuel Su sild us alle.
Amen.
AUE MARIA
Marie ful off grace, weel de be,
Godd of heuene be wift fte,
Oure alle wimmen bliscedd tu be,
So be Se bern datt is boren of "Se.
CREDO IN DEUM
I leue in Godd al-micten fader,
Satt heuene and er5e made to gar ;
And in Ihesu Crist his leue sun,
Vre onelic louerd, ik him mune,
ftatt of de holigost bikennedd was,
Of Marie 'Se maiden boren he was,
Pinedd under Ponce Pilate,
On rode nailedd for mannes sake ;
•Sar iSolede he deadd widuten wold,
And biriedd was in de roche cold,
Dun til helle licten he gan,
•Se ftridde dai off deadd atkam,
To heuene he steg in ure manliche,
•$ar sitte^ he in hijs faderes riche,
0 domes dai sal he cumen agen,
To demen dede and Hues men :
1 leue on 'Se hali gast,
al holi chirche stedefast
Men off alle holi kinne,
And forgiuenesse of mannes sinne,
Vprisinge of alle men,
And eche lif I leue. Amen.
Camden's Remaines p. 24.
Paa-ter nos-ter.
Faa-der uu-re dhat art in nevne blis-e
Dhiin nekh-e naam it wurdh-e blis-ed,
Kuirmen it moo-te dhii kiq-doonr
Dhiin naa-li wil it bee al doon
In neven and in erth al soo,
So it shal been ful wel ik troo,
Gif us al-e on ' dhis dai
UUTC bred of iitsh-e day
And forgiv us uu-re sin-e
Als wee doon uu-re wiidb/erwin-es ;
Leet us nokht in fon-diq-e fal-e,
Ook fro ii-vl dhuu shild us al-e.
Aa-men'.
A a- ve
Marii-e ful of graa-se, wel de2 be,
God of nevne bee with dhee,
Ovr- al-e winren blist tu* bee,
So bee dhe bern dat-s2 born of dhe.
Kree- do
li leev in God al-mi#ht-en Faa-der,
Dhat nevn-and erth'e maad togaa-der ;
And in Dzhee-sus Krist, His lee-ve suu-ne,
Uur oo-neliik loverd, ik Him muu-ne,
Dhat of dhe Hooii Goost biken-ed was,
Of Marii-e dhe mai-den boorn ne was,
Pii-ned un-der Puns-e Pilaaie,
On roo-de nail-ed for man-es saa-ke.
Dhar dhoold -e death withuu'ten woold,
And ber-ied was in dhe rotsh-e koold,
Duun til Hel-e liA;ht-en He gaan,
Dhe thrid-e dai of death atkaanr,
To nevn -e stee^h in uur man lii'tshe,
Dhar sit-eth -e in -is faa-dres rii'tshe,
0 doo-mes dai shal -e kuu-men agen*
To dee-men deed and lii-ves men.
li leeve on dhe Haa-li Gaast,
Al-Hoo-Ii tshirtsh-e stee-defast,
Men of al-e hoo-li kin-e,
And forgivnes- of man-es sin-e,
Up-riis-iq- of al-e men,
And ee-tshe liif ii leev. Aa-men-.
The short PROVERBIAL VEESES, vol. ii, p. 14, are taken from the
margin of the Cott. MS. Cleop. C. vi, fo. 21, where they are in a
different hand from the text and are prohahly much later, though,
as Mr. "Wright observes, "in a hand of the thirteenth century."
They contain some peculiarities as : J?eise midoutin lesing, for : J>ese
1 This line is probably corrupt. The
hiatus (ai-e on), is unlikely, but to
read : (Gif us aloo-ne . . . 'dhis dai),
would be deficient unless we inserted
(nuu) or some such word, after (aloo-ne),
meaning : give us alone [now] this
day. The rhyme is, however, so rough,
that criticism is out of the question.
2 (De) for (dhe) after (wel); (tu)
for (dhu) after (blist) which must be
taken as a monosyllable, this change
of (dhu) into (tu) shewing that the
preceding letter was voiceless, that is
(t) not (d), as j>u would have otherwise
been (du), compare the first case, and
also (dat) for (dhat) after (bern).
§ 1, No. 3. MISCELLANIES XIII TH CENTURY. 445
wijmten lesing = these without lying. This form Ipeise is not named
hy Stratmann, and is perhaps an individuality. The ou in : midoutin
stroutende, belong to the transition period, shewn distinctly by:
"that tu, and tou," both of which = J?w, in two following lines.
The form ielu, printed jelu, for ~&elu = yellow, is peculiar, as
shewing the complete passage of 5 into i.
In vol. i, p. 89, there is a HYMN TO THE VIRGIN, and another on
p. 102, ] preceded by a curious parabolal poem, beginning: " Somer
is comen and winter2 gon," not entirely legible, all taken from
MS. Egerton 613, fo. 1 and 2. The first and last are in the same
hand, the second in a different hand, but they all belong to the
transition period ; thus on p. 89 we have : thou, our, flour, ous
(twice), foule ; but also : hut = out, thu (3 times) ; also : put =
pit, shewing the (y) or (i, e) sound of u. The last has : foules =
fowls, witoute — without, ous = us, but generally keeps the u
pure. And the second prayer p. 102, while it has : thu (16 times),
flur, withuten, oreisun, tunge, has also : out, foul ; and : sunne
(3 times) = sin. It is curious to note also : ic chabbe, and ich
chabbe, for ich habbe, implying probably the running on of the
words thus: (i,tshab-e). The orthography: flehs, for: flesh, is
perhaps to be compared with : ihc, for : ich, in the preceding line.
The other poems in the Reliquice Antiques, belonging either to
the transition or later periods, do not call for any further remark.
The first seven pieces in the Early English Poems taken from
Harl. MS. 913, are all assigned to a date prior to 1300, but like
the fifteen pieces which follow from Harl. MS. 2277 and ascribed
to 1305-10, they belong to the transition period with respect to
ou and u.
In the SAHMW pp. 1-7, the transition period is marked by : ous 1
(the figures refer to the stanzas), nou 2a, mou]? 4, aboute 4, ]?ou 5,
witoute 7, etc. ; against : ure 1, us 3, schuldres 5, luse = louse 5,
wijjoute prate = proud 6 (the adjective always end in t ; prude 10,
pride 12, is the substantive in which u ==*',) acuntis 24, lude =
loudly 31, jur 41, etc. The u for i is common, as munde kunde =
mind kind 26, ihuddid 11. The palatalised guttural usually sinks
into Y, as : sei)? 3, mei 8, dai 18, ei hei = eye high 22, etc. ; but j
sometimes remains, as : heij 53, 56, nejbor 9 ; )>eij = though 27.
We find also : fleisse meisse = flesh mass 6 (see infra p. 473, n. 4),
hir hirist = herr, hearest 33, file = vile 3, drit = dirt 7, dritte =
dirt 10, ihc 13, mov = mow 14, nov = now 31, verging = farthing
24, wl = will 31, angles = angels 33, woni = to dwell 51, and
these infinitives in «, usually accented, occur as will be presently
seen, in other parts of the same MS. There is an assonance : sprede
wrekke 30, and : virst best 57 may probably be : }>rist = thirst
best, a rhyme of *', e, but the rhymes in general are not remarkable.
The final e seems simply disregarded in rhyme and metre, but the
metre is so hummocky that it is difficult to make anything of it.
1 Both are printed in Goldheck and 2 The is here inserted in the printed
Matzner's Alteuglische Sprachproben, text of the Rel. Ant. is not in the MS.
p. 53.
446 MISCELLANIES — XIII TH CENTURY. CHAP. V.
Take for example the last stanza, p. 7, which may perhaps be read
as marked :
Alle ]mt be]) icommin here (Al dhat beeth ikunren neer
fort to hire ]>is sannun For to nirre dhis sarmuun-,
loke }>at je nab no were Look'e dhat je n-ab no weere.
for seue jer je habbij> to pardoun. For sev jeer je nabth parduun :)
The whole MS. seems marked by provincialisms, which it is ex
tremely difficult to understand. The first stanza of the xv. SIGNA
ANTE JTJDICTUM, p. 7, is in the same style, and was probably due to
the same author :
pe grace of ihesu fulle of mijte (Dhe graas of Dzhee-su ful of mikht
J?roj prier of ure swete leuedi Thrukh prii-er of uur sweet levdir
mote amang vs nu^e alijte Moot amaq us nuudh alikht
And euer vs jem and saui. And ever us jeem and saavii-)
Such attempts, however, to give pronunciation, must be viewed
with indulgence, they are necessarily very hazardous. In this
piece : ysaie profecie 9, must have the vowels in ai divided, y-sa-i-e.
The final e in mercie 25 is idle, added on to rhyme with crie in the
same stanza, where it was probably not pronounced, as we have :
of ihesu crist merci to cri 80, and
Ipe. xii. dai )>e fure. elemens sul cri
al in one heij steuene
merci ihesu fij mari
as ]jou ert god and king of heuene, 177
which gives us another example of Mari, see supra, p. 441, and
similarly : to cri, merci 137. Eemarkable forms : dotus angus =
doubtful anguish 1 13, probably = (duutus* aqgus') with a Norman
u = (u), fisses = fishes 121, euch uerisse watir = each fresh water
125, skeis = skies 133, where I suspect an accidental transposition
of ei for ie, as the form is otherwise incomprehensible, fentis =
fiends 161, fure = four 169, 177, wolny nulni = wullen-hi ne-
wullen-hi, = will they n'ill they 173, maugrei = maugre 173, pro
bably a Norman form.
THE PALL AND PASSION, p. 12, has the rhyme : frute dute =
fruit doubt 23 (line) which is decidedly favourable to the English
pronunciation of Norman u at that time as (uu) see p. 424, note 3.
Remarkable forms : maistre = mastery 21, maistri = mystery 50,
sso = she 52, jo = she 79, flees, = flesh 49, as he is manhed siwed
97, hou hi lord ssold siu J>e 105. The following infinitives in -•
occur : sufiri = to suffer 66, honuri = to honour 72, biri = to bury
74, 76; and: sauid isinid 43, being accented on the last syllable
imply the same form. The same accent occurs in the rhyme :
ipinsed suflred 89, siwed suflrid 97. The rhyme : alowe two 79,
seems to be an error.
THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, p. 15, has also : honuri worj>i = to
honour, to worship 17, and the assonance: iwisse limmes 5. THE
FRAGMENT ON THE SEVEN SINS, p. 17, has also : clansi = cleanse im
perative st. 5, herrid = horrid, st. 10, nemeni = to name st. 10,
woni = to dwell v. 9, prute shrute = proud shroud v. 10, fleis =
fiesh v. 12, ]?er is mani man bi peijte (= lepeached, deceived?), so J>e
§ 1, No. 3. MISCELLANIES XIII TH CENTURY. 447
fend him haui]? iteijte (= taught*?} 22, susteni = to sustain 58.
CHRIST ON THE CROSS p. 20, has : bewonde wnde = wounded wound
v. 3, fote blode 11, anguis 14, gredind deiend 25, strang hond 26.
The RHYME BEGINNING FRAGMENT p. 21, is only remarkable for
making in me answer to inne, but as the trick of beginning a line
with the last word of the preceding line is not carried out con
sistently, this assonance may have no special meaning. The whole
examination does not lead to much. The orthography is so singular
and so irregular, we might almost say so ignorant, and the dialect
so peculiar, that it is of very little assistance. No general result
could be deduced. The rhymes are not certain enough to be of
much value, and are generally the veriest doggrel conceivable,
while the metre is nowhere. In the parts from Harl. MS. 2277,
we may notice the false rhymes : poynte queynte p. 66, v. 5,
(unless indeed. poynte is to be Normanized into peynte}, britaigne fawe
p. 68, v. 85, against : britaigne fayne p. 69, v. 133, and the asso
nance : makede glade p. 108, v. 35. The form sede for seide is
found in : rede sede p. 66, v. 28 ; p. 68, v. 99, sede mede p. 72,
v. 56, dede sede p. 74, v. 48. See infra, p. 484. But seide also
occurs, p. 72, v. 58, v. 60, etc., being the regular form.
In an extract from Cott. MS. Yesp. D. IX., (which being of the
xv th century, does not properly belong to this place), WHY I
CAN'T BE A NTTN, p. 138, we find : wept few accept ihesu trew ob-
servaunce new variaunce p. 139, v. 40, but ihem may not have been
intended to rhyme with few trew new, because we find a line ending
with this name thrown in without a rhyme on the next page 140,
v. 88, kyn necessite wyn me omnipotent Ihesu present ys thys, etc.
In p. 140, v. 100, we find:
To the for comfort I make my sute
To have that ioy that lastythe ay,
For her loue that hare that frute
Swete ihesu miserere mei.
giving the rhyme : ay mei, the last word being Latin : This may
be compared with : Sinay day, in Chaucer, supra p. 264, and Dr.
Gills (eei)p. 114.
In the Political Songs Mr. "Wright has collected a number of short
poems in Latin, Norman French, and English, referring to the xm th
or beginning of the xivth century. Unfortunately most of the
English songs, as : the Song against the King of Almaigne p. 69,
Song of the Husbandman p. 149, Song against the Pride of the
Ladies p. 153, Satyre on the Consistory Courts p. 155, Song of the
Flemish Insurrection p. 187, Execution of Sir Simon Fraser p. 212,
Song against the Eetinues of Great People p. 237, Elegy on the
Death of Edward I. p. 246, are from Harl. MS. 2253, which has
adopted the full xivth century orthography, so that they are of
little use here. The principal points are the assonances : lonke
songe wlonke thonke p. 156, and longe londe p. 193. There are
numerous instances of u = (i, e), as : hude prude p. 150, sturne
hurne p. 150, wunne sunne p. 153, prude shrude hude p. 153,
prude drede p. 190. The apparent rhyme : ded sayde p. 246,
448 MISCELLANIES — XIII TH CENTURY. CHAP. V.
is probably no rhyme at all, but the nature of the stanza is broken
and the first and third lines do not rhyme, which is precisely what
we find in the next stanza but one, p. 247, where otherwise :
sunne Edward, would form a rhyme ! Still, as we have just seen,
the form sede also occurs, and may here be meant (p. 447). Ded
gret redde p. 248 must be regarded throughout as an assonance.
In : chivalrie deye heyje crie p. 249, the second and third words
should have been written : dye hye, as often in Chaucer.
Of all the Political Songs the only two which exhibit almost pre
cisely the orthography of the xm th century, are those from the
Harl. MS. 913, viz. The SONG OF THE TIMES, p. 195, and the SONG OF
NEGO, p. 210. The last raises no new points, and may be passed
over. The first exhibits ss for sch in : ssold p. 197, also written
scholdvn. the same page, ssal pp. 201, 203, 204, ssul pp. 202, 205,
precisely as in the Ayenlite, supra p. 409. There are some little
slips as: feloni = felonie p. 197, line 13,.amy lie, ami mei both
on p. 200, where mei is an error for me. The first will not rhyme
unless we read : li\ which is unusual, but the final e's are lax in
this song. The use of boi = boy, in : tel me, boi, what hast
ido ? p. 199, 1. 5 is noteworthy. The curious word i-pilt, in the
Prisoner's Prayer, v. 25, (supra p. 429, note 1), is well illustrated
by the passages
And so men didde that sell asse, When hit is so, ich vouchsave,
That trepasid nojt, no did notgilte, Ic forgive the this gilte. p. 199.
With ham bothe iwreiid was, Ic am iwreiid, Sire, to the,
And in the ditement was ipilt. p. 198. For that ilk gilt ;
Godis grame most hi hare Sire, ichul sker me,
That in the curte the so pilt ! I ne jef ham dint no pilt. p. 200.
The Auchinleck l MS. in the Advocates' Library, Edinburgh, has
not thoroughly adopted the xrv th century orthography,2 and as it
belongs to the very beginning of the xrvth century3 has a claim to
1 "In the year 1504, the barony or such forms in Sir Tristrem, the 37th
manour of Auchinleck (pronounced piece.
Affleck) in Ayrshire, which belonged to s An "Account of the Auchinleck
a family of the same name with the MS. Advocates' Library (W. 4, 1,) and
lands, having fallen to the crown by a catalogue of its contents," forms the
forfeiture, James the Fourth, King of fourth appendix to the introduction to
Scotland, granted it to Thomas Bos- Sir Walter Scott's edition of Sir Tris-
well." — Boswell's Life of Johnson, trem, to which a facsimile of the first
anno 1776. "The pronunciation of two stanzas of that poem are prefixed
Affleck for Auchinleck, was formerly It is a quarto of 334 leaves, containing
common, but is fast disappearing, and 44 pieces of poetry, on parchment, " in
is now confined, I should say, to the a distinct and beautiful hand, which
lower classes of the parish and neigh- the most able antiquaries are inclined
bourhood." Private letter from Mr. to refer to the earlier part of the xiv th
Halkett, Librarian of the Advocates' century. The pages are divided into
Library, Edinburgh, 18 Jan. 1869. two columns, unless where the verses,
2 JV«, hu, occur occasionally, but being Alexandrine, occupy the whole
rarely. Nu occurs once in the piece breadth of the quarto. In two or three
immediately cited, nu and hu several instances there occurs a variation in
times in the second piece, which, though the handwriting ; but as the poems re-
last in the MS., is said to be in an gularly follow each other, there is no
older hand. I have not noticed any reason to believe that such alterations
§ 1, No. 3.
MISCELLANIES XIII TH CENTURY.
449
be considered here. There are two extracts from it, On the King's
Breaking his Confirmation of Magna Charta, p. 253 (MS. No. 21),
and the Evil Times of Edward II. p. 323 (MS. No. 44). The
second only offers the curious orthography: muis huis, p. 326,
for : mous hous, and the assonance : hundred wonder p. 344.
But the first is very singular. The second, third, fourth, fifth,
and sixth stanzas, containing the sayings of the "iiij. wise men"
have a peculiar arrangement of rhymes, differing from the rest of
the poem, which may be symbolised thus, like letters shewing
rhymes : a a b c c b d dd e ee. The last five stanzas stand thus :
a a b cc b. None of these lines present any difficulty or novelty.
The following is the first stanza, which Wright prints in divided
lines, but which in the MS. itself runs across the page, although the
pages of the MS. are usually divided into two columns, indicating,
apparently, that the transcriber considered the final rhymes only as
pointing out the divisions.
Len puet fere et defere ceo fait il trop souewt
It nis nou)?er wel ne faire J^rfore ewgelowd is shewt
Noftre pnnce de engletere par le cowfail de sa gent
At weftmiwfter after j?e feire madew a gret parlemewt
La chartre fet de eyre ieo lewteink et biew le crey
It was holde to neih J?e fire and is moltew al awey
Ore ne say mes que dire tout i va atrzpolay,
huwdred. chapitle. court aw shire al hit go\> a deuel wey 2
des plusages de latere ore efcotez vn sarmouw
Of iiij. wise mew ]>at ]?er were whi engelowde is brouht adoun 3
edited and printed privately by David
Laing, Esq., and W. B. D. Turnbull,
Esq., under the title of ' Owain Miles,
and other Inedited Fragments of An
cient English Poetry. 8vo. Edinburgh,
1837.' " The present copy follows a
careful transcript obligingly made for
me by Mr. Halkett, the Librarian of the
Advocates' Library, Edinburgh, who
says : " In Owain Miles the editors
have divided each line into two ; in my
transcript you have them as they were
originally written. There are no points
except a dot after the word hundred,
and another after the word chapitle ; I
am not sure whether they have been
put there by design or by accident."
On examining the orthography of the
two pieces in this MS. given by
Wright, and of Sir Tristrem as edited
by Scott, we find it very irregular with
respect to final e, in which it agrees
with the MS. of Hampole (p. 410).
Similarly, in the poems of the " deeff,
sick, blynd," monk John Audelay of
Haughmond, four miles from Shrews
bury, written 1426, necessarily from
dictation and of course unrevised by
the author (edited from MS. Bodl. 546,
for the Percy Society, by J. 0. Halli-
29
indicate an earlier or later date than
may be reasonably ascribed to the rest
of the work ; although the satire
against Simonie, No. 44, seems rather
in an older hand than the others, and
may be an exception to the general
rule. The MS. was presented to the
Faculty of Advocates, in 1744, by
Alexander Boswell, of Auchinleck, a
Lord of Session, by the title of Lord
Auchinleck, and father of the late
James Boswell, Esq., the biographer of
Dr. Johnson. Of its former history
nothing is known. Many circum
stances lead us to conclude that the
MS, has been written in an Anglo-
Norman Convent. That it has been
compiled in England there can be but
little doubt. Every poem which has a
particular local reference, concerns
South Britain alone .... On the other
hand, not a word is to be found in the
collection relating particularly to Scot
tish affairs."
1 Compare "And lete me slepe, a
twenty devel way !" — Cant. Tales 3713.
2 The passage as we learn by Mr.
"Wright's note on p. 385, was trans
ferred to his pages from : "an in
teresting little volume of early poetry,
450
MISCELLANIES XIII TH CENTURY.
CHAP. V.
Now if we adopted Mr. Wright's arrangement in half lines
we should be led to suppose that the rhymes were intended
to be arranged thus : ab ab ab ab cd cd cd cd ef ef,
and thus make : defere faire Engletere feire, rhyme together. But
the first and third words probably ended in (-ee-re) and our pre
vious investigations lead us to consider that the second and fourth
ended in (arre).1 We have not hitherto found a single instance in
any good xrv th century MS. of e rhyming with ay or ey? The few
•well, 1844), the final e has appa
rently no phonetic meaning at all. The
whole character of the spelling of Sir
Tristrem (MS. No. 37) is northern.
In the present short extract we have
both Engelond and Engelonde in the
nominative ; in the second line faire
should be fair (p. 383), and then of
course feire must be feir' if it is in
tended to rhyme, maden a gret parle-
ment, seems an error for, made a grete
parlement ; Wright reads made a gret.
1 A Somersetshire fanning man once
asked me if I had seen the (sht'p) on
the (fair), which sounded remarkably
like a ship on fire, but merely meant
the sheep in the fair from which I was
walking. This is therefore an existent
(fair) pronunciation of the Norman
(feire.)
* This rhyming of ey with e, must
be distinguished from the double forms
ey, e, in certain words which occurs in
a few instances, see supra p. 265, and
compare the double forms ey, i, pp.
284-286. The apparent rhyme : ded,
sayde, p. 448, we have seen may not
have been meant for a rhyme at all.
Since the text was in type my atten
tion has been directed to some apparent
rhymes of ay, e in the poems of Aude-
lay referred to in the last note but one.
It will be advisable to consider these
rhymes in this place. We must re
member that the poet was both blind
and deaf, and had an illiterate scribe,
These three points are well proved by
the notice (p. vi., Halliwell's edition,
to the pages of which all references
will be made) : " iste liber fuit compo-
situs per Johannem Awdelay, capella-
num, qui fuit secus et surdus, in sua
yisitacione, ad honorem Domini nostri
Jhesu Christi, et ad exemplum aliorum,
in monasterio de Hagmon, anno Domini
millesimo cccc.mo vicessimo vi.to cujus
anime propicietur Deus." The secus for
cecus, or as we now write ccecus, shews
the trustworthiness of the scribe. The
English part is full of the grossest or
thographical eccentricities and incon
sistencies, and was probably written by
an ignorant brother, whose labours the
author was unable to revise either by
eye or ear. Under these circumstances
we should rather be surprised at the
regularity of the rhymes than at the
occasional utter forgetfulness of rhyme,
as : law withdrawe dais p. 22, (but
perhaps dawes should be read, see supra
p. 371, Ex. b.), leudmen corexeon
relegyon p. 24, Christ charyte p. 26,
to therfro more p. 40, worlde Lorde re-
warde p. 40, reprevyd dispilid p. 60 (both
accented on the penultim), Lorde worlde
p. 60, Judas cos = kiss p. 60, Lord
soffyrd p. 61, thorst last p. 64, opus
masse p. 73, on-morwe undorne p. 75,
dimes masse p. 76, dynt stont p. 78,
masse worse p. 79, prayere honoure
p. 79. It is evident from these ex
amples that we must not press Audelay's
doggrel rhymes too closely, and cer
tainly not draw any inference from a
few isolated examples. There can be
no doubt, however, that he did not dis
tinguish short f and short e, and there
seems little doubt that he confused long
f and long e also. Every page offers
examples of the first, and the rhyme in
-e, -i, -y, -ye is the commonest he has.
The words, die, high, eye, were to
him dye, hye, ye the last was even
written -e, (p. x), and the two former
constantly rhyme -e. Mr. Halliwell
says (p. xi) that in Shropshire " » is
still turned into e, which may be re
garded one of Audelay's dialectical
peculiarities, especially in the prefixes
to the verbs." Another peculiarity, of
the scribe at any rate, is to consider oi
and i as identical, at least in some
words. We have already cited dispilid
= despoiled, p. 60, and we have dystry
p. 20 but dystroy p. 33, /o.yre=fire, p.
48, rhyming to were. Another singular
rhyme, if any weight is to be attached
to it is: hyng drynke p. 61, see supra
p. 192. The word cros has various
rhymes: was, losse p. 61, choys p. 8,
$ 1, No 3.
MISCELLANIES XIII TH CENTURY.
451
earlier cases which appear to exist in Havelok, etc., will hereafter be
shewn to have probably arisen from errors (p. 473). Could we then
were it evidently stands for croyse
which is used p. 64 to rhyme with
voyse. This preliminary examination
will enable us to appreciate the exam
ples of ay which apparently rhyme
with e. In the first place, although
-e, is the commonest rhyme sound
throughout the poems, and -ay is also
frequent, the instances in which -ay
rhymes with -e are very rare. The
following are all that I have noted
throughout the extracts edited by Mr.
Halliwell. In the poem on Henry VI,
p. viii, there are 16 lines which should
rhyme in ay, but in one case the word
is cuntre, the rhymes being : veray day
play away fray day way day aray day
cuntre Fryday may betray pray Awd-
lay. The rhymester was evidently
hard up, or he would not have used
day five times, and if his ay had really
rhymed to his common e, he would
certainly have introduced it many times.
The single instance might be a case of
carelessness, which the blind and deaf
man failed to discover and correct.
But country is one of those words which
had a double orthography : cuntre
cuntrey, corresponding to two forms
in the Norman, which generated two
pronunciations in (-i -e) in xvn th
century (supra p. 125), and hence pro
bably had two sounds (-ee, -ai) in the
xiv th century at least. To this list
belong: country, valley, journey, livery,
most probably. Hence the error may
be merely scribal, cuntre for cuntrey.
Cumpane, which at first sight seems to
rhyme with say, p. 16, is apparently a
simple mistake, and the line containing
it, which is unnecessary to the sense,
should be expunged. It occurs among
a set of 78 stanzas of 13 lines each,
having the complicated rhyme system
ababbcbcdeeed. In this par
ticular piece the rhyming words are :
spiryt say epocryte pay day compane
clene say lene mynde by truly cumpany
unkynde. That is, this one stanza has
14 lines; and the line which is subver
sive of the whole rhyme system, is this
very one which ends in compane.
Degre be may p. 44 is also a mere
error, it occurs in a stanza of the
last kind, corresponding to the e e e
portion, and on the same page, in the
next preceding stanza, in the same por
tion, we find: jeve know laue, which no.
one would hesitate to consider a false
rhyme. To the same category I relegate
the example in the same place of the
next stanza : sayne eyne sene p. 45,
where sene = seen is the infinitive mood
of see, y-seyne bene p. 68 =i-seen been,
are past partici pies, and the spelling
of the first word is erroneous, but we
have a similar form in Chaucer, supra
p. 265. Bred betrayed p. 70, I class
with : wayt algat p. 47, as mere helpless
rhymes ; if the one could prove that
ay — (ee), the other would prove
ay = (aa), for the rhyme : face alas p.
60, would establish longa = (aa). In
cownsele asayle batayle p. viii, the first
word should have its usual form coun-
seyl. In erne = modern aim p. 12, 37
and often, the e is correct, the modern
spelling is wrong, the origin being Fr.
esmer = sestimare. The above are ab
solutely all the cases observed, and the
impression produced on myself by the
examination of these rhymes, is, that
Audelay pronounced ay, e, differently,
and that the conclusions deduced from
other sources, apply to these cases also,
viz : ay = (ai), e = (e). Nevertheless
there are at least two MSS. and there
may be more, which certainly confuse
ey, ay with e, both in spelling and
sound. The most striking of these in
the Lincoln's Inn MS. 150, from which
Weber has printed the greater part of
King Alisaunder (in vol. 1 of Metrical
Romances of the xm th, xiv th and
xv th centuries, published from Ancient
Manuscripts, with an introduction,
notes, and a glossary, by Henry "Weber,
Esq., Edinburgh, 1810, 3 vols.,8vo.), and
which must be carefully distinguished
from the Bodl. MS. Laud, I. 74, from
which he has taken v. 4772 — 5989 of
the same romance. This poem is
supposed to have been written before
1300, and both the MSS. are attri
buted by "Weber to the xivth century,
but Mr. Furnivall and Mr. Skeat
date the Lincoln's Inn MS. about
1450. The Bodleian MS. has nothing
strange, except : noye daye 5412,
ryth nyth 4812 (but: nighth righth
5076) which reminds one of Havelock's
peculiar th, infra p. 477. and there are
a few «', e rhymes, as : clere fire 5342,
and some e, a, as : art cert 5802, but
not frequent, and some assonances, as :
blith wyf 5138. But on the whole it
452
MISCELLANIES XIII TH CENTURY.
CHAP. V.
from this popular song conclude that all this is a mistake, and suppose
that Chaucer, and Gower, and other writers, although frequently
hard up for rhymes, never employed such an extremely convenient
jingle which lay ready to hand ? The conclusion would be hazard
ous in the extreme, and is certainly unnecessary, for the apparent
fleygh 119, kynde heynde 425, yilde
feilde 2956, is deys = is dais 3966,
eighte knyght 3884, 6042, contrey
sygh 6440, wite disseyte 7704. El,
U Y : reyn &\myn=abtde 2991. 01, AI
see AI, 01. 01, I : annoyed distryed
129, syghe joye 6060, nigh anoye 6116,
anoye dye 6568. UI, E: kuyn=Ariwe
slen 760, quarter wildfuyr 1902, pruyde
wede 2093, there afuyre 7549. TJI, I :
Tyre wildefuyre 3031. The conclusion
seems to be that the writer occasionally
pronounced a, ai, e, ei, i, oi, ui in the
same way =(ee). This must certainly
indicate some great peculiarity of pro
nunciation, and it is sufficient to note
its inconsistency with the results al
ready obtained. No more can be said
than that some xv century scribes in
some part of the country, did perhaps
so pronounce. But I cannot think
that these rhymes justify our supposing
an invariable pronunciation of ai, ei, oi,
ui in this manner by any speaker.
There is another MS. Advocates' Li
brary Jac. V. 7, 27, supposed to have
been written in the xv th century, from
which Weber has printed his Sir
Amadas (Ibid. vol. 3), which exhibits
great peculiarities, of which we need
only notice: reyr=rair 7, leyi = let 10,
geyi=ffet 24, &eytt£=debt 37, feyr =
fere 118, greyt = great 156, seyt^set
218, deyd reyd = deed rede 236, speyke
meyte = speak meet 284, etc., shewing a
complete fusion of ei, e. The other pieces
printed by Weber, and all the other
old spelling which I have examined
are free from such fusion. The above
peculiarities are also absent in the
second copy of Sir Amadas printed in :
Ghost-thanks or the Grateful Unburied,
a mythic tale in its oldest European
form, Sir Amadace, a middle North
English metrical Romance of the
xni th century, reprinted from two
texts with an introduction by George
Stephens, Cheapinghaven (i.e. Copen
hagen), 1860, which Mr. Payne has
brought under my notice. With this
explanation, therefore, I allow the text
to stand unaltered, convinced that al
though a few words may have had both
(ai, ee), and a few provincials may
is tolerably regular, and admitting the
correctness of: cuntrey 4898, 5008,
charrey 5096, curreye 5118, tornay
play journay noblay 5212, presents no
other remarkable orthography. But
the Lincoln's Inn MS. is very peculiar,
and if we had to deduce pronunciation
from its rhymes, we should be badly
off indeed. Omitting the false rhymes,
63, 305, 1515, 1708, 3173, etc., the
assonances, the eases in which the first
syllable of a dissyllable rhymes with a
monosyllable as : bridel ride 953, walles
al 1876, foughte doughte 2761, certis
heort 6544, etc., the rhymes of a with
e, o and even i, as: wist cast 716,
fynde thousand 2403, often spelled
thousynde, sixe waxe 6038 ; of e with
»', a, o ; and confining ourselves to the
combinations ei, ai, oi, ui or ey, ay, oy,
uy, we find ei written for e in : leynthe
streynth 788, 7351, nobleys 1373,
eynde 1573, 1912, eleir 2885, steil
3211, speide neide 3441, yeilded 3791,
heynde 4206, yeir 6963, which are
conclusive as to confusion in the scribe's
mind between these sounds. But we
also find ai rhyming with a, e, i, oi ;
ei with ai, e, i, uy ; oi with ai, i ; ui
with e, i, oi. These rhymes are so
curious that many of them may be
cited. AI, A ; saide made 525, 7339,
barbicans mayne 1591, amiraylis talis
1780, Taran, mayn 3247. AI, E:
camelis vitailes 854, \>oneie=debonnair
faire 6732, saide lede 6942, saide
maied=mede? 7327. AI, I: Akaye
Arabye 3399, play dye = deye 3442,
bywryghen sayn 4116, raineth schyn-
eth 6450, high contray 7143. AI, 01 :
y-said anoyed 273, 876, 1287, 1599,
and often, play boy 1730, (boy is ab
solutely written bay 4376), taile spoile
2133, faile Tysoile 2148, palfray boy
3207, pays = peace noise 3373. EI,
AI : chevynteyn mayn 3199, reyne
mayne 7378. EI, E : thede feide 95,
deys = dais nobles 1039, ese deys=dais
1153, kene eyghnen 1317, yeilde sheldis
2067, seye=seen pudre 2179, cortcys
fes=peace 2951, yeld field 2959, steil
wel 3419, keip =*««/> deop 3429 (but:
kepe deop 3477), seide felawrede 6838,
mesteir conseiler 7480. EI, I : nygh
§ 1, No. 3. NORMAN FRENCH El, AI. 453
anomaly is easily explained. The writer began in Norman French,
meaning to mix up English with it, just as Norman French,
English and Latin are intermixed in a haphazard manner in the
Song of the Times, p. 251. In this way he wrote the two first
lines, taking the arrangement in the MS., (which did not rhyme in
the middle) ; but reverting to Norman French in his third line he
threw off a middle rhyme to his first, and then for the sake of
symmetry he made his fourth line have a middle rhyme to his
second, thus producing, if we count the middle rhymes, the some
what singular arrangement : ab cb ab cb. Naturally enough
in adding the next four lines he adopted the more obvious ar
rangement : ab ab ab ab, for the words : eyre fire dire shire,
all rhyme ; l and the words : crey awey Tripolay wey,2 also
rhymed to English ears at least, as (-ai). A question, however,
arises whether the Norman French : crey, Tripolay, ended in (ai)
as well as the English: awey, wey. Of the latter we can at
present feel little doubt, of the former there may be considerable
cause for hesitation. In modern French ei, ai, are in most words
called (EE), and the stanza we have been considering has been relied
upon to establish that ai, ei in English had the sound of (ee), on the
presumption that : defere, faire, Engleterre, feire, were all intended
to rhyme in (ee're).3 If we take the arrangement of the lines in
the MS. itself, there is no room at all for this assumption, because
in fact we have only ten rude Alexandrines, rhyming thus : a a a a
b b b b c c, at their ends, and occasionally, but not essentially,
rhyming their middles. As, however, the other view is strongly
insisted on, it is advisable, without further reference to an isolated
song which can really establish nothing, to enter upon an examina
tion of the probable value of ei, ai, in old Norman, a question so
extensive and so beset with difficulties that it is impossible to
discuss it fully.4
The conclusions to which I have been led by an examination of
all the rhymes in Wace's Roman de Eou,5 and several other Norman
have used (ee) for ei (ei, ai) in some (st'rre, d«'re). The rhyme was there-
words at a very early period precisely fore (-irre) or (-i'rre) in all, or the first
as Hart did in the xvi th century (p. in the French and the second in the
122), the great majority of educated English.
men, and all speakers of the Court 2 Mr. Wright prints way, Mr. Hal-
dialect said (ei) or (ai) where ei, ai tett transcribes wey.
were written, down to the middle or , R has ad ted the pronuncia.
?nd^ ?VYith <TturVnd b.el^ev: tion (ee) for ai in old French, see
ing that the hypothesis of an original ^^.'509, note 1.
(ee) sound, followed by an (ai) pronun- . ,
ciation in the xvith century as dis- * See the Previous remarks> P- 438'
tinctly laid down by Sir T. Smith (p. * Le Roman de Rou et des Dues de
121), which again became (ee) in the Normandie, par Robert "Wace, poete
xvii th, is untenable. normand du xiie siecle, publie pour la
1 Fire has a dative e ; shire ags. scire premiere fois, d'apres les manuscrits
an essential e. The word shire is still de France et Angleterre, avec des notes
pronounced (shiir) by many, supra p. pour servir a 1' intelligence dutexte, par
275, note 3. Gyre, dire, were French Frederic Pluquet, Rouen 1827, 8vo,
(siire, diire) anglicized, perhaps to 2 vols., 16547 verses.
454 NORMAN FRENCH El, AI. CHAP. V.
poems, are that ei, ai, when written were always meant to indicate
the diphthongs (ei, ai) or the dissyllables (e,i) and (a,i), but that
they were occasionally employed, perhaps by a scribal error, for
simple e (e). It also appears tolerably certain that in a small series
of words both (ai) and (e) were pronounced at a very early period,
and that in other cases, by the same sort of habit which at the
present day leads an Englishman to terminate his (ee, 00} in (i,u),
thus (eei, oou), and which led him in the last century to palatalise
k, g into (kj, gj) before (ae, ai), — habits which, it is important to
observe, exist in full force at the present day in Icelandic, the living
representative of the language spoken by the Norsemen before they
acquired Normandy, and therefore probably indicating the tendency
of the pronunciation these would adopt — the Normans introduced
an unhistorical, but really pronounced (i) after e, a, in many words ;
so that this introduced i was not an idle orthographical ornament, but
implied an actual alteration of sound. "Whether the sounds (ei, ai)
were kept as distinct as they now are in modern French conseil,
travail, it would be difficult to determine, but they were certainly
confused in writing, and it is probable that to English ears, which
seem to have long confused the sounds, they sounded the same as
the ordinary English (ai).1 The existence of the sounds (ei, ai) in
vieil, ail and such words, seems indeed to imply a prior (ei, ai) pro
nunciation, because, as we have every reason to suppose that the
palatisation of the I in (Ij ) and even (jh) or its entire absorption in
(i), as (vjei, ai), is comparatively modern, and we know that I had
the contrary tendency to labialisation after the same vowels e, a in
French, compare eux, aux, it seems probable that this palatisation
was generated by a preceding (i) and did not conversely generate
the (i). Supposing these conclusions were correct, an Englishman,
at least, would rhyme: crey awey Tripolay wey, as we have
supposed, in (-ai). The following is a brief statement of some of
the grounds on which these conclusions rest.
Both ai and ei occasionally represent divided vowels and not diph
thongs, in which case the French editors generally write ai, ei, but
it is more convenient to use the ordinary signs a'i, ei with Dr.
1 Modern Englishmen readily hear ei, at are written ei, <e and pro-
all combinations which approach in nounced (eei, aa») with a distinct
sound to their (ai), as (ai). Compare and lengthened primary, and an
p. 123, note 4. Observe the common extremely abbreviated secondary ele-
error (kuirdail) for (ku doei) coup tfaeil. ment. Compare the effect of the similar
See also the various Scotch sounds, p. sound (eei) of southern English long a
290, which Englishmen usually find at Tenby, p. 272, note 3. Also observe
the greatest difficulty in distinguishing. the actual change of long a into (ei) or
When I was recently endeavouring to (eei), as (raeuri dsei) for rainy day,
make a literary English friend appre- among the children of the uneducated
ciate the difference (ei, ai), I entirely classes in London, pointed out to me
failed, and he hdard both sounds as by school-teachers to whom it occa-
(ai). The Dutchle^y =(ei, ai) as I sioned difficulty, see p. 294 and note 2.
heard them (p. 295, note 1), are both The change of (ee) into (ei) and thence
heard as (ai) by Englishmen, and as (ai) is therefore not merely a priori
(ai) by Germans. The modern Ice- likely from Norse habits, but actually
landic diphthongs corresponding to corroborated by existing English uses.
§ 1, No. 3.
NORMAN FRENCH El, AI.
455
Delius.1 These divisions occur even in words which, in modern
times have received the sound of (ee) or (EE), as well as in such
words as: poiz fu ocis en trai'son 5 1,2 et en France mainte envaie
135, guerpi ont toz li plein pai's 529, where the separation still
remains in : trahison, envahir, pays, and the pronunciation has
altered in the last word only.
Aider in the Norman war-cry is always die ;
Franceiz orient : Monjoe. e Normanz : Dex3 die. 4665
The complete: ai'der, occasionally occurs, and this divided form
seems etymologically more ancient than the diphthongal : aider,
which is however more common.* It is worthy of remark that the
diphthongal pronunciation (arder) remained well into the xvith
century, as it is classed with : aymant, hair, as having both vowels
pronounced by Meigret (supra p. 118), and Ramus, 1562, classes:
paiant gaiant aidant (Livet, p. 205). The older pronunciation of
this one word, therefore does not admit of doubt.
Par false e par feinte hdine
Fu faite ceste desaisine. 15670
This word : haine, is now pronounced (een), Feline writes (en),
but: hair is (a,iir) not (eer, air), haissable (a,isabl'). The verb is
now very variable: je hais, tu hais, il hait; nous ha'issons, vous
ha'issez, ils haissent. The old French : hadir, cited by Diez, seems
to imply the greater antiquity of the divided vowels.
1 Maistre Wace's St. Nicholas. Ein
altfranz 6sisch.es Gedicht des zwolften
Jahrhunderts aus Oxforder Hand-
sckriften, herausgegeben von Dr. Nico-
laus Delius, Bonn, 1850, 8vo. pp. 95.
" Eben so unentbehrlich erscheinen
die Trennungspunkte iiber zwei Voka-
len, die sonst, zur Beeintrachtigung des
Verses, fur einen Diphthong gelesen
wiirden, z. B. eu, o'i, u. s. w. Die
Methode franzosischer Editoren im
ersteren Falle eu, blesceure u. s. w. zu
schreiben, ist schwerlich zu rechtfer-
tigen, da ein so betontes e wohl kaum
von dem folgenden Vokal verschluckt
worden ware, wie das in der neuern
Sprache doch geschehen ist ; eu, blessure
u. s. w." Preface, p. xi. Dr. Delius's
reason may admit of dispute. The
proper method is, of course, to follow
the manuscript, and leave the rest to
the reader, but in the present case I
shall use di, e'i, as the object is to point
out such cases to the eye.
2 The simple figure refers to the
verse in the Roman de Rou. The let
ters B, E, refer to Benoit (supra p. 438,
note 2,) and Eustache (Roman d'Eus-
tache le Moine, edited by F. Michel,
Lond. 1834, 8vo).
3 On this extraordinary form Dex
for Deus, Dr. Rapp remarks (Phys. d.
Spr. ii, 86) that the black letter v, x of
the middle ages only differed by a small
tail affixed to the latter, and this he
supposes induced the scribes to abbre
viate the frequent termination us, ux,
that is, vs, vx, as they should have been
written, into x, which meant v with a
subscribed x, and also led them to write
x for v. Modern editors, he complains,
have overlooked this, and hence written
this pseudo x for v, in characters where
the resemblance of form has altogether
disappeared. So that now we find
generally at one time als, els, Jils, at
another ax, ex, Jix, and even where
there was no s, at one time diu, at
another diex, or dieu, which are, Dr.
Rapp thinks, entirely due to errors of
writing or reading. Hence we must
always determine in the printed copies
whether x stands for s, u, or us. To
this abbreviation Dr. Rapp also attri
butes the German proverb, to make
one an x for aw," einem ein X fur
ein U machen," that is, substitute the
false for the true, which he thinks is a
proof that the custom was objected to
even in the middle ages.
* It. aita, Pr. ahia, 0. Fr. aide ai'e,
Fr. aide, Eng. aid, It. aitare, Pr. aidar,
Fr. aider. Donkin's Diez's Rom.
Die. sub ajuto.
456 NORMAN FRENCH El, AI. CHAP. V.
Mult vei'ssiez ....
Homes a terre jambeter,
E chevals resnes trainer. 6737-44
The modern French is (treene). The divided vowels again appear
to be more ancient.1
Ausi cum glaive ist de gayne
U cum lion prent sa rabine. B. vol. i. p. 16.
Here again the modern French is (geen), but the divided vowels are
more ancient.3 For ei.
Emme sa fille fu reine
A lie fu Engleterre encline. 6548
The modern French is (reen), but the g extruded from regina shews
the divided vowels to be the more ancient, and they were more
common in this word in old Norman. Even the form : ro'ine is
found in Wace's Brut.
Grant partie sor la marine
Malgre sa feme la ro'ine T. 43.
Compare also
Tu meisme, dist Eou, as fet ton jugement. 2029
The following examples are curious :
Sire, dist un Visconte, jo vos dirai ja veir,
Cele vile n'estpas legiere a asseir
Par 1'ewe e par li pont povez sovent veir
Chevaliers e serjanz cha dedenz recheveir. 4196
Turna sei pur h cors veir :
Gis tei, dist il, ne te moveir. 5462
En la boisiere volt ve'ir,
Ne sai s' il out de rien espeir. 5688
Here we see a divided : veir, rhyming with an undivided : -eir.
Now the hypothesis that ir was in such a case pronounced as eir,
seems contrary to all possibility or probability. But this might
be simulated by the prefixing of an e, thus making the ordinary :
veir into : veeir, so that in this case we should not so much have
a divided e'i, as an omitted e. This notion is partly sustained by
comparing
A plusors des Baronz a monstre son cunseil ;
Si Ten tindrent trestuit a bon et a.fe'il. 3314
Ki li donouent tel cunseil
Ne li unt pas este/m7. 8483
where the same word feil, L. fidelis, rhyming with the same word
cunseil is at one time spelt feil and at another feeil, which I have
interpreted by a diaeresis. This may however have been only a
scribal accident. Still this insertion of e is similar to the familiar
use of u or eii as the metre seems to require. This explanation
hardly applies to
Normendie prendront e tendront soubs lor peiz
E se voudrent la France partiront entr' eiz, 3633
1 It. traino, Sp. tragin, Pr. trahi, Fr. 2 It. guaina, Fr. gaine, 0. Fr. gaine,
E. train (0. Fr. train), from trahere ; Eou. waine, W. gwain a sheath ; from
vb. It. trainare, Pr. trahinar, Fr. trainer. vagina. Milanese has guadinna, Vene-
The suffix ino is not added to verbs, so tian guazina. Donkin's Diez.
the Ital. and Sp. forms njay have been
borrowed from the Pr. Fr. trahim traim.
Donkin's Diez.
§ 1, No. 3. NORMAN FRENCH El, AT. 457
and it seems more natural to suppose that (e,i) and (ei) were found
sufficient rhymes, when a trouvere was hard pressed. But what
ever explanation is adopted, we must remember that whereas veir
is generally a monosyllable, it is made a dissyllable in these places
for the exigencies of the metre, which could hardly have been done
unless it contained within itself the elements of resolvability, by
containing two vowel sounds usually diphthongizing. This reminds
us of the division of ueine, mayn into ue'ine, mayn for the exigencies
of the music only, and even against the metre, in the Prisoner's
Prayer, p. 432, line 7, and p. 433, line 6, of the music, which cer
tainly could not have been attempted if both vowels had not been
sounded. See also the apparent division of the diphthong in
Chaucer, supra p. 264, and Havelok, infra p. 476. The double
orthography : esmaier, esmaai, the last of which rhymes with at, in :
Guert, dist Heraut, ne t' esmaier,
Dex nos pot bien, s'il volt, aidier. 13015
Guert, dist il, nos anemiz creissent ;
Chevaliers vienent et espeissent,
Mult part en vient, grant poor ai ;
"Unkes maiz tant ne m' esmaai. 13027
is scarcely comprehensible on the supposition that a was not clearly
pronounced.
These quotations seem to establish the existence of ei, ai as diph
thongs, and as divided vowels with the pronunciations (ei, ai) and
(e,i, a,i) and the confusion of ei, ai when ai was an undoubted diph
thong as in aider, compare sentreeident = s'entr'aident, in the Nor
man version of the Proclamation of Henry III, p. 502, 1. 2.
The question then becomes whether this pronunciation was uni
versal, or whether ei, ai were not occasionally pronounced (ee) as
at present.
Now in the first place we must not lose sight of the fact that
several words were spelled indifferently with e or ai.
Odes n'en volt pur li rien/ere,
Orguil respundi e cuntrere. 6612
Oil n'en osa plus nientfere
Dez ke li Dus le rova tere. 7057
Ki a sun cuer runt a cuntraire
Maiz n'en pot il a eel terns faire. 8433
E de la grant destrucion
Ke paen a Dol orent/<tf :
S'il en France venir les lait. 6946
Se il nel fet, a nul jur mais
N'ara trieves de li ne pais. 8453
Mez par li bons clers ki 1'escristrent. 37
Ne mez tant com Ten vait disant. 59
Sul Deus est sachanz e mestre
D'Occean fist eissir e naistre B. vol. i. p. 5
Compare: estre maistre ib. p. 10. If we examine old French,
as distinct from Norman, we shall find the interchange of ai, e con
stant. It is almost impossible to open Roquefort's Dictionnaire at
hazard without finding examples. Exit at this early period, XTT th
or XTTT th century, I have not yet seen the confusion in many words.
In the Roman de Rou, the only final words in -ere for -aire which
458 NORMAN FRENCH El, AI. CHAP. V.
I have noticed are : fere, tere, contrere, and these, so far as I have
observed, do not rhyme with words that are not also spelled with
ai. Such words would, therefore, be probably words of double
sounds, and if we met a rhyme like : faire cuntrere, we should
naturally suppose that the scribe had mistaken in spelling one of
the words. Thus, in the lines just cited, for : fet lait, read fait
lait. This is precisely similar to the double forms in Chaucer :
dye deye, ye eye, etc. (supra p. 284-6.) That the change had taken
place in a large number of words in the xrv th century we see by
such English words as : ese, pees, cler = aise, paix, clair, in
Chaucer, but the double form : ese eyse, shew that the tradition
at least, of the old diphthongal form was not lost in England (p. 265).
In this examination it would be necessary for certainty to revert to
original manuscripts of a known date, for at a late period scribes
must necessarily have confused spellings which had come to be
identical in signification.
The Normans, if they carried with them Norse traditions, as in
terpreted by modern Icelandic,1 into the French pronunciation,
must have had a tendency to palatisation ; they must have been
fond, that is, of prefixing or subjoining i to any other vowel, either
always or occasionally. This is fully borne out in the Eoman de
Hou. Thus, for preceding «': triege 1362, trieves 1320, legiere
1323, aidier 13016, chierte 1571, cunquiere 4677, similarly matiere,
baniere, chief; mangie, eslaissie, E. p. 4, the practice being common.
For a succeeding i we have the frequent termination -aige co-exist
ing with -age, as langage usaige 5217, messaige passaige 10790,
rivaiges damaiges2 127, and: tuit = tout, tons 1074, trestuit =
tres tous 1076, where the change is made to rhyme with : s'enfuit,
muit, deduit, but all the forms : tuit, tut, tot, are found. Now to
this Norman tendency I attribute the addition of an i to a pure e,
as in dei=rfe 3770, creimon 14966, compare cremuz 15049, and such
common forms as: sei mei tei dei mescrei lei porkei 2021-8, meiz
3636, which are all alterations of a Latin e in the direction of pala
talisation, whereas the French forms : soi moi toi etc. = (sue mue
tue) etc. are in the opposite direction of labialisation.3 Compare
also : vezins 186, with : veizin 2292, which seem to show how
Latin i passed through Norman e before it became Norman ei, as a
palatalisation of the e. From insufficient research I have not met
with -tei for -te, answering to the Latin -tas, but Mr. Payne says he
has found in Lymage del Monde, Harl. MS. 4333, dated 1246, all
the forms : pouretei humilitei ueritei, vanitei, vanite, and similar
1 See an account of Icelandic, infra il faut noter que 1'accent Valeriguais
§ 4, No. 2. See also supra p. 454. differe sensiblement de 1'accent can
's In addition to the observations at chais ; a St. Valery on ferme les
the close of the note on p. 120, M. lettres : a devient e, et e devient i.
1' abbe Delalonde, (p. 438, n. 3), says: Je n'ai jamais entendu dire rivaige."
" La pronunciation rivaige, etc., n'existe 3 See supra p. 131, note, col. 1 ; p.
pas dans la Seine-Inferieure, sauf a 138, note, col. 1 ; and p. 187. A lady
St. Valery-en-Caux, ou Ton pourrait informs me that (sue, mue, tue,) etc.,
trouver quelque chose d' analogue : on were the received pronunciations, when
dirait plutot a St. Valery rivege : mais she was in French Canada.
$ 1, No. 3. NORMAN FRENCH El, AI. 459
varieties in the past participle. I am inclined to class these forms
with the others as Norman palatalisations, but of less frequent
occurrence than those with which we are so familiar, and confined
to particular writers and localities.
This discussion is necessarily left in a very incomplete form, and
it is evident that lengthy researches would be necessary to arrive at
a satisfactory conclusion. Nevertheless, it seems to me, that a high
degree of probability has been attained for the theory that when the
scribe wrote ei, ai he meant (ei, ai), or (eei, aai).1 The true English
diphthongs were derived from the Saxon, eg, ag, ceg, and passed
through (ejh, ajh, sejh) most probably, to become finally fused into
(ai). They do not in any respect depend upon the Norman, and
hence, from the rhyming of : awey wey, both from ags. weg, and
hence both necessarily (wai), with the Norman: crei Tripolay, in
the passage which has led to this discussion, (supra p. 449), we
should conclude that the Anglo-Normans said (-ai) rather than allow
the unproved theory that the Anglo-Normans of the xrn th century
called : crei Tripolay (kree Tripolee), to establish by a single ex
ample the English pronunciation of : awey wey, as (awee- wee), in
contradiction to the evidence that the diphthongal (awai' wai) were
recognised by Dr. Gill as late as 1621, and still exist dialectically.
Such a conclusion would be similar to the theory which, starting
from modern use, makes old English long i = (ai), finds the same
sound in Anglosaxon, and even imagines that the old Norman was
pronounced so in England, so that the rhymes : eyre fire dire shire
of our song (p. 449) should be : (sair fair dair shair), an hypothesis
which our examination of long * in the xrv th century (pp. 270-297)
must render extremely improbable.2
1 Mr. Joseph Payne, as a conse- ing the northern habit of (ee) to have
quence of his researches on Norman co-existed from, at least, the beginning
orthography, etc. (supra p. 438, note of the xvi th century in Scotland, supra
1), dissents from the conclusions in the p. 410, note 3, and perhaps at a still
text respecting the Norman value of earlier period in some districts of Eng-
ei, ai, which he believes to have always land, probably north-midland, supra p.
had the sound (ee), and he considers 452, note, col. 2, although even there it
that the French rhymes cited supra p. is unlikely that the forms (ei, ai) had
264 would tend to prove that Chaucer invariably the sound of (ee). See also
also pronounced his ei, ai as (ee). So infra p. 473, note 1. I much regret
far as I understood, he considers that that owing to Mr. Payne's researches
ei, ai had the same sound (ee) from not being yet (April, 1869) in type,
the earliest times in England, but I am unable to examine the proofs
that ai, ei had the sound (ai) in the which he has adduced, but no one can
English of the xvi th century, as hereafter properly appreciate the evi-
well as that of (ee) which Hart accepts dence on which a decision has to be
as the only sound, supra p. 122. The taken, without thoroughly examining
reader is referred to pp. 118-124, what he has SQ carefully and con-
p. 238, pp. 263-266, to the rhyme ay, scientiously adduced.
mei=English aye, Latin mei, p. 447, 2 Nevertheless as M. Le Hericher
and to the use of aj^, 633 in Orrmin, has advanced an opinion that the pro-
infra p. 489, as well as to the preceding nunciation ai (ai) for long i was by no
investigation, for the reasons which lead means unknown to the old Norman
me to the conclusion that ei, ai were (ei, language, and has stated that it is even
ai), or simply (ai) from the earliest times known in the modern Norman dialect,
to the end of the xvi th century, allow- it is necessary to consider what he has
460
NORMAN FRENCH El, A I.
CHAP. V.
Our knowledge of English pronunciation in the xm th and xiv th
centuries, is now so much more certain than any knowledge which
advanced. The following are the words
of his assertion, Histoire et Glossaire
du Normand de 1' Anglais, etc., i. 27,
"On retrouve en Normandie V I
ouvert des Anglais, c'est-a-dire Ai'.
Dans la Hague on dit : " II est en
praison;" c'est-a-dire prison, "ilest
jolai," c'est-a-dire joli. Ce son d'ail-
leurs n'etait pas etranger an vieux
normand, comme le prouve ce vers de
"Wace:
Eve est isle, Zornee (thorn) est es-
paine (epine)
Soit rain, soit arbre, soit raine.
Les paysans de Moli&re, c'est-a-dire de
l'Ile-de-France, prononcent quelquefois
ainsi ; voyez dans 1'acte II de Dom
Juan : ' Chagraine, Chopaine.' Mais
les exemples sont assez nombreux en
vieux normand ; outre celui de Wace
nous pouvous en citer un de Beneois :
Noise, meslee n'ataine,
Gardez que chascun en devine.
Nous pouvons encore en citer un mo-
derne, tire d'une chanson patoise, sur
le nom propre Edeline :
Vous y v'la done, monsieur Edlaine.
(Condoleance hagtiaise, par Edeline.)
Le paysan bas-normand rentre dans
la prononciation anglaise de 1'Y final,
par exemple To sanctify, lorsqu'il
dit " Tu betifai'es," tu dis ou fais
des betises; et il prononce Envaie,
envie, comme 1' Anglais prononce Vie,
apocope du mot normand. Du reste,
c'est aussi la prononciation de Picardie,
ou le mot " Arnould daine" est devenu
celebre. Le normand a traduit en ei
l'I du latin, que le franc, ais a traduit
enot: Deit (digitus), Freid (frigidus),
Peil (pilus), Neir (niger), Peis (pisus),
Set (sitis). C'est ainsi que la forme
primitive Franceis, Angleis, Daneis re-
presente Franci, Angli, Dani." We
have seen the uncritical manner in
which this author cites Palsgrave,
supra p. 120, note, making him assert
that in the French of his time A was
pronounced as the modern French a, ai,
whereas Palsgrave gives a as the gene
ral sound, and a'i not ai, that is (ai)
not (BE), as a sound of a in a very
limited class of words. I therefore
considered it necessary to check the
assertions in the above quotation as
well as I could. My friend Mr. W.
Babington, being resident at Havre
when this passage came under my con
sideration, obligingly made inquiries
for me of the vicars of Notre Dame at
Havre, Messrs. Herval and Le Due,
and of Norman gentlemen from the
different departments of Seine In-
ferieure, Calvados, Orne and Eure, but
'could find no trace of this pronuncia
tion of long f as ai (ai). M. 1' abbe
Delalonde (supra, p. 438 n. 3) whom I
also consulted on this point, writes to
me : " I change en a'i est tout a fait
Stranger a notre contree." But re
specting "Arnould daine," he says:
" Le celebre proverbe est totalement
inconnu chez nous ; il signifie bien :
Arnould dine, .... quant a la ma-
niere de prononcer le mot diner, je le
representerais plutot ainsi : deinner, et
cette prononciation est fort repandue
parmi les paysans." This probably
means (dEEne). As, however, none of
these inquiries had extended to the
precise district pointed out by M. Le
Hericher as that in which a'i was said
for long f, viz. la Hague, the penin
sula containing Cherbourg, I wrote to
M. Totain, the cure of Beaumont, the
nearest town to Cape de la Hague, and
he has fav oured me with the following
reply : " Etranger au pays de la Hague
que je n'habite que depuis quelques
annees, je ne suis pas autant au courant
que beaucoup d'autres de la prononcia
tion des habitans. J'ai cependant in-
terroge quelques personnes de la localite"
que j'habite, et elles m'ont affirme que,
dans le canton de Beaumont, nulle
part on ne dit : praison pour prison, ni
jolai pour joli ; ni : tu betifdies pour
betifies. On dit : il est parti en pri
son ; il est j61i — tu dis ou tu fais des
betises. On ne dit pas non plus envaie
pour envie." In a subsequent com
munication, M. Totain says : " Mpn
Maire, M. Le Taillis, Docteur m&lecin,
originaire de Montebourg," a small
town fifteen miles S.S.E. of Cherbourg
on the same peninsula, "m'a affirme
que la prononciation : il est jolai, il
est en praison, tu betifais, qui n'est
pas usite dans la Hague, Test tres
ge'neralement parmi les habitants de
Montebourg et des environs." (supra
p. 297, note.) After this examination
we may feel certain that the pronun
ciation of long » as (ai) adduced by M.
§ 1. No. 3.
NORMAN FRENCH El, AI.
461
we possess of the old Norman pronunciation, that, as it is in general
derived from independent sources, we are rather justified in revers
ing the process of investigation and using rhymes of English and
Le Hericher is a remarkably circum
scribed local pronunciation of no his
torical value, although it has the pho
netic importance of shewing that the
change of (ii) to (ai) is not confined
to England, Germany, and Holland,
but has an analogue, confined indeed
to a very small district, but still ex
istent in Normandy. We proceed then
at once to what bears more directly on
our present investigation, an examina
tion of the evidence on which he attri
butes this pronunciation to the old
Norman of the xn th century. M. Le
Hericher does not give the reference
to Wace and it was not without con
siderable difficulty that I discovered
the passage he apparently meant to
cite in Roman de Rou, vol. ii, p. 105,
v. 10659. Wace is explaining the
meaning of the English word Zonee as
he writes it, that is, Thorney, Thorn
island, on which Westminster Abbey
was built, and says — not what M. Le
Hericher has written, but —
Ee est isle, zon est espine,
Seit rainz, seit arbre, seit racine.
All trace of an di = (ai) sound here dis
appears. The next passage cited from
Beneois (Benoit ?) again without any
reference, I have been unable to verify,
but supposing that it is correctly cited
— a very hazardous supposition, after
the above misquotation — the metre re
quires the separation of the syllables
a-ta-i-ne, and the rhyme becomes re
gular. Roquefort gives the verb under
the forms : atainer, ataigner, atayner,
athir, aimer = nuire, referring to the
low Breton atayna, and the substantive
in the forms : atahin, ataine, atainement,
atayne, atenes, athaine, athine, atie,
atine, attaine, attine =• haine. The word
was evidently pronounced in a variety
of ways, and it is not an example which
establishes anything. From M. Le
Hericher's assertion with which he in
troduces this instance, that there are
"numerous" examples of the rhyming
of ai with i in old Norman, it would
seem that he had confused the diph
thong (ai) with the divided vowels (a,
i), and that when, as is quite right,
proper, and consistent, (a,i) rhymes
with (i), he concluded that (ai) rhymes
with (i), which is perfectly different.
Certainly no one who can confuse the
two cases, is competent to make use of
rhymes to determine pronunciation.
We may therefore dismiss M. Le Heri
cher's assertion that the pronunciation
ai (ai) for long i was not unknown to
the old Normand, as perfectly destitute
of foundation, neither of his examples
bearing in the least upon it, and both
discrediting his method of research.
My own examination of all the rhymes
in Wace's Roman de Rou has not pro
duced a single instance of this mon
strosity. In the modern example from
La Hague, as the author writes Edlaine
and not Edlaine, this does not seem to
be a case in point, but appears to refer
to some other dialectic tendency similar
to that cited by M. Delalonde of deinner
for diner. I have not been able to see
or hear of a copy of the poem Condo-
Uance Haguaise cited by M. Le Heri
cher . Respecting the two words cited
from Don Juan, we must remember that
Moliere lived in the xvuth century,
hence his ai, not di, should mean
(ee). There are many curious spellings
in Le Festin de Pierre, Act 2, sc. 1, as ai
for oi and conversely, ar for er, i for
u, but perhaps no cases of ai for t except
those cited : " Iglia que tu me cha-
graines V esprit, franchement." "Je
m'en vais boire chopaine pour me re-
bouter taut soit peu de la fatigue que
j'aie cue." The esprit, fatigue shew
that there was no general change. M.
Totain says in reference to words in
-ine, as " poitrine, chagrine, vermine,
chopine, etc., nos paysans les pronon-
cent generalement comme s'il y avait :
ene ou aine. Ainsi ils disent ; Viens
bere une chopene ou une chopaine,
c'est-a-dire ; Viens boire une chopine."
This confirms the above view of Edlaine.
After this examination it would be un
safe to build upon M. Le Hericher's ac
count of Norman pronunciation, which
begins with an assertion very far from
being borne out by his subsequent re
marks, even supposing them correct :
" Quand la prononciation normande
n'existera plus, on pourra la retrouver
presque tout entifere, dans la prononcia
tion anglaise." — Credat Judceus !
462 NORMAN AND ENGLISH RHYMES. CHAP. V.
Norman to elicit the English pronunciation of Norman. Of course
it is necessary to be sure that apparent rhymes are meant to be
such, and to exclude assonances when consonants are to be deter
mined, and not to deduce anything from single instances, which
may be only scribal errors. For example the passage last cited
(p. 449) could not be used to deduce the pronunciation of any of the
Norman words, except : tere, sarmoun, which certainly rhyme with :
were, adoun, in the last stanza, and which must therefore have been
called (tee're, sarmuurr), an important conclusion as respects the
last word, as it excludes the idea of the English having heard any
approach to the modern French nasality in the last word. It is
evident that in the former part of the stanza the Norman words
may rhyme with Norman and the English with English throughout,
as shewn by the italics for the Norman in : defere sovent, faire
shent, Engletere gent, faire parlement ; eyre crey, fire awey, dire
Tripolay, shire wey, and hence no information would result. The
construction of ballads is so loose that we have really no right to
assume anything else, if we take the middle rhymes into account.
The following lines are curious (Pol. Songs, p. 49, from Harl.
MS. 978, undoubtedly of the xinth century, supra p. 420, n. 1).
Competenter per Robert, robbur1 designator :
Et per Riehard riche hard congrue notatur ;
Gilebert non sine re gilur appellatur ;
Gefrei, si rem tangimus, iujofrai commutator.
The consonants must here not be pressed too hard, and we cannot
be certain that Robert was pronounced Rober as at present. The
Gilebert, gilur = Gilbert guiler, shew the identity of Norman and
English i long, guaranteed as (ii, ii) by the present and perhaps
ancient short vowel in the first syllable of Gilbert ; and Gefrei, jo
frai = je ferai, is useful in assigning the pronunciation of Geoffrey
as (Dzhef'rai'). But (Dzhef'ree*) must have also been in use, see
p. 498. There is scarcely anything else which is useful in the
Pol. Songs, but the following may be noted, the French words
being italicised as before : pas was p. 189, De be p. 191, Boloyne
moyne assoygne loyne Coloyne Sesoyne p. 191, Dee contree p. 216,
eglise wise p. 251, and the Latin: custodi mody p. 251.
There are three poems from Univ. Camb. MS. Gg. 4, 27, in which
many French rhymes occur.2 This MS., from which also the Chaucer
Society are printing the Canterbury Tales, is supposed to belong to
the first half of the xv th century, but evidently cannot belong to a
Southern locality on account of its treatment of the final e.3 Although
1 In the spelling robbur, gilur the u 3 See an interesting account of this
stands for e as usual ; the English MS. and its numerous peculiarities,
reader should not think of such a sound prefixed to the Chaucer Society's re-
as (a) or (a). print. It may he compared with
Audelay (supra p. 450, note 2), in the
2 These were printed 11 July 1864 interchange of o with a, e, u, the use of
for private circulation by Rev. H. any for any, the frequent use of e for *',
Bradshaw, of King's College, Cam- the neglect of final e, and in many
hridge, to whose kindness I am in- other points, so that its authority on
dehted for the copies from which I questions of Southern pronunciation is
quote. very slight.
§ 1, No. 3. NORMAN AND ENGLISH RHYMES. 463
these rhymes do not properly belong to the period of this chapter,
this seems the most appropriate place for their consideration. The
first stanzas of the poems are as follows :
I. DE AMICO AD AMICAM.
1. A celuy qui pluys eyme en Mounde
Of alle tho that I haue founde
Carissima
Saluj od treye amour
With grace ioye and alle honour
Dulcissima
2. Sachej bien pleysant et beele
That I am ryjt in good heele
Laus cristo
Et moun amour done vous ay
And also thynowene nyjt and day
In cisto
II. RESPONCIO
1. A soun treschere et special
Fer and ner and oueral
In mundo
Que soy ou salt} et gre
"With mouth word and herte fre
locundo
2. leo vous sanj debat
That je wolde of myn stat
Audire
Sertefyes a vous ieo say
I wil In tyme whan I may
Venyre
III. [THE SONGS OF THE BIRDS]
1. In may whan euery herte is lyjt
And flourys frosschely sprede and sprynge
And Phebus with hise bemys bryjte
Was in the bole so cler schynynge
That sesyn in a morwenynge
Myn sor for syghte to don socour
With inne a wode was myn walkynge
Pur moy ouhter hors de dolour
2. And in an erber sote and grene
That benchede was with clourys newe
A doun I sat me to bemene
For verray seyk ful pale of hewe
And say be syde aturtil trewe
For leue gan syngyn of hire fere
In frensch ho so the roundele knewe
Amour me fait souent pensere.
The following arrangement of these rhymes will shew their
bearing. The French words are in Italics, the references to the
number of the poem, as above, and the line, explanations in
brackets :
A. debat senbat [s'en bat] iii 22, debat E. le [le, broad] me i 52, le the ii 28 —
stat ii 7 — special oueral ii 1 — alias pete [pite] me ii 40, verite the i. 23,
was ii 31 — toward yard [garde] i 70 charitebe i 67, voluntethe [thee] i 37,
AI. ay [ai] day i 10, serray [serai] ii 46— gre [gre] fre [free] ii 4, tre-
day ii 13, say [sais] may ii 10 same [tres aime] be i 55, (resume the
464
NORMAN AND ENGLISH RHYMES.
CHAP. V.
stedefastly [another faulty northern
or xv th century rhyme] ii 52 —
fere [=ryr = fire for this rhyme,
see p. 272] aymyer iii 38, quoer
[cceur] fyr [evidently taken as (keer,
feer), see last case] i 40, entyre de-
parter [compare the last case but
one] iii 118 — dy\ [disj pris i 31 —
tryst [triste] ny;t [night, see re
marks below] i 19.
0. a cestys ay maunde de vous ore [or ?]
more ii 43, note rote i 46, sort mort
iii 62.
OU. verteuous ioyous [joyeux] iii 86,
amour flour ii 22, amour honour i 4,
socour dolour [douleur] iii 6.
NASALS. — penaunce languis&aunce iii
70 — dolent schent ii 19, entendement
entent i 58, greuowement schent ii
37 — seyn [sain] serteyn i 49 —
— mounde [monde] founde i 1.
[thee] i 13, done [donne] the i 61,
en presone [emprisonne] sle [slay, as
often in Chaucer] i 34 — fere [com
panion] pensere [penser] iii I4,manere
were ii 34, chere pere [peer] i 43,
et pur ceo leo vous creser [?] daunger
i 28,— leal [loyal] fel [feel] i 16, beele
[belle] heele [health] i 7.
El. weye soye [sois] iii 46, espeye
[epee, should be espie, the e was a
subsequent insertion] deye [should
be dye as often in Chaucer, p. 284]
122
ETJ. rewe adewe iii 94, crew deceu iii 54
I. vye [vie] curteysye ii 49, pry [prie]
curteysy [should be curteysye as in
the last case] i 64, ermony [should
be harmonye] oublye iii 30, maladye
sikyrlye [should be sikyrty, but
then the rhyme is faulty in a
northern or late xv th century man
ner] ii 16, ieo vous pry [for prye]
So far as these rhymes establish anything they go to confirm our
former conclusions in every respect, and to shew an absence of
nasality in the English pronunciation of French in the xv th century,
as we shall find again in the xvr th, Chap. VIII, § 3. The rhyme :
tryst ny^t, is very remarkable. It cannot be supposed either that
j was in such a position as ny^t ever pronounced as s, although we
find dy] = dis i 31 in the French; nor on the other hand can we
suppose that s was omitted in tryst and j in ny$t, producing the
rhyme: (triit, niit,) because s is still pronounced in this French
word. Hence we are compelled to assume an assonance (trist,
niyfcht), which a clumsy poet found quite near enough to satisfy his
ear. Mr. Lumby however entertains a different opinion. In his
edition of King Horn, infra p. 480, n. 1, from this same Cambridge
MS. Gg. 4, 27, 2, he observes on the forms, mifte = mijte 10,
dofter = dojter 249, rhyming with Jn^te, and rift = rijt in
line 663 of Flori] in the same MS., which line also contains no jt,
with j and not f : " This interchange," he says, " occurs so often in
earlv MSS. that it is a conclusive proof of a similarity in sound be
tween the letters," and adds that " in several copies of Piers Plow
man soure occurs for pure" l and refers to Rcl. Ant. i, 48, for a poem
where this substitution occurs throughout. This poem, The Five Joys
of the Virgin, is from Trin. CoU. MS. B 14, 39,2 which Mr. T. Wright
1 Mr. Skeat knows only of one copy,
MS. Cotton Vesp. B. xvi, where there
are several, but not many, examples,
and the spelling is altogether singular.
2 Some account of this MS. is given
in Mr. Albert Way's Preface to the
Promptorium Parvulorum, p. Ixxii,
under the heading "Femina." This
MS., I am informed by Mr. Aldis
Wright, the librarian of Trinity Col
lege, disappeared from that library
between 1853 and 1859, and as no one
had taken it out on bond in that inter
val, it must have been appropriated.
There are notices of it in Hickes, The
saurus i, 144, 154, and its disappearance
is a serious loss to Early English phi
lology. The poem of the Five Joys
is reprinted in Golbeck and Miitz-
ner's Sprachproben p. 51, but these
editors have taken the liberty of replac
ing -ft by -ht throughout.
§ 1, No. 3.
NORMAN AND ENGLISH RHYMES.
465
assigns to the first half of the xni th century, a conclusion at
variance with the orthography thou which is invariable and occurs
frequently, and wid-oute. The only other test word is ure, which
has the xrri th century form, so that the close of the xin th century
is the time indicated, as for Havelok. The words containing f for j
in this poem are : brift mift, lifte rifte, mifte, drift rift, mifte
brifte, brift. This same poem contains some other curious ortho
graphies as : sue [such], seal, sculde, scenq. It omits the guttural
altogether in : broutest [broughtest], slo [slew]. It apparently
confuses v with ]> in
The thridde dai he ros to live ;
Levedi, ofte were thou blive [blij?e ?] 1
Ac never so thou were tho.
Levedi, for then ilke sive [sij?e ?]
That tou were of thi sone bhve [blij?e ?]
Al mi sunnes thou do me fro !
In the last stanza we have : beue newe, printed, meaning ap
parently : bene newe, which would be an assonance, and is the
reading adopted by Matzner.
Levedi, tuet thou me mi bene
For the joie that ever is newe,
Thou let me never be furlorn.
These peculiarities render this text not particularly useful for our
purpose, and inasmuch as j was used for both 2 and 5, some inac
curate scribes may have considered that f , which was also certainly
(z) at times, might be used for 5. The only passage I have yet met
in which j standing for 5 has apparently the sound (s), is this very
suspicious couplet of a poem full of bad spelling (i 19, supra p. 463) :
Jeo suy pour toy dolant et tryst
Ther me peynyst bothe day and nyjt
Amore,
and it would be unwise to found a theory upon a single instance of
such small authority. In the first passage of King Horn, the
parallel MSS. in Mr. Lumby's preface, p. vi, give myhte,
m i c t e ; and m i j t e occurs two line above in his own text.
These rhymes of Norman and English are rather to be treated as
jokes than as serious attempts to determine the Norman pronun
ciation. They may be classed with Hood's description of an Eng
lishman's difficulties in France :
Chaises stand for chairs,
They christen letters Billies,
They call their mothers mares,
And all their daughters fillies ;
Strange it was to hear,
I'll tell you what's a good 'un,
They call their leather queer,
And half their shoes are wooden.
1 Blive means quickly, which will
not make sense here. The rhyme here
then sinks into an assonance, which
even more resembles a rhyme than :
For wine I reel'd about
To show my meaning fully,
And made a pair of horns
To ask for " beef and bully."
Then their cash was strange,
It bored me every minute.
How here's a hog to change,
How many sows are in it !
Comic Annual, 1831, p. 82-
line biliue stighe (Prisoner's Prayer
27), because (f, th) and therefore (v,
dh) are more readily confounded than
(v, #h) ; we may suppose bii\e to have
30
466 GENESIS AND EXODUS XTII TH CENTURY. CHAP. V
Moore's Fudge Family in Paris, shews : joy Hoi, St. Denis penny,
swear is Very's, throat papillote, fond Fronde, cracker fiacre, Natties
pdte"s, affiches wish, Russes use, mon Prince sense, jolie Dolly,
icrevis&es bliss, coach poche. In Byron we find : true is petits puits
(Juan, 15, 68) eprouveuse muse (ib. 9, 84), Vauban hang slang (ib.
5, 11), d VAllemande understand hand (ib. 15, 66), French Per-
venche 14, 75. These modern instances should teach us not to ride
our old examples too hard, and certainly not to draw conclusions
from a few cases.
4. THE STORY OF GENESIS AND EXODUS, cmcX A.D. 1290.
Mr. Richard Morris attributes the composition of the rhymed
account of GENESIS AND EXODTJS contained in a MS. in Corpus Christi
College, Cambridge, to about A.D. 1250, but the actual writing of
the MS. to nearly as late as 1300,1 so that it was "the work of a
scribe to whom the language was more or less archaic." The
dialect he considers, together with that of the Bestiary (supra,
p. 439), and the Orrmulum (infra, p. 486) to be East Midland.
This poem being well known to all the members of the Early
English Text Society, I have examined the rhymes to obtain indi
cations of the pronunciation, and shall refer to them by the number
of the lines in which they occur.
Assonances are not uncommon, but the principal are those in
which an, corresponds to am, as: 'San nam 481, nam canahan 725,
abram leman 781, abram iurdan 805, abram man 909, bigan abram
921, abraham 'San 1189, nam laban 1653. Occasionally in im,
caym kin 543, elim sin 3307; on om, on-on horn 2199; un um,
cumen munen 1621. Probably : gate quake 1054 is an error of the
scribe for: gate quate. Joseph swep 2085, hond wrong 2063,
sokoth pharaofh 3209, are single cases, but oo occurs more fre
quently : fot oc 2497, oc mod 3923, nurS hoc 3603. Altogether
false rhymes are rare, and are probably scribal errors : agen under-
gon 1159, drog nuge 1327, get bigat 2277, 'Sor ger 2417, specande
lockende 2821, moysen man 3109, eliazar or 4091. In: numen
comen 343, broken luken 361, 3779, this is almost certainly the
case, and in : swem greim 391, which would otherwise be an
example of e, ei rhyming, the second word should be grem or grim.
The rhyme i, e, is normal, as in Chaucer, (supra p. 272) : IrSer
ne'Ser 369, effraym hem 2151, wliten eten 2289, abiden deden
2483, mide dede 2963, and probably implies that i = (ii, t). Oc-
been called, (bliidlre), at present both ' The story of Genesis and Exodus,
(blaidh, blaith) are heard. Matzner an Early English Song, about 1250,
reads blithe, sithe, saying : " Wir now first edited [for the Early English
schreiben aier blithe fur blive, und Text Society] from a unique MS. in
sithe fur she ; da sonst die Stelle un- the library of Corpus Christi College,
erklarbar bleibt. Dadurch tritt in live Cambridge, by Richard Morris, Lon-
die Assonanz an die Stelle des Reims. don, 8vo. pp. xl. 224 ; A.D. 1865.
Dass blive = bilife, beliue, quickly, nicht
geduldet werden. knnn, ist selbstver-
gtandlich."
I 1, No. 4. GENESIS AND EXODTJS XIII TH CENTURY. 467
casionally an e final seems omitted, or added by mistake, as : song
amonge 699, child milde 985, compare: childe mild 1305. In
many instances -e, and -en rhyme, where the editor has apparently
changed -e into en, though in some cases it would seem more
correct to change -en into -e.
As regards u, it had certainly generally the pronunciation (uu),
and those rare cases in which it is replaced by ou, may be attributed
to the more modern habits of the scribe, as the use of ou for (uu)
seems to have commenced about the close of the xinth century.
Thus we find : run = speech, circumcicioun 991, town dun =
down 2739, but: tun dun 713, teremuth = Pharaoh's daughter's
name, out 2615. But the Hebrew: man hu? nu 3329, alluding
to Ex. xvi, 15 (man HUU?), what is this?, the question asked
when the manna was first seen, as clearly points to the use of u for
(uu) as the cuccu of the Cuckoo Song. The use of u for (yy, y),
probably called (ii, i, e) is rare, but we find untuderi=. barren, 964.
That the unaccented syllables were occasionally pronounced in a
slovenly manner, we collect from the rhyme : euenehe uone 331.
Diphthongal combinations are altogether rare.
Ma, occurs, but rhymes with e, and may be always a scribal error :
forbead dead 311, opened dead 387, red dead 401, bead dead 1059,
ear Sear = dear? 1089, forked dead 1329, dead red 2513. Pro
bably pronounced (ee') or (ee, e) in all cases.
Oa rhymes always with a, and may have been (aa~) : moal =
speech natural 81, woa = woe eua = Eve 237, gomorra Soa = Sa
839, oba woa = woe 879, salmona Soa 3893, fasga doa = Sa 4129.
Ai, ei rhyme together, and must have both been (ai) : ay day 87,
wei dai 1429, grei awei 1723, dai awei 2305, day wey 2721, dai
mai 2747. In : awei deai 861, the last word is a mere scribal error
for dai.
The guttural g is occasionally omitted, as : ru esau 1539, where
ru = rough. Sometimes it is merely changed into w, probably in
dicating (wh) or (gwh) : noght sowt 2869. We also find initial
gh, in ghe = she, 237, 337, 339, but ge = she 1024 possibly a
remnant of (#h), though (j) seems to have been the sound intended.
This examination confirms our previous conclusions as to the pro
nunciation of the xm th century.
The following is an attempt to convey a notion of how the poem
may have been read. The text is according to the MS., the pro
nunciation introduces some conjectural emendations, without which
it would have been impossible to read the text.1
1 In one or two points I differ from there about as in : ftor buten noe long
Mr. Morris, particularly in the last line fwing he dreg 566, .vii. mone^S ftor-
but four, where he takes buten hunte = buten he ben 3625, hunte becomes the
"without search, or hunting, without infinite mood, and the construction is
delay," but by restoring ic in the pre- ic sal hunte ftor- buten, I shall hunt
ceding line, wanted for the metre and there about, I shall endeavour to ac-
the sense, and taking "Sor buten to mean complish it.
468
GENESIS AND EXODUS XIII TH CENTURY. CHAP. V.
Genesis and Exodus, 269-318.
"Wifdom 'Se made ilc 'Sing of
nogt,
Qwuat-fo-eiwe on henone or her
if wrogt.
Ligber he fridde a dere frud,
And he wurSe in him-feluen
prud,
An wi'S 'Sat pn'dehim wex a ny^,
'Sat iwel welded al his ITS ;
^5o ne migte he non louml
'Shauen,
ftat him fulde 'Shinge grauen :
Min fligt, he seide, ic wile up-
taken
Min fete norS on heuene maken,
And 'Sor ic wile fitten and fen
Al 'Se 'Shinges 'Se in werde ben,
Twen henone hil and helle dik,
And ben min louerd geuelic.
fto wurS he drake 'Sat ear was
knigt,
'So wurft he mire 'Sat ear was ligt,
And eumlc on 'Sat helden wid
him,
'So warden mire, and fwart, and
dim,
And fellen ut of heuones ligt,
In to 'Sis middil walknes nigt ;
Conjectured Pronunciation.
Wiis'doom dhe maad ilk thiq of
nokht,
Kwhat-s-eer on nevn- or neer
is rwokht.
Likhtbeer He arid an deere
sruud,
And He wurth in mmsel'ven
pruud,
And with dhat priid -im weks
a niidh
Dhat ii'vel weldeth al -is siidh,
Dhoo nee mikht -ee noon loverd
thaa'ven
Dhat nim suld [al'e] thiq'e
thraa'ven :
Miin flikht, ne said, ic wil up
taa'ken,
Miin see'te north on nevne
maa-ken,
And dhoor ic wiil'e sit*n- and
seen.
Al dhe thiq-es dhee -n werld'e
been,
Tween nevne nil and nel'e diik,
And been miin loverd gee'veliik,
Dhoo wurdh -e draak'e dhat eer
was knikht,
Dhoo wurdh -e mirk dhat eer
was likht,
And everilk oon dhat held'en
with nim
Dhoo wurdb/en mirk and swart
and dim,
And fel-en uut of nevnes likht,
Intoo1 dhis mid'il walk-nes nikht;
Translation.
Wisdom then made each thing of
nought,
Whatsoever in heaven or here is
wrought.
Light-bear [Lucifer] he [God] clothed
in precious clothing,
And he became in himself proud,
And with that pride in-him waxed an
envy
That ill ruleth all his path.
Then not might he no lord endure,
That for-him should [all] things control.
My flight, he said, I will up-take,
My seat north in heaven make,
And there I will sit and see,
All the things that in the world be,
Between heaven's hil and hell's ditch,
And be to-my lord even-like.
Then became he dragon that ere was
knight,
Then became he mirky that ere was
light,
And every one that held with him
Then became mirky, and black, and dim,
And fell out of heaven's light,
In to this middle welkin's night,
§ 1, No. 4. GENESIS AND EXODUS XIII TH CENTURY.
469
Genesis and Exodus.
And get ne ku'Se lie nogt blinne
for to don an o'Ser finne.
Eften he sag in paradif
Adam and cue in mike pnf,
Newelike he was of erSe wrogt,
And to 'Sat mine bliffe brogt ;
'Sowgte 'Sis qwead, hu ma it hen,
Adam hen king and cue qwuen
Of alle 'Se 'Singe \n werlde hen.
Hu mai it hauen, hu mai it fen,
Of fif, of fugel, of wrim, of der,
Of alle 'Shinge 'Se wunen her,
Euerilc 'Shing haued he geue
name,
Me to forge, fca'Se, and fame ;
for adaw ful 'Sus, and his wif,
In blifle 'Sus leden lefteful Hf ;
for alle 'So, 'Se of hem fule cumen,
fulen ermor \n blifTe wunen,
And we 'Se hen fro heuene
driuen,
fulen 'Suffe one in forwe liuen ;
Get ic wene I can a red,
'Sat hem fal hringen iwel fped ;
Conjectured Pronunciation.
And Jet ne kuudh'e nee nokht
hlin'e
for to doon an oodh-er sure.
Eest'en He saagh in paa'radiis
Aa'dam and Eev in mik'e priis,
Neu-liik' -e was of erth'e rwokht,
And too dhat mirie hlis-e hrokht,
Thoukht'e dhis kweed, HUU mai
it heen,
Aa'dam heen kiq and Ee've
kt^een,
Of al-e thiq-e dhee -n werld-e
heen,
Huu mai ic naan, HUU mai ic
seen.
Of fis, of fuugh-el, of winn, of
deer,
Of al-e thiq-e dhee wuun'en neer,
Eer'ilk' thiq navd -e geeve
naa-me,
Mee to sorgh'e, scaadh and
saa-me.
Por Aa'dam sal dhus, and ms
wiif
In hlis'e leed'en les'teful liif ;
For alle dhee -f nem sul'e kuu--
men
Sul'en eermoor* in hlis'e wuu--
nen,
And wee dhe heen froo nevne
drii'ven,
Sul'en dhus oon in sorgh-e lii'ven,
Jet ik ween i kan a reed
Dhat nem sal briq-en ii-vel speed.
Translation.
And yet not could he not cease
For to do another sin.
Eastwards he saw in paradise,
Adam and Eve in much honour,
Newly he was of earth wrought,
And to that merry hliss brought.
Thought this evil-one, how may it be,.
Adam be king and Eve queen
Of all things that in world be.
How may I have, how may I see !
Of fish, of fowl, of worm, of beast,
Of all things that dwell here,
To-every thing has he given name,
For my sorrow, scatHe and shame.
For Adam shall thus and his wife
In bliss lead lasting-full life.
For all who of them shall come
Shall evermore in bliss dwell,
And we that be from heaven driven,
Shall thus only in sorrow live.
Yet I ween I know a plan
That them shall bring evil speed.
470
HAVELOK XITI TH CENTURY.
CHAP. V.
Genesis and Exodus. Conjectured Pronunciation.
for gef he don 'Sad god for-bead, For Jef He doon dhat God for-
beed
'Sat fal hem bringen to 'So dead, Dhat sal Hem briq-en too dho
deedh,
And fal get 'Sis ilke dai,
'Sor buten hunte if ic mai ;
And [ic] sal jet dhis ilk'e dai
Dhoor buut'en nunt'e rif ik mar
Ic wene 'Sat ic, and eue hife wif, Ik ween'e dhat ik and Eev -is
fulen adam bilirten of hife l«f.
Ic wene 'Sat ic and eue
fulen alle is blifle dreue.
wiif
Sul'en Aa-dam biliirten of ms
liif,
Ic ween'e [to sooth] dhat ik and
Ee-ve
Sul'en [Aa'dam] al -is blis'e
dree've.
Translation.
For if they do that- which God forbade, I ween that I, and Eve his wife,
That shall bring them to the death. Shall Adam betrick of his life,
And [I] shall yet this same day I ween [in sooth] that I and Eve
There about hunt, if I may. " Shall [for- Adam] all his bliss trouble.
5. HAVELOK THE DANE, CIRCA A.D. 1290.
Sir Frederick Madden in his edition of this poem * considers its
author to have been a Lincolnshire man, and the time of composition
between A.D. 1270 and 1290. As the romance was popular, there
may have been many copies, and the manuscript followed by Sir F.
Madden may not have been original. In its orthography, apart
from its dialectic peculiarities, (which are numerous but do not here
come into consideration, as the object is merely to determine the
value of the letters,) it shews a transition from the customs of the
xm th to those of the xrv th century, much more marked than in
Genesis and Exodus. Thus ou is frequently used for (uu), ]>ou
being the common form, though ]>u is by no means unfrequent,
indeed both forms occur in the same line : Grim, ]>ou wost ]>u art
mi thral 527, and we have ]>w 1316, and J?o 388, where, probably,
a final u has been accidentally omitted by the scribe. The following
1 The Ancient English Eomance of
Havelok the Dane, accompanied by the
French Text, with an Introduction and
Glossary by Frederick Madden, Esq.,
F.A.S., F.R.S.L., subkeeper of the
manuscripts in the British Museum,
printed for the Roxburgh Club, 1828,
4to. This edition being very scarce, a
new one compared afresh with the MS.
has been prepared for the Early English
Text Society under the title : The Lay
of Havelock the Dane : composed in
the reign of Edward 1.x about A.D.
1280, formerly edited by Sir F. Mad
den for the Roxburghe Club, and now
re-edited from the unique MS. Laud
Misc. 108, in the Bodleian Library,
Oxford, by Rev. "Walter W. Skeat,
M.A., London, 1869. It will there
fore be assumed to be accessible to all
members of that Society, and will be
cited by the number of the verses, as
usual. The citations originally made
from Sir F. Madden's edition have
been verified by Mr. Skeat's. I am much
indebted to Mr. Skeat for many hints, and
for kindly allowing me to make use of
his proof sheets before publication, so
as to enable me to insert this notice in
its proper place.
§ 1, No. 5.
HAVELOK XIII TH CENTURY.
471
rhymes serve to shew the identity of the two spellings : yow now
160, prz'soun lajarun 330, mouth suth 433, yw = you nou 453,
nov = now you 484, bouwderc wnden = wounden 546, unbounden
fuwden 602, hw = how he was mike, hw he was strong 960,
doun tun = town 1630, wounde grunde 1978, bowr tour 2072,
dune croune 2656. Of course ou, ow also occur as (oou) corres
ponding to ags. aw, oh, and the guttural is generally lost in (w)
after o, thus : ynowe slowe 2682. In : croud god 2338, we should
probably read crod, as the proper form of the past participle.1 The
frequent occurrence of ou, however, would lead one to suppose
that the actual MS. must belong to the very end of the xmth,
if not to the beginning of the xiv th century.2
Assonances are frequent, and the more marked that there is
often no relation between the consonants which follow the iden
tical vowels. Thus: rym fin 21, yeme quene 182, harde crakede
567, beje rede 694, knaue plawe 949, starederc3 ladder 1037,
1 Ags. cre6dan (cread, crudon, cro-
den) Ettmuller, Lex. Anglos, p. 400.
Nail (supra p. 166, note 1) under
Crowd-Barrow, quotes : " She sent my
mother word by Kate, that she should
come hither when God sent time,
though she should be crod in a barrow.
Letter of Margery Paston, A.D. 1477."
2 Mr. Skeat informs me that : " No
other MS. of Havelok has ever been
heard of, or known to exist : though of
course there may have been several. If
this is not the original, it is at any rate
a very early copy. I do not think Sir F.
Madden, or any other judge of writing,
would admit it to be later than about
1280, the probable date of the compo
sition. The evident age of the MS. is
one evidence of its early composition."
The MS. containing Havelok begins
with lives of Saints, and Havelok was
overlooked for years, because it does not
begin till fo. 204. It ends on fo. 2196,
and is immediately followed by Kyng
Horn in the same column. This has
all the appearance of a copy, not an
original MS., and as we have two other
copies of King Horn (p. 480, n. 1), we
may some day find another of Havelok.
Even a much later one (as in the case of
Lajamon) would be of great service.
It is of course impossible to date a MS.
by the writing only, within 30 years,
the working life-time of a single scribe.
The orthography would lead me to
place the actual manuscript after the
copying of Genesis and Exodus, and
within the variable period, say 1280 to
1310. Probably after the last date
ou was universally employed for (uu).
If the reader will turn to : Seinte
Marherete, the Meiden ant Martyr, in
old English, first edited from the skin
books in 1862 by Oswald Cockayne,
M.A., and now reissued for the Early
English Text Society, 1866,and compare
the three versions there given, the first
from the MS. Eeg. 17, A. xxvii., ap
parently written in 1230, in which no
case of ou = (uu) occurs ; the second
from MS. Harl. 2277, attributed to
1330, in which ou is always used for
(uu) ; and the third from the lost Cam.
MS. (supra p. 464, n. 1 ) as printed by
Hickes, in which, if the text is to be
trusted, there is just a trace of « = (uu)
— J?u 22, prisun 26, etc., dragun 44,
ut 28, 56, )?oru 47 — amidst a great
preponderance of ou, the value of this
sign of age in a MS. will become more
apparent ; compare also supra, pp. 408,
423,1439, 445, 467, and p. 481, 1. 11.
3 " Probably miswritten for stradden
contended." Skeat, Glossary, Sir F.
Madden, and Garnett are of the same
opinion. It is with great diffidence
that I presume to doubt this correction.
Stradden would introduce a Norse word,
whereas the noun strout is used imme
diately 1039, and verb stroute in 1779,
from ags. strudan, strulian, and it does
not seem likely that both words should
coexist in the same dialect, or, if they
did, should be used in immediate proxi
mity. Nor, I must confess, does con
tended seem to make very good sense.
The passage relates to the game of
" putting the stone," the point being to
see who should throw an enormous
stone furthest, for he whose stone was
472
HAVELOK XIII TH CENTURY.
CHAP. V.
sliop(?) hok 1101, odratbad 1153, drawe haue 1297, fet ek 1303,
ioye trone 1315, maked yschaped 1646, riche chinche 1763, 2940,
feld swerd 1824, 2634,1 seruede werewed 1914, wewd gent 2138,
shauwe knawe 2206, grauen namen 2528, thank rang 2560,2 bofe3
rede 2585, bo]?en drowen 2659, shawe knawe 2784.
Apart from these assonances there are no had rhymes which do
not admit of explanation. Thus : hey fri 1071, might possibly
be : hy fri, see p. 285, but as the form hy does not occur in Have-
lock, we should probably read: hey sley, compare 1083.* The
even an inch before the others was to
be held a champion :
Hwo so mithe putten ]?ore
Biforn anober, an inch or more,
Wore ye [=he?J yung, [or] wore he
hold,
He was for a kewzpe told. 1033
What would then be more natural than
for the champions and the lads to stand
and look intently, stare, prior to the
throw, and then make a great conten
tion, strout, about the best cast. This
is what the text says as it stands :
Al-so be[i] stoden; an[d] ofte staredew
J?e chaunpiouns, and ek the laddew,
And he maden mikel strout
Abouten ]>e alberbeste but. 1037
It would, however, be rather curious to
say that the champions and lads stood
and contended and made a great con
tention about the best throw. If we
must alter the passage, straden, strode
about (Ettm. 746), would make decent
sense, but not so good as stareden. It
was doubtless the apparent harshness of
the assonance : stareden ladden, which
led to this conjecture. In the same
way Mr. Morris, anxious to avoid the
assonance : harde crakede 567, proposed
to change
And caste ]>e knaue adoun so harde,
bat hise croune he ber crakede
into
And caste be knaue so harde adoun,
bat he crakede ber hise croune.
(Skeat, p. 91). Where the rhyme re
quires adoune as in King Horn 1487
(Lumby's edn.)
Fikewhildes crwne
ifer ifulde adune . . .
which is quoted in Mr. Skeat's glos
sary (from MS Harl. 2253,) as : crowne
adoune, shewing the more ancient form
of the other version of King Horn.
But the only alteration really required
is : ber he crakede, for : he ber crakede,
in order to preserve the e in croune. As
to the assonance itself, it is harsh to our
ears only. We must remember the
constant habit of the metathesis of r,
so that : harde crakede, may have been
called : harde carkede, which would
have been almost a rhyme, as : star' den
ladden, also is. On the principle of not
making unnecessary changes, I prefer
accepting the reading of the MS. in
each case as it stands, and therefore re
tain both : harde crakede, and stareden
ladden, as assonances.
1 And be bredde so sore he slow,
bat he made up-on the feld
His left arm fleye, with the swerd.
On which Mr. Skeat remarks : " Cf.
1. 1825. We should otherwise be
tempted to read sheld; especially as
the shield is more appropriate to the
left arm." This was Sir F. Madden's
original suggestion. But with may
denote the instrument: he slow be
bredde so sore with the swerd, ]>at he
made, etc. Compare the constructions,
supra p. 376, art. 110. Compare also
the parallel passage :
For his sword he hof up heye,
And be hand he dide of fleye,
That he smot him with so sore. 2750
I feel doubtful whether the other inter
pretation : that he made his left arm
together with the sword, fall on the
field, could be justified by parallel
passages.
2 This may be a rhyme, see supra
p. 192.
3 As we find : rede bebe 694, be]>e
rede 1680, we should of course read:
bebe rede in this place. This is only
one of the numerous instances of the
interchange of e, a, o, to be noticed
presently. Thus we have : babe 1336,
2543, and boben 173, 697, 958.
4 According to the text Godrich hears
the knights talk of Havel ok ;
Hw he was strowg man and hey,
Hw he was strowg and ek fri, 1071,
and then he thought that King Athel-
§ 1, No. 5.
HAVELOK XIII TH CENTURY.
473
rhyme : yhe se 1984, is a mere misprint in Sir F. Madden' s edition,
corrected by Mr. Skeat to : ]?he se, where the h is an idle insertion,
compare ]>e — thigh 1950, and : ^hinge = 'Singe, Gen. and Ex. 300.
The passages which present the greatest difficulty are the follow
ing : eir tother 410, misdede leyde 994, deled wosseyled 1736.
The last is explained by : wesseylew todeyle 2098, which ought
to shew that the writer had two ways of pronouncing: delen,
deylen, (deel'en, dail'en). Compare:
So J>at )>e blod ran of his fleys,
pat tendre was, and swi]?e neys, 216
And woundede hiw rith \n ]>e flesh
J?at tendre was, and swi)>e nesh. 2742
As the dialact of Havelok shews a Scandinavian character in
many words, the form deylen may have arisen from that source,
Icelandic at deila, (deei'la) to divide, and it would be in fact more
difficult to acccount for the forms fleys neys.1 If we do not accept
wald had made him swear to give his
daughter to the " hexte " = highest,
tallest, man alive, and then asks
Hwere mithe i finden ani so hey
So hauelok is, or so sley ? 1083
It is evident that the two couplets
ought to correspond. Sley, of course,
means skilful, Havelocks skill : hw he
warp )>e ston Ouer )>e laddes euerilkon
1061, having made him the common
talk. Fri yields no good sense.
1 For fieys see supra pp. 265, 441,
445. The form is, in fact, not unusual.
For neys there seems to be no authority,
and cognate languages do not exhibit
the diphthong (ei), as they do in the
case of high German Jleisch, theil, weich
(flaish, tail, bhaiArh), compare Dutch,
vleesch, deel, week (vlees, deel, bheek).
These undoubted correspondences of (e,
ai) in high and low German, and the
occasional use of ei in Icelandic as deila,
veikr (dml'a, v«eikr), but its rejection in
other cases, asfask (flesk), may at least
serve to render intelligible some doubt
ful usages in such a provincial region
and early time as that which gives us
the rhyme of Havelok. Not only
does provincial, but even metropolitan
usage at the present day, furnish
examples which may give as much
trouble to a future investigator. Com
pare the example Chap. XI. § 3, where
it will be seen that Mr. Melville Bell
writes : (deiz, weisted, fein, geiv, keim,
sei), where I have (deez, wasted, feen,
geev, keem, see) = days, wasted, fain,
gave, came, say, though we are both,
supposed to speak the same dialect.
See also p. 450 n. 2, and p. 459, n. 1,
and the forms sede saide, p. 446. . . .
After the preceding observations had
gone to press, I received a remarkable
confirmation of the views there ex
pressed concerning the possibility of
different pronunciations coexisting in
limited districts, from an account of the
present pronunciation of English in
the Peak of Derbyshire, orally com
municated to me by a native of the dis
trict, Mr. Thomas Hallam, of Man
chester. A somewhat detailed account
of these remarkable pronunciations will
be given below, Chap. XI. $ 4, but it is
as well to notice here, that on the west
of the mountain ridge of the peak we
find (mee, dee, rawee', pee) and on the
east (mii, dii, ewii, pii) for may, day,
away, pay, and again on the west we
have (shiip, sh'ip, mii) and on the east
(sheip, sleip, mei) for sheep, sleep, me.
This characteristic diphthong (ei),
found also in the west of the ridge in
(dzheist, dzheint, beil, peint, eint'-
mynt) for joist, joint, boil, point, oint
ment, is, as pronounced to me by Mr.
Hallam, a sound which one Southerner
will hear as (ee) and another as (ai).
Compare poynte =peynte, p. 447, 1. 14.
We can guess how a peasant of the
Peak, with his partial inoculation into
the mysteries of modern orthography
is likely to write, but to put ourselves
into the position of the most careful of
ancient scribes, we have only to en
deavour to appreciate such sounds and
attempt to commit them to paper, after
a careful study of phonetics. The ex
treme difficulty of appreciation, the
readiness with which we mentally as-
474 HAVELOK — XIII TH CENTURY. CHAP. V.
the form deyle, then one of three things must be the case : 1 ) The
rhyme may be faulty, but it would be perhaps the only faulty
rhyme. Or, 2) the ey, e may be a true rhyme, but then, indepen
dently of previous investigations, the persistent avoidance of such
rhymes is remarkable, and there would have been no reason to lug
in, for example, withuten faile 179, 2909, as a rhyme to cornwayle,
with scarcely a shadow of excuse from the sense. Or 3) the pas
sages containing deled, to deyle, may be corrupt. For this there is
some ground. The passages are :
But hwan he haueden )>e kiwing deled,
And fele sij?es haueden wosseyled. 1 736
Hwe)>er he sittew nou, and wesseylew,
Or of ani shotshipe to-deyle. 2098
The first line contains at least one corrupt unintelligible word
kiwing, and not only is the metre of the last line unusually defective,
but the construction to-deyle of for participate in, seems forced and
unsatisfactory. It would, however, be too hazardous, in the ab
sence of parallel passages, to propose any emendation.
The second passage
Neuere more he him misdede,
Ne hond on him with yuele leyde. 994
cannot be so explained, as dede never appears as deide, and it would
not be right to conclude that there was an assonance formed by
calling leyde (leid'e) rather than (laid'e), in face of the older Laja-
mon forms : Iffiide, laeiden, leide, laiden, leaide. There was no
period of English pronunciation in which misdede leyde would have
rhymed, so far as our researches extend. The passage must there
fore be corrupt. In the first place the sense is bad : " never more
he hurt him by deed, and never laid hand on him with evil intent,"
merely repeats in the second line what is said in the first. We
sociate the unusual with the usual old case that e, ey, had the same mean-
sound, the hesitation which we feel in ing ? At most, they would be different
selecting one orthography in place of appreciations of the same sound, and
another, and the variety of pronuncia- might possibly indicate the co-existence
tions prevalent within a limited dis- of different sounds within the same
trict, none of which can claim the pre- district. And such coexistence is not
eminence — true picture of English confined to English dialects. The
habits of speech in the xm th century vulgar (een, keen,) coexists with the
— will make us more readily understand polite (ain, kain) =ein, kein, in Berlin,
the varieties of orthography adopted Saxony, and many parts of Germany,
by ancient scribes, and rather admire In the Dyak (Darak) languages of
than depreciate the partial uniformity Sarawak (Saraa-wak), (ee, ai) constantly
to which they attained. For myself I interchange even in adjacent house-
should feel no surprise to find one writer clusters, sometimes even in the same
representing the " Derbyshire " sound house-cluster, so that (basee*) or (basai1)
of sheep, in "ordinary spelling" as would be equally intelligible for great,
sheep, another as shape, and a third as Generally in these languages (ii, ee, ai)
shipe. Should we then be surprised if interchange on the one hand, and (oo,
we found an old monk proceeding from uu, au) on the other, as I have just
a similar district at one time writing been informed (April, 1869) by an
shep, and at another sheyp ? and should English resident of long standing in
we conclude in the modern case that Sarawak. See also neither, supra p.
ee, a, i, had the same sound, or in the 129, n. 1.
§ 1, No. 6. HAVELOK XIII TH CENTURY. 475
want the sense, "he never more wronged him by word, or deed."
This is supplied by reading misseyde for misdede, and of the correct
ness of this reading we can have no doubt after considering the
parallel passages,
Ne found he non that him misseyde,
N[e] with iuele on[ne] hand leyde. 49
Eoberd hire ledde, )>at was red,
pat hau[ed]e Darned for hire J>e ded
Or ani hauede hire misseyd,
Or hand with iuele onne leyd. 1686
Me wore leuere i wore lame,
J>a«ne men dide him ani shame,
Or tok, or onne handes leyde,
Vn-ornelfke [vn-ornelike ?], or same seyde. 1938
The first instance
Hauelok, ]>at was }?e eir
Swanhorow, his sister, Helfled, the tother. 410
is also corrupt on the face of it,1 for the second line of the couplet
is outrageously prolonged. The word eyr occurs not unfrequently
at the end of a line, as 110, 288, 605, 1095 and always rhymes
with/aw-. This suggests the reading
Hauelok, that was the eir,
Swanborow, Helfled her sister fair, 3
which at least preserves metre and rhyme, and is immediately sug
gested by the parallel passage :
Of his bodi ne haude he eyr
Bute a mayden swi]>e fayr. 110
The rhyme i, e, as : bidde stede 2548 is frequent. Shewed
knawed 2057, must be considered in connection with : shewe
lowe 1698, and lowe awe 1291, where lowe, ags. hlaw, means
a hill, preserved in the Scotch law; as well as with the not
unfrequent interchange of e, o, as: sore wore =were 236, wore
= were more 1700, were sore 414, (where Mr. Skeat reads wore),
more thore = there 921, cle[r]k yerk = York 1177, and also of
o, a : lowge gange 795, 2586, sawe wowe = wall 1962, 2142,
1 " Corrupt? Lines 410, 411 do not at first proposed : Swanborow, Helfled
rime well together." Skeat. his sisters fair, in order to preserve as
2 We may even imagine how the much of the original as possible, but
extraordinary error in the MS. arose. the examples: hise children yunge 368,
Suppose, as usual, that the scribe was we aren bo}>e )nne 619, kniues longe
writing from dictation. The reader 1769, hundesteyte 1841, wundes swi)>e
gives out : " Swanborow, Helfled her grete 1898, monekes blake 2520, shew
sister fair," the scribe writes "Swan- that: his sisters faire, would have been
borow, his sister ; " altering her to his required and this would have militated
as a matter of course, because only a against the rhyme. Unless, indeed, the
masculine noun had preceded; the reader author could have dispensed with this
sees the error and exclaims, " Thou hast final e if the necessity of rhyme lay on
forgotten Helfled thet other;" the him, as he does dispense apparently
scribe immediately claps down the words with an e, which is at once plural and
" Helfled the tother," and is quite dative, in :
satisfied he has correctly followed the Hwan he hauede mawrede and oth
reader in the monstrosity: "Swan- Taken of lef and of loth. 2312
borow his sister, Helfled the tother !" where however perhaps: othe, lefe,
Se non e vero, e ben trovato. I had lothe, should be read.
476 HAVELOK — XIII TH CENTURY. CHAP. V.
thare = thore = there more 2486, open drepen = kill 1782.
We have then to admit that the pronunciation of the writer
varied in the same word at different times, and that he allowed
himself to interchange e, a, o. The same interchange of (ee, 00) is
observable in the modern Scotch and English : aik oak, aits oats,
aith oath, caip cope, claith cloth, craik croak, daigh dough, dail dole,
gaist ghost, gait goat, grain groan, graip grope, hail whole, haim
home, kaim comb, laid load, laird lord, laith loath, main moan, mair
more, maist most, raid road, raip rope, saip soap, sair sore, spaik
spoke of a wheel, taid toad. In Aberdeen we even find (stiin,
biin) for stone, lone. But it will be seen on examining other
Scotch ai = (ee) forms, that they often derive from an ags. a, e.
Herein then we seem to have an indication of the key to this
dialectic peculiarity. The original (aa) was at one time broadened
into (oo), and at another squeezed into (ee), and the habits of the
speaker became so uncertain that all three forms in (ee, aa, oo)
were in sufficiently common use to allow a rhymester to employ
whichever was most convenient, till at last (oo, ee) interchanged
without the intervention of an original (aa).
We find the regular interchange of ai, ei, as : at hayse = at ease
preyse 59, deye preye 168, seyl nayl 711, ay domesday 747.
There seems to be even a probability of seint having been occasion
ally dissyllabic, as supra p. 264. Thus, comparing ion 177 :
In al denemark is wimmaw [non] = (In al Denmark- is wunran noon,
So fayr so sche, bi seint iohan. 1719 Soo fair so shee, bi saa-int Dzhon.
But gaf hem leue sone anon But gaa1 -em lee've soon anoon\
And bitauhte hem seint Iohan. 2956 And bitaut- -em saa-int Dzhon).
We have also occasionally the («) value of u. In two instances
this value is apparently given to u in words which were un
doubtedly generally pronounced with (u), as :
So J?at )>ei nouth ne blinne
Til )>at to sette bigan }>e sunne. 2670
per was swilk dreping of }>e folk
pat on )>e feld was neuere a polk
pat it ne stod of blod so fill,
pat jje strem ran i«til )>e hul. 2684
In the first case read so ]>at ]>ei \stunte\ nouth ne blunne, the
ags. forms, stunte, blunne, making metre, rhyme, and construction,
perfect. In the second, hul, which was supposed by Sir F.
Madden to mean hill, is perhaps a provincial pronunciation of
the ags. and old norse hoi, Swedish hoi, Danish hul, a hollow for
the valley, as the battle was fought at Tetford, near Horncastle.
But the line is possibly corrupt, and there is no obvious means of
correction from the want of parallel passages.1
1 As it stands the passage must be inclines to hul hollow, on account of
translated: " There was such slaving the Scotch use of howe (HOOU, nau), a
of the people, That on the field there direct descendant of a previous (HM!),
was never a puddle, That it stood not as opposed to knoll, for a small valley
so full of blood, That the stream ran or depression. Part of a village in
into the hollow(P)." Mr. Murray, who Teviotdale is called Huole-o-the-Burn
suggested the insertion of stunte above, (HW'!, HU\O\, nwal, naal).
§ 1, No. 5. HAVELOK XIII TH CENTURY. 477
The other rhymes do not require particular notice. The value
of the letters is clearly that established for the xin th century, by
previous research, with, in the case of ou, an anticipation of the
usages of the xiv th. The metre is rugged and the spelling irregular,
so that the use of the final -e cannot accurately be determined.
But there is no reason to suppose it different from what had been
found for others.
The orthography of the guttural in connection with t is very
remarkable, as: knict 239, knicth 77, knith 1068, kniht 2706,
brouth 336, brihte rithe 2610, bitawte authe 1409, etc., implying
a peculiarity of pronunciation, which, in the absence of parallel
usage, and determining rhymes, cannot be appreciated with certainty.
We must not forget, however, that sigh, drought, height, were
sometimes called (saith, drAAth, naith) in the xvii th century (p.
212), and that Keighley in the West Riding of Yorkshire, and
therefore likely to be somewhat inclined to the same pronunciation
as the writer of Havelok, is now called (Kiith'K), and the pro
nunciation (nekth) for height, has been noted near Ledbury in
Herefordshire, which greatly resembles -cth in knicth. At first
sight -th looks like a metathesis of ht, just as we find ihc 1377
for ich, and this in connection with the actual occasional oc
currence of -ht or even -ct, -cth, would lead directly to the
usual (-kht) pronunciation. But an examination of the ortho
graphy in the poem shews a systematic avoidance of the guttural
except in relation to t. In all other cases it is expressed only
by y i, w u, as : eie, fleye, heie, leye = mentire, seyen, sleie ;
awe = possess, dawes = days, drawen drou, fa wen =fain, flow,
galwe, mowe, slou, J?ou = though. Even with t the sign of the
guttural is frequently omitted, as : aute laute 743, but : awcte 207,
lauthe 1673. It seems then very possible that these -ct, -cth, -th, -t,
only mean t, with a merely orthographical indication of the gut
tural. This pronunciation of final -cht is not unknown in German.1
The otiose h after initial t, and even elsewhere (supra p. 473, 1. 8),
found occasionally in various manuscripts, but never systematically
carried out, is not to be compared with this use of h in connection
with final t, where in most other MSS. the guttural is inserted as
h, g, }.2 We must also recollect that in MSS., as we have had
occasion to see also in the Prisoner's Prayer and elsewhere, the
letter h is used very loosely, even when initial. In Havelok it is
unnecessarily prefixed in : holde 30, hete 146, het 653, but :
et 656, heuere 17, her 229, hof 1976, helde 128, etc., etc., and
we find it omitted in: aueden 163, osed 971, etc., but with no
1 " Ch lautet gar nicht vor t Ober- 2 The French the, German Thee has
Rhein und Donau Gebiet, Land und (t) or if it is more dental (.t) on the •
Stadt, (-it, -at) Endsylbe -icht, (-let, continent more than with us, this ap-
-lat) Endsylbe -licht, (nit net) nicht, plies to every t and not merely to those
ostlech. Rab, Land, (fait'n) Feuchten, written th. In one dialect of the Peak
Fichte, (Furt) Furcht, (knet) Knecht, of Derbyshire ( .t) is heard only, but
(liat) Liecht, (Nat) Nacht, (rE9t) recht, always, before r and -er.
(shlEot fed'eln) schlecht fechteln, (brat)
gebracht." Schmeller, Mundarten
Bayerns, art. 432.
478
HAVELOK — XIII TH CENTURY.
CHAP. V.
sort of uniformity. Hence the temptation to use it as an idle
letter, or an orthographical expedient.
That long i was (ii) or («) appears among other passages from
Als she shulde hise clothes handel
On forto don, and blawe Jer 1 fir ( = fire)
She saw therinne a lith (= light} ful shir (= sheer). 586
Al so brith, al so shir,
So it were a blase of fir. 1253
The word sheer, Gothic skein (skiirs) bright, clear, old Saxon
slciri, middle high German and new low German schir, new high
German schier (shiir), old high German scieri (skii'ri ?), ags. sc'ir
old norse shir (skiir), Orrmin shir, is a word which from the earliest
times and in almost all dialects, and specially in English, has re
tained the sound of (-iir), and hence is an excellent rhyme to deter
mine the old sound of jlr.
The reader will find many points of orthography and pronuncia
tion touched on with great care in Mr. Skeat' s edition §§ 27 and 28,
and a full consideration of the treatment of final e in § 29.2
It is with great diffidence that I annex an example of this difficult
provincial poem. The text is given exactly, in the pronunciation I
have ventured on a few alterations, intended to he corrections.
Haveloh 2312-2345.
Hwan he hauede manrede and
oth
Taken of lef and of loth,
Vbhe duhbede him to knith,
With a swerd ful swi)>e brith,
And J?e folk of al }?e lond
Bitauhte him al in his hond,
pe cunnriche eueril del,
And made him king heylike and
wel.
Hwan he was king, ]?er mouthe
mew se
pe moste ioie )>at mouhte be :
Conjectured Pronunciation.
Whan He navde manreed* and
oodh-e,
Taak'en of leev and [ook] of
loodh'e
TJb'e dub'ed Him to kniit,
With a swerd ful swidh'e briit,
And dhe folk of al dhe lond
Bitaut* -im al in [too'] His hond
Dhe kin'eriitsh'e evrfl deel,
And maad -im kiq Harliik and
weel.
Whan nee was kiq, dher mout'e
men see
Dhe most'e dzhore dhat mout'e
bee :
When he had homage and oaths
Taken of dear and [eke] of loath (ones),
Ubbe dubbed him (to) knight,
With a sword ful very bright,
And the folk of all the land
Translation.
Committed to-him al in [to] his hand
The kingdom every part,
And made him king, highlike and wel.
When he was king, there might one see
The most joy that might be ;
1 Mr. Skeat reads ]>e.
2 Mr. Skeat having requested me to
read and comment on some of these
points, I endeavoured to do so, in great
haste, at a time when accidental circum
stances disabled me from given them
proper attention. In those cases where
the present statements differ from those
hasty expressions of mine which Mr.
Skeat, anxious not to smother opinions
opposed to his own, has politely printed,
they must be considered as corrections,
resulting from careful re-examination.
I regret not having been able to examine
all the cases of final e, to determine
the circumstances of its elision and
suppression, but I believe that it was
not otherwise treated than in the Cuckoo
Song and Prisoner's Prayer.
1, No. 5.
HAVELOK XIITTH CENTURY.
479
Buttinge with sharpe spares,
Skinning with taleuaces, ]>at
mew beres,
Wrastling with laddes, putting
of ston.
Harping and piping, ful god won,
Leyk of mine, of hasard ok,
Homanz reding on J?e bok ;
per mouthe men here j?e gestes
singe,
pe gleymen on J?e tabour dinge ;
per mouhte men se ]?e boles
beyte,
And j?e bores, with hundes teyte ;
po mouthe men se eueril gleu,
per mouthe mew se hw grim
greu;
Was neu^re yete ioie more
In al }>is werd, ]?an ]>o was J>ore.
per was so mike yeft of clones,
pat J?ou i swore you grete othes,
I ne wore nouth ^er-oflfe croud :
pat may i ful wel swere, hi god!
pere was swi^e gode metes,
And of wyn, J?at men fer fetes,
Bith al so mik and grete plente,
So it were water of ]?e se.
pe feste fourti dawes sat,
So riche was newre non so fat.
But'iq' [dher was] with sharp-e
speer'es,
Skirnriq' with tal'vases, dhat
men beeres,
R^ast'liq' with ladz, put'iq* of
stoon,
Harp'iq' and piip'iq', ful good
woon,
Laik of Miin, of Has'ard ook,
Roonrans' reed'iq' on dhe book ;
Dher mout'e men nee 're dhe
dzhest'es siq'e,
Dhe glai'men on dhe taa'bur
diq'e ;
Dher mout'e men see ]>e bol'es
bai'te
And the boo 'res, with sund'es
tait'e ;
Dhoo mout'e men see evril gleu,
Dher mout'e men see HUU Grim
greu;
Was never jet'e dzhoi'e moor'e
In al dhis werld, dhan dhoo was
dhoor'e.
Dher was so mik'e jeft of
kloodh'es
Dhat dhou i swoor'e JTI greet
oodh'es,
In'e woor-e nout dherof'e krod :
Dhatmai i fulwelsweere, biGod!
Dher was swidh'e good'e meet'es,
And of wiin, that men fer fet'es,
Biit al soo mik and gret plen'tee*
Soo it wer waa'ter of dhe see.
Dhe fest'e foour'ti dau'es sat,
So ritsh'e was never noon so
dhat.
Translation.
Butting [there was] with sharp spears,
Fencing with shields that one bears,
Wrestling with lads, putting of (the)
stone.
Harping and piping, full good quantity,
Game of Mine, of Hasard eek,
Romance reading on the hook.
There might one hear the jests sung,
The gleemen on the tahour drum,
There might one see the hulls baited,
And the boars, with merry [staunch P]
hounds,
Then might one see every glee,
There might one see how Grim grew;
Was never yet joy more
In all this world than then was there.
There was so great gift of clothes
That though I swore you great oaths
I- (not) were not thereof oppressed :
That may I full well swear, by God.
There were very good meats',
And of wine, that one far fetches,
Right also much and great plenty,
As-if it were water of the sea.
The feast fourty days lasted,
So rich was never none as that.
480 KING HORN — XIII TH CENTURY. CHAP. V.
6. KING HORN, cmcX A.D. 1290.
The story of King Horn exists in three several manuscripts which
present such great varieties both of orthography and language, that
the text must he considered uncertain. The oldest * was apparently
written about the latter half of the xmth century, and is that
which will he followed here. In some cases f occurs for j or z
which represents 5. On this orthography see supra (p. 464). The
dialect is Midland, and the whole poem hears a great affinity to
Havelok.
There is the usual rhyming of i, e or u, e when u stands for i •
adrenche of^inche 105, Westernesse hlisse 157, ire = ear were
309, wille telle 365, pelle fulle = pall fill ±01, hrunie = armour
denie = din 591, dunte wente 609, ferde hurede 751, custe = kissed
reste 1189, etc.
There are a few cases of e, a, in which the a should he replaced
hy e, as : hiweste laste 5, warne herne 689.
As in Havelok, there are cases of e, o, in which one or the other
letter must he dialectically altered, if the readings are correct:
more jere 95, swerde orde 623, sende yrlonde 1001, posse "Wester-
nesse 1011. We have a, o in : felawe knowe 1089.
A few cases of u, o, may shew a dialectic pronunciation of u as
(o), or o as (u) : stunde londe 167, J^ojte jmjte 277, huje iswoje
427, jonge isprunge 547, hunde fonde 831.
In some cases u = (uu) seems to rhyme with u = (yy). In
bur mesauentur 325, 649, bure couerture 695, one might fancy
that the French word was mispronounced with (uu). The word
lure 270, might therefore be to lure, which makes good sense, and
have been used as a term of falconry, but would then, probably in
a Saxon's mouth, have been called (luure), but it must apparently
have been to lower or watch for,2 which would be properly (luure),
since the Harl. MS. 2253, fo. 85, reads loure. Stuard 275, 393,
is probably a clerical error for stiuard compare ags. stiward, which
1 Cambridge Univ. Lib. Gg. 4, 27, 2. ihc ich y J
This is contrasted with the Bodleian jou you ou you
MS. Laud 108 fo. 2195, and Harl. MS. laste sg., lesten pi., yleste sy., last
2253, in the preface to : King Horn, fairer feyrer feyrorer fairer
with Fragments of Floriz and Blaunche- rein reyn reyne rains.
fleur,and of the Assumption of our Lady, miste micte mihte might
from a MS. (Gg. 4, 27, 2) in the Cam- birine upon-reyne by-ryne rain upon
bridge University Library; also from brijt brict bryht bright
MSS. in the British Museum. The flur flour flour flower
Assumption of our Lady (Add. MSS. colur colur colour colour.
10036) and Fragments of the Floyres
and JBlancheflur (Cotton Vitellius D. 2 "lure(n), 0. Dutch leuren, loren,
iii), edited with notes and glossary by Fr. leurrer, lure, Cliauc. C. t. 5997 ;
J. Rawson Lumby, M.A. London, lured (part.) vis. P. P. 3351. — (luren)
1866. 8vo." pp. xx, 142. E. E. T. S. lourin, L. Germ, luren (speculari*) lour
The extracts from the three MSS. taken (lower) scowl, prompt, paw. 316 ; loure
in the above order present the follow- Gow. coiif. am. 1, 47 ; Rich. 3470 ; vis
ing among other varieties, P. P. 2735 ; Triam. 1032 ; louring
he he heo they (part.) Chaw. C. t. 6848." Strat-
beon ben ben be mann, 373.
§ 1, No. 6. KING HORN — XIII TH CENTURY. 481
occurs 227, and is the reading of the Harl. MS. 2253 elsewhere.
In : ture pure = tower peer 1091, we must suppose pure = (puure),
to pore or look intently The origin of the word is very obscure.
The reading of the Harl. MS. 2253 is totally different, and intro
duces loke for pure.
The form ou occasionally, but very rarely occurs, by no means so
frequently as in Havelok, is: galun glotoun 1123, harpurs gigours
1471. This applies only to this particular MS. of King Horn. Pro
bably the ou is fully as frequent in the Laud. MS. 108, as it is in
that MS. copy of Havelok, both these poems being in the same hand
writing. The greater rarity of ou in this Cam. MS. of King Horn
is evidence of its greater antiquity, and forms a presumption in
favour of earlier copies of Havelok having also existed. It is cer
tainly desirable for the investigation of the orthography and develop
ment of the English language in the XTTT th century, and especially
with a view to illustrate Havelok, to have the Laud MS. copy of
King Horn accurately printed and compared with the Cam. MS.
The scribes of the two MS. possibly belonged not only to dif
ferent times but to different districts, and yet were so nearly con
temporary, that the comparison would probably clear up many
points of difficulty. In the Harl. MS. 2253, " which has been
printed, but very badly, by Bitson in the second volume of his
Metrical Romances," (Lumby, p. vi.) the ou is paramount.
Sometimes a word is changed for the sake of the rhyme, as ;
birine = le-rain bischine 11, y]?e = ethe = easily dijje = deihe =
death 57, ires = ears tires = tears 959. The two latter are how
ever perhaps rather to be considered as dialectic peculiarities.
Notwithstanding all these resources the shortness of the lines
seems to have driven the rhymester to great shifts, unless the scribe
has much belied him, for we have such decidedly false rhymes as : he
deie 331, fofte brijte 389, bi^ojte mijte 411, jonge bringe 279, ringe
jonge 565, 1187, (query, read \inge, the form found in the Harleian
MS. 2253,) sede read seide leide 691, heirs read heiris pris 897,
his (?) palais 1255, yrlonde fondede read fonde 1513, quene beon
1519. To these we must add: bure foure 1161, unless we admit
for (fuirre) (foou're) as supra p. 446, 1. 21. It is however pro
bable that all these cases are mistakes. The great diversity of the
MSS., forbids us to lay great store by any particular readings.
The marked peculiarity of the poem, and one which makes it
worth while to notice it especially, is the prevalence of assonances,
single, or double, that is, assonances in which the consonants after
the identical accented vowel are different, but those, if there are
any, following the identical unaccented vowel are the same or
different, as in Spanish ; and assonances which being half rhyme
and half assonance, may be called conassonances, the accented sylla
bles rhyming, and the unaccented being assonant, which also occur
in Spanish though they are not legitimate. Compare the as
sonances of dissyllables and monosyllables in King Alisaunder,
supra p. 452, note, col. 1, 1. 13. These assonances, which are so
31
482 KING HORN — XIII TH CENTURY. CHAP. V.
clearly developed in King Horn, remove any difficulty about ad
mitting them in Havelok, where they are not so frequent. The
following is a list of both kinds.
Assonances : sones gomes 21, beste werste 27, gripe smite 51,
admirad bald 89, makede = mak'de uerade 165, swi)>e bliue 471,
whit ilik 501, proue woje 545, take rape 553, trewe leue 561,
man cam 787, woje gloue 793, nadde harde 863, rynge Rymen-
hilde 873, 1287, compaynye hije 879, shorte dorste 927, bH)?e
bliue 967, iknowe oje 983, haue felaje 995, blowe }>roje 1009, loje
rowe 1079, wunder tunge 1247, grauel castel 1465, yswoje louje
read loje 1479.
Conassonances : moder gode 145, gumes icume 161, doster read
dojter j?ojte 249, scholde woldest 395, lijte knijtes 519, feste
gestes 521, igolde woldest 643, dojter ofte 697, ride bridel 771,
ariued fiue 807, fifte knijtes 811, borde wordes 827, hundes funde
881, knijtes wijte 885, dojter lofte 903, while bigiled 957, knijtes
fijte 1213, houe proued 1267, draje felajes 1289, hundred wunder
1329.
The rhyme : time bi me 533, is interesting from its association
with the same rhymes in Chaucer and Gower (p. 280).
The word^&my 32, seems to be a contraction ofpleying, and this
renders the rhyme : king pleying 32, perfect.
The following may serve as a specimen of the language of this
poem, according to this more ancient version. The pronunciation
indicates occasionally conjectural emendations, principally for the
sake of the metre.
King Horn 223-234, 241-276. Conjectured Pronunciation.
J?e kyng com in to halle Dhe Kiq kaam in to nal'e,
Among his knijtes alle : Amoq* sis knikht'es al'e :
For]? he clupede aj>elbrus, Forth He klep'ed Aa'thelbruus,
pat was ftiward of his hus. Dhat was Stirward of His HUUS.
Stiwarde, tak nu here Stii'ward" taak nuu neere
Mi fundlyng for to lere Mi fund'liq, for to leere
Of Jnne mefte/v, Of dhiin'e mesteere,
Of wude and of riuere, Of wuud and of riveer'e,
And tech him to harpe And teetsh mm to narp*e
"Wij? his nayles fcharpe, With His naiTes sharp'e,
Biuore me to kerue Bifoor'e mee to kerve,
And of ]>e cupe ferae. And of dhe kup-e serve.
Ailbrus gaii Jere Aa'thelbruus gan lee're
Horn and his yfere : Horn and nis ifee're :
Horn in herte la^te Horn in nert'e lakht'e
Al ]>at ne him tajte. . Al dhat nee Him takht'e.
In J?e curt and ute In dhe kuurt and uut'e
And elles al abute, And el'es al abuut'e
Luuede men horn child, Luvde men Horn Tshild.
And meft him louede Rymenhild, Meest luvd- im Riinrenhild
{ 1, No. 6.
KING HORN XIII TH CENTURY.
483
J?e kynges ojene dofter,
He was meft in J?ojte,
Heo louede so horn child
pat nej heo gan wexe -wild :
For heo ne mijte at horde
Wij> him fpeke ne worde,
Ne nojt in j?e halle
Amowg Je knijtes alle,
Ne nowhar in non o^ere ftede :
Of folk heo hadde drede :
Bi daie ne bi nijte
Wi)> him fpeke ne mijte.
Hire foreje ne hire pine
Ne inijte neure fine.
In heorte heo hadde wo.
And )ms hire bi]?ojte J?o^
Heo rende hire fonde
AJ?elbrus to honde
]pat he come hire to,
And alfo fcholde horn do
Al in to hure,
For heo gaw to lure.
And J>e fonde feide
pflt fik lai ]?#t maide
And bad him come fwi)»e,
For heo nas noting blij? e.
Ipe ftuard was in herte wo,
For he nufte what to do.
Dhe kiq'es ooglme dokht'er.
Hir was -e meest in thokht'e.
Heo luvde soo Horn Tshild
Dhat Heo gan weks'e wild.
For HCO ne mikht at boord'e
With nim speek'e noo word'e
Nee nokht in dhe nal'e
Amo<r dhe knikht'es al'e,
Nee in noon oodlrre steed e.
Of folk HCO nad'e dreed'e.
Bi dare nee bi nikht'e
With nim speek neo ne mikhte.
Hir sor-ghe nee nir piin-e
Ne mikht'e nevre fiin'e.
In nert neo had'e woo.
Dhus nir bithokht-e dhoo.
Heo fende Hire sond'e
Aa'thelbruus to nond'e,
Dhat he kuum nir too,
And al'so shold Horn doa
Al in too nir buu're,
For Heo gan to luu-re.
And dhe sond'e said-e
Dhat sik lai dhat maid'e
And bad him kimnve swiidh'e,
For neo n-as noo'thiq bliidh'e.
Dhe Stir ward was dher woor
For He nust'e what to doo.
Translation.
The king came in to hall
Among his knights all.
Forth he called Athelbrus
That was steward of his house.
" Steward take now here
My foundling, for to teach
Of thy craft,
Of wood and of river,
And teach him to harp
With his sharp nails,
Before me to carve,
And serve of the cup."
Athelbrus began to teach
Horn and his companion*.
Horn received in his heart
All that he taught him.
In the court and out
And else all about
Loved one Horn Child.
Most loved him Rimenhild,
The king's own daughter.
To-her was he most in thought.
She loved so Horn Child
That she began to grow wild.
For she might not at table
With him speak no word,
Nor nought in the hall
Among all the knights,
Nor in no other place.
Of people she had dread.
By day nor by night
With him she might not speak..
Her sorrow nor her pain
Might not ever cease.
In heart she had woe.
Thus bethought her then.
She would-send hir messenger
To the hand of Athelbrus,
That he should come-to her,
And thus should bring Horn
All into her bower.
For she began to lower (lure P)
And the messenger said,
That sick lay the maid
And bad him come quickly (?)
For she was in no wise blithe.
To-the steward was woe,
For he knew-not what to do.
484 MORAL ODE, ETC. — XII TH CENTURY. CHAP. V.
7- MORAL ODB, PATER NOSTBR, ORISON, END OP XIITH CENTURY.
The compositions of the YTTT th century have all a decidedly local
character, but the phonetic meaning of the letters, which is all we
have to deal with, seems as firmly established as in the xrvth.
The poems mentioned above belong perhaps to the xn th century.
The copies to which we shall refer have been published for the
Early English Text Society.1 It will not be necessary to examine
them in much detail. They present much the same character as
Havelok, with the e, i and e, o and o, a rhymes. The orthography
is very unsteady, and it is difficult to feel certain in any place that
we are not dealing with a scribal error rather than a peculiarity of
pronunciation. It will be sufficient to deal with a few peculiarities.
THE MOEAL ODE, or POEMA MOEALE : Rowen sowen = rue sow
19, written : ruwen seowen, in the Egerton MS., are ags. hreowan,
sawan, and can only rhyme by the dialectic interchange of e, o, as :
shewe lowe, in Havelok (supra p. 476). Seide misdede 129, seiden
reden 223, require a peculiar dialectic pronunciation of seide as sede,
and that this existed we learn not only from the orthography : of
sede, rede 155, in this MS. but from the parallel rhymes : sede
misdede 131, sede rede 225 in the Egerton MS. See supra, p. 447.
Hulde felde 343, hulle fulle 347 and durlinges 385, are examples
of the use of u for », or e, common in this MS.
THE PATEE NOSTEE offers many examples of u for i: wule 14,
of-Jmnche'S 16, ufele 17, J>enne wunne = win 19, inne sunne =
sin 23, 139, 224, wulle ifulle 55, sunne unwune 282. The rhyme :
bone clene 167, shews how o was written for e even when e was
pronounced. WrerS segge'S 179, shews the derivation of the (ai)
sound from (e^h), and: mei dei 169, shews the identity of ei^ ai.
The OEISON, or ON GOD UEEISON OF UEE LEFDI, contains a few
peculiarities which suggest scribal errors : Marie lefde 1, lefdi liuie
11, lefdi beien 17, could not have rhymed. The first would be
satisfied by the more ancient form lefdie, ags. hlasfdie, which is
justified by lafdie in Layamon, 15647, or else by the contracted
form Mari, which we have already had reason to suspect, p. 441.
The difficulty of: lefdie beie 17, as it would then be written, is
the same as that of: beie offrie 2, and: lefdie liuie 11 offers a
singular form for Hue, and a transmuted accent. See several other
instances of like forms, supra p. 446. See also the infinitives in
the Assumpcioun in Lumby's King Horn, p. 44, and in Dan Michel's
Ayeribite. Kwene reine = queen rain, 57, should evidently be :
kwene rene, the old ags. form ren, which existed as well as regen,
here coming into use.
1 Old English Homilies and Homi- with introduction, translation and notes
letic Treatises (Sawles Warde, and }>e by Richard Morris, 1867-8. The Mo-
Wohunge of Ure Lauerd : Ureisuns of ral Ode is No. 17, p. 158, and a dupli-
Ure Louerd and of Ure Lefdi, etc.) of cate of the first 270 lines from the
the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries, Egerton MS. is given in an Appendix,
edited from MSS. in the British Mu- p. 288. The Pater Noster is on p. 55,
seum, Lambeth and Bodleian Libraries, and the Orison on p. 191.
$ 1, No. 7. MORAL ODE, ETC. XII TH CENTURY.
485
The following "brief extract from the Paternoster will convey
some notion of the language.
Paternoster, 75-98.
Adueniut rsgnum tuum.
Cume ]?i riche we seggeft hit.
HercnrS alle to J>is writ,
his riche is al Jns middeleard.
EorSe and heofene and uwilcherd
of<?r alle is his muchele mihte.
lauerd he is icleped mid rihte.
Lauerd he is of alle scafte.
In eorSe. in heuene is his mahte
alle J>e scafte J>e he bi-gon.
J?et is ]?et sod's e hit wes for mon
alle Jirage he makede aet agan.
Er he efre makede mon.
he makede mon i rihtwisnesse,
Onlete on his onlichnesse.
Alle dor and fujel ifliht J
lete he makede adunriht.
]?ene Mora he lufede and welbi-
fohte.
and for-]n his neb upward he
wrohte.
)>et wes al mid muchele skile J
}if he hit understondon wile.
Neb upwardes he him wrohte.
he walde }ei he of him ]>oht[e].
Al swa ]>G lauerd }ei him wrohte.
Conjectured Pronunciation.
Adveen-iat reg-num tuirum.
Kuum-e dhi riitsh'e ! We sareth
nit.
Herk-nith al'e too dhis r«0it.
His riitsh is al dhis mid'el erd,
Erth and nevn- and ii'wilk nerd.
Over al is sis mutsh'le mikht'e
Laverd He is iklep'ed mid rikht'e
Laverd ne is of al'e skaft'e.
In erth, in heven is His makht'e :
Al-e dhe skaft'e dhee He bigon',
Dhet is dhet soodh, nit wes for
mon.
Al-e thiq He maaked [? ?]
Eer He evre maak'de mon.
He maak'de mon i rikht'wisnes'e,
Onieet on His on'litshnes'e.
Al-e door and fuugh'el iflikht*
Leet -e maak'ed aduun'rikht :
Dheen-e Mon ne luvd- and wel
bithokht'e,
And fordhii' His neb up'ward' he
Dhet was al mid mutsh'le skiile,
Jif je nit un'derstond'on wiiTe.
Nebup'ward'es nee nim r^okht'e.
He wald'e dhet nee of mm
thokht'e,
Alswaa dhe Laverd dhet Him
rwokht'e.
Mr. Morris's Translation.
Adveniat regnum, tuum.
Thy kingdom come, we do say it,
Hearken all unto this writ !
His kingdom is this middle earth,
Earth and heaven, and each abode ;
Over all is his great might.
Lord he is called with right ;
Lord he is of all creatures,
In earth and heaven is his might.
All the creatures that he formed,
That is truth, it was for man,
All things he made to appear
Before he ever made man.
He made man in righteousness,
In the form of his own likeness.
All deer (animals) and fowl of flight
He made to stoop adownright (down
wards).
Man he loved and cared for well,
And therefore his face upward he
wrought,
That was all for a good skill (reason),
If that understand ye will.
Face upwards he him wrought,
He would that man of him thought,
That he should love him with thought
(in his mind)
As the Lord that him wrought.
486 ORRMIN — XII TH CENTURY. CHAP. V.
§ 2. Unrhymed Poems of the Thirteenth Century and Earlier.
The rhymed poems having resulted in a satisfactory deter
mination of the values of the letters, it is necessary to apply
the result to the examination of documents in which no
rhyme is employed. The first of these that has been selected
is so careful in its orthography that it is in many respects
more fitted for our purpose than the laxly written poems
already considered. The second has chiefly antiquity to
recommend it, and its principal phonetic value lies in the
great diversity of representations which it supplies for the
same word.
1. ORRMIN'S ORRMULUM, END OF xnra CENTURY.
Orrmin's Orrmulum1 is written in a strict orthography, with
some inevitable slips here and there perhaps, which escaped the
author's evidently careful and repeated revision,2 and as the object
of this orthography was phonetic, the poem may be fairly considered
as being the first example of the application of the purely phonetic
principle in the orthography of English.
Orrmin's scheme was to double the following consonant when a
vowel was short. The origin of the feeling which led to this no
tation has been already explained (p, 55). This plan has the ob
vious disadvantage of not indicating the length of a vowel when no
1 The Ormulum. Now. first edited italic, we have in these sixteen lines,
from the original manuscript in the broferr (twice), troww]?e, takenw,
Bodleian (Jun. MS. 1.) with Notes and regAell, folljAenn, swasumw (twice),
a Glossary by Robert Meadows White, biwwille, wenwd, little, hafe)>>J. As we
D.D. Oxford, 1852, 2 vols. 8vo. "If have also at length bro>err (twice),
we consider alone the character of the Wallt', afft', flseshess, crisstenndom,
handwriting, the ink, and the material burrh (three times), fulluhht, godess,
used by the scribe, we find reasons for J;att, witt, hafenn, etc., and as in the
placing the date of the MS. early in cases of superposition the writing was
the thirteenth century," pref. Ixxii. crowded, I conceive these to have
Mr. Garnett considers it to have been been corrections, similar to the little ac-
written in Peterborough. Dr. White cent marks by which words were sepa-
writes " The Ormulum" with a pre- rated that had been too closely written,
fixed the and single r in the above If then in some cases we find a single
title, but in the introduction we read — consonant where we should have ex-
biss boc iss nemmnedd Orrmulum pected a double consonant, we may
forrbi ]>att Orrm itt wrohhte fairly attribute it to a slip which has
where Orrm is a contraction for Orr- escaped correction. Occasionally, where
min as we see by the example given two consonants follow the vowel, the
below,p. 491 dedication 324. first consonant seems not to have been
2 In the facsimile of the sixteen doubled, either through the author's
opening lines prefixed to White's edi- inadvertence or from his not having
tion, we see that the second consonant thoroughly settled the system of writ-
in a reduplication was sometimes ing, so that we find &«'«<& &n&jinndenn,
written over the other, and sometimes which must have both had a short t,
not. The same was the case occasion- and may be compared to the double
ally with h in jh, etc. Thus, repre- forms amang, amanng, which must
senting the superior consonant by an have signified the same sound.
$ 2, No. 1. OREMIN XII TH CENTURY. 487
consonant followed. Thus in the opening lines ]pe, i, o, to, swa were
all probably short, and la = both, was long. The writing, how
ever, shews no difference. There was also this inconvenience that
as the short vowels are more frequent than the long, the writing
was overladen with doubled letters. The expedient of doubling the
vowel to indicate length, also very common and natural, overcomes
both difficulties, as may be seen by the example of pronunciation in
palseotype below p. 490. Thorpe in the Preface to his Analecta
Anglo- Saxonica, 1846, p. xi, attributes to Orrmin the precise cor
respondence of long and short vowels which exist at the present
day,1 so that according to him Orrmin's a, e, i, o, u represented (e«
se, ii e, ai i, oo o, uu a), an hypothesis which our preceding inves
tigations render untenable. If any weight is to be attributed to
our determination of the values of a, e, i, o in Chaucer, and u in the
Cuckoo Song, we can hardly conceive the pairing of the vowels to
have been otherwise then (aa a, ee e, ii i, oo o, uu u), except that
very possibly (aa a, EE E, n i ) may have replaced the first three
pairs, and as to the last pair, there might, from previous examples,
be a suspicion that the long and short u may have been at least
occasionally (yy, y) ; but no examples of the use of u for i, e seem to
occur, so that u should probably be always read as (uu, u). The
form ou for (uu) never occurs.
There are very few divided vowels, but we meet with ce and eo.
The ce in numerous instances replaces an ags. ea as in : da?d dead
dead, draem dream sound, raem hream cry, tasm team offspring, flserd
fleard mockery, staep steap steep. It often alternates with e and
sometimes even with eo, thus we have : draedenn dredenn, 2 pr.
draedesst, 3 pr. dredej>)>, 2 pi. draedenn, 3 p. dredde, imp. dred ;
drsefedd, dreofedd, drefedd. These confusions seem to indicate that
te, eo, e had the same sound. Even if a retained its true ags. sound,
which was probably (3333, 93), this would readily be confounded with
(EE, E), and this again with (ee, e). It seems preferable then to give a
' the same sound as e, viz. (ee, e), or else to regard & as (E), and e as (e).
As respects eo, Mr. White observes that : "a remarkable instance
of the preference of e for eo will be found by the omission, nearly
1 He says : " The author seems to nounced God, not Gode), etc. Thus
hare been a critic in his mother-tongue ; hus is to be pronounced hoos, whereas
and to [through ?] his idea of doubling }>uss> with a double s, is our thus."
the consonant after a short vowel (as Tyrwhitt, in his Essay on the Language
in German), we are enabled to form and Versification of Chaucer, Part III.
some tolerably accurate notions as to § iv. note 52, declares himself unable
the pronunciation of our forefathers. to comprehend the meaning of those
Thus he writes min with a single n doubled consonants, and in quoting the
only because the t is long or diphthonal, commencement of the Dedication, "ven-
as in our mine. So also in kinde (pro- tures (first begging Ormin's pardon for
nounced as our kind,} dom, boc, had, disregarding his injunction) to leave
lif (pronounced as our life), etc. On out the superfluous letters." To have
the other hand, wherever the consonant been consistent, then, he should have
is doubled, the vowel preceding is written : beging, lev, leters, instead of
short and sharp, as in jett (pronounced the " superfluously lettered " begging,
as our yet, not yate, as it would be if leave, letters !
written with a single t) Godd (pro-
488 OKRMIN — XII TH CENTURY. CHAP. V.
uniform, of o in the latter part of the MS., in the inserted leaves,
and in the dedication and preface, as in the forms lede, Jede,
werelld, etc., the o having been written in the above words and
in others in the first part of the MS., afterwards erased, and
then re-written. In these last named instances the o has been
retained in printing in order to preserve the orthography. Perhaps
the o was rejected as not essential for pronunciation ; Cf. our word
people." Of course such deletions and restitutions of o could not
have taken place unless eo formed one syllable, as White observes,
quoting v. 8571 :
Ja shulenn beon off heore kinn.
Possibly the writing may have been Orrmin's, the deletion his
brother's, who was requested to examine the manuscript, ded. v. 65 :
Annd te bitaeche ice off biss boc
hell wikenn1 alls itt semebb
all to burrhsekenn illc an ferrs
annd to burrhlokenn offte,
certainly rather for the purpose of detecting trips in doctrine,
batt upponn all bis boc ne be
nan word j«en Cristess lare,
nan word tatt swibe wel ne be
to trowwenn annd to folljhenn ;
but we can easily imagine " bro^err Wallterr " having extended his
observations to the spelling, and Orrmin having on further reflection,
restored his own orthography. In this case Orrmin attached a
value to eo different from (ee). However it be, we find as a matter
of fact that in White's glossary almost every word spelled with eo
has a secondary form spelled with simple e. This would rather
indicate (ee|_o), with a strongly marked (ee) and an evanescent (o),
comparable to the (oo[U, oo'w) in our modern pronunciation of know
= (noou).
The forms ai, ei, au, ou do not occur, but the syllables igg, 655,
a55> aww, eww, most probably indicated the presence of diphthongs.
The letter 5 had of course a different sound from g. The regular
(gh) sound seems to have been written $h, while (kh) was h or hh.
Thus from a%henn to own, we have ah owns, and ahhte goods, cattle.
We have also berr&henn to save, berrhless salvation. Observe that
in these cases gA comes before a vowel, as in hatt$he, re%hell,
fofahenn, etc., and h, hh, before a consonant or at the end of a word,
and this rule appears to have been consistently carried out. The
simple 5 then probably functioned as (j), as in : garrken, gate, 50,
gelden, gellpenn, georne georrne genie gerrne, ger, gife, giff, gilt,
gocc, gol, sung, gure. The initial gh is peculiar to the word gAo =
she and the contraction ^hot= %ho itt. In the later text of Laja-
mon we have %eo for she ; see also ghe, ge, supra p. 467. It would
be difficult to pronounce %ho otherwise than (^ho, Jho), and it
would seem to be a peculiar derivative from heo, the (jh) being
generated in the same way that it is in a not unusual modern pro-
1 White translates, office, duty, attendants, and Stratmann sub voce
charge. See Lajamon's wikenares= wiken.
§ 2, No. 1.
ORRMIN XII TH. CENTURY.
489
nunciation of the words, hue, Hume, Hughes = (jhuu, Jhuum,
Jhuuz). From these (jho, jhe) forms the subsequent (shoo,
shee, shii) easily follow. What then was the effect of g when
final? "W"e know that many orthoepists, as "Wallis, consider
that the final element in the diphthongs (ai, au) is (j, w) and not
(i, u), p. 186. "We see also from the example ofAwwstin, Ded. v. 10,
which we know from Latin sources must have been (Austiin*), that
Orrmin belonged to this class. It follows therefore that eww must
must have been (eu) in cnewwe and that 0gg, egg must have been
(ai, ei), or (aai, eei), as it is unlikely that Orrmin would have made
the difference, the duplication of g serving only to shew the strict
diphthongation of the elements.
The legitimacy of this interpretation will be more readily
admitted after an inspection of the following lists of all simple
words which I have observed in Orrmin containing ag g and eg g.
> gen. and pi.
dajhess, dajjess ; ags.
uV, ags. faegr
fairly, ags. faegere
fra^jnen to ask, ags. ireg-
nan, Lancashire frayne.
mass (1) may, ags. mseg ;
(2) maid icel. mey.
majjdenn maiden, ags.
maegden
majjstre magister
mas3>e tribe, ags. msegiJ
TO&II nay
nagjlenn to nail,
naeglian
ags.
wajjn wain, a£
wajjne]?]? carrieth, ags.
wegan
beggen gen. of ba both.
bejgsanns bezants
be^sc bitter, icel. beiskr
bejjtenn to beat, ags.
beatan
ejje fear, ags. eg
e^jlenn to ail, ags. eglan
ejjjierr either, ags. aeg)>er
ejjwhaer everywhere, ags.
seghwaer
, old Fr. flaial,
Lat. flagellum
gej^nen to gain, icel. at
gegna
gejjnlike conveniently,
icel. gegnilega
lej^kenn to play, icel. at
leika
lejgtenn to inquire, icel.
at leita
metle^^c humility
rej^n rain, ags. ren, regn
rejgnenn to rain
rejjsenn to raise, icel. at
reisa to travel
sejjst
seggeun
twain
wejje way, age. weg
layest layeth laid
lay, from leggenn to lay.
In almost all these cases we see agj answering to ags. ag (Kg eg,
and egg to ags. eg and once ea, or Icel. ei, and twice 6 = (je). The
most remarkable exception is \e%%m from ags. ]>am, as it accounts
for the form ]>eim, ]>aim, (p. 442, Pater, v. 8), and perhaps for ]>eis,
forms sometimes found in old English. It does not seem possible to
establish the transition of ag into ai (agh, a^h, aj, ai) more clearly.
The combinations «g or ^'gg occur in -/eg, as innwarrdli^,
witerrli-%, and in twi^ess and similar words, where the difference of
the single g and double gg has to be noted. Properly the sound
should be that of the very common German termination -iff, as
inwendig, wahrhaftig, which is theoretically (-i#h) and practically
(-i&h), as (in'bhend:iyh, bhaarHaft:igrA), or (in*bhend:iM, bhaar-
Haft-.ijkh). It would therefore be hazardous to read ^'g, *gg, other
wise than as (ii&h, i^h) final or (ii^h, iyh) before vowels. The
objection that these sounds when final should have been written-^,
-ihh, must be met by the habit of the ags. final -ig. The same
reason may have led Orrmin to use gg in the middle of a word in
490
ORRMIN XII TH CENTURY.
CHAP. V.
place of g gA, which would have been the regular reduplication of 5 A,
compare ssh in Englissh, dedication 109. The value of uw in %uu>
is doubtful, but it does not seem likely to have differed from (uu).
The / between two vowels, and frequently elsewhere, was most
probably (v}, a letter which Orrmin avoids, but ff was of course (f).
This would accord with the modern "Welsh usage.
As to the final e, the rule of pronunciation given, by the strict
observation of the number of syllables in each line, is precisely that
at which we arrived for Chaucer, down to the occasional elision of
an inflectional final e, even when not preceding a vowel, in which
case Orrmin simply left it out.1 The elisions, however, are not so
frequent as in Chaucer. Thus, in the first 1000 lines of the Homilies
in White's text, final e is elided five times before himm, three times
before he, twice before himm and hiss, once before hu and once before
Herodess v. 277, which is very peculiar. The elisions before a
vowel are more common. Open e perhaps does not occur, so that
the practice of the end of the xivth century is justified by an
English practice at the beginning of the xrrr th, which cannot have
been influenced by Norman habits. Coalescent words also occur as
^alde, namm = J?e aide, ne amm, Mt = he itt, no/ = ne off, nafe,
naffde = ne hafe, ne haffde, etc. A final d or t changes the follow
ing j> to t, a practice which we have met with before (p. 444, n. 2),
and which was still preserved in Chaucer's : wiltow = wilt thou,
etc. (p. 371), but here carried much further. We may therefore
feel considerable confidence in pronouncing Orrmulum as follows :
Orrmulum, Dedication.
Annd whase wilenn shall J>iss
boc
efft oj?err site writenn, 96
himm bidde ice ]?att het write
rihht
swa summ J?iss boc himm taech-
Conjectured Pronunciation.
And whaa'see wirlen shal this
book
eft oo'dher sirdhe rwirten,
mm bid ik dhat nee-t rwai'te
riAht
swaa sum dhis bookhimtEEtsh*
eth,
al thwert uut afVer dhat it is
upoo* dhis first'e biis'ne,
with al swilk riim als heer is
set
all }>werrt u't affterr J?att itt iss
uppo )nss firrste bisne, 100
wij>)> all swillc rime alls her iss
sett,
Verbal Translation.
And whoso shall desire this book All throughout after (the way) that it is
Again another time to write, 96 On this first example, 100
[rflj beg I that he it write rightly "With all such number as is here set
Just as this book him teacheth, (forth,)
1 White cites the examples: fra
mann' to 7»anne 11219 ; to king' 8449,
to kinge 8370; to grund' 11773, to
grunde 12547; o faderr hallf 2269,
o faderr halite 2028 ; i Godess bus'
625, inn huse 2112; off slap* 1903,
offslaepe 3143; >att Iseredd' follc 15876,
>att lajrede follc 7440 ; att inn' 12926,
att inne 12739 ; whaeroff' 13694,
whsroffe 13704; off witejhunng 14416,
off witejhunnge 14617, where I have
introduced an apostrophe to mark the
elision. This omission of e in writing
sometimes takes place before a vowel,
where it was not necessary according
to Orminn's system of writing.
§ 2, No. 1.
ORRMIN XII TH CENTURY.
491
wi)>J7 all se fele wordess ;
annd tatt he loke wel f-att he
an bocstaff write twiggess 104
ejgwhaer J?ser itt uppo }>iss boc
iss writenn o )?att wise ;
loke he well ]?att he't write swa,,
107
forr he ne mag g nohht elless
onn Ennglissh writenn rihht te
word,
J?att wite he wel to soj>e.
Annd giff mann wile witenn whi
ice hafe don }?iss dede, 112
whi ice till Ennglissh hafe wennd
goddspelless hallghe lare ;
ice hafe itt don forrj^i j>att all
crisstene follkess berrhless 116
iss lang uppo ]?att an, ]?att teg j
goddspelless hallghe lare
wij>J? fulle mahhte follghe rihht,
Jrarrh ]?ohht, jjurrh word, Jmrrh
dede.
* # # #
Ice ]?att tiss Ennglissh hafe sett
Ennglisshe menn to lare, 322
ic wass, j?aer J?8er I crisstnedd
wass,
Orrmin bi name nemmnedd.
annd ice Orrmin full innwarrdlig,
wfy]> ran]? annd ec wi)^
herrte, 326
her bidde J?a Crisstene menn
]?att herenn oj?err redenn
]?iss boc, hemm bidde ice her ]>att
teg 5
forr me jnss bede biddenn : 330
with al see fee'le word'es ;
and tat He look'e wel dhat nee
aan book'staf re<;ii'te twi^h'es
ei'whEEr dhEEr it upoo' dhis book
is iwit'en oo dhat wii'se ;
look nee wel dhat nee-t
swaa,
forr nee ne mai nokht el'es
on Eq'lish r^ii'ten ri^ht te
word,
dhat wiit He wel to sootlre
And jif man wiil'e wit-en whii
ik naave doon dhis deed'e,
whii ik til Eq'lish naave wennd
god'spel'es nalyh'e laa're ;
ik naav it doon fordhir dhat al
cristee*ne folk'es berkh'les
is laq upoo- dhat aan, dhat tei
god'spel'es nal^rh'e laa're
with ful'e makht'e folyh'e ri^ht,
thur^h thokht, thurih woord,
thur^h dee'de.
* * * *
Ik dhat tis Eq'lish Haave set
Eq'lish'e men to laa're,
ik was, dhEEr dhEEr i krist'ned
was,
Ormiirr bi naam'e nemm'ned.
And ik Ormiur ful in'wardli^h
with muuth and eek with
hert'e,
neer bid'e dhaa kristee'ne men
dhat nee'ren oo'dher ree'den
dhis book, Hem bid ik neer dhat
tei
for mee dhis bee'de bid'en :
Verbal Translation.
With all so many words,
And that he look well, that he
One letter write twice, 104
Everywhere where it upon this book
Is written on that wise ;
Look he well that he it write so,
For he may not else 108
In English write rightly the word,
That know he well to sooth.
And if one will know why
I have done this deed, 112
"Why I into English have turned
Gospel's holy lore ;
I have done it because that all
Christian people's salvation 116
Is along of that one (thing), that they
Gospel's holy lore
With full power follow rightly,
By thought, by word, by deed. * * *
I that this English have set (forth) 321
Englishmen to teach,
I was there where I christened was,
Orrmin by name named ;
And I Orrmin full inwardly,
With mouth and eke with heart 326
Here pray the Christian men
That hear or read
This book, them pray I here that they
For me this prayer pray : 330
492
ORRMIN XII TH CENTURY.
CHAP. V.
)>att broken- ]>att tiss Ennglissh dliat broo'dher dhat tis Eq-lish
wntt rt#it
allraeresst wra't annd wrohhte, alrEE'restrwaat annd rwokht'e,
)?att broken*, forr hiss swinnc to dhat broo'dher, for ms swiqk to
laen, LEEH
so]> blisse mote findenn. 334 . sooth blis'e moo'te find'en.
Verbal Translation.
That brother that this English writing That brother for his labour to reward,
First of all (men) wrote and wrought. True bliss may (he) find.
As considerable doubt attaches to the length of the vowel in old
English, and as Orrmin's orthography is meant to resolve that
doubt, it seems worth while to collect together all the instances
where he seems to mark vowels as long. In the following lists,
which have been collected from White's glossary, all the simple
(uncompounded) words in which a long vowel before a consonant
appeared to be indicated with tolerable certainty have been col
lected. To all cases in which a vowel is followed by more than
one consonant, and the first of those consonants is not doubled,
doubt attaches, because Orrmin's usage fluctuates in some of them,
and he seems to have thought that two consonants would act oc
casionally as well as a doubled consonant. Such words are there
fore excluded, as are also all monosyllables ending in a vowel, and
therefore of undetermined quantity. The use of the short sign (")
sometimes seems to indicate a short vowel, where only one con
sonant follows, and hence a few of the following words may be
doubtful, but on the whole it would seem that a long vowel was
intended in each of the following cases.
LIST OF OKRMIN'S "WoBDS CONTAINING LONG TOWELS.*
Long A (aa)
dale
ladebb
rabe
wrab
adle
drake
laf
rabenn
bafe
afell
drashenn
laferrd
sake
j?rashe
a -7- lip
"fl f\ P1*T*
loh
BHTY1P
o
an
fakenn
lull
lakenn
samenn
Long M (BE)
anis
farenn
lare
sare
aadij
ar
frame
late
shame
eefre
are
gal
lashe
shapebb
•c
arenn
gan
makenn
ska]>esst
83rd
atell
gate
male
slan
sere
abell
Sate
man
snab
Ml
abess
Satenn
manab
stan
8Bb
abumm
sehatenn
munis
strac
baere
awihht
grap
mare
sware
baerenn
babe
had
nakedd
swat
baetenn
brad
hafenn
name
takenn
braad
brab
hal
nan
tale
il'i-'l
kafe
halis
naness
wac
d83f
kare
ham
nabe
wakenn
daeh
charij
hat
ran touched
war
dael-enn
clake
hatenn
rap
wat knew
daew
clab
lac
ras
waterr
dseb
cnape
lade
rab
wrat
draefedd
This list and the following have been checked by Mr. Brock.
§ 2, No. 1.
ORRMIN XII TH CENTURY.
493
draem
kechell
metedd
whil
blome
faerenn
kelenn
mejhe
idell
hoc
faewe
kene
ned
ifell
bode
flaesh
chepinng
nedl
irenn
bodij
jeep
chesenn
neh
lie
bone
gaetenn
kepenn
new
lich
bojhess
haefedd
dene
peninng
lif
bote
haele
clepenn
prest
Hke
bo]?e
b.aep
cnedesst
redenn
likenn
broberr
hser
cnelenn
rejhell
lim
clofenn
haese
cwemenn
sec
limess
come
haete
cwen
sed
lin
croc
haebenn
dede
sefenn
litell
dom
haewenn
deme-nn
sekenn
li>e
don
whaer
depe
sel
mikell
flod
laec
degenn
ser
min
flor
laeche
drefedd
shene
mine]?]?
flowedd
laefe
drejlienn
shep
nimenn.
fode
laepenn
ec
shetenn
ni]>
fon
Iserenn
eche
slep
nijhen
fot
laetenn
efenn
smec
pine-nn
frofre
maelenn
ekenn
smere
ridinngess
god
maeless
ele
smebe
rime
30!
nia'iio
etenn
sped
risenn
gom
maere
e^he
spedenn
shine]? ]?
hof
maeb
fedenn
spekenn
shir
holefcb
naefre
fele
stekenn
shridenn
hope
raed
fere
ster
shrifenn
hojhefull
raedij
flete»
stren
side
inoh
rsefenn
flejhenn
swere
sikenn
lofenn
raem
frend
swet
sikerr
lokenn
T83W
^emenn
tekenn
si]?e
lome
saem
jer
tene
sije
lojhe
shsedenn
jetenn
tredenn
skiledd
mod
shaewenn
gredij
wedenn
skir
moderr
shraedenn
grene
wel
smikerr
mone
slaen
gresess
wen-enn
smitenn
moneb
slaep
gretenn
wepenn
stidij
mot-e
spaeche
hefenn
were
stih
notesst
stsep
heh
werenn
stirenn
oferr
Btraem
her
wrekenn
stijhenn
ofne
straete
here
wrejenn
swin
oberr
taechenn
herenn
Jede
swije
ploh
taelenn
hete
J;es
tid
rhof
taem-enn
hew
j^ejjenn
time
rode
W8Gd6
llGWGIlIl
nnn
waedle
hejhe
Long I (ee)
W1C
wide
ros
rosenn
•waslmng
ledenn
abidenn
wif
rote
waepenn
lefe
bisne
win
rotenn
waete
lefenn
bli>e
wis
scone
Jaer-e
lem
ki]?enn
wise
shop
]?sew
lenenn
cnif
wite
slob
Jraspenn
letenn
drifenn
witenn
snoterr
I "L
fit
• i
Long E (ee)
Ic^Ilc
lejhenn
i\i
filenn
witerr
wi]>err
sone
sob
ffigede
mede
fir
writenn.
stoke-ss
bede
mekenn
jifenn
J^iderr
toe
bene
mele
giferr
tise
tor
berenn
menenn.
hidcrr
j
betenn
menejjj?
hire
Long 0 (oo)
wod
woh
breme
mete
bis
blod
wokenn
494
ORRMIN
XII TH CENTURY.
CHAP. V.
wop
wojhe
Jolenn
bujhenn
cludess
clutess
crune
cumenn
cu]j
dun
dure
ftile
fus
jure
hunij
bus
husell
butenn
Ihude
lufe-nn
lukenn
lutenn
muj>
mujhenn
numen
rum
rune
shrud
sumerr
sune
sur
sutell
8U)>
Butenn
tun
uferr
ure
usell
ut-e-nn
u)>e
wude
wuke
wunenn
Long Z7(uu)
brukenn
bufenn
bule
bun
bure
butenn
As considerable interest attaches to the determination of such
adjectives and substantives as had a final e in early English, and as
Orrmin's versification establishes with certainty the pronunciation
of such letters, except when they are elidably situate, I have
collected from White's glossary all such words, adding the meaning.
A few substantives are only found in oblique cases, and these are
marked f because the e may be only inflexional. In the case of
the adjectives it is not always certain, from a simple inspection
of the glossary, whether the e is a mere mark of the plural or
of the definite inflection. "When I have detected either of these
to be the case I have omitted the adjective from the list, but I have
not thought it necessary to verify every case. Such a table of
German nouns and adjectives would seem ridiculous to a German,
because he cannot dissociate the e from the words. "We have be
come so used to its absence that every kind of artificial means is
necessary to restore the association.
LIST OF OEEMIN'S ADJECTIVES AND SUBSTAOTTVES ENDING IN E.
adle disease
blisse bliss
dsedbote repentance
fallse false
aebaere clear
bli)>e blithe
dale part
fasste fast s.
aegedef luxury
blome blome
daerne secret
fele, fele, fele many
sere ear
blostme blossom
daffte humble
feor)>e fourth
sete food
bode command
dale valley
fere f£re power
ahhte goods
bone boon
dede deed
fifte fifth
ane alone (?adv.)
bote remedy
deme t judge
fiftende t fifteenth
ange sorrow
bo]?e booth
deope, depe deep
fode food
anndssete odious
bra)>j>e anger
deore, dere dear
forrme first
anndsware answer
breme furious
drijje dry
frame profit
are grace
bridale bridal
druh.h)>et drought
fremmde strange
arrke ark
bridgume bride
dure door
frofre f comfort
asse ass
groom
dwillde error
frummjje beginning
axe axe
bulaxe axe
eche eternal
fulre foul-er
ajhe awe
bule bull
eggef edge
galle gall
baere bier
buref bower
enhte eight
gate way
bede prayer
care care
eldef age
genge gang
belle bell
chele cold
ele oil
gillte f tribute
bene prayer
chepinngboje mar
ende end country
grene green
bennche f bench
ket-booth
eorbe, er]?e earth
grejjfe herald
berrmef barm
cbesstre city
errfe animal
grimme grim
berrnef barn
clakef accusation
errnde errand
haele health
bettre better
clene clean
ejhe eye
basset command
bilenge belonging to
cribbe crib
ejhesallfe eye-salve
haetef heat
birde lineage
cade cud
ejhesihh^e eyesight
belle hell
bisne example
cullfre dove
e% je t fear
hellfe handle
bite morsel
cweme agreeable
faewe few
hellpe help
§ 2, No. 1.
ORRMIN
XII TH CENTURY.
495
heoffne heaven
jae-^hefemale eousin
si^e f victory
unnwrsfjste weak
heore their (pron.)
milde mild
smere ointment
uppbrixle object of
heorrte heart
milef mile
sme)>e smooth
reproach
here host
millce mercy
soffte so/ie
ure our
hete, hgte hate
mindef mind
spseche «peecA
waede clothing:
hirrde guardian
minnstre f minster
stede sfeois? ^?^«ce
wacdle poor
hire Aer
missdedef misdeed
stefFne vow
wsete f drink s.
hirne corner
mone moon
steorrne star
walde f power
hope Aq#>e
name name
stirne stern a.
wambe belly
irre ire
nabe f grace
stoke f stock
wasstme fruit
karrte cart
neddre adder
straete t street
wajhe wall
kemmpe champion
nedlef needle
strandef strand
wecche watching s.
kene keen
-nesse -ness
strennc]>e strength
wehhte f weight
kide foW
nesshe soft
sune son
w^re were man
kinde kind s.
orrmete measureless
sunne sun
werre worse
kineriche kingdom
orrtrowwe distrust
sware f answer s.
wersse worse
kirrke church
ful
grievous a.
wesste waste desert
kirrkedure church-
orrtroww)>e distrust
swepe wA«j?
s. and a.
door
oxe ox
swijie ^rea<
we^e way
lade guiding s.
pappe f breast
t^le <afo number
whaete wheat
laechef feccA
pine pain
temmple temple
wicke mean weak
laefe belief
profete prophet
tende £e«£A
wicked
lare fore
resste repose
tene ten, injury s.
widdwe widow
late, late t appear
riche kingdoms rich
time tame
wilde wild
ance
rimef metre
tunge tongue
wille will
lattre Ja^r
rodef rood
turrtle turtle
•wis, wise wise a.
lawe mound
rote root
twinne tivin
wise wise s.
la;$he t fotfl
rume wide
]>eode people
wite prophet
lefe feow
rune counsel
Jejjre </z«V
wite t punishment
leode people
saete f sea#
Jjrajhef throw,time
witejhunnge pro
leome, leme gleam
sahhte concurring
J^ridde third
phecy
leghe wa^es
sake dispute
]?rinne three
wij?J>errstrennc]>e t
lifisshe living
sallfe safee
Jmttene thirteen
opposing power
like /orm
sallmef psalm
Jrittennde <Atr-
wlite f faee
liref fo«*
same f same
teenth
wra3che vengeance
li]>e ftYAe ^e«£&
sawle SOM^
j^rowwinngef throe
wrajjjie t wrath s.
lo;$he f fire
scone beauteous
j^urrfe needful
wrecche wretched
lufe ftwe
seoll)>e sell^e Aa^j-
jmsennde thousand
wrihhte (1) maker;
macche, make,
piness
unnclene unclean
(2) blame
mate, wife
serrjhe sorrow
unncweme unac
wude wood s.
msenef company
sexe st'a;
ceptable
wuke week
male t tribute
sexte «tiz;^
unnfaele deceitful
wullef wool
mare wore
sextene sixteen
unnfsewe not a few
wundef wound
majjstre master
shaebe f sheath
unnhselef unsound-
wurrjie t worship
ma^gjje ?n'£e Am
shaffte creature
ness
wurr);shipe worship
mede f »iee«?
shame shame
unnorne plain
gate gate door
mele «je#£
shande disgrace
unnride vast
jerrde t yard rod
merrke t mark
shene sheen a.
unnsme^e uneven
jife gift
messe mass
shriffte shrift
unnwine enemy
jure your
m£te meat
sihh]>e sight
It will be found on examination that though many of the above
-e are justified by the existence of some final vowel or syllable in
Anglosaxon or Icelandic, not a few have been clearly subsequently
developed. See supra, p. 345, note 2, and the Table, pp. 379-397.
496
LAYAMON XIII TH CENTURY.
CHAP. Y.
2. LAJAMON'S BRUT, BEGINNING OF XIIITH CENTURY.
Although Lagamons Brut1 is written in verse, yet the rhythm
and orthography are so irregular that it is scarcely easier to con
jecture the pronunciation than if it were mere prose. In fact with
Orrmin we take leave of all certainty arising from metre or strict
orthography. But the extraordinary diversity of spelling is of
itself some assistance.
"Weighing the results already obtained we cannot be very far
wrong in supposing a, e, i, o, u to be (aa a, ee e, ii i, oo o, uu u),
with the doubtful (i) or (y) for u occasionally as in lut, lutel, luKere
(lit, Kt'el, Hdh'ere) few, little, wicked.2 Again a may be called
(EE, E), and as eo interchanges with e it may be (ee) or (06^0).
Ea is rare and interchanges with a, so that it may be (ea) or even
(ea) with a more distinct (a). Among the consonants g, h, follow
the same rule as in Orrmin, ch is of course (tsh), but (sh) does
not seem to have been developed, as sc is constantly used.
On account of the extreme western locality of the author's resi
dence (3^ miles south-east of Bewdley, in Worcestershire) there
may have been many dialectic peculiarities which would tend to
give the letters slightly different values from those thus assigned,
but it seems probable that such a pronunciation as the following
would have been intelligible.3
Conjectured Pronunciation.
Siks'ti win'ter neevde Lair
dhis lond al to-weld'en.
Dhe kiq neevde threo dokht'ren
bii His driA:h-litshe kween.
Neevd He nen*e suture,
dheerfoor He wardh sari,
ms man-skiipe to hald'en,
buut'en dha threo dokht'ren.
2 The forms litul, liftere also occur.
It is quite possible that in such words
both modes of speech (lut-el, lit-el) oc
curred in these "Western dialects, see
p. 298, p. 300 note 2, and p. 424.
3 The many interesting points which
would arise from a careful study of the
dialectic peculiarities indicated by the
orthography are of course passed over
here, as the object is onlv to ascertain
the phonetic meaning of the letters,
which is an entirely preliminary inves
tigation without which the other could
not properly succeed, but which is quite
independent of any other research.
Brut.
Madden' s edition, vol. i. p. 124, v. 2922.
Sixti winter hefde Leir J
J?is lond al to welden.
J>e king hefde }>reo dohtren ^
bi his drihliche quen.
nefde he nenne sune J
J?er fore he warS sari,
his manscipe to halden ^
buten }>a breo dohtren.
1 Lajamons Brut, or Chronicle of
Britain; a poetical semi-saxon para
phrase of the Brut of Wace, now first
published from the Cottonian manu
scripts in the British Museum, accom
panied by a literal translation, notes,
and a grammatical glossary. By Sir
Frederic Madden, K.H., keeper of the
MSS. in the British Museum. Pub
lished by the Society of Antiquaries of
London, 1847, 3 vols, royal 8vo. The
Cottonian MSS. are Calig. A. ix, the
older version, which is attributed to the
beginning of the xmth century at
latest, and Otho. C. xiii, which is of a
much later date.
§ 2, No. 2.
LAYAMON XII TH CENTURY.
497
J>a seldeste dohter haihte Gor-
noille.
]>a o^er Begau.
];a ]?ridde Cordoille.
Heo wes ]?a gungeste suster ^
a wliten alre uairest ;
heo wes hire fader al swa leof ^
swa his agene lif.
]>a asldede ]?e king ^
& wakede an a'Selan.
& he hine bi-}7ohte ^
wet he don mahte.
of his kineriche ^
sefter his deie.
He seide to huwsuluen r'
tat ]>at vuel wes :
Ic wile mine riche to-don ^
& alien minen dohtren.
& 3 eii en hem mine kine-j?eode i
& twemen mine hearnen.
Ac serst ic wille fondien J
whulchere heo mi heste freond.
and heo seal habhe j>at heste del^
of mine drihlichen Ion.
}ras ]>e king ]?ohte J
and ]?er sefter he worhte.
Dha Eld-este dokhier
Gornuil'e,
dha oo'dher Reeg'au
dha thrid'e Korduil'e
Heo wes dha juq'este sus'ter,
a l^ii'ten al're vairest.
Heo wes Hiir*e faa'der al swa
leof
swaa His aagh'ene liif.
Dhaa Eld'ede dhe kiq
and waa'kede an aa'dhelan
and nee min'e hithokht'e
whet He doon makht'e
of his kin'eriitshe
Effc'er His dai'e.
He said'e to him sel'ven,
dhat* dhat iivel wes :
Ik wil'e minre riitsh'e to-doon
and alien minren dokht'ren,
and jeeven Hem miure kin'e-
theo'de
and tweenren miin'e hearn'en,
ak EErst ik wil'e fond'jen
whilk'ere heo mi best'e freond,
and neo skal nah'e dhat hest'e
deel
Of miin'e driMrlitshen loon, [deel
Dhus dhe kiq thokht'e
and dheeraft'er He workht'e.
Sir F. Madden' s translation of the above, omitting the parts relating to the
more modern text.
Sixty winters had Leir
this land ' all ' to govern.
The king had three daughters
by his noble queen ;
he had no son, —
therefore he was sorry, —
his honor to hold,
except the three daughters.
The eldest daughter hight Gornoille,
the second Regau,
the third Cordoille.
She was the youngest ' sister,'
of beauty fairest of all ;
she was to her father as dear
as his own life !
Then the king grew old,
and weakened in strength,
and he bethought him
what he might do
with his kingdom,
after his day.
He said to himself
that that was evil :
" I will divide my realm
to ' all ' my daughters,
' and give them my kingdom,
and share among my children ; '
but first I will prove
which is my best friend,
and she shall have the best part
of my lordly land."
Thus the king thought,
and thereafter he wrought.
32
498 HENRY III. — XIII TH CENTURY. CHAP. V.
§ 3. Prose Writings of the xin th Century and Earlier.
Here we have only the spelling to trust to, and to see
whether the determination of the values of the letters by
means of the poets is borne out by the systematic ortho
graphy of the prose writers. Yery brief notices are all that
need to be given.
1. ONLY ENGLISH PBOCLAMATION OF HENRY III, 18 OCT. 1258.
This proclamation, issued by the barons in the king's name, has
been fully considered in a separate work,1 in which the pronuncia
tion was assigned in accordance with the results at which I had
then arrived,2 but subsequent research has induced me slightly to
alter my opinion on certain points. Considering that the document
is formal, it seems probably that ea, eo had their full (ea, eo) sounds.
It is even possible that eow may have been (eou) rather than (eu),
but the constant practice of writing ew in trewe leads me to believe
that the initial eo of this combination has to be read (e) simply.
The occurrence of simple ew, however, casts some doubt upon this
conclusion as respects the actual pronunciation of the scribe. There
is probably little doubt that the more general pronunciation of ea,
eo, at that time was (ee), and of eow (eu). The combination oa is
rare. We have seen it rhyme with (aa) in Genesis and Exodus
(p. 467), and the writer may have said (aa, aa, aah\ the last as an
intermediate sound. As a compromise I use (aa, a}. The inter
change of ce, e in rcedesmen redesmen, seems to imply that & had
become simple (ee, e). In accordance with former usage (ai) is
employed for ei- but we must not fail to observe the correspondence
of the French Fiz Geffrey, p. 504, with the English Geffrees sune
p. 505, shewing that the pronunciation (Dzhef'ree*) was then
current (supra p. 462). The name AlditlieV in tbe English, p. 504,
and Au&itheV in tbe French, p. 505, seems to be a contraction for
the name Aldidelege in Staffordshire (Domesday Book, printed edition,
fo. 2505, col. 2, pbotozincograpbed edition, Staffordshire, p. x. col. 2,)
=ald-ide-lege, or ags. eald y^Sa lega, that is, old-water-land, com
pare Caedmon's ea-stream-y%a. Ide, still called (lid) supra p. 291,
is in Devonshire (Domesday Book, fo. 1015, col. 2,) as also Ideford ;
Idebill is in Kent, Iden in Sussex. Hence tbe probable alteration
of the name was (ald-irdha-lee'^ha, ald-irdhe-lai, auld-i-lai,
aud-e-lai, AAdiee, AAd'K), compare Audelay, p. 449, n. 2, and the
modern Audley. The other vowels and the consonants present no
difficulty. The length of tbe vowels, where it differs in my scheme
1 The only English Proclamation of z The error of supposing long » to
Henry III, 18 October 1258, and its have been occasionally (ai), see supra
treatment by former editors and trans- p. 279, was not detected till after the
lators, considered and illustrated ; to book had been printed off, and is re-
which are added editions of the Cuckoo ferred to in the errata. The use of
Song and The Prisoner's Prayer, Lyrics Henr' .... send igretingefor
of the xin th century, London, 1 868, s e n d e )?, is well illustrated by Prof.
8vo. pp. 135, by the author of this F. J. Child, supra p. 354, art. 61.
treatise.
§ 3, No. 1. HENRY III. XIII TH CENTURY. 499
from that assigned to Anglosaxon, will generally be found justified
by the spelling of Orrmin, or by more recent usage. The quantity
of the Anglosaxon short vowels seems to have frequently suffered
in passing through the Norman period of repression, when the
language ceased to be cultivated by men of letters.
The complete proclamation, with the French original, is here
reproduced from the stereotype plates of the work cited in note 1,
in order that the first correct presentation of this venerable and
interesting document may be preserved for the use of the Early
English Text Society. To insure accuracy, the proofs had been
compared three times with the originals in the Public Record Office.
A few very slight inaccuracies in the stereotype plates have been
removed in this edition, after a fourth comparison. The bracketed
numbers refer to the numbers of the lines in the original MSS.
The following is an abstract of the history of this important pro
clamation, the only public English document known to have been
issued under our Norman kings. On account of the quarrels be
tween Henry III. and his barons, the latter were summoned to
Westminster 7 April, 1258, when Henry submitted himself to a
Council of Twenty-four, twelve chosen by himself, and twelve by
the Barons, or, as they called themselves, the Commons. This
Council appointed a Committee of Four to choose a Cabinet of
Fifteen. To this Council and Cabinet were due the provisions of
Oxford, 11 June 1258, which ordered a Parliament consisting of the
Fifteen, and Twelve Magnates to meet three times a year, and for
the first time on 6 October 1258_ At this Parliament the follow
ing Proclamation was agreed to, and issued in Latin, French, and
English. The Latin version has not yet been found. There are
two copies of the French, and one of the English in. existence.
The French version which follows contains the names of thirteen
out of the Cabinet of Fifteen, and three from among the first ap
pointed Twelve Parliamentary Magnates. The object of the Pro
clamation, was to make each man in the country take the oath
already taken by the King and the Commons at Oxford, pledging
him to obey the Council of Twenty-four, to assist it to the utmost
of his power, and to oppose its enemies.
The English proclamation seems to have been published from the
original by Somner 1659, Hearne 1720, Henshall 1798, the Eecord
Commission (in its edition of Rymer's Foedera 1816,) the Master of
the Rolls (in Sir H. James' photozincographed National Manuscripts
1865), and, in part, by Astle 1803 (in facsimile), but in all cases
incorrectly, and the errors made by these editors have increased
in the hands of Tyrrel 1700, Lyttelton 1767, Henry 1781-93,
Latham 1841, and Koch 1863, who followed Somner; and Craik
1851, who foUowed Rymer. Pauli 1853, and Regel 1856 (who is
followed by Marsh 1862,) conjecturally, and on the whole satis
factorily, amended Rymer by means of the French version, which
has been published by Rymer and Pauli only, but the latter merely
transcribed the former, leaving a grievous blunder uncorrected.
Some of the errors of these various editions are given on page 504.
500 HENRY III. XIII TH CENTURY. CHAP V.
OLD FRENCH VERSION.
Patent Roll, 42 Henry III. m. 1, n. 1.
[1] Henri par la grace deu Rey de Englet're Sire de
Irlande. Due de Normandie de Aqui'en et Cunte de Angou. a
tuz fes feaus Clers et Lays saluz. Sachez ke nuf uolons et
otrions ke ce ke noftre conseil [2] v la greignure partie de
eus ki est esluz par nuf et par le co'mun de noftre Reaume a
fet v fera al honur de deu et noftre fei et pur le p'fit de noftre
Reaume ficum il ordenera ^ feit ferm et eftable [3] en tuttef
chosef a tuz iurz. Et comandons et enioinons a tuz noz
feaus et leaus en la fei kil nus deiuent kil fermement teignent
et iurgent a tenir et a maintenir les eftabliflemenz [4] ke funt
fet v funt a fere par lauant dit Cunseil v la
Modern English Translation of Old English Version.
[1] Henry, by the grace of God, king of England,
Lord of Ireland, Duke of Normandy, of Aquitaine, and
Earl of Anjou, sends greetings to all his lieges, clerical and
lay, in Huntingdonshire. [2] That know ye well all, that
we will and grant that that which our councillors, all or
the greater part of them, that have been chosen by us,
and by the people of the country of our kingdom, have
done, and shall [3] do, to the glory of God, and in fur
therance of our allegiance, for the benefit of the country,
by the provision of the aforesaid councillors, be stedfast and
lasting in all things ever without end. And we call upon
[4] all our lieges in the allegiance that they owe us, that
they stedfastly hold and swear to hold and to defend the
acts that have been passed, or shall be passed by the
aforesaid councillors, [5] or by the
§ 3, No. 1. HENRY III. — XIII TH CENTURY. 501
OLD ENGLISH VERSION.
Patent Roll, 43 Henry III. m. 15., n. 40
[1] 5f Henr* Jmrj godef fultume king on Engleneloande.
Lhoauerd on Yrloand'. Duk on Norm' on Aquitain' and
eorl on Arriow Send igretinge to alle hife holde ilaerde
and ileawede on Huntendon'fchir' [2] J>aet witen je
wel alle j>£et we willen and vnnew }>8et. j>aet vre raodef-
men alle o)>er )>e moare dael of heom j^aet beoj? icho-
fen Jmrj uf and jmrj j?aet loandef folk on vre
kunenche. habbe]> idon and fehullen [3] don in J>e
worjmefTe of gode and on vre treow)>e. for ]>e freme
of ]>e loande. Jmrj ]>e befijte of )>an to forenifeide
redefmen r' beo ftedefaeft and ileftinde in alle J^inge
abuten aende. And we hoaten [4] alle vre treowe in
}?e treowj?e ])83t heo vf ojen. j^aat heo ftedefasfthche
healden and fwerien to healden and to werien ]?o
ifetneflef ])Sdt beon imakede and beon to makien }>urz
J)an to foren ifeide raedefmen [5] o]?er JJUTJ J?e
Conjectured Pronunciation of Old English Version.
[1] Hen'rii thurkh God'es fuHume kiq on Eqienelon'de,
Ihaverd on lirLmde, Dyyk on Normandii, on Akitain'e and
eorl on Andzhuir, send igreet'iqe to al'e nis'e Hold'e ileer'de
and ilee'wede on Hmrtendooneshirre. [2] Dhet wii'ten Je
wel al'e, dhet we wil'en and un'en dhet, dhet uirre ree'des-
men al'e odli'er dhe maa're deel of neom, dhet beoth itshoo'-
sen thurkh us, and thurkh dhet lond'es folk on uu're
kin'eriitshe, nab'eth idoon" and shul'en [3] doon, in dhe
worth'nese of God'e and on uu're treuth'e, for dhe free'me
of dhe land'e, thurkh dhe besi&h'te of than to foo'renisaide
ree'desmen, beo stee'defest and jles'tinde in al'e thiq'e
abuut'en en'de. And we naa'ten [4] al'e uu're treu'e in
dhe treuth'e dhet Heo us oogh'en, dhet Heo stee'defestliitshe
neald'en and swee'rien to Heald'en and to weerien dho
iset'neses dhet beon imaa'kede and beon to maak'ien thurkh
dhan to foo'ren isaid'e ree'desmen, [5] odh'er thurkh dhe
502 HENRY III. — XIII TH CENTURY. CHAP. V.
Old French Version. — (Continued.)
greignure partie de ens. en la maniere kil est dit defuz.
et kil fentreeident a ce fere par meifmes tel s'ment
cunt* tutte genz [5] dreit fefant et p'nant. et ke mil
ne preigne de t're ne de moeble par quei cefte purueance
puifle eftre defturbee v empiree en nule manere. et fe
mil v mis viegnent encunt' cefte chose [6] nuf uolons
et comandons ke tuz nof feaus et leans le teignent a enemi
mortel. et pur ce ke nus volons ke ceste chose feit ferine et
eftable r' nof enueons nof lettres ou'tes feelees de n're [7] seel
en chefcun Cunte a demorer la entrefor. Tesmoin Meimeifmes
a Londres le Difutime lur de Octobre Ian de noftre regne
Q'raunte fecund. Et cefte chose fu fete deuant Boneface
Arce[8]eueske de Cantrebur'. Gauf de Cantelou. Eueske de
Wyreceftr'. Simow de Montfort. Cunte de Leyceftr'. Richard
de Clare Cunte de Glouceftr' et de Hertford. Bog'
Modern English Translation of Old English Version. — (Con.)
greater part of them, as it has been before said. And that
each help the other so to do by that same oath, against all
men, doing and receiving justice. And let no man take
any land or [6] chattel, whereby this provision may be
let or impaired in any wise. And if any person or persons
oppose this provision, we will and enjoin that all our lieges
hold them as mortal enemies. And because [7] we will
that this should be stedfast and lasting, we send you this
letter patent signed with our seal, to hold among you in
the treasury. Witnesses ourselves at London, the eigh
teenth day of the month [8] of October, in the two and
fortieth year of our reign. And this was done in the
presence of our sworn councillors, Boneface, archbishop of
Canterbury ; Walter of Cantelow, bishop of Worcester ;
[9] Simon de Montfort, earl of Leicester ; Richard of Clare,
earl of Gloucester and Hertford; Roger
§ 3, No. 1. HENRY III. XIII TH CENTURY. 503
Old English Version. — (Continued.)
moare dael of heom alfwo alfe hit if biforen ifeid. And
j?aet sehc o)>er helpe J^aet for to done bi J>an ilche
oj?e ajenef alle men. Rijt for to done and to foangen.
And noan ne nime of loande ne of [6] ejte. wherj>urj
Ipif befijte nmje beon ilet oj?er iwerfed on onie
wife. And jif oni o]>er onie cumen her onjenef*/
we willen and hoaten J>aet alle vre treowe heom healden
deadliche ifoan. And for }>set [7] we willen }>8et }>if beo
ftedefseft and leftmde r' we fenden jew Jnf writ open
ifeined wi]> vre feel, to halden a mangef jew inehord.
Witnefle vf feluen set Lunden'. }>ane Ejteten^e day.
on J?e Monj>e [8] of Octobr' In }>e TwoandfowertijJ^e
jeare of vre cruninge. And J>if wef idon aetforen
vre ifworene redefmen. Bonefac' Archebifchop on Kant'-
bur'. Walt' of Cantelow. Bifchop on Wirecheftr'. [9]
Sim' of Muntfort. Eorl on Leircheflr'. Eic' of
Clar' eorl on Glowchestr' and on Hurtford/ Rog'
Conjectured Pronunciation of Old English Version. — (Con.)
m««fre deel of Heom al'swo als'e nit iz bifoo'ren isaid*. And
dhet eetsh oodh'er Help'e dhet for to doon'e bii dhaan il'tshe
ooth'e ajee'nes al'e men, ri&ht for to doon'e and to faq'en.
And naan ne nirme of land'e ne of [6] e£ht*e, wheerthurkh*
dhis besi^ht-e muugh'e beon ilet* odh'er iwers'ed on on'ie
wiise. And jif on'i odh'er on'ie kuum'en neer onjee'nes,
we wil'en and H«a*ten dhet al'e uu're treu'e Heom Heald'en
dead'litshe ifaan' And for dhet [7] we wil'en dhet dhis beo
stee'defest and lest'inde, we send'en Jeu dhis rwit oop'en
isain'ed with uu're seel, to Hald'en amaq'es Jeu in'e Hoord.
Wit'nese us selven et Lun'deene, dhaan'e e/cht'etenthe dai,
on dhe moonth'e [8] of Oktoo'ber in dhe twoo and foourti&hthe
jear'e of uu're kruuniqe. And dhis wes idoon' etfoo'ren
uu're iswoo'reneree'desmen,Bon'efaase,Ar'tshebish'oponKan'-
terber'i; Walt'er of Kan'teloou, bish'op on Wii'retshester; [9]
Sii'moon of Munt'fort, eorl on Lairtshester ; Rii'tshard of
Klaa're, eorl on GUoou'tshester and on Hereford ; Rodzh'er
504 HENRY III. — XIII TH CENTURY. CHAI-. V.
Old French Version. — (Continued.)
le Bigod Cunte de [9] Norf' et Marefchal de Englet're
Humfrey de Bohun Cunte de Hereford. Piere de Saueye.
Guilame de forz. Cunte de Aubemarle. lohan de Plesseiz
Cunte de "Warrewyk*. Rog' de Quency [10] Cunte de
Wynceftr'. lohan le Fiz Geffrey. Piere de Muntfort.
Richard de Grey Rog' de Mortemer lames de Audithel.
et Hug' le Despens'.
Modern English Translation of Old English Version. — (Con.)
Bigod, earl of Norfolk and Marshal of England : Peter of
Savoy; "William de Fort, earl of Albemarle; [10] John de
Plessis, earl of Warwick ; John Fitz Geoffrey ; Peter de
Montfort ; Richard de Grey ; Roger de Mortimer ; James
Audley, and in the presence of other kinsmen.
[11] And in exactly the same words it has been sent
into every other shire throughout the kingdom of England
and also in till Ireland.
P rincipal errors of former editions. Only such blunders are here
given as make nonsense of the original. The numbers refer to the
lines of the MS., the spaced letters to the original, and the italics
to the errors.
Send igretinge 1, Tyrrel, Henry, Latham: send I greting.
holde ilserdel, Henshall : hoi theilaerde.
fr e m e 3, Somner : freine ; Henshall freime.
ilche oj?e 5, Tyrrel, Henry, Lyttelton : ilche other.
K, i g t 5, Somner : (in atte tynge \&£) ogt ; Tyrrel : (in all thinge
that} ogt ; Henry, Lyttelton : in alle thet heo ogt ; Craik :
[in alle thaet heo] oght.
noan ne nime of 5, Somner, Tyrrel, Henry, Henshall,
Eymer, Craik : noan ne mine of; Latham : noan ne of mine.
ejte. wnerjburjG, Somner : egtewhar }>urg ; Tyrrel, Henry :
egeteivher thurg ; Latham : egetewhere, thurg ; Henshall :
egte-wheer, thwg ; Rymer : egteohcero }urg ; Craik : eghteo-
hcero, thurg.
deadliche ifoan6, Somner, Tyrrel, Henry, Latham, Eymer,
Craik : deadlicheistan; ; Henshall : deadliche. If than.
In consequence of these errors the translations given by Somner,
§ 3, No. 1. HENRY III. — XIII TH CENTURY. 505
Old English Version. — (Continued.)
Bigod eorl on Northfolk' and Marefcal on Engleneloand.'
Perref of Sauueye. Will' of Fort eorl on Aubem'.
[10] loh' of Plefleiz. eorl on "Warewik loh'
Geffreef fune. Perref of Muntfort. Ric' of Grey. Rog'
of Mortemer. lamef of Aldithel* and aBtforen oj?re
moje.
[11] ^f And al on ]>o ilche worden if ifend in to seunhce
o)>re sncire ouer al J>aere kuneriche on Engleneloande.
and ek in tel Irelonde.
Conjectured Pronunciation of Old English Version. — (Con.)
Bii'god, eorl on North'folke and Maa'reskal on Eq'leneland'e.
Peres of Savai'e; "Wil'Helm of Fort, eorl on Au'bemarle;
[10] Dzhoon of Ples'aiz, eorl on "Waa'rewiike; Dzhoon
Dzhefrees sumre ; Peres of Munt'fort ; Rirtshard of Grai ;
Rodzh-er of Mortemer; Dzhaanvez of ATdithel, and etfoo'ren
oodh're mooglre
[11] And al on dho il'tshe word'en is isend' in to evritshe
oodh're shii're oo'ver al dhee're kin'eriitshe on Eq'lenelande,
and eek in til lirknde.
Henry, Latham, and Craik of the passage : And ]?set sehc o]?er
helpe ....deadliche ifoan, 5, 6, are ludicrously wrong.
Somner's Latin version is : " Et quod unusquisque, vigore ejus-
dem juramenti, contra omnes homines, in omnibus turn faciendis,
turn recipiendis, ut id ita fiat et observetur, alter alteri sint auxilio.
Et (quod) nullus sive de terra (vel, gente) mea, sive quacunque alia,
per consilium hujusmodi (hujus scil. consilii obeundl causa) impe-
diatur, sive damnum patiatur, ullo modo. Et si quis, sive vir sive
faemina, huic (edicto) contra venerit, volumus et mandamus ut omnes
fideles nostri eos habeant infensissimos."
Craik' s English version is : " And that each other help that for
to do, by them (to) each other against all men (in all that they)
ought for to do and to promote. And none, nor of my land nor
elsewhere, through this business may be let (hindered) or damaged
in anywise. And if any man or any woman come them against,
we will and enjoin that all our lieges them hold deadly foes."
The most remarkable error in the copy of the French version
printed in Bymer is : nos Giueons, for nos enueons 6, which
has the false appearance of an appropriation of a Saxon word by
the Normans, with a French inflexion, — a philological curiosity !
506
ANCREN RIWLE XIII TH CENTURY
CHAP. V.
2. ANCREN RIWLE, XIIITH CENTURY.
The ANCBEN RJWLE and the HALI MEIDENHAD may be considered
together.1
In the ANCREN KIWLE it will be seen that the simple vowels
a, e, *', o, u must be taken as usual to mean (aa a, ee e, ii i, oo o,
uu u), with a much larger allowance of u = (y) or (i, e) than is
found, except in the west of England. Thus we have gult, cluppen,
fustes, fur, lupes, lut, nule, for guilt, clip (embrace), fists, fire, lips,
little, n'ill. Besides this there is a very extensive assortment of
diphthongs and even triphthongs, which should be apparently pro
nounced thus : ai, au, ea, ei, eo, eu, oa, oi, ou, ui = (ai, au, eea ea,
ai, eeo eo, eu, ooa, uui, oou ou, ui). The oa, oi, ui as in bloawen
bloamen buine are too rare to form a good judgment on.
The combination iw which only occurs in the foreign word riwl
is most probably intended to give the sound (yy), for it is scarcely
possible to imagine that (yy) could not have been pronounced, and
that therefore iw = (iu).2 On account of the action of the (r) the
sound (riul) is difficult to enunciate purely, and (rmjl, ryyl, ml)
are all easier, and they are consequently still in use provincially.
The following brief example from p. 70 of the Ancren Biwle,3
will shew the effect of these assumptions, and will render an ex
ample from Hali Meidenhad needless :
Original Text.
Muche fol he were, J?e
muhte, to his owene bihoue,
hwefter se he wolde, grinden
greot o]?er hwete, gif he
grunde ]?et greot and lefde
J?ene hwete. Hwete is holi
speche, ase Seint Anselme
serS. Heo grint greot 'Se
J?e two cheoken
J>e two grinstones.
J?e tunge is ]?e cleppe. Loke^,
leoue sustren, fet ouwer
cheoken ne grinden neuer
1 The Ancren Riwle; a treatise on
the Rules and Duties of Monastic Life,
edited and translated from a Semi-
Saxon MS. of the thirteenth century
by James Morton, B.D., vicar of Hoi-
beach, prebendary of Lincoln ; printed
for the Camden Society, 1853, London,
4to. Hali Meidenhad, from MS. Cott.
Titus D. xviii, fol. 112 c., an allitera
tive homily of the thirteenth century,
edited by Oswald Cockayne, M.A.,
London, 1866, 8vo. pp. viii, 60;
E. E. T. S.
2 As the combination iw does not
occur in other words, and as riuk,
Conjectured Pronunciation.
Mutsh'e fool nee weere, dhe
mukht'e, to HIS oou'ene binoo've,
whedh'er see He wold-e, grind'en
greeot oo'dher wheet'e, jif He
grund'e dhet greeot and leevde
dheen'e wheet'e. Wheet'e is nooH
speetsh'e, as'e Saint Anselm'e
saith. Heeo grint greeot dhe
tsheef'leth. Dhe twoo tsheek'en
beoth dhe twoo grin-stoon'es.4
Dhe tuq-e is the klep'e. Look'-
eth, leo've sustren, dhet oou'er
tsheok'en ne grind'en never
reule are found in very old Nor
man, the point must be considered
doubtful. In the xiv th century the
sound was almost certainly (ryyle).
Mr. Payne is inclined to think that the
old Norman sound was (riu'le).
3 The proof was read by Mr. Brock
by the original MS., Cott. Nero A. xiv.
* The "colloquial" pronunciation
(grin-Stan), mentioned by Smart, is
thus shewn to be very ancient, and
becomes a proof that grind was for
merly (grind) not (graind), supra p.
276, and p. 290, 1. 3.
§ 3, No. 2 & 3. HOMTLIES — XII TH CENTURY.
507
bute eoule node ^ ne our
earen ne hercnen neuer bute
soule heale : and nout one
our earen, auh ower eie
Juries tune^S agein idel
speche ^ ]>et to ou ne cume
no tale, ne ti'Singe of }>e worlde.
buut'e sooul'e vood'e ; ne oour
ea'ren ne nerk'nen never buut'e
sooul'e neal'e ; and nout oon'e
oour eea'ren, aukh oou'er are
thirl'es tuun'eth ajain* ii'del
speetsh'e ; dhet to oou ne kuunve
ne taal'e netiidh'iqe of dhe worlde.
Verbal Translation.
Much fool he were, that might, to
his own behoof, whether so he would,
grind chaff (grits) or wheat, if he
ground the chaff and left the wheat.
Wheat is holy speech, as Saint Anselm
saith. She grinds chaff that chaffs
(chatters). The two cheeks are the
two grindstones. The tongue is the
clapper. Look, dear sisters, that your
cheeks do not grind never but soul's
food; nor your ears do not barken
never but to soul's health ; and not only
your ears, but your eye's windows
fence against idle speech ; (so) that to
you (may) not come neither tale nor
tiding of the world.
3. OLD ENGLISH HOMILIES, XIITH CENTURY.
The venerable homilies lately disinterred by Mr. Morris 1 cannot
be read in any other way than the Ancren Eiwle. The values of
all the letters and combinations seem to be completely known, and
no further change can be expected. A very brief example will
therefore suffice. In the following, the original text is exactly
reproduced except in wmid for mi¥>, mwolde for walde, (s)yarS for
gad, wdo^6 for deft, ^lulke for luke. The leinten for lenten at the
beginning, may, as so many other evidently are, be a dialectic
pronunciation, and is comparable with fleish for flesh (supra p.
473, n. 1), but Stratmann quotes the same form from Wright,
Yocab. 90, Rob. Glouc. 187, 8. The experiment of writing (y)
for u, when it may be (i, e), and (ei) for ei, as being older forms,
has here been made.
Original Text, p. 25.
Dominica Prima in Quadrigesima.
[I]n leinten time uwilc mon
ga'S to scrifte ; }>er beo^S
summe J?e mare herm is ]?e
ga'S al swa ic nuj>e eow tellen
wulle. He sevS mid(1)]7aimrSe
J>et nis naut in his heorte. ic
wulle gan to scrifte for scome
alswa do^ o^Ser men. }if ic
forlete ]>e preost me wolde(2)
eskien on ester dei hwa me
scriue er he me jefe husul
and ec for monne weordes
ftinge. he ne ga^ (8) naut to
scrifte al swa do^ o^Ser men.
Conjectured Pronunciation.
First Sunday in Lent.
In lein-ten tirme ywilk mon
gaath to skrift-e. Dher beoth
sunre, dhe maa're Herm is dhe
gaath, alswaa* ik nuu'dhe jou tel'en
wyl'e. He saith mid dha muu'dhe,
dhet nis naut in sis Heorte : " Ik
wyl'e gaan to skrif'te for skoo'me
alswaa' dooth oo'dher men; jif ik
forlee'te, dhe preost me wol'de
es'kien on eest'er dai whaa me
skrii've, eer nee me jee've mis'ul,
and eek for mon'e weordes
thiq-e." Hee no gaath naut to
skrifte alswaa- dooth oo'dher men.
In the same work with the Moral Ode, supra p. 484, note 1.
508
SOURCES OF ENGLISH.
CHAP. V. § 4.
Ah al swa he do^'4? swa ]?e
swica ]?e biswike% hine
eeolfe on ende and ~br6 al swa
is an eppel iheowe'S. he brS
wrSuten feire and frakel
wrSinne. Awah J?et he efre
wulle Jjristelechen o'Ser bi-
Enchen mid his fule heorte
heo wulle underfon swa
j ]?ing and swa hali swa is
cn'stes licome in his sunfulle
bulke.(5) and wene^ ]>et hit
wulle him helpen ^ Neiso'S-
liche nawiht ah Jjenne ]?e
preost hit de^S in his mu}>e.
j»enne cume^ drihtenes engel
and binime^ }>a halinesse mid
him toward heouene riche.
J?et J>er bilef ^ in his imrSe,
ah jif eni mon hit muste isean.
he mahte iseon ane berninde
glede ]>et hine al for-berna^S
jmrut to cole.
Akh alswaa* He dooth, swaa dhe
swiik'a dhee biswii'keth mure
seol'fe on end'e, and biith alswaa'
is an ep'el iheo'weth; see biith
withuu'ten fai're, and frak'el
within'e. Awakh', dhet He evre
wyl'e thris'teletsh'en odh'er bi-
then'tshen mid His fuu'le Heorte,
dhee neo wyl'e un-derfoon swaa
nei thiq and swaa Haa-li, swaa is
Krist'es liic'oome in ms syn'fule
bulk'e, and ween'eth dhet nit
wyl'e nim Helpen ! Nei, sooth'-
liithshe naawikht ! akh dhen-e dhe
preost nit deeth in His muu'the,
dhen'e kuu'meth drikhtenes eq-el,
and binii'meth dha naa'lines'e mid
Him toward' neo'vene rii'tshe.
Dhet dher bilefth* in nis muu-the,
akh jif en'i mon nit mus'te isee*an,
He makh'te isee'on aa'ne bern'ind'e
gleed'e, dhet nii'ne al forbenreth
thuruut' to koole.
Mr. Morris's Translation, p. 24.
In Lenten time each man goes to
confession; there are some to whom
there is greater harm in going (than
in abstaining), as I will now tell you.
He saith with the mouth what is not
in his heart. " I will go to shrift for
shame, as other men do ; if I neglect
the priest will ask me on Easter day
who shrove me, hefore he administer to
me the sacrament, and also for the sake
of man's esteem." He does not go to
shrift as other [good] men do, hut acts
like the cheat who at last deceiveth
himself, and is as a rosy apple— fair
without and rotten within. Alas that
he will ever dare or think with his foul
heart to receive so high and so holy a
thing as is Christ's flesh into his sinful
body, and thinketh that it will help
him. Nay truly not ! but when the
priest putteth it in his mouth, then
cometh the Lord's angel and taketh
the holiness with him toward heaven-
kingdom. As for what remaineth there
in his mouth, if any man were able to
perceive it, he might see a burning
gleed that consumes him all to coals.
§ 4. Teutonic and Scandinavian Sources of the English Language.
The pronunciation of English has now been traced up to
the earliest period in which it is known in a literary form as
distinct from Anglosaxon. To complete the edifice, some
account must be attempted of the pronunciation of Anglo-
Saxon, the direct mother, and Old Norse, an important
modifier of our tongue. These again point to Gothic as the
oldest low German dialect that is known. It would be
highly desirable to add an account of Old Norman, but no
CHAP. V. § 4.
SOURCES OF ENGLISH.
509
sufficient researches have been made into that language to
warrant any detailed statement of the pronunciation of that
language. It must be therefore entirely passed over.1
g zh, H H, I ii, i, J zh, K k, L
I, M m, N n, [AN aq, EN eq, IN
iq, ON oq, UN yq, AIN SIN eq,
OIN oiq, UIN uiq,j 0 oo o o, <E ce,
01 oi, OU u au, P p, Q k, R r,
S a, T t, [-NT -n, -q], U y ce, UI
ui, V v, X u s us ks, Y i, Z s ts.
The following is a small portion
of his example taken from Etienne
Sarbazan, Fabliaux et Contes des
Poetes franc,ois des xi, xu, xm, xiv
et xv siecles, 1808, 8vo. 4 vols., vol. 1,
p. 82, the original text, which Eapp
omits, is here added by way of com
parison. As I have not been quite
able to appreciate his system of accen
tuation, I omit it altogether. I have
also forborne to correct any apparent
errors, such as making meisme v. 35, of
two, instead of three syllables.
Dy shevalieer, ki o,oit la mese e
notra dam a Mioit puur lui au
turnoiameq.
Duus Zhesys, kom shil bel geroia
E koma noblameq turnoia
Ki voleqtiers au monstier turna,
Uu 1- eq b seq servis- aturna
E shelebra \» seq mistera
Dy duus Fils de la Vierzhe Mera,
Puur she vcelj yq koqta retreera,
Si kom 1? truis en eseqpleera.—
Yq shevalier kurtois e sazhas,
Hardiis e de graq vaselazhas,
Nyys mieudres eq shevalariia,
Mult amoit la Vierzha Mania
Puur soq barnazha demeneer
E soq fraqk koors d- armas peneer
Aloit a soq turnoiameq
Garnis de soq koqtenameq
Au Dice plesiir eqsi aviq.
Ke kaq \» zhuur dy turnoi viq,
II se nastoit de shevaushieer ;
Bieq vusit estr- eq shaq premieer.
D- yn- eglisa ki prest estoit,
0,ii los seqs ke 1- oq sonoit,
Puur la seqta mesa shaqteer.
L? shevalieer saqs aresteer
S- en est alee droit a 1- eglisa
Puur eskuteer la Dioe servisa ;
L- eq shaqtoit taqtost Hautameq
Yna mesa devotameq
De la seqta Vierzha Mariia :
Puis a on autra komeqshiia,
1 See the observations on p. 438, and
the remarks on Norman ai, ei, p. 453.
Dr. Rapp, while owning that the de-
cyphering of the phonetic meaning of
Northern and Old French documents
was one of the most difficult parts of
his task, has yet ventured to assign
such definite values to the symbols as
to give detailed specimens, which he
has not attempted for Anglosaxon and
Old Norse. Although I am far from
agreeing with his results, which appear
to be founded upon insufficient exami
nation of the sources of information,
the reader will probably be pleased to
have a brief account of his opinions,
Phys. d. Spr. ii, 82-117. The follow
ing seems to be )his alphabet : A aa a,
AI ee, AU au, B b, C k s sh, CH sh,
D d, E ee e a s, EI ei, EU ce ey, G
J)u Chevalier, qui ooit la Messe et
Notre - Dame estoit pour lui au
tournoiement.
Extraitd'unMS.deSorbonneNo.331 (2).
Dous Jhesus, com cil bel guerroie,
Et come noblement tournoie,
Qui volentiers au monstier tourne,
Ou Ten le saint servise atourne 4
Et celebre le saint mistere
Du doux Fils de la Vierge Mere.
Pour ce vueil un conte retraire,
Si com le truis en exemplaire. 8
Un Chevalier courtois et sages,
Hardis et de grant vasselages,
Nus mieudres en Chevalerie,
Moult amoit la Vierge Marie. 12
Pour son barnage demener
Et son franc cors d'armes pener,
Aloit a son tournoiement,
Garnis de son contenement. 16
Au Dieu plesir ainsi avint,
Que quant le jour du tournoi vint,
II se hastoit de chevauchier :
Bien vousist etre en champ premier 20
D'une eglise qui pres estoit
Oi les sains que 1'on sonoit
Pour la sainte Messe chanter.
Le Chevalier sans arrester 24,
S'en est ale droit a 1' eglise
Pour escouter le Dieu servise,
L'en chantoit tantost hautement
Une Messe devotement 28
De la sainte Vierge Marie,
Puis a on autre comencie,
510
ANGLOSAXON PRONUNCIATION.
CHAP. V.
1. ANGLOSAXON.
The value of the letters in Anglosaxon proper could not have
materially differed from that which the whole of the preceding in
vestigations has led us to assume for the letters used in the earlier
part of the xrn th and close of the xn th century. The most re
markable difference was the vowel y, manifestly (yy, y), which
however had become interchangeable with i, and therefore equiva
lent to (ii, i) or (»V, «') before the inflectional system of the Anglo-
Saxon literature had disappeared. The vowel <E we may also
assume to have had its deeper sound, now again familiar in England
(aea3, ae). It is very probable that a was sounded fully as broad as
(aa, a\ but e was probably not so broad as (EE E) because it would
have been otherwise confused with (asae, ae). That short i was («'),
from the Saxon times to the present day, there can be very little
doubt, although, from having no direct authority for this conclusion,
I have generally written it (i) before the xrv th century. But we
Le Chevalier bien 1'escouta,
De bon euer la Dame pria. 32
Et quant la Messe fut finee,
La tierce fu recomenciee
Tantost en ce meisme lieu.
Sire, pour la sainte char de Dieu, 36
Ce li a dit son Escuier,
L'heure passe de tournoier,
Et vous que demourez ici ?
Venez vous en, je vous en pri, 40
Volez vous devenir hermite,
Ou papelart, ou ypocrite ?
Alons-en a nostre mestier.
Amis, ce dist li Chevalier, 44
Cil tournoie moult noblement,
Qui le servise Dieu entent,
Quant les Messes seront trestoutes
Dittes, s'en irons a nos routes : 48
Se Dieu plest, ains n'en partirai,
Et puis au Dieu plesir irai
Tournoier viguereusement ;
De ce ne tint parlement. 52
Devers 1'autel sa chiere tourne,
En saintes oroisons sejourne
Tant que toutes chantees furent,
Puis monterent, com fere durent, 56
Et chevauchierent vers le leu
Ou fere devoient leur geu.
Ij9 shevalieer bieq 1- eskuta,
Dtf boq koer la dama pria.
E kaq la mesa fyt fineea
La tiersha fy rekomeqshieea
Tantost eq shs meesma lies.
Siir, pur la seqta shar de Dioece,
Sh? h a dit son escuieer,
L- oera pasa de turnoieer,
E vus kee demurees ishii ?
Venees vus eq, zhs vus eq prii,
Voices vus deveuiir nermita,
U papalart u ipokrita ?
Aloqs eq a nostra mestier.
Amiis, sha dist li shevali«r,
Shil turnoia mult noblameq
Ki \a servisa Dice eqteq ;
Kaq las mesas s«roq trestutas
Ditas, s- en iroqs a nos rutas ;
Se Dio3o? plest, eqs n- eq partiree,
E puis a Dice plesir iree
Turnoieer vigoercesameq ;
De shy ne tiq parlameq.
Divers 1- autel sa shiera turne,
Eq seqtas oroisoqs sezhurna
Taq ke tutas shaqt^eas fyra,
Puis moqtera, kom fera dyra,
E shevaushiera vers b loace
Uu fera d^voia leer zhoaoe.
3. monstier, monostere
8. truis, trouve
11. mieudres, meilleur
13. barnage, courage, force,
noblesse
14. pener, tounnenter
16. contenement, Mat
22. sains, cloches.
GLOSSAIRE.
26. le Dieu servise, le service de Lieu
30. puis, on en a une autre commencee
39. que, pourquoi demeurez-vous id ?
valeur, 42. papelart, faux devot
43. alons-en, aliens nous-en
48. s'en irons, ti nous, et nous nout en
irons
55. tant que, jtuqu'd ce que.
$ 4, No. 1. ANGLOSAXON PRONUNCIATION. 511
find (*') or even (e\ so rooted in the North of Europe at the present
day, among not merely the English, hut the Scotch, Dutch, Danes,
and Swedes, and above all, the Icelanders, who acknowledge it
orthographically, that it presents the appearance of an original sound,
rather than of a modern development. The o was almost certainly
(oo o) ; the distinction (oo o) is quite of modern growth, nor have we
been led to suppose that there was any equivalent distinction from
the xvi th century upwards. The u was perhaps (uu u~) rather than
(uu u) or (uu u}, the modern use.
The digraphs ea, eo could scarcely have been (ja, jo) as Rask
supposes, being misled apparently by modern Scandinavian usage.
The confusions of ea with ce on the one hand, and a on the other,
even in Anglosaxon, and its further confusion with e in more recent
times, as the XTTT th century, exclude the sound of (j) with certainty.1
And similarly for (eo). But it is possible that they were occa
sionally pronounced with the second element more conspicuous than
the first, so that though we may generally write (ea, eo), as true
diphthongs, in the ordinary manner, it may be occasionally neces
sary to indicate the preponderance of the second element by
writing (ea, eo) or perhaps more truly (eaa, eoo) which might fall
into (aa, oo, uu). On examining the long list of Anglosaxon words
commencing with ea eo, the following are all that I have noticed
which could give rise to the notion of the pronunciation (ja Jo),
which Rask seems to have adopted through his own Scandinavian
habits : ealo ale, vulgar (jel, w\} : Eoforwic, in Domesday Eurvic,
York, with the secondary form Eferwic ; eond yond, the proper form
being geond, eow you; eowu ewe, dialectic (.TOO). Remembering
how recently the sounds (w, -r) have been prefixed to the English
one, Scotch ane (wan, jen), we can find no difficulty with these
words. The Icelandic Jarl, which many persons rely upon for
proving that ags. eorl must have been (jorl), was perhaps a deriva
tive of or the hearth, and was anciently applied to an upper .domes
tic, whereas the ags. word was probably connected with the old
Saxon erl, constantly used for male, man, and in the plural erlos,
and compound erlscepi for men, people, collectively (Schmeller's
Heliand, Gloss, p. 29). Hence the effect of palatisation can alone
be relied on in support of this (j) theory.
Now the palatisation of a preceding c (k) into (It) would be produced
by the simple action of the palatal (e) and would not require that
that (e) should be squeezed into (i, j). Indeed, we have observed
a tendency to palatisation in French and English before (a) sounds,
which in French produced (kj, tsh, sh) (p. 53), but in English after
flourishing for a little time as (ki, kr, kif) and still dragging out an
obscure existence in a fast disappearing generation, or on the boards
of second-rate theatres, (p. 206), is rapidly going out of use and
favour.2 In modern French, too, both (kj) and (gj) are used with-
1 The isolated identification of ea 2 It is strongly marked in the dia-
with (je) in certain words, by Sales- lects of the Peak of Derbyshire,
bury, we have seen reason to suppose
was a misprint, p. 80.
512 ANGLOSAXON PRONUNCIATION. CHAP. V.
out any tendency to becoming (sh, zh) as in quew, gueux (kjoe,
gjoe). Icelandic is a conspicuous example of the same, as k, g
are there always palatised into (kj, gj) before (aa«, ee, eei, i,
i, j) without having the least tendency to become (tsh, dzh). The
(k) itself is naturally an unstable letter ; either the tongue has a
tendency to rise, producing (kj), or the lips a tendency to round,
producing (k«>), and from these physiological actions can be traced
a vast variety of changes in time and place. The same remarks
apply also to (g) and to (kh, gh). A proper understanding of the
relations, palatal (k, kj, tj, tsh, sh), and (kh, kjh, jh, j, i), labial
(k, K, kw, w, b, p) and (kh, xh, kwh, wh, f ) will serve to solve
numerous riddles in comparative philology. Not only does, how
ever, a palatal vowel by direct action, or occasionally a guttural
vowel by contrary action, tend to palatalize a consonant, but also
the presence of the liquids (1, m, n, r) produces the same effect in
the Germanic languages, as we have already had occasion to observe
(p. 205). It is curious to note how certain words, however, resist
palatalization, while their fellows readily succumb to the influence,
as in drink drench. The resistance to palatization is not purely
Scotch. We find werchen in the PBISONEE'S PEAYEE, v. 41, and
werch often in Chaucer, but we constantly find werk. In the
ANCEEN RIWLE, while k had yielded to (tsh) by itself, sc had not
become (sh), as in Italy and Germany, and as generally in England
at that time, and the modern shot scot, ags. sceat, shews both the
palatized and unpalatalized form of the same word still current.
Again although cede is now chalk (£ealk, tshAAk), and ceap is cheap
(£eap, tsheep, tshiip), ceald, cealf are cold, calf1 (yfceald, kaald, koold,
koould, koold ; Aealf, kaalf, kaaulf, kauf, kaaf ), and if cicen has be
come chicken (tshik'en), altering the first and retaining the second
(k), cicenehas become ^YtfAw(kjtsh'en)by a precisely contrary action.
Again, the single word wicca seems to have given rise to both witch
and wieked, (wicke in Orrminn) and similarly ags. wic gives wick as
an independent word, also heard in Wickham and in terminations as
lailiwick, sherifwick, as well as Berwick, Alnwick, while in other
cases it gives (wetsh) as in Ipswich* or («dzh) as in Norwich. Hence
the pure (k) is no more the sign of a north country pronunciation than
the (tsh) of the south ; nor is it at all necessary to suppose that ea, eo
were (ja, jo) to account for the change of a preceding (k) into (tsh).
As to the consonants generally there is very little to observe,
except that probably (kj, gj) were well in use in the early Anglo-
saxon times, that g also probably became (^h) that is, (gjh) in many
cases, in the same way as it now does in Iceland, and in Modern
Saxony,3 so that the preparation for the (j) or simple (i) sound was
early made. On the other hand, after (o, u) sounds and in other
1 In Cumberland (koof). 3 Modern Saxon is high German,
2 So called generally by persons old Saxon and Anglosaxon low German,
living away from East Anglia. In There was no connection between the
Norwich I heard it called (/ps-j'dzh) two, and no connection is intended to
which follows the analogy of Norwich be implied by this illustration. Thej
and Greenwich. are two independent phenomena.
\
§ 4, No. 1. ANGLOSAXON PRONUNCIATION. 513
places g may have had an early tendency to (gwh) as we also find
in Icelandic, and thus prepared the subsequent changes (p. 212
and p. 311.)
The letter h seems to have naturally played a triple part, the
three functions being frequently confused, and by no means gene
rally understood at the present day. At the beginning of words h
was either (H) or (H'), probably sometimes one and sometimes the
other as in modern English, and in almost all languages where h is
pronounced at all. At the end of words, the (H') was replaced by
the (kh) which is an easier terminal sound, and more adapted to
check a vowel sound. The initial combinations hi, hr, hn, hw, are
ordinarily assumed to be (khl, khr, khn, khw) and at a remote
period, before Anglosaxon was properly constituted, they may have
been (kjhl, kjhr, kjhn, kwh). But it seems more probable that in
the more cultivated period they were reduced to (Ih, rh, nh, wh), the
last (wh) remaining to the present day, although sadly neglected in
the South of England, and the first (Ih) existing in the xin th century,
though the second and third (rh, nh) rapidly disappeared. This
view is strongly confirmed by the existent Icelandic pronunciation
of hj, hi, hn, hr, hv as (jh, Ih, nh, rh, wh). The device of pre
fixing h to form the symbols for these sounds, is so natural, that
many persons still insist that the proper way of writing when is hwen,
and when I was printing phonetically I found this position of the
letters practically sufficient. An accurate analysis, however, would
shew that (n'wen) was materially diiferent from (when), and that
therefore in all accurate phonetic writing the sounds should be
distinguished.
The letter p 1 I presume was (w), certainly not (v), and probably
not (bh). It is supposed by some to be merely a variety of the
medieval form of v, but I consider it to be rather the old rune called
wen = hope, in Cotton MS. Otho B. 10, as quoted in Hickes's
Anglosaxon Grammar (Thesaurus i. 135). The sound of v con
sonant in ancient Latin, is a matter of dispute ; it was probably
(w) or (bh), and more probably the latter than the former, because
we can hardly imagine (w) generating (v) except through (bh), but
the passage from (bh) to (v) is so easy and slight, that the two
parts of Germany which are distinguished by the two different
sounds at this day, profess to pronounce their w in the same way.
(Bh) is a kind of bat sound, readily falling into (w) or (v), but the
real (w) has a very moderate domain in Europe.2 The (bh) is
thoroughly established in high Germany and in Spain, where the
old joke of
"felices populi quibus vivere est biter e "
1 Mr. Skeat notices only seven or at about 1300." — Havelock, Preface
eight instances of the use of p in J 26.
Havelock, adding : " This evidence is a An accurate conception of the
interesting as shewing that this letter three sounds (w, bh, v) is necessary for
was then fast going out of use, and I the proper understanding of many
think we may safely date the final dis- linguistic relations. For (w) the lips
disappearance of this letter from MSS. are rounded nearly as for (u) and the
33
514
ANGLOSAXON PRONUNCIATION.
CHAP. V.
points at once to the antiquity of the sound in that country in which
it is still used for both b and v, and to the probable pronunciation of v
in Latin as (bh) at that time. The example of Kavvkax being heard
as cav' n1 eas = cave ne eas, would be solved by the identity (kabhne'
aas) in both languages at that time. At the time when the Anglo-
saxons, being Christianized, adopted the Christian Roman alphabet,
the Roman v consonant was certainly (v), a sound which the Anglo-
Saxons did not then distinguish from (f ), as we have reason to
suppose that the letter /, like the letter «, served the purposes of
both hiss and buzz. The consequence was that the Anglosaxons
had no sign for their w consonant, which was distinct from v, and
they therefore retained their runic p. For these reasons I think
that p was (w) not (v), and that the German habit of transliterat
ing p by v is improper.
The combinations cw, wl, wr, were probably the labial modifica
tions (k«0, Iw, rw). The first has been already explained. The
other two still occur in French loi, roi = (Iwa, rwa), confused with
(lua, rua) on the one hand and (Iwa, rwa) on the other, supra
p. 187. The action is however truly simultaneous. The ags.
wlaco (l^aa'ko) seems to have generated (luuk) in lukewarm, and
back of the tongue is raised, but the
outer edges of the lips are brought
more together than for (u), and the
sound of (w) when continued is there
fore a buzz, a mixture of voice and
whisper, and not a pure vowel sound.
When the buzz is strong the tremor of
the lips is very perceptible, and a little
more force produces the labial trill
(brh). If the voice is removed we
have (wh), and the back of the tongue
being raised as before mentioned, the
slightest effort suffices to raise it higher
and produce (kwh). This gives the
relation between the gutturals and
labials which plays such an important
part in comparative philology. On
the other hand, for (bh) the tongue is
not raised, the sound is a pure labial,
less like (u), but easily deduced from
(w) by lowering the tongue and slightly
flattening the lips. It is, to those used
to it, an extremely easy and pleasant
consonant, produced with the least pos
sible effort. By dropping the voice it
produces (ph), which is not now used
in Europe, out was probably a value of
<f>. For (w, bh) there must be no contact
with the teeth. Directly the lower
lip touches the upper teeth, an impe
diment is raised to the passage of the
air through the mouth, and the breath,
escaping out on both sides, produces a
rushing, rubbing, rustling sound, dis
tinctive of the "divided" consonants,
and known as (v), which, on dropping
the voice, becomes (f). But all degrees
of contact between the lower lip and
the teeth are possible, producing varie
ties of (f, v), from sounds which can
scarcely be distinguished from (ph, bh),
up to extremely harsh hisses and
buzzes. Generally, then, (w) is a con
sonant framed from (u) by closing the
lips too closely to allow of a pure re
sonance for the vowel sound ; (oh) is a
(b) with the lips just slightly opened, or
a (v) without touching the teeth, that
is, a pure labial ; (v) is a denti-labial.
The (w) is further distinguished from
(bh, v) by having the tongue raised.
It is possible, of course to raise the
tongue when sounding (v) ; the result is
(vh), a very peculiar and disagreeable
sound. But if the tongue is raised
when sounding (bh) no ear would dis
tinguish the result from (w). The
following words should be carefully
pronounced to shew these differences :
Fr. ou'i, out; Eng. we, German wie,
Fr. vie = (u,i ui wii bhii vii), Dutch
letters u, v, w = (yy, vee, bhee) ; usual
Scotch quhen, English when, Aber-
deenshire fen = (kw?h.En, when, fen) ;
usual German schreiben, faulty German
schreiwen = (shrarbm, shrarbhm) ;
German pferd now (pfert), once pro
bably (pphert) and in some Bavarian
dialects (paert).
§ 4, No. 1. ANGLOSAXON PRONUNCIATION. 515
wliie (Iz0ii'te) has become (locrte), lote, countenance in G. and E.
1162, 2328. On the other hand, as wrong exists as (vraq) in
Aberdeenshire, so wlcenco (Iwseqk'o) generated the Scotch wlonk
(vloqk) the origin of our flunkey. In ags. wlips (Imps} the labial
modification has been simply dropped in Chaucer's lipsen 266, Sir
T. Smith's (Kps) and our lisp. Ags. wlcetian to nauseate, loath,
seems to be lost, but (Iwat) and (laadh) = ags. la^, loath, are
closely related in sound. Wl, wr, could scarcely be pronounced
initially as (wl-, wr-), but would require the insertion of ('), thus
(w'l-, w'r-), as seems to be the case in some Scotch dialects at the
present day (p. 290.) The mode of writing would then be similar
to that adopted for hi, hr = (Ih, rh)- The reason why cw was
used in preference to we, is probably to be sought in the Latin qu,
and the probability that (kw-) being sounded with tolerable ease
may have been confused with the correct sound (kw>), for which
there was a single character both in the Runic and Gothic alphabets.
The letter (g) of the Roman alphabet was also not quite the same
as the ags. g in all cases. In later stages of the language, as in the
xmth century, two forms (g, g) are found in use, the latter of
which, under the form j became confused with z in writing, and
subsequently in printing (p. 310). But the Roman g represented
some of the sounds of ags. g and hence the Anglosaxons found no
more difficulty in using it than is now felt by the modern high
Germans. The two sounds (th, dh) however, had no Latin equiva
lent. Though the old Latins had introduced th, ch, for the Greek
sounds 0, •%, the probability is that these letters were never properly
pronounced, and that at the period in question they were merely (t, k)
as at present in Italy, and therefore quite unsuited for Anglosaxon.
Hence the necessity for J> ¥>, the former a rune, the latter a modified
d, whereas the use of y for (y) would imply that the Latins still
made some distinction between i and y.
What were the precise meanings of ]> 'S, or rather how the mean
ings (th, dh) were distributed over them, it does not seem possible
to elicit from the confused state of existing manuscripts. It is
generally accepted that ]> is (th) and ¥> is (dh),1 yet J> is generally
employed in initials, and ^ elsewhere, quite disregardful of modern
usage, which we know has remained unaltered for 300 years, and
therefore might be supposed to represent the old practice. We find,
however, in modern Icelandic, a systematic adherence to the rule
1 Mr. Oswald Cockayne seems to haps: wr$, which some still call (wtth),
consider ft = (th), and b = (dh), for in but then we also find: "Sough. These
the preface to his edition of Hali inconsistencies in a modern writer who
Meidenhad (supra p. 506, n. 1), which was evidently desirous of indicating the
is otherwise in ordinary orthography, two sounds (th, dh) by appropriate
he generally, but not quite consistently, letters may serve to explain the nu-
employs b 15 in these senses. Thus I merous inconsistencies of ancient and
find : be, bis, bose, bat, bey, bem, perhaps less careful scribes, who were
beir, but : birteenb, faib, and in one certainly not less intending to carry
place : aubor, though in three other out theoretical conceptions of ortho-
cases : auSor, is writen ; with this last graphy. See infra, No. 2, under "S £
spelling agrees : lengiS, deaiS, and, per- in the Icelandic Alphabet.
516
ANGLOSAXON PRONUNCIATION.
CHAP. V.
of initial J? and medial and final ¥> in writing, and a uniform cor
responding pronunciation of (th) for ]> and (dh) for ft. Hence we
should not be justified in pronouncing pure Anglosaxon in any
other way, and we must suppose the change to have occurred1 in
the transition period from pure Anglosaxon to Early English.
In the above remarks we have endeavoured to assign the probable
values of the Anglosaxon letters from the conclusions to which we
were gradually led for the XHI th century, but these values differ
materially from those assigned by our native Anglosaxon scholars.
We have seen (p. 255, note 1) that one of them, an excellent
scholar, who has paid much attention to the subject, decidedly calls
long » (oi), long e (ii), long a (oo), long u (au). The well known
scholar, Benjamin Thorpe, evidently made long i (ai), and short u
(a), although he makes long e and u in Orrmin (ee, uu), see p. 487,
note. Now it is certainly desirable to have some direct evidence as
to the sounds of these long vowels, and this seems to be furnished
by a valuable and interesting MS. at Oxford, to which attention
was drawn by Hickes,2 who gave some extracts from it, which will
be here reproduced. In order to correct the errors in Hickes' s
transcription, Mr. G. Waring, of Oxford, obligingly collated the
text with the MS., and has subsequently compared the proofs of
the extracts with the original. I am also indebted to birn for the
account of the MS. given below.3
so late as Orrmin, and even later, J> be
came t, and not d, even in )>at, )>u, etc.,
and even after d, which is rather in
favour of a (th) than a (dh) sound. But
see a different use, p. 444, note 2.
2 Linguarum Vett. Septentriona-
lium Thesaurus grammatico-criticus et
archaeologicus. Auctore Georgia Hicke-
sio, S.T.P. Oxford, 1705, folio, 3 vols ;
preface p. xi.
3 The MS. is thus described by
Hickes : " Dum in Bibliotheca Bod-
leyana Codd. Saxonicos perscrutarer,
inveni pervetustum librum MS. cujus
nota, NE. D. 2. 19. in quo quidem
libro nonnullse lectiones e veteris tes-
tamenti LXXII. interpretum versione
Grseca, cum Latina translatione ex ad-
verso in altera columna scripts, Saxo-
nicis literis describuntur." Mr. "War
ing says that the present signature of
the MS. is Auct. F. 4. 32. It is a
small quarto volume containing several
unconnected pieces of great age and
value. On the first page is a figure of
Christ with an entry stating it to have
been drawn by the hand of St. Dunstan.
Fo. 1-8, " In honomatis sumi tonantis
ars Euticis Gramatici," with several
interlinear glosses, partly Latin and
partly Old British.— Fo. 10-18. Anglo
saxon homily on the Invention of the
1 Usage is not yet quite fixed in some
few cases. Meath and Lowth are com
monly called (Miith, Lauth) by the
uninitiated, and (Miidh, Laudh) comes
on them as a surprise. With the pre
position was always (wt'th) in the
xvi th century, and with the sub
stantive is still so called. Sometimes
an arbitrary distinction is made. Dr.
E. G. Latham calls himself (Leeth-em),
but informs me that his family says
(Lmlh-Bm). This is an instance of a
variation of the medial th, which, so
far as I can recall, is always (dh) in
ordinary words. The change of final
(dh) to (th) is natural enough, through
the frequent use of (-dhth) as in breathe
= (briidhth) at the end of a sentence,
or when prolonged without a following
vowel. The initial change has only
affected the common words : that, the,
thee, their, them, then, thence, there
and its compounds, these, they, thine,
this, those, thou, though, thus, thy.
These have all (th) so far as they exist
in Icelandic. But it must be remem-
.bered that we have a western dialect
which uses (dh) initially in all cases.
It would be interesting to know if
•there are any dialects which use (th)
initially in all. Enclitically and after
words ending with d, t we know that
§ 4, No. 1.
ANGLOSAXON PRONUNCIATION.
517
The peculiarity of this manuscript is that it gives certain Greek
texts in Anglosaxon characters, which are seen immediately not to
reproduce the original letters, but to be intended to represent the
sounds in reading. There is no indication of the age of the MS. in
any part of the book, but Mr. "Waring thinks that these transcrip
tions were probably written in the latter half of the xth century.1
Now we shall see that Greek was at that time probably pronounced
almost, if not quite, as at present. Hence, by comparing the letters
by which the Anglosaxon scribe translated the Greek sounds, we
have direct evidence of the values he assigned to the Anglosaxon
letters themselves. To make this comparison the more complete, I
append the extracts given in Hickes, which are quite sufficient for
the purpose, as collated by Mr. "Waring, and contrast them with
the modern Greek pronunciation, as obligingly furnished to me by
Prof. Yaletta,2 adding the ancient text for comparison.3 As the
Cross, superscribed Ixiii, as if forming
part of a collection. The handwriting
is ancient, the language pure and
strictly grammatical. Judging from
these characteristics and certain pecu
liarities of dialect, Mr. "Waring assigns
it to the latter half of the x th century.
The legend is that of the poem of
Elene.— Fo. 19. See below at fo. 24. —
Fo. 20-22. A Lunar and Paschal Ca
lendar. — Fo. 23. Pauca de Mensuris,
containing several Old British glosses.
— Fo. 19 and fo. 24-36. Extracts from
the Septuagint with corresponding
texts from the Itala, in two parts : fo.
24-28, the Septuagint text in Greek
characters, full of flagrant blunders,
and critically worthless; fo. 19, and
half of fo. 28 to 36, the Septuagint
text in Anglosaxon characters, of a
decidedly better quality than the other.
— Fo. 37 to end, Ovidii Nasonis Artis
Amatoria3, Lib. prim., accompanied
with many interlinear glosses in Latin
and Old British. — The pieces com
mencing on folios 1, 20, 23, 37, are
noticed in Lhuyd, Archa3ol. p. 226, and
Zeuss, Celtica I, p. xxxviii, and II, p.
1076 ff. The whole codex is described
in p. 63 of : Antiquae Literature Sep-
tentrionalis Liber Alter seu Humphredi
Wanleii Librorum Vett. Septentrion-
alium, qui in Angliae Bibliothecis ex
tant, nee non multorum Vett. Codd.
Septentrionalium alibi extantium Cata-
logus Historico-Criticus, cum totius
Thesauri Linguarum Septentrionalium
sex Indicibus, Oxford, 1703, folio,
forming the second volume of Hickes.
The Scribe apparently did not know
Greek. The letters are run much into
each other, with very imperfect at
tempts at arrangement into words.
1 The following are his reasons :
There could be little doubt of the date,
if a period could be assigned when
priests of the Anglosaxon church might
have been brought into connection with
those of Constantinople, and this is
easily done. Otho I, emperor of Ger
many, 936 - 973, married Eadgith,
daughter of King Athelstan I of
England. 930, and his son and suc
cessor Otho II, married Theophania,
daughter of the Greek Emperor Nice-
phorus, in 972, after the latter em
peror's assassination. At the court of
Othor then, where constant connection
was kept up with the Anglosaxons and
the Greeks, there was a means opened
out for the priests of the former to
receive some tincture of Hellenic
letters. We shall therefore hardly be
wrong in referring such transcriptions
to the latter part of the x th century.
Want of opportunity is against an
earlier date, and the confusion and ruin
occasioned by the Danish invasion in
the early part of the xi th century, the
close connection of Canute with Rome,
and the subsequent Norman influence
through Edward the Confessor, render
a later date almost impossible. To this
we may add the agreement of the Saxon
homily in the same book with the
language of the x th century.
2 Author of a learned work in mo
dern Greek on the Life and Poems of
Homer. 'Ofi-fipov fiios Kal iroi^aro,
irpa.yfj.arfla. IffTopiK^t Kal KpirtK^], inrb
'Iwdvvov N. BoAerTO, London, 1867.
3 There will be found many dif-
518 ANGLOSAXON PRONUNCIATION. CHAP. V.
modern Greek does not distinguish long and short vowels, and does
not seem to appreciate any such difference, but pronounces the same
vowel in the same word sometimes long and sometimes short, ac
cording to the feeling of the moment, I felt that it would be mis
leading to indicate long and short vowels in the following, and I
have therefore, for convenience marked them all as short. The
same indistinctness exists in the Italian, Spanish,1 and French
languages, and probably exists naturally wherever the vowels are
in perfect pairs. On a very accurate examination of the vowel
pairs in English it will be seen that in many words they differ
rather in quality than in quantity, and that there is, as Professor
Haldeman urges, a medial length of vowel,2 which is sometimes
heard as short and sometimes as long. The Scotch consider most of
their vowels as short, though they strike an English ear at first as
long, being probably medial, and Feline marks almost all French
vowels as short, though other writers mark them frequently as long.
When I have placed the accent mark after the vowel instead of
after the consonant, there seemed to be certainly an option in pro
nouncing long or short, and the shortest vowels, are, as in Italian,
always perfectly clear and never degenerate into obscurities like the
English. The letters /3, <j>, seem to be naturally pronounced by
Prof. Valetta as (bh, ph), but when he became particularly em
phatic he made them (v, f ). I have, therefore, used (v, f) in my
transcription as more convenient,3 and for the same reason have
transcribed av, ev as (av, ev) or (af, ef ),
ferences between the two editions, but with the Sanskrit form, inferring a
it was thought best to follow the usual digamma in many cases where the
text of the Septuagint. latter began with (v), or (sv), and the
* My attention was first drawn to Greek had either no initial consonant
the doubtful medial quantity of the « ?*$ an "f?™*6- Remembering
Italian vowels by H.I.&. Prince Louis Jat cthe Sanskrit grammarians affirm
Lucien Bonaparte, and Senor Cubi y the Sanskrit sound to be a true (v)
Soler made me notice the absence of T^. meth act,lon °[ the **t\ **f
truly 'stopped,' or shut, short Towels Ja* ™ Spanish we know historically
in Castilian, which he said was a par- Jat ^aif . F, certainly (*), P«sed
ticular mark of that leading Spanish £"^<S ^ ^came,lost' " ™
dialect, so that he suggested the use of &«?> °ld ^^ #*> modera, h?° ™
long vowel signs in all Spanish words. wn,ic.h the. h Jf no* Pronounced (rxo),
and knowing first how easily (r, f) are
2 Analytic Orthography, p. 80. Prof. confused, next how unlikely the Greeks
Haldeman makes short vowels last who had <r<f> = (sph) would be to allow
about a quarter of a second, medial (sv) Or (sf), the ease with which there
about three-eighths or one-half, and fore an initial (s) in this combination
long vowels about five-eighths or three- would be rejected, and at the same
quarters, so that the comparative time the very probable transit of (s)
lengths are about as 2, 3 and 6, or into (f), we are led to the sound of (f)
1» 2, 3. as that most likely to fulfil the phone-
* The sounds (bh, ph) are most pro- tic conditions imposed on the digamma
bably very ancient. Prof. Goldstiicker by comparative philology. The sound
in his learned paper on the Greek Di- (w) would not be easily lost except
gamma, read before the Philological before (o, u), and the sound (bh) was
Society, 20th Nov. 1868, attempted to already probably existent, and became
point out the Greek words in which it fixed as one (if not the only) sound of
had existed by means of a comparison jSijra.
4, No. 1.
ANGLOSAXON PRONUNCIATION.
519
EXTEACTS FROM THE BoDL. MS. AlJCT. F. 4, 32.
Anglosaxon Transcription.
MS. fo. 30, b.
26. Phyisomen anthropon cat
icona ce cath omyosin imeteran
ce archeto ton icthyon tis talasas
ce ton petinon tu uranu ce ton
ctinon ce passes tis gis ce panton
ton herpeton ton herponton epi
tis gis ce egeneto utos
27. ce ephyisen o theos ton
anthropon cat icona theu epyisen
auton aren ce thily epyoeisen
autos.
28. ce eulogisen autus legon
auxanesthe ce plithynesthe ce
plirosate tin gin ce catacyrieu-
sate autis ce archete ton icthyon
tis thalassis ce ton petinon tu
uranu ce ton panton ctinon tis
gis ce panton ton erpeton ton
erponton epi tis gis
29. ce ipen o theos idu edoca
ymin panta chorton spomonri
spiron sperma 6 estin epano pas-
sis tis gis ce pan xylon o echi
en eauto carpon spermatos spori-
mu ymin estae is brosin.
30. ce passin tys thiriys tis
gis ce pasin tys petinys tu uranu
ce panti erpeto erponti epi tis
gis 6 echi en eauto pnoin zois ce
panta chorton chloron is brosin
ce egeneto utos.
Greek Text.
26. iroffiffia/JifV av6pcairov KO.T' ei/ccW
flperfpav Kal Kaff dfJLoloxnv Kal apx*-
rwffav ruv IxQvwv rrjy 0a\dV<r7js, Kal
T£>V irfT€ivuf rov ovpavov, Kal TUP
Kri\v5)Vt Kal Tracnjy rrjs yys, Kal irdvraiv
rwv epireruv ruv fpir^vruv M rrjs yrjs.
27. Kal ^iroiijfffv 6 0ebs T\IV avdpta-
vov Kar' ftK^va ©eou 4iroli)O'ei/ ain6v
&p<rfv Kal Qfav liroi^fffv O.UTOVS.
28. «al fv\6yrifffv avrovs 6 &fbs,
\eyaf, av£dveaQf, Kal ir\r)6vveff0f, xal
Tr\ripcaffaTe r^v yyv, Kal KaraKvpievffare
avrrjs' Kal apx*re r£>v IxQvwv r^y
6aXaa<ri]s, Kal riav ireTfLvcev TOV ovpa-
Modern Greek Pronunciation.
Genesis ch. i.
26. Pi,rsomen an'thropon kat
iko'na imeter'an ke kath omi'-
osin, ke arkhet'osan ton ikhthi'-
on tis thala'sis, ke ton petinon'
tu uranu', ke ton ktinon', ke
pa 'sis tis jis, ke pan -don ton
erpeton' ton erpon'don epy tis jis.
27. ke eprisen o theos' ton
an'thropon. kat iko'na the,u*
epi'isen afton-, ar'sen ke thi'li
epi'isen aftus*
28. ke evlo'risen aftus' o
theos-, legh'on, afksa'nesthe, ke
plithi'nesthe, ke pliro'sate tin
rin, ke katakirief'sate aftis', ke
ar'khete ton ikhthi'on tis thala'
sis, ke ton petinon' tu uranu',
ke pan'don ton ktinon', ke pa-sis
tis jis, ke pan'don ton erpeton'
ton erpon'don epi' tis jis.
29. ke i'pen o theos', idhu'
dhe'dhoka imin' pan'da khor'ton
spo'rimon spi'ron sper'ma, o es*-
tin epa-no pa* sis tis jis, ke pan
ksi'lon, o e'khi en eafto' karpon'
spermatos spori'mu, imin- es'te
is vro'sin'
30. ke pa'si tis thiri'is tis jis,
ke pa'si tis petinis' tu uranu',
ke pandi' erpeto' er'pondi epi'
tis jis, o ekhi en eafto- psikhur
zo,is', ke pan'da khor'ton khlo-
ron* is vro'sin, ke ejen'eto u'tos.
Genesis, Ch. i.
i/o«5, Kal irdvTtav TUV Krijvwv, Kal itdffi\s
TIJS ^Sj tal irdvTcav TWV fpireTwv T£>V
tpit6vT(av M Trjs yrjs.
29. Kal flirfv 6 ®fbs, ISov SeStaKa
vfiiv irdvra x^PTOV o"Trdp<-(*ov ffttfipov
ffirfpfia, '6 tffTiv £ira.v(o irdo"r]S TTJS yys'
Kal -KO.V £v\ov, t> «?xet ^v ea-VTV Kapir6v
(nrfpfiaros o"iropi/j.ov, vfjuv %<rrai eij
30. Kal iraffi rots (hjptois TIJS yrjs
Kal waffi rots vereivots rov ovpavov,
Kal Travrl epirer<p epirovn tirl rys yrjs,
els fipUffii', Kal
520
AKGLOSAXON PRONUNCIATION.
CHAP. V.
Anglosaxon Transcription.
31. ce yden o theos ta panta
osa ephyisen ce idu cala lian ce
egeneto hespera ce egeneto prohi
himera ecti .
MS. fo. 34, b.
1. 0 theus epirasen tonhabra-
cham ce ipen pros auton habra-
cham habracham ce ipen idu ego.
2. ce ipen labeto yion su ton
agapeton on egapesas ton isac ce
poreutheti is ten gen ten ypselen
ce prosenencon auton eci is olo-
carposin is ena oros on sy ipo
3. anastas de habracham to
prohi
MS. fo. 34 a.
1. on tropon epipothie elafos
epi tas pegas ton ydaton utos
epipothi e psuYche mu pros se o
theus
2. edipsisen e psyche mu pros
ton theon ton zonta pote ixo cae
opthesome tu prosopu tu theu
3. egenethe my ta dacrya mu
artos emeras cae nyctos.
MS. fo. 32, *.
1. Ce epilempsonte epta gyne-
ces enos anthropu leguse ton
arton emon fagometha ce ta
Modern Greek Pronunciation.
31. ke i-dhen o theos- ta pair-
da, os-a eprise, ke idhu" kala-
Iran- ke ejen-eto esper-a, ke
ejen-eto pro,r, imera ek'ti.
Genesis ch. xxii.
1. o theos • epi-rasen ton Avra,-
anr, ke i'pen aftxr, Avra,anr,
Avra,anr, ke i-pen idhir egho"
2. Ke i-pe, lave ton i,on- su
ton aghapiton*, on igha-pisas ton
Isa,ak", ke poreiHhiti is tin jin
tin ipsilin-, ke anen'eqke afton-
eki- is olokarposin ef en ton
ore'oon on an si i'po.
3. anastas- dhe Avra,am' to
pro,i- . . .;.;/
Psalm xlii.
1. on trop-on epipothi- i el'-
afos epi' tas pighas' ton idha'ton
u'tos epipothi- i psikhr mu pros
se, o theos-
2. edhip'sisenipsikhi-mupros
ton theon- ton zon-da; po'te
iks'o ke ofthi'some to proso'po
tu the,u- ?
3. ejeni'thi ta dhak-ria-mu
emi- ar'tos imer-as ke niktos1
Isaiah ch. iv.
1. ke epilip-sonde epta- jine*-
kes anthro'pu enos-, legh-use :
ton arton imon- faghom-etha, ke
Greek Text.
31. «al €?$€i/ 6
Ka\ lSoi>
, Kal iyfV
ek irdvra, Sffa
\iav' ical tyevero
irpwt r]fj.fpa e'/cn;.
Genesis Ch. xxii.
1. 6 ©ebs Itrflpaffev rbv '
Kal elirev avrf-
Kal flirev, ISov 4yd.
2. Kal (lire, \d$f rbf vl6v ffov rbv
ayaTTTjrbj', &i/ fiydirr)ffas, -rbv 'Itraa/c, Kal
iropfv6r)Ti fis r^v yfy r^v v^nj\}jvt Kal
aJ'^vtyKf avrbv IK*? tls 6\OKdpTrwffiv
ty' ft> ruv o4<av S>v a.v ffot elVw.
3. avatrras 8e 'Af}paa/jL rb rput ....
Psalm xlii.
1. Sv rp6irov lirtiroOf'i f) f\a<pos 4*1
ras irrjyas r<av vSdrwv, oUrus, lirnroQt?
rj tyvxfi fiov irpbs (re, 6 ®€6s-
2. 4Styriff(v r) <^ux^J Mou irpbs rbv
®(bv T^tv faira' iron r}|o> Kal o<pd-f]ffo/j.ai
Tip irpoatSiirtf TOV ®tov ;
3- 4yfirfi&i] ra SaKpvd pov fyol &PTOS
fi/jifpas Kal WKTOS.
Isaiah Chap. iv.
1. Kal 4irt\-fi\ftoi'Tai lirra ywaiKts
avQptSiirov evbs, \eyov<rar Tbv aproy
•}]fj.a>i> <pay6p.f6a, Kal Ta iguana rjfjiiav
§ 4, No. 1.
ANGLOSAXON PRONUNCIATION.
521
Anglosaxon Transcription.
imatia enion peribalometha plen
to onoma su ce elite ef emas
afele ton onidismon emon
2. te de emera ecinie empi-
lampsi o theus en boile meta
doxes epi tes ges tn ypsose ce
doxase to catalipthen tu israhel.
3. ce este to ypolipthen en
sion ce to catalipthen en hiru-
salem agiy clethesonte pantes y
engraphentes is zoen en hirusa-
lem.
4. oti ecplyni kirios ton rupon
ton yion ce thygateren sion ce
to aema eccathari ec messo auton
en pneumati criseos ce en pneu-
mati causeos.
5. ce exi ce este apas topos
tu orus sion ce panta ta peri
cyclo autes sciasi nefele emeras
cae os capnu ce fotos pyros
ceomenu nyctos pase te doxe
scepasthesete.
6. ce este is scian apo cau-
matos en scepe ce en apocryfo
apo scelerotetos ce yetu.
Isaiah ch. v.
1. Aso de to agapameno asma
to agapeto to ampeloni mu Am-
pelos egeneto to ecapemeno en
cerati en topo pioni
Greek
ireptl3a\ovfjif6a'
b dVojua rb
pe\f rov o
2. Trj 8e r)/j.epa ^Kfivr) «nAajin//ei 6
fit /3ov\fj /j.€ra 8o|rjy £irl TT)S ynsi
rov fyiaaai Kal 8o|o(Tot rb Ka,Ta\fi<t>dev
rov 'Iffpafa.
3. Kal effrot, rb viro\ei(f>6fi' tv "Siiiiv,
Kal Tb /faTaXei^flei/ Iv 'lepoueraA^^,
o^toj KKr\6i]ffovTa.i iroivrfs of
Modern Greek Pronunciation.
ta ima'tia imon* perivalu'metha:
plin to o'noma to son keklis'tho
ef imas', af'ele ton onidhismon*
imon'.
2. ti dhe imera eki'ni epi-
lam'psi o theos* en vuli* meta*
dhok'sis epi* tis jis, tu ipso'se ke
dhoksaa'se to katalifthen* tu
Isra,il\
3. ke es'te to ipolifthen- en
Sion' ke to katalifthen* en leru-
salim.', a'ji,i klithrsonde pan-des
i ghrafen'des is zoin' en Jeru
salem.
4. o'ti ekplini' ki'rios ton
ri'pon ton ion- ke ton thigha-
teron Sion', ke to e'ma ekkath-
ari,i- ek mes'u afton*, en pnev-
mati kri'seos ke pnevmati kaf*-
seos.
5. ke ik'si', ke es'te pas to'pos
tu orus Sion*, ke pan'da ta peri-
kik'lo aftes' skia'si nefel'i imer*-
as, ke os kapnu' ke fotos' piros'
keomen'u niktos', ke pa'si ti
dhok'si skepasthi'sete.
6. ke es'te is skian- apo* kav-
matos, ke en skep'i, ke en
apokri'fo apo' sklirot'itos ke ietu\
Isaiah ch. v.
1. a'so dhi to ighapimen'o
as'ma tu agliapitu* mu to ambe-
lo-ni mu. Ambelon' ejeni'thi to
igapimen'o eq ge'rati en do'po
pi'oni.
Text.
5. Kal !}£ei, Kal e<rrai iras r6iros rov
6povs *S,i<bv, Kal iravra. ra irfpiKVK\(f>
avrrjs ffKidffet vf(f>f\r) f]/j.fpas, Kal ws
Kairvov Kal (pwrbs irvpbs Ka.ioft.fvov VVK-
TOS, Kal irdar) rfj 5J|j? ffKtira(r8-t]<Tfrai.
6. Kal effrat els ffKiav dirb Kavfj.aros,
Kal if 0"K67rj7, Kal ev ajroKovtyta CMrb
ffK\"np6r-nros Kal verov.
Isaiah Chap. v.
4. Sri iKirXwe? Kvpios rbv pvirov ruv
viiav Kal TUV Bvyarfpcav Site;*', Kal TO
of/na ^KKaOapift £K pecrov avruv, iv
irvftfjiaTi Kpifffws Kal iryeujuart Kavfffus.
. aff(t> •>] r$ i)yaTriuj.tv(p .iTfj.a rov
ov ry afj,irf\S>vi fj.cv. 'Afi-
Kfpari, iv roitip iriovi.
522
ANGLOSAXON PRONUNCIATION.
CHAP. V.
Anglosaxon Transcription.
2. ce fragmon perietheca cae
echaracosa ce ephyteusa ompelon
sorec ce ocodomesa pyrgon en
meso autu ce prolenion oryxa
en auto ce emina tu pyese stafy-
len epyesen de acantas
MS. fo. 33, b.
1. Y dipsontes poreuesthe ef
ydor ce osy men u cecethe
argyra°n badisantes agorasete ce
piete aneu argyriu CSD timis ynon
ce stear
2. inati timasthe argyrio ke
ton misthon ymon .u. chi plis-
monin acusate mu cae fagesthe
ta agatha ce tryfisi en agathys
i psychi ymon
3. prosechete tys osin ymon
ce epacoluthisate tes odys mu
acussate mu cae ziste en agathys
i psychi ymon cae chathisome
ymin diathicin eonion ta osia
dauid ta pista.
4. idu martyrion auton dedoca
ethnesin archonta ce prostas-
eonta ethnesin.
5. ethni a uc idisan se epicale-
sonte se ca3 y las .y. uc epistanto
se epi se catafeuxonte enecen tu
theu tu agiu israhel oti edoxasen
se.
Greek
2. Kal (ppayfibv vepiedrjKa, /col txaPa~
KUffa, Kal tyvrevffa &/j.irf\ov ^cap^K,
Kal cpKoS6/j.r)o~a irvfyov £v fif(T(f> avTot),
Kal irpo\4iviov &pv£a Iv avry, Kal cjueo/a
rov iroiyffai <rra<pv\$iv, Kal tirdiijo-fv
aKavOas.
Isaiah Chap. IT.
1. ol $t\f/a>vT€s, iropfiiftrOe l<f>' SSwp,
Kal tiffoi fify %xerf apyvpiov, fiaSto-airfs
ayopdffarf, Kal tpaytrf avev apyvpiov
Kal rifj.fis olvov Kal crr4ap.
2. Ivari Tifj.aff6f apyvpiov, KO.} rbv
(i.6-)(f)ov vfj.cei' OVK (Is ir\r)ff/j.ovriv ;
aKovcrare /J.QV, Kal (pdyfffOf ayaOa, Kttl
ivTpvcp-fi<rei tv ayadois T) ^vx^l
Modern Greek Pronunciation.
2. ke fraghmon- perieth'ika
ke ekhara'kosa ke efrtefsa am*-
belon Sorik' ke okodho'misa pir'-
ghon en mes'o aftu* ke proli'nion
o'riksa en afto*, ke em'ina tu
pi,i'se stafilin*, ke epi'isen akan--
thas.
Isaiah ch. IT.
1. i dhipson-des, porevesthe
ef i'dhor, ke o'si mi ekh'ete ar-
oi'iion, vadhi'sandes aghora'sate,
ke fa'jete an'ev ar/iri'u ke timis*
i*non ke ste'ar.
2. inati* timas'the arjiri-u, ke
ton mokh'thon imon* uk is plis-
monin'? aku-sate- mu, ke fa--
jesthe aghatha*, ke endrifi'si en
aghathis1 i psikhr imon*.
3. prose'khete tis osin- imon',
ke epakoluthi'sate tes odhis-mu :
isaku'sate* mu ke zi'sete en
aghathis* i psikhi' imon', ke
dhiathi'some imin* dhiathi'kin
e,o'nion, ta o'sia Dhavidh' ta
pista'
4. idhir marti'rion en eth'ne-
sin e'dhoka afton' ar'khonda ke
prostas'onda eth'nesin.
5. eth'ni a uuk i'dhasi* se
epikale'sonde' se, ke la,r i uk
epis'tande' se epi* se katafef'-
ksonde en'eken Kiri'u tu the,u-
su tu ari'u Isra,il', ot'i edhok'-
sase' se.
Text.
3. irpoffexere rots Sxrlv v/xcDc, Kal
iiraKo\ovOii<raTf TOIS &Sots ft.ov els-
aKovcrare fiov, Kal ffifffrai £v aya6o?s
7; \|/i>x^ vfj-uv, Kal SiaO-fjffo/j.ai vfuv
$La.Q-i]Ki]v aitiiVLOv, TO. uffia AavlS ra
vtcrra.
4. 1801; fjLaprvpiov tv %Qv«riv cScoxa
, apxovra Kal irpoffrdcrffovra
5. fQtrri a OVK offiaffl fff,
rat ere, Kal \aol ot OVK ^irlffravral <rt
M o~^ Kara(p€v£ovTai, fVfKtv Kvplov
rov ®fov arov rov ayiov 'lapo'JjA, 8r*
§ 4, No. 1.
ANGLOSAXON PRONUNCIATION.
523
From these extracts we may deduce the following table of the
correspondence of the Greek and Anglosaxon letters. A third
column shews the values now attributed to the Greek letters in
Athens, including some combinations which do not occur in the
extracts.
•
rt
M a
p
rl
^ e
00
. a
— ~
5
J4
I
Anglosaxon
Transcriptio]
Modern Gree
Pronunoiatio
Greek Lettei
Anglosaxon
Transcriptio]
Modern Gree
Pronunciatio
3
4
2
O
Anglosaxon
Transcriptiol
Modern Gree
Pronunciatic
a.
a
a
•nv
iv
0
r
r
<?
a
a
e
th
th
ff
8 SS
s
at
e ae
e
i
i
i
T
t
t
aw
au av
av af
K
c
k
rC
tsli
/3
b
V
\
1
1
V
y.
i
7
g c
gh J
M
m
m
VI
y1
i
77
qg g
p.*
nip
mb b
<t>
ph. f
f
7'
J
V
n
n
(pe
pth
fth
7*
nc
qg
yr
nt
nd d
X
ch
kh
7X
qkh
v*C
dzh
x0
cth
khth
S
d
dh
1
X
ks
*
ps
ps
6
e
e
o
0
0
<a
0
o
•
i
i
01
y
i
V
o
0
ev
eu ev
ev ef
ov
u
u
tov
ov of
c
•n
z
i e
z
i
IT
P
P Ph
r
P
r
g
h
h
~
V
e
i
A
r
r
As Prof. Yaletta pronounced, a was (aa, a) or (aa, «), but there
was never any rounding or labialisation producing (ah, A). From
this, however, it does not follow that the ags. a which transcribes
a may not have had a labialised form, for, just as the French a
was called (A) in England, when it was only (a), p. 226, note, col.
2, so the Anglosaxons would have transcribed a by a, even if the
first said (a) and the last (A). But we may safely conclude that
ags. long a was not (00) or even (oo).
The uniform transcription of e, and almost uniform transcription
of at, by e, precludes the idea that ags. e was ever anything but
(ee, e). When at was not represented by e, which is very rarely,
it is represented by ae, which must be regarded rather as a Latin
than an ags. form, having then the invariable sound of (ee),
although the ags. se itself is found in ca Is. 55, 1. 5. Thus /cat
is generally written ce but occasionally cae Ps. 42, 2; and este
e<rrat Is. 4, 3. 5 is evidently more correct than estae, Gen. 1, 29 ;
so that aema alpa Is. 4, 4, should be ema.
The transcription of CD o by o, shews that ags. must have been
(oo, o) or (00, o). Prof. Valetta pronounced Greek, and indeed
English, with a clear (oo, o), and did not seem to be aware of (00).
But just as Englishmen nowadays report the Greek to to be (00).
so the Anglosaxons would of course have used their 0, whether it
meant (oo) or (00).
The uniform transcription of t by i shews that ags. i was certainly
524 ANGLOSAXON PRONUNCIATION. CHAP. V.
(ii, i) or (it i}. There are six letters and combinations in modern
Greek which, in Prof. Valetta's pronunciation, have the sound of
(ii, i), viz. : tj i v et, 01 vi. Of these the ags. transcription gives »
for i and et uniformly, with the single error ie in Ps. 42, 1 epipothie
eTmroOel. For 17 we find most generally t, but in about 50 in
stances e, not, however, uniformly, thus against passes iratjt]^ Gen.
1, 26, we find passis, ib. v. 29 ; against ten gen rrjv yrjv Gen. 22, 2,
we may put Us gis, Gen. 1, 30 ; against emeras r)/J,epa$ Ps. 42, 3,
we have himera Gen. 1, 31 ; against psyche ^v^r) Ps. 42, 2, we
have psychi, Is. 55, 2 ; against epyesen €7roirjcrev Is. 5, 2, we have
epyisen Gen. 1, 27, against exi rj%ei Is. 4, 5, we have ixo rjt;<o
Ps. 42, 2, and so on. Hence we cannot conclude that rj was
sounded as (e), or e as (i), but must consider that there was some
confusion in the mind of the scribe, perhaps arising from the Latin
transcriptions of ij, with which he was necessarily more familiar.
The forms ecinie eiceivrj Is. 4, 2, and agapameno ryyairij/^evy Is. 5, 1
are mere mistakes. The Greek v 01 are uniformly rendered by y
and vi by yi, mere clerical errors excepted, as epyoeisen eTroirja-ev
Gen. 1, 27 when five words before it was epyisen ; and ecpluni rupon
eKTrXvvel pvTTOV Is. 4, 4, between which words stands Tcirios
fcvpios (having i and not y for v,} as if to shew the error, while
psuVche tyvxf) Ps. 42, 1, indicates an intention to correct such
errors. Now we have reason to suppose that the earlier sounds of
v vi 01 were (y, yi, ui), and that the degradation of y, yi into (i),
was similar to the common upper German use of (i) for (y), while
(i) for (ui) is comparable to the French franqais (fraASE) forfrangois
(fraAsuE). At present Prof. Yaletta will not admit any other sound
but (i) for any one of the three combinations, v vi 01, but Franz
asserts in his Modern Greek Grammar,1 that v vi 01 resemble French
u,2 which at least shews a probability that the Anglosaxon scribe
also recognized (y) rather than (i) in the combinations v VL 01, and
hence that the ags. y was, as is generally suspected, (y).
The Greek ov is the least disputed of the Greek sounds ; it re
mained for writers of the xvith century to start the theory that
both Greek ov and Latin u were (ou), supra pp. 150-1. We find
it uniformly represented by u, with the exception of the manifest
error loile ftovXy Is. 4, 2.
As. to the transcriptions au, eu for av, ev, it is not easy to say
whether they are to be taken as Latin (au, eu), or whether u is
\
1 Grammatica Linguae Graecse Ee- minanti imprimis hae tres ij i v sese
centioris, Romas in Collegio Urbano, offerunt, de quibus si quis ex usu rul-
1837, 8yo. pp. v, 137, and tables. The gari judicaverit, facile adduci potest, ut
preface is signed Joannes Franzius, and nullum in sono earum discnmen de-
dated Romae, Idibus Martiis, 1837. prehendi arbitretur. Quanquam illud
Franz was, I believe, a Bavarian priest quidem negari non potest, quum ij
who was sometimes at the court of magis ex imo pronuntietur, v ad sonum
Otho. Gallici u propius accedere . . . . 01 vi
2 "Vocalium pronuntiationem exa- u (gall.) irotbs, vibs (pyos, yos)." Ib.p.2.
§ 4, No. 1. ANGLOSAXON PRONUNCIATION. 525
" u consonant," that is v, in which case (av, ev) would agree with
the modem sounds except before TT, r, K.
These transcriptions establish, therefore, by direct evidence, that :
ags. a was one of the sounds (a, a, ah, A), and not (o, 0).
ags. e was (e).
ags. * was one of the sounds (i, i], and not a diphthong like (ai)
ags. o was one of the sounds (o, o)
ags. u was one of the sounds (u, u), and not (ou)
ags. y was probably (y) but may have been (i) or («)
The transcription has several foreign letters and combinations as,
ae, z, th, x, ph, ch, the meaning of which is generally evident. The
only difficulty is ph when used for TT in phyisomen Troirjo-co/Aev, Gen.
1, 26, epJiyisen €Trotr)aev, v. 27, where it is explained by the con
current form epyisen in the same verse. In all other words p only
is used. The concurrent form / when pJi represents <f> as in nefele
fotos ve<j>e\i) <£O>TO?, Is. 4, 5, shews its value in this case. Before
th, there seems to have been the same difficulty of pronouncing pht
as at the present day, where so many say, as most used to write
diptJiong (de'p'thoq), for we find opthesome o^^cro/^at Ps. 42, 2,
ypolipthen vTrokeupBev Is. 4, 3, where the modern Greek says
(ipolifthen'). Similarly cth is used for %6 in icthyon fyOvatv Gen.
1, 28. It is rather remarkable that ]> was not used for 0.
The consistent use of c to transcribe Greek K, to the exclusion of
k, shews that the ags. always pronounced c as either (k) or (£), the
distinction, of course, being unrecognized. As b, g, d are used for
ft, 7, 8, no countenance is given to the modern uses (bh, gh, dh),
where (bh) becomes (v), and (gh) is rather (grh) or the lighter (r],
but before (i, e) falls into (gh, #rh) or (j), the last being the re
cognized sound. The character ^ stood in readiness for 8, but as
th had been used for 0, dh would have been the only appropriate
sign for 8, and this was not a known symbol. Perhaps the use of
]>, *6, had begun to be unsettled, and this may have prevented their
employment for 0, 8- The ags. g was itself most probably often
(gh) and hence no better sign could be devised, even if the (gh)
sound of 7 was recognized. The modern change of TT, T, K, into
(b, d, g), after //., v, 7, is not acknowledged. But the change of
y into (q) before K in the middle of a word is acknowledged as
prosenencon aveveyice Gen. 22, 2.
The Greek aspirate is generally omitted, but an h is occasionally
inserted where there is none in the original, especial to avoid an
hiatus as prohi irpwt, Gen. 1, 31, israhel 'IcrparjX, Is. 55, 5, and
this is occasionally strengthened in ch as habracham 'A/Badfj,.
The principal gain, then, of this transliteration is the establish
ment of the Anglosaxon simple vowel system within certain limits ;
nothing is gained for the double vowels ea, eo. On the whole, the
results are confirmatory of those arrived at by the totally different
process of gradual ascension from the English of the xiv th, xin th,
and xn th centuries.
526 ANGLOSAXON PRONUNCIATION. CHAP. V.
We have assumed as well known that the pronunciation of Greek
in the x th century at Byzantium was practically the same as that
now in use at Athens.1 The proofs of this are to be sought in the
hieroglyphical transcription of the names and titles of the Greek
and Roman Pharaohs, as collected in Lepsius's Konigsbuch, in
the Septuagint and the New Testament transcription of Hebrew
words, and in the New Testament transcription of Latin names, in the
Syriac vowel points, in the transcription of Latin names by Polybius
and other Greek writers, in the numerous errors of the old Christian
and other inscriptions, and, among other sources, in the writing of
Latin words in Greek letters in the vi th and vn th centuries, by
certain Greeks at Ravenna, who had to attest certain Latin documents
which still exist, and have been published by Marini.2 As a com
panion to the above transcription of Greek into Anglosaxon characters,
a few of these attempts by Greeks to write Latin in Greek characters
will be interesting, and, if we bear in mind that they were writing an
unknown language from dictation and would be therefore likely to
commit as many errors of audition and pronunciation as a decidedly
provincial Frenchman, ignorant of English, who attempted to write
English from dictation in his own characters, we shall see that the
key to his meaning is to be found in the modern pronunciation of
Greek. The Latin interpretation here annexed has been deduced
from corresponding Latin attestations in the same documents. The
Latin letters u, n, d, indicate some peculiar forms of v, v, 8, and h
is sometimes Latin H, and sometimes a peculiar form of 17. The
transcript of Marini is not always trustworthy, and in a few
i "Why Greek alters not in fourteen vincial speakers among the highest of
centuries, and English must needs alter the realm, the general importance of
in four, is queer," wrote a friend in secondary cities, and other causes,
reply to an observation of mine on the readily suggest themselves to account
pronunciation of Greek at the time of for the numerous changes which have
Ulfilas. Of course there must have prevailed. If we examined the Greek
been reasons for the preservation of dialects at present for variety of pro-
any pronunciation for so long a time. nunciation, we should probably obtain
Greece was a very small country, but a large amount of information, impor-
it had numerous dialects, and by ne- tant in its bearings even upon ancient
glecting these we reduce the country Greek usages. The modern system of
almost to one city, Byzantium, the seat education however, which aims at uni-
of the Greek empire, and of Greek formity of pronunciation and a recur-
learning and literature, till quite recent rence to ancient idiom, only the ancient
times. The pronunciation we have to Greek Grammar being taught in schools,
deal with is therefore that of an undis- may soon efface these records of the
turbed court and literary dialect, in past. In the disturbed state of Greece,
which we should naturally expect the from the death of Alexander B.C. 323
utmost uniformity to prevail, while as to the establishment of the Greek
it gave the character to all Greek lite- empire, A.D. 395, took place most pro-
rature, it became the norm for all bably those changes which separate the
"correct" speakers. England offers modern from the ancient system,
the utmost contrast to this state of
things, and the violent succussions of 2 I papiri diplomatic! raccolti ed
two civil wars, the forcing of a peasant illustrate dall' abate Gaetano Marini,
into a court dialect, the adoption of a primo custode della Bibl. Vatic, e pre-
whole vocabulary from a foreign tongue, fetto degli archivi secreti della Santa
the parliamentary introduction of pro- Sede. In Roma 1805, fol.
§ 4, No. 1.
ANGLOSAXON PRONUNCIATION.
527
instances it has been corrected by his facsimiles, but the passages
ought to be carefully re-edited from the original documents. The
numbers and pages refer to Marini's book, and the numbers in
( ) to the lines of the document. The Latin contractions have not
been extended, and Marini is not always clear as to their meaning.
No. 75, p. 116. Rome, in the Vatican.
Attestation to a will A.D. 575, by which certain property was
left to the Church at Ravenna. The numbers are those of the lines.
Corrected by facsimile, plate V.
(24) Petrhs vh Collectarius huic testa-
mentum rogatus a Mannane (25) vd
testarore filio qd. Nanderit ipso praa-
sente et subscribente .(26) adque ei tes-
tamento relictum per quod constituit
heredem santam ecclesiam (27) catho-
(24). Herpes vh. K.o\eKTapuos ovei
rijoTa.fj.JiVT lav poyaros a Mavvavr) . . .
(25) . . . v 'TTjirraTaipTj <j>i\tcas Kwfj.5a
NapSepij ytyov irpt\aevTt] er ffovffKptvevTi)
(26) .... et Tr/ffTdfjievTU pijAe/CTOp
irep KOV KovseToveT epiqo'e aavra, ijK\icria
(27) . . . . KO, fa.vevva.Tri TTjsr/y o~ovo~-
licam Ravennatem testis subscripsi.
No. 90, p. 139. In Bologna, Museo dell' Institute.
Deed of Gift to the Church at Ravenna, vi th or m th century.
Corrected by facsimile, plate XII.
(38) Maptttoy xPv°~<ll>Ka'Ta^aKTls oveiK
Xaprov\e ovffovipopTv . . . (39) naTitanis
ssrapovn o~f£ ovnKeapovfji irpiKiirapiw
mniTp . . . (40) nofj.ina.Te TWTIOVS crouy-
rarte fioviiehe eT infji<au\e y . . . (41)
fua/j.etnnuovs fftyKov/J. o~ovireptovs \eyi-
Top <paKTa .... (42) ya/cra Va.Uevva.re
E.K\tffie a luianne UK Etyirorap . . . (43)
Teopyi Maetcrrpo MtAtr . . /J. er nonov
npijuiKiptous A'ovfj. . . . (44) Kovfj. 0 ...
.... K . . . . Scava-Tovpe KOI p.i irpeffe
. . . (45) nov SO.KTI Kpo/as <piKer . . r
Kiapa nous ei pi\iKra . . . (46) TOS au
eoSefj. resrts yoi/5/cpn|/i er 8e KOfJiffip . . .
(47) niuovs W/JLDIUOVS K€ sovireptovs
svKKpiTa. \eyovn . . . (48) yo/cra evua,-
ye\\ia /copiroppoAtrep peei irpesevn . , .
(49) . . . « OVK irepnonenare ycc/cre
Pa.Ufnna.re eK\isie rpa . .
(38) Marinus Chrysokatalactis huic
chartiilae usufructuanae (39) donationis
sstarum sex unciarum principalium in
integro. super (40) nominatse totius
substantia? mubilaa et immubilas seseque
(41) moventibus sicut superius legitur
facta in sstam (42) sanctam Ravennatse
Ecclesiaa a Johanne vc. Expatario qd.
(43) Georgio Magistro Militum et nunc
Primicirius Numeri felicum (44) qd.
Theodosiakus ssto donatore qui mi
presente (45) signum sancta) Crucis
fecit et coram nobis ei relicta est (46)
rogatus ab eodem testis subscripsi et de
conservandis (47) omnibus (?) omnibus
quas superius superscripts (?) le-
guntur ad (48) sancta evangelia cor-
poraliter mei presentia [prasbuit sacra-
menta et hanc donationem] (49) ab hoc
prenominata? sancta? Ravennatae Ec-
clesia? traditam [vidi].
No. 92, p. 142. Rome, in the Vatican.
Deed of Gift, vith or vnth century. Corrected by facsimile,
plate XIII ; line 19 is scarcely legible, and the whole is very obscure.
f!7) <pn sf<panos t\\ovspios Kon/j.a,nens
f 18) ev KiftiTUTt NeoiroA.jraj'ae OIK [/cap-]
(20) rouAe a die irpeaevri dona. ....
(21) de ffoirpa iffKpnrra. o/tiwm e»/jLoftt\ta
(22) irpedia. KVI ffovnr reppiropto Ayov
(23)[Bt»]o ov/3i oujSt fffov enrpo KifiiTare
(24) [erejou </)opt KifiiTare lovpis p.ei a. p.e
(25) <paKTe en ffaiiKTO, eKK\fO~ia, Po/3ew
(26) ware ad op.ina ffoirpa,iffKpnrTa, pe
(27) \eyi Kono-eno-i eT o-ovo-Kprfyt er reses
(28) KVI ffovffKpifiepevr poyafii.
(17) Fn Stephanos illustrius conma-
nens (18) in civitate Neapolitanae huic
(20) cartulaa a die praesentis donationis
.(21) de supra inscripta omnia inmobilia
22) praedia quas sunt territorio Agu-
23)bmo ubi ubi seu intro civitate
24) seu foris civitate, juris mei a me
25) facte en sancta ecclesia Raven
(26) nate ad omnia suprainscripta re-
(27)legi consensi et subscripsi et testes
(28) qui subscriberent rogavi.
528
ANGLOSAXON PRONUNCIATION.
CHAP. V.
No. 110, p. 169. Bergamo, in the possession of the Marchesa
Antonia Solzi Suardi.
Deed of Gift. Supposed to be of the vi th century. No facsimile.
(9) . . , . a~ir. ovt ovffo<pptiKTvapiat (9) ... sp. huic usufructuariae do-
dovar^tovfs Kaprov\at nationis cartulae ssti hortus in integro
(11) c«
tvyptffo e6 eypfffo yey vov . . . .
(12) . . . piere a irAarea veA op.vifj.ovs ad
eodtn irtprfve ... (13) ... ffinoO ffir.
\tytrop tpanTU a ffir. yavOitiffo ptv . . .
(14) . . . /xo df<pfvffopf ffavre c/c/cAccrtat
pavfwaTf . . . (15) . . . a> ffir. pavevva-
TffjL fKK\fff K (J. . . . (16) ... 6 fftiffpltylQ
f6 Kopav v ... is at pe\tKTa tffr . . .
(17) ... ovff a ffir. yavBitfffo Tfffres
ffVffKpityt f6 avK ... (18) ... Aa/x
troffira ffovirep ffavra fvayye\ia o/crfio
... (19) ... pf(pare cKKAetriai a /te/uopaTo
ffovK . . . (20) . . . vpavdofjL
qui est in pergulis exornatus cum usu
cortis (11) et putei adque ingresso et
egresso nee non et (12) pariete vel om
nibus ad eundem pertinentibus. (13)
sicut sp. legitur facta a sp. Gaudioso
reverentis(14)simo defensore sanctae
ecclesiae Eavennatae dona (15) tori in sp.
Eavennatem eccles. qui me (16) pre-
sente subscripsit et coram nobis ei re-
licta est (17) rogatus a sp. Gaudioso
testis subscripsi et hanc (18) cartu-
lam positam super sancta evangelia
actionariis (19) prefate Ecclesiae a
memorato Gaudioso sub (20) jusjuran-
dum traditam vidi.
No. 114, p. 172. Rome, in the Yatican.
Deed of Sale, vi th century. No facsimile.
(92) ItfAjottos uh. Apyemaptos ets
eiffTptop.enris uiytvrai Mytpou (93)
tpondfi KonKtapdiaxos ptayaros a 6op-
fiihioiiai o(p. jitorpe (94) er o/3 fioffKoi
<pi\ieis dofjintita o<p. er dfvrtpw uh. aa
... (95) ... indirupfuos ttirffis Trpffffnre-
/8ol»S TfffTIS ffOffKp ... (96) tyl «T ffff.
irpfrio avpi (ro\fdos Kftirov dfKfi eieis
ev vp ... (97) e«na rpadtros uidi.
(92) Julianus vh. Argentarius his
instrumentis viginti jugerum (93) f'umli
Concordiacus rogatus a Thulgilone hf.
matre (94) et ab ejusque filiis Domnica
hf. et Deuterio vh. sstis (95) vendi-
toribus ipsis prsesentibus testis subscri-
(96)psi et ss. pretium auri solidos cen
tum decem eis in pra3s(97)entia traditos
vidi.
No. 122, p. 187. Rome, in the Yatican.
Deed of Sale. A.D. 591. No facsimile.
(78) HuKfitpiKos Bh . (is esopnenris
ffe£ en imptypo ovriKfiapov/j. <povn$i
FftifKeiani (79) aiKor ffovirfpuas
\tyiTop poyaTos a ffff. Povsuceiana h<p.
tlendfTpiKai f«ov<r(80)Koe iovya\h
KeiTowe B^ avrovpe fd effironraneu
tpediiovffffovpf Koe (81) /te irpefffnre
ffiytta <pfiKafpov/j, (d eeis peAi/cro fff
Tfsrts ffovffKpityt (82) €T ffovirpafffKpnrro
irpeiceica avpi ffo\idos ueitnri KUVTOVO
ens «M irpf(83)ffinria luanne BK.
Konvaparupe vrnop.ipa.Tos tr Tpadnos
(78) Pacificus vh. his instrumentis
sex in integro unciarum fundi Gene-
ciani (79) sicut superius legitur rogatus
a ssta. Eusticiana hf. venditrice ejus-
(80)que jugale Tzitane vd. autore et
spontaneo fidejussure qui (81) me
praesente signa fecerunt et eis relictum
est testis subscripsi (82) et suprascrip-
tum precium auri solidos viginti qua-
tuor eis in prse(83)sentia lohanne vc.
comparatore adnumeratos et traditos
vidi.
The Latin A is here uniformly represented by a. But E, though
generally e, is often 77, and very rarely i, indicating not so much
a wavering pronunciation of e, 77, L, as an uncertain appreciation
of the sound of the Latin e, confirmed by modern Italian usage. I
is regularly t, but not unfrequently et ; in ttvyevrai viginti (No.
114, line 92), if the transcription is to be trusted, i, e, at, all occur
for «', and e is also found occasionally, compare ueienri (No. 122,
§ 4, No. 1. ANGLOSAXON PRONUNCIATION. 529
line 82) ; this again must be attributed to mishearing of the Latin.
0 is o, at, and rarely ov, for similar reasons. U is regularly ov,
occasionally o, v in the words, KOI, tcvi, for qui, and rarely o>. I
have already recorded my opinion that the original sound of Greek
01 was (ui), and Latin oe (ue), see Trans. Phil. Soc. 1867, supp. p. 65.
Probably a&Koi,ai=atque (No. 110, line 11) is Marini's misprint for
ad/covai. AE is generally e, occasionally at. ATI is represented
by av in avpi = auri, No. 122, line 82, but it is still possible that
the Greek said (abh'ri), as I heard a guide at Pompeii call centauro
(tshentabh'ro), and compare PavevvaTtj— Ravennatem. The Greek et,
01 are written occasionally for el, o'i; compare et?, eei<s = eis, ovet/coiK
=huic. Among the consonants yg is used for Latin v =(bh) ?, and b,
but Latin I is also represented by u a special form of v ; 7 is used
for g which, however, occasionally falls into i ; S is rather avoided,
or receives a special form d for Latin d ; % only occurs in one of the
attempts yavfyoa-o to spell Gaudioso, and in atcrtyo, dovarfyoves
for actio donationes, which seem to indicate its present use in T£, vr%
= (tsh, dzh), but observe the pure t in Trpecrivna = prasentia; Q is
only used as a mispronunciation of t ; K universally represents c,
indicating that the Latin letter had preserved its sound down to
this period in Italy, as indeed the ags. use of c is sufficient to prove ;
\ = I ; p = m, but the m is often quite dropped when final, indi
cating the transition to the modern Italian -o, -a, from -um, -am, the
accusative forms ; v = n, but n and m are much confused ; £ = x,
•IT =p, p = r, <r = s, T = t, 'p — f, X ^oes no^ occur> ^ = Ps as in
tj-^rov = ipso, aovaKpi^rL = sulscripsi, but etTrcrt? = ipsis, is also
found. The use of cravra = sancta, seems to indicate a transition
to the modern Italian santa, although era/era, (ranicra also occur,
and the combinations 77, 7« are not found.
The extremely recent date of the present pronunciation of Greek
in England is not generally appreciated. In 1554 the present
modern Greek pronunciation was regularly taught.1 Sir Thomas
1 See: Institutions Lingvse Grsecse ; grec, je l'ay entendu. Et comment?
N. Clenardo Authore cum Scholijs as tu demeure en Grece ?" The Greek
P. Antesignani Rapistagnesis, Lugduni, is thus restored in the edition of the
1554, in which the only pronunciation (Euvres de Rabelais par Esmangart et
taught is that now usual at Athens. 'Eloi Johanneau (Paris, 1823, 9 vols.
Compare also the passage in Rabelais 8vo.) vol. 3, p. 296. A«Wora roivvv
— La vie de Garagantua et de Panta- iravdyaOe, Sici T\ av pot OVK aproSoTfis ;
gruel. Book ii, chap. ix. (first edn. 6p^.s y&p \L/J.$ a.va\icrK6fj.evov f/j.e
1535), " I)ont dist le compaignon : &6\ioi>, nal *i> r<p pera^i> pe OVK eAesFs
" Despota tinyn panagathe diati sy mi ou8a/*ws- fartls 8e irop" e/j.ov & ov xpt-
ouk artodotis ? horas gar limo analis- Kal '6u.<as <pt\o\6yoi iravrfs 6(j.o\oyov(ri
comenon erne athlion, ke en to metaxy r6re \6yovs re KO.\ p^juara irfpirrh
me ouk eleis oudamos, zetis de par uircSpxeu/ dirdre irpayfj.a avrb iraffi
emou ha ou chre. Ke homos philologi 5i]\6i> f<mv. "EvBa yap avayKaioi
pantes homologousi tote logons te ke fj.6vov \6yoi flcrlv, Vca Trpa.yiJi.aTa, ay
remata peritta hyparchin, opote pragma irtpi a.u.<pi<T&T]-roi>ii.tv, ^ irpovQdpws tiri-
afto pasi delon esti. Entha gar anan- <paivr)rai. Observe the retention of e
kei monon logi isin, hina pragmata for ij / dialectically fftSepov depiov, etc.,
(hon peri amphishetoumen), me pros- are still found for ffiS-qpov Qripiov, etc.,
phoros epiphente." Quoy ? dist Car- in Modern Greek,
palim lacquays de Pantagruel, c'est 34
530
ANGLOSAXON PRONUNCIATION.
CHAP. V.
Smith's theories were quite heretical in 1568, see supra, p. 35,
note 1, and he called a, e, 17, t, o, a>, v, at, €i, av, ev, ov, vi (aa a,
e, ee, ei i, o, oo, yy, ai, ei, au, eu, ou, wei), entirely ignoring the
long sound of (ii) both in Latin and Greek. In the XVH th century
a, 4, v, ei, av, ev, ov, became (aese ae, ai «, iu, ai, AA, iu, au), in
the xvmth a, vj, became (ee, ii), and thus in one letter, 17, the
former pronunciation was restored. The extraordinary mispronun
ciation of Latin and Greek now prevalent in England, results from
the application of our own changeable pronunciation to the fixed
pronunciation of dead languages, and from the historical ignorance
which assumes that a language may have only one pronunciation
through the generations for which it lasts. We may never be able
to recover the pronunciation, or appreciate the quantitative rhythm
of the Athenian tragedians or of the Homeric rhapsodists, but we
can read as Plutarch and as Lucian, and we should be satisfied with
that privilege, remembering that if we pronounced these later
authors otherwise than as the modern Greeks, we should certainly
pronounce wrongly. It would indeed be just as absurd to read
Lucian with the pronunciation of Aristophanes, as to read Tenny
son with the pronunciation of Chaucer.1
1 The following is Kopofj 's eloquent
apology for the modern Greek pronun
ciation in the preface to his edition of
Isocrates, Paris, 1807. No one who
is acquainted with ancient Greek will
have any difficulty in reading it, and
the English pronunciation of Greek is
so mixed up with the history of our
own pronunciation, that it is not out
of place to give it here at length : —
~2.<a£ovrai iroXKorarai l-niypa.tyal ira-
\aial. ruv 6irol<av r] KCM^I ypa^ airo-
Seixvfi, 'on ruv ffri^tpivuv 'E\\-fivuv
TTJS 'EAA.rjviKTJs y\(iiffffrts r] irpoQopa that
rj avr^i Kai i] irpofyopa, fym ^rov (Is
Xpijffiv Kara rovs KaiaapiKOVs, Kal icrus
avoir f pa /car' avrovs rovs TlroKefjLaiKovs
Xpdvovs, tfyovv ica-r' (K((vf\v o\r)v r^]v
irfptoSov rov XPOVOVJ els r^v diroiav
efaffav leaders 6 no\vfiios, 6 'A\tKapv-
affafvs Aiovuo'ios, 6 SiKeAiwrijs Ai6-
Seopoj, 6 ~2,rpa$(av, Ka\ av e\Qufj.tv
Karwrtpu M€/XP' T'5S Sevrepas airb
Xpiffrov tKarovrafrypiSos, Aictiv 6
Xpv<r6ffro(i.os, 6 Tl^ovrapxos, 6 'Appia-
vbs, 6 Tlava'ai'ias, 6 AovKiavbs, 6 FaArj-
vbs, 2e|Tos 6 'E/inrfipiKbs, Kal &\\oi
•jroAAol a£i6\oyoi ffvyypafytis. " 'Eav
jvai Pdpftapos fi fftiptpiv)) ri^oov irpo-
<pupa, elv' tKtivoi ex' ^Me" °' o"r«ot
TTJS fiapPapuffftas," ^/j.iropovfJ.fv va
airoKpivtafj-fV irpbs rovs xarriyopovs, Kal
va rovs TrapaKO\fff(ii/j.fv ^ viro<p4p<a<riv
fj.f fji.aKpo8vfji.lav va irpo<^fpo>^v Ka.1
flpfts, &s iirp
fj\.d\iffra r] Kari}yopia els rov 'I
fjibv, ffyovv TT^V QavdyKys
ffav rov avrov tfxov rov 'l^
iiravaKri-fyiv, oir6rav Kal ai
EI Kal OI irpo<pfpcavrai us avr6. 'Afi<t>i-
/3o\ia Stv flvai ort TJ o~vxv)) ruv avrwv
ffroix^w i'iravd\T)'fyis flvai (pvffiKa
djjSifjs' oAA* 6xl 8to rovro vpfirfi rts
irdvrore va r)\v airocpfvyr) /j.e irfpiepyiav
5fi(nfiaip.ova, orav (ndKiara Stv %vat
ffv/ji<f><i>va ra £Trava\a/j,pav6fj.eva aroi-
X6?a ; TlapaSetyparos X<*Plv el>s T^*'
ffrixov rovrov rov 'Ofi.-fipov (Jl\idS, E.
222).
Olot Tpta'ioi 'linroi, 4irtffTdfifvoi
vfSioio,
evpiffKerai c|a«is fi SiQQoyyos OI. M'
S\ov rovro Sty f$\eiru Sia iroiav alriav
Ttpotp fpdfj.fi/os Kara rijv irpo<popav rOav
rpuutSff
T« fpdi'ii ?ir7ri, ("iriffrdfufvi veStio
fj0e\fv fiffOai eh rfy OLKO^V ari^fffrfpos
irapa irpoQtpOfiLtvos, us rbv irpo<pfpovffi
iro\\ol airb robs a\\oyevf"is Evpuiralovs.
Sifoi' Tpu'iOl '/TTTTOi' (TTtO-rdfJLfVOl TTfSioiO
Se'lros o 'E/jiiretptKbs ovofj.d£fi Kadapa
ras 5up06yyovs ravras o~roixt?a, ijyovv
ras ffroxdfcrai us air\a ypdfjip.ara (Is
rriv irpo<popdv. [In a footnote the
author says that Sextus lived A.D. 190,
and cites a long passage from his npbs
rpafjLfj.ariK. Keep, e, § 117, fff\. 241,
beginning : 'Eirel ovv & rov AI Kal EI
§ 4, No. 1.
ANGLOSAXON PRONUNCIATION.
531
After thus establishing the value of these transcriptions of the
Septuagint into Anglosaxon characters for indicating the precise
signification of the Anglosaxon vowels in the x th century, it may
seem superfluous to cite Norman traditions in the xn th and xrn th,
were there not always a certain amount of satisfaction in cumula
tive evidence. In Wace's Boman de K'ou, which unfortunately
exists only in later transcripts, and whose author probably always
pronounced the despised Saxon most vilely, and. certainly spelled it
abominably, we find the following indications. Describing the
conduct of the Saxons the night before the battle of Hastings, he
Mult les veissiez demener E laticome e drincheheil.
Treper e saillir e chanter Drinc Hindrewart e Drintome
Bufler e crier welseil Drinc Helfe drinc Tome~ v. 12471-6
which may perhaps be rendered: "You might see them much
sporting, gamboling, leaping, singing, joking,1 and crying Was
heel, and Lcet hit cuman, and Drinc heel, Drinc Hindweard, and
Drinc to me, Drinc healf and Drink to me" In this Wees heel and
Drinc heel are well known, and we must not be surprised at finding
Norman ei for ags. ce, a strange sound, when Orrmin shews leg&tenn
for ags. leatan (supra p. 489). Drink to me, remains in our language.
air\ovs e'ffrt Kal' fJ.ovoeiSi]s,
Kal TavTa o~Toixe1a, and proceed
ing very distinctly to shew that by this
expression he excluded the conception
of diphthongs.] Kal or TOVTO Sev
atrodflxvy STJ els TOVS xpoVous TOV
-SfcTOV 77 TTOOfpOpa 0€V 7JTO (b@apU.eVT},
'iKavbv elvai va deity, '6ri els TOVS xpovous
TOV Sev inruineueTO Kavel*, STI ol
6\iyas eKarovTaeT-ripiSas trpoyev4o'Tepoi
elxav Tpotpopav Sid<popov. MT^T" ^evpo>,
juTjre va fjidOci) fie /j.e\ei, TT&S eirpdtyepev
6 lo-o/cpOTTjs, o nXaTtav, b A-rt/j.off6evris,
Kal offot &\\oi tfK[iao~av els avT^v TTjy
T'qv a.K/j.'hv Kal, orav virepa-
i£ofj.ai OTI irpo(j>fpofiev ciTrapaA.-
: us ^/ceTj/oi, eireiS)) iriQavbv eJvai
va ecrvi/ffir] Kal els T^JV 'EA.ATjj'iK^ji', 8,n
o-v/j-ISaivei els 8\a T&V avQpcairwv TO
epya Kal irot^/naTa. TOUTO p.6vov aSitr-
TO.KTWS TTlffTtVO) OTI af 7J TTpOtp OpO T7JS
Aas S\Xoy irpo\-fi^eis, rt&pa ^d\iffra
els T^V avayevvijfftv rrjs 'EAAoSos,
6ir6rav pe T^V 6fjLO<f><eviav rrjs irpotpopas,
Kal rijv aSidKOirov vapdOecriv rfis
Tra\atas fie T^V veav y\<affffav Ttav
'E\\ifivcav, Kal aurol airb TOS d/ceJ^ur;
Sei\as fjfjMV iraparripi}ffeis, KO\ Tjfi.eis
atrb ras o~o(pas avruv ffr]fnei(i>o-ets i)6e\a-
fnev fj.eyd\(as u<pe\r]6rj els T^V Kara-
v6fiffiv T&V apxalcav TTOITITCOV Kal ffvy-
(TTircrT? es r^jv ap-)(cdo-v av-rris Qvcriv Sev
elvat /caAbs irapa /j.6voi ol oiroiot r^v
^\d\ow Kal T^V eypa<pov &s p-rirpiK^v
avriav yXSiffffav. "Ecos va
^Keivoi, Kal els i]fj.as
elvai va Trpo(f>epca/j.ev, &s
6 fidpfiapos SS'ITOS, 6 aypdfji.fj.aros Tl\o6-
rapxos, & afj.a6e<rraros FaArji/bs, Kal ol
a\\oyeveis 'E\\-i^vLffral (piXoffotpiiTfpov
•fjdt\av irpd£et, av eire(j.irov Kal T^V irpo-
<f>opav TOV 'Epdfffj.ov oirov eirffnrov TTO\-
1 1 adopt the reading of the Duchesne
MS. cited by Pluquet, since the read
ing in his text "Hublie crient e weissel"
is unintelligible. Sujleris from "buffe,
buffet, buffle : coup de poing, soufflet,
tape ; buffa, en Ital. buffettone ; en
Basq. bufeta ; en Languedocien bvfa"
(Eoquefort) ; whence English buffet,
compare Italian buffo, whence our buf
foon. Compare also the Norfolk luffle,
to handle clumsily, to speak thickly
and inarticulately (Nail), to abuse, to
rate soundly (as I am informed by Mr.
"Waring) ; also German Biiffel, buffalo,
buff, lout (compare Ochs for a fool) and
biiffeln to drudge (Hilpert). Whether
bujler is a Norman word adopted into
English, or an English word Norman-
ized — compare the modern French
boxer, to box — it is impossible to deter
mine in the absence of parallel passages.
It seems here to imply rough joking.
532 ANGLOSAXON PRONUNCIATION. CHAP. V.
Perhaps Lat hit cuman, is a good wish, may you have what you
want, and the drinking hindweard and healf, may refer to some
customs such as still prevail among those who, making an art of
toping, such as standing back to back and giving each to drink from
the other's cup, or both drinking from the same bowl, etc. The
passage is, however, not of much service phonetically, and the
Anglosaxon words are doubtful. The following are better :
Olicrosse sovent crioent, E Godemite altretant
E Godemite reclamoent : Com en frenceiz Dex tot poissant.
Olicrosse est en engleiz v. 13119-24.
Ke sainte Croix est en franceiz,
Hence Olicrosse = Hdlig Cross, which looks like an error for R6d,
and Godemite is God Almihtig. The former would incline to a
very broad pronunciation of a as (AA), and perhaps arose from the
subsequent southern holy. The latter might imply that long i was
(ii), and certainly that they did not pronounce almighty as at pre
sent ; but as the vowel was certainly short in miht, we do not gain
much, except to learn that this form coexisted with Orrmin's
Allmahhti'%. The form Godelamit occurs in the singular poem
called La Pais aux Englois, attributed to A.D. 1263, which ridicules
English French in an orthography difficult to comprehend.1
Nonnanz escrient : Dex aie ; Con est 1'ensegne que jou di
La gent englesche : Ut s'escrie. v. 13193 Quant Engles saient hors a cri.
The two last lines are an addition to the text of Pluquet, taken
from MS. 6987, Bib. Eoy. de Paris (E. Taylor's translation, p. 191),
and imply that ut = ags. ut, and therefore fixes the traditional pro
nunciation as (uut), which is of some value. The Man of v. 109,
and Zoonee of v. 10659 (supra, p. 461, note col. 1) are useless.
Marie de France belonged to quite the beginning of the xm th
century, and we have the advantage of an indubitably early manu
script of much of her poetry.2 In her lai de Laustic (Roquefort 1,
315, Harl. MS. 978, fo. 142), which Roquefort explains as in
tended for a Breton word, meaning a nightingale, she says :
Lauftic ad nun ceo meft auif Ceo eft reifun en frrmceif
Sil apelent en lur paif E nihtegale en dreit engleif. v. 3.
1 See Journal de 1' Institute His- consistent way in which dialectic or
torique, Premiere Anne, 1834, p. 363, foreign pronunciation is still repre-
for which reference I am indebted to sented orthographically, e.g. Burns's
the kindness of M. Francisque Michel. Scotch. No doubt can be felt as to
In this poem roi is uniformly spelled the presumed rhyming word faire (p.
rai, and foire rhymes to Ingletiere, 449), after seeing Orrmin's ortho-
ffuere, conquerre, which seems to mili- graphy faj^err, p. 489.
tate against the view I have taken on 2 The Harl. 978 described supra, p.
p. 453, and at least shews that (feere) 419. The Fables of Esop there named
was a presumed Anglo-Norman pro- are by Marie de France, and many of
nunciation at the time, but whether it her lays occur in the latter part of the
was the only or general value, or same MS. See : Poesies de Marie de
whether this may not be due to the France, poete Anglo-normand du xme
author's pronunciation, or to the Poite- siecle, pur E. de lioqttefort, Paris, 1819,
vin dialect to which the editor attri- 2 vols. 8vo. I am indebted to Mr.
butes the piece, it is difficult for any Payne for having drawn my attention
one to determine, who knows the in- to the transcription of English in her
§ 4, No. 1. ANGLOSAXON PRONUNCIATION. 533
In the lai de Chevrefoil (Roq., 1, 388, Harl. MS. 978, fo. 148J),
we find:
En fuhtwales .v. il fu nez v, 16. Gotelef lapelent en engleif
En cornwaille uait tut dreit. v. 27. Cheurefoil le numewt en franceis. v. 115
In the lai de Milun (Roq. 1, 328) we find Suhtwales v. 9,
Irlande 15, Norweie 16, Guhtlande 16, Suhthamptune 318, Nor-
thumbre 453. In the lai dj Twenec (Roq. 1, 274), we have Incolne
= Lincoln v. 26, and Yllande = Ireland, v. 27. In the Fables
(Roq. 2, 141, Harl. MS. 978, fo. 53J), we have :
Si ad ure ke li uileinf Lung cum li witecocs aueit.
Euft tel bek mut li plereit v. 18-20
where Roquefort cites the variants: huitecox, widecos, witecoc,
which all seem to mean whitecock, an unknown bird, but as Norman
m was probably not so truly (ui) as (ui), or according to Mr. Payne
(uu), p. 424, n. 3, and certainly often replaced (uu), p. 458, 1. 27,
these may mean (uit'ekok, uut'ekok), that is (wuud'ekok), ags.
wuducocc (Ettm. 86), English woodcock, with an omitted (w)
before (uu), p. 420, note, col. 2. These words give (aa a, ee e,
ii i, oo o, uu) as Marie de France's appreciation of the sounds of
the Anglosaxon, or xuth century English «, 0, «, o, u.
In order to see at a glance the different opinions that prevail
respecting the values of the Anglo-saxon letters, a table has been
annexed on p. 534, giving also the views of Rask, Grimm, and
Rapp.1 Neither Rask nor Rapp give any illustrations, though Rapp
writes a few isolated words.2 But as we have ventured to give a
theoretical representation of the values of the letters, symbolizing
of course different pronunciations according as they are used in
different combinations to express the very distinct dialects which
prevailed at the time, it is necessary to shew the effect of this
theory, by attempting the phonetic representation of a short passage.
The parable of the Prodigal Son,3 has been selected for this purpose,
and will be hereafter presented in Icelandic (No. 2), Gothic (No. 3),
and Wace's poems. It is true that her ii, 140 - 149, iv, 245, Vergleichende
transliterations of English rather repre- Grammatik, vol. 3 (1859), pp. 125-129.
sent the pronunciation of the xmth 2 This heing contrary to his usual
century, than of Anglosaxon, and should, custom he explains by saying: "Da
properly speaking, have been adduced dieser Dialekt noch zu gar keinem
on p. 462, but as I was not aware of festen Eesultate Uber die Kritik der
them till after that sheet was printed Buchstaben gelangt ist, sind wir weit
off, I am glad to have this oppor- entfernt, mit dahin einschlagenden
tunity of inserting them. Sprachproben uns zu befassen."
1 E. Rask, Grammar of the Anglo- 3 £)a halgan Godspel on Englisc.
Saxon Tongue, translated from the The Anglo- Saxon version of the holy
Danish by B. Thorpe, Copenhagen, Gospels, edited from the original manu-
1830, pp. 6-15. J. Grimm, D. G. I3, scripts by Benjamin Thorpe, F.S.A.,
325-378, for vowels, and I2, 243-269 London, 1842, 8vo. pp. 240. " The
or consonants, but the indications are basis of the present text is the Cod.
often so indistinct, that much doubt is Bibl. Pub. Cant. Ii. 2, 11, collated
to be attached to the following inter- with Cod. C. C. C. C. S. 4. 140. In
pretations. Grimm proceeds from an doubtful cases Cod. Bodl. 441. and Cod.
etymological, rather than a phonetic Cott. Otho, C. 1, have also been con-
conception. K. M. Rapp, Phys. d. Spr. suited." — Preface.
534
ANGLOSAXON PRONUNCIATION.
CHAP. V.
the Wycliffite version (Chap. VII., § 3), for the sake of comparison.
The translation at the foot of the page is intended to point out the
grammatical construction, and the etymological relations of each
word to the English, and would he therefore scarcely intelligible if
the passage were not BO well known.
Letters
Rask
Grimm
Rapp
Ellis
Letters
Rask
Grimm
Rapp
Ellis
a
aa
aa
aa
aa
i
ii
ii
ii
ii
a
a
a
a
a a
i
i
i
i
*
3d
8688
; | .;( •
aea;
3383
ie
jee
ie ie
ie?
98
se
86
ee
ae
iu
JUU
iu?
aw
au
au
1
1
1
1
b
b
b
m
m
m
m
c
k
k
k
k k
n
n
n
n
eg
gg
ng
q qg
cw
kbh
V)
6
00
00
00
00
d
d
d
d
d
o
0
0 0
0
0
•5
dh
ds
th
dh
P
P
P
P
e
ee
£0
ee
ee
r
r
r
e
e
e e
e e
e
8
8
SJ
8
ea
saa .1 a
ea ea
eA ea
ea e«
8C
sk sk
ek
sk sA
eo
300 JO
eo eo
eo eo
eo e6
t
t
t
t
f
f V
f
f
f V
I
th
ths
th
th
g
S ff *
g
g *
g 9
d
uu
uu
uu
uu
gh ^h
u
M
u
u
U M ?
h
H< kh
H
kh
HH'kh
w
bh
bh
W
hi
kid
Ih
wl
\w
hn
khn
nh
wr
TW
hr
hw
khr
khw
rh
wh
y
y
yy
y
yy
y
yy
y
yy "
y »'
Anglosaxon, Lucas 15, 11-32.
11 So^lice sum man haefde
twegen suna.
12 Da cwae'S se gingra[7%orp0,
yldra] to his faeder, Feeder, syle
•me minne d»l minre aehte £e
me to gebyre^. Da dajlde he
hym hys aehte.
13 Da, aefter feawa dagum,
ealle his ]?ing gegaderode se
gingra sunu, and ferde wrseclice
on feorlen rice, and forspilde
)?ar his sehta, lybbende on his
gtelsan.
Conjectured Pronunciation.
11 Soodh'liiie swm man
Hsevde twee^h'en swn'a.
12 Thaa kwaBdh se
to m's fsed'er, Fsed'er, syl*e me
miin'e dsea3l miin're aekht'e thee
me too-gebyredh. Thaa daeaeld'e
ne mm H»S seseiht'e.
13 Th<w, seft-er fea'wa dogh'-
um, eal-e HIS thtq gegad'erode
se ^rhiq'ra swn'u, ond fer'de
rwsek'liike on feorlen riiA-e,
and forspil'de thaar HIS assekht'a,
lyb'ende on HI'S gasael'san.
Verbatim Translation, Luke 15, 11-32.
11 Soothly some man had twain sons.
12 Then quoth the younger to his
father, Father, sell (give) me mine
deal (part) of -mine owning that me to
belongeth. Then dealed he him his
owning.
13 Then, after few days, all his
things gathered the younger son, and
fared banished-like (abroad) on far
kingdom, and for-spilled (lost) there
his ownings, living on his luxury.
4, No. 1.
ANGLOSAXON PRONUNCIATION.
535
14 Da he hig haefde ealle
a,myrrede, fa wearS mycel hun
ger on J?am rice ; and he wearS
weedla.
15 Da ferde he and folgode
anum burh-sittendum men fees
rices : fa sende he hine to his
tune, fast he heolde hys swyn.
16 Da gewilnode he his
wambe gefyllan of Jam bean-
coddum fe 'Sa swyn aeton: and
him. man ne sealde.
17 Da befohte he hine, and
cwee'S, Eala hu fela yrSlinga
on mines feeder huse hlaf ge-
nohne habba'S, and ic her on
hungre forweorSe !
18 Ic arise, and ic fare to
minum feeder, and ic secge him,
19 Eala feeder, ic syngode on
heofenas, and beforan f e, nu ic
neom wyrSe fast ic beo fin
sunu nemned : do me swa 83nne
of f inum yrSlingum.
20 And he aras fa, and com
to his feeder. And fa gyt, fa
he waes feor his feeder, he hyne
geseah, and wearS mid mild-
heortnesse astyred, and agen
hine arn, and hine beclypte, and
cyste hine.
14 Thaa He H^h neevde
eal'e amyr'ede thaa weardh
im'A'el Hwq-er on tham rii&'e; and
ae weardh weed'la.
15 Th«« fer'de He <md fol'-
ghode ofln'um bwrk^h-sit'endwm
men thees rii&'es : \haa send'e
He nm'e to ms tuu*ne, theet He
neold'e H^'S swiin.
16 Thaa gewil'node ne ro's
w«m-be gefyl'an of tham bean*-
kod'um thee tha swiin eeeet'on :
and Htm man ne seal'de.
17 Thao bethokht'e ne Hzn-e,
and kweeth, Ea'la, HUU fel-a
yrdh-ltqa on mii'nes feed-er
Huu*se lhaaf genookh'ne
ath, and tk neer on
forweor'dhe !
18 /k arii'se, and A fare
to mirman. feed'er, and ik se^'e
mm,
19 Ea-la feed'er, ik syn-gode
on Heo-venas, and befor'an
thee, nuu ik neom wyrdh'e theet
*k beo thiin siai"Q. nem'ned :
doo me swaa 83n-e of thirnum
yrth'h'qum.
20 And. He araas* thaa, and
koom to ms feed'er. And thaa
ghii thaa He wees feor h«s
feed'er, He Imre geseakh' and
weardh m*d mzld-heort'nese as-
tfc'red, and agen- nm'e arn,
and Hwre beklyp'te, and kys'te
Verbatim
14 Then (when) he them had all
dissipated, then worth (became) muckle
hunger on that kingdom ; and he worth
(became) destitute.
15 Then fared he and followed one
borough-sitting man of-that kingdom :
then sent he him to his town (inclo-
sure), that he might hold his swine.
16 Then desired he his womb (belly)
to-fill of (with) the bean-cods that the
swine ate ; and to-him man not sold
(gave).
17 Then bethought he him, and
quoth, Oh! how many earthlings (farm
ers) on mine father's house, loaf (bread)
Translation.
enough have, and I here on hunger
forth- worth (perish).
18 I arise and I fare to mine father,
and I say to him,
19 Oh ! father, I sinned on heavens,
and before thee, now I not-am worthy
that I be thine son named : do to-me
as to-one of thine earthlings (farmers).
20 And he arose then, and came to
his father. And then yet, then (while)
he was far-from his father, he him saw,
and worth (became) with mildhearti-
ness a-stirred, and again him ran, and
him be-clipped (embraced), and kissed
him.
536
ANGLOSAXON PRONUNCIATION.
CHAP. V.
21 Da cwae'S his sunu, Faeder,
ic syngode on heofen, and be-
foran ]?e, nu ic ne eom wyrSe
J?aet ic )>in sunu beo genemned.
22 Da cwse'S se faeder to his
)>eowum, Bringa^S ra'Se ]?one
selestan gegyrelan, and scryda'S
hine ; and sylla'S him hring on
his hand, and gescy to his fotum ;
23 And hringa^ an fsett
styric, and ofslea'S ; and uton
etan, and gewistfullian :
24 forj?am }>es min sunu waes
dead, and he geedcucode ; he
forwearS, and he ys gemet.
Da ongunnon hig gewistlsecan.
25 So^lice his yldra sunu
waes on aecere ; and he com:
and }>a he }>am huse genealsehte,
he gehyrde }>one sweg and J?aet
wered.
26 Da clypode he aenne Jeow,
and acsode hine hwaet fast waere.
27 Da cwavS he, pin broker
com, and J>in feeder ofsloh an
faett cealf ; for]?am he hine
halne onfeng.
28 Da gehealh he hine, and
nolde ingan : ]>a eode his faeder
ut, and ongan hine biddan.
21 Thaa kwaeth zis staru,
Faed'er Vk syn-gode on neo'ven,
0nd beforan thee, nuu ik ne
eom wyrdh'e dhaet t'k thiin swn'u
beo genenrned.
22 Thaaktcaeth se faed'er to
HI'S theo'wttm, Bnq/adh rafldlre
thon-e see'lestan gegyr'elan,
and skryyd-adh Htn-e, and syl*-
adh H«m rh«'q on He's Hand, and
ges&yy to His foo'twm. :
23 and brz'q-adh aon. faet
styyriX;, and ofsleadh- ; and
uu'ton et'an, and gewz'st'fMl'ian:
24 fortham' thes miin siai'u
wses dead, and he ge,edkuu*-
kode ; He forweardh', and He t's
gemeet'. Thaa on'gwn-on ni^h
gewzst'laeae-Aan.
25 Soodh'lii^e HZS yld'ra
SWD.-U waes on aek'ere ; and
He koom ; and ihaa He tham
Huu'se genea'lseaekhte, He ge-
nyrd'e thon-e swee^h and thaet
wered.
26 Thaa klyp-ode He sen-e
theou, and aks'ode mire whset
thaet w3983Te.
27 Thaa kwaedh He, Thiin
broo'dher koom, and thiin
faed'er of'slookh' aan faet kedlf :
fortham* He Hm-e naal'ne on'feq*.
28 Thaa gebeaUh- He nm-e
and nold'e orgaan* : thaa eo'de
HZ'S faed'er uut, and on'gan*
Verbatim
21 Then quoth his son, Father, I
sinned on heaven, and before thee, now
I not am worthy that I thine son be
named.
22 Then quoth the father to his
thanes (servants). Bring rathe (quickly)
the best garment, and shroud (clothe)
him, and sell (give) him a-ring on his
hand, and shoes to his feet,
23 and bring one fat steer, and
slaughter ; and let us eat and feast,
24 for-that (because) this mine son
was dead, and he again-quickened ; he
forth-worth (perished), and he is met.
Then began they to-feast.
Translation.
25 Soothly his elder son was on
acre ; and he came, and then (while)
he to-the house neared, he heard the
music and the company,
26 Then cleped (called) he one
thane (servant) and asked him what
that were.
27 Then quoth he, Thine brother
came, and thine father slaughtered one
fat calf ; for-that he him whole fanged
(received).
28 Then was-wrathful-at he him
and not-would go-in : then went his
father out, and began him to-bid.
§ 4, No. 2. ICELANDIC AND OLD NORSE. 537
29 Da cweeX he, his faeder 29 Thaa kwaeth He, H*'S
andswariende, Efne, swa fela fsed'er andswariende, Eevne
geara ic ]>e J^eowode, and ic swa fel'a ^hea'ra {k the theo*-
naefre Jnn bebod ne forgymde, wode ; and *k na3vre thiin
and ne sealdest }m me nsfre an bebod- ne for^hyynrde, and ne
ticcen, j^set ic mid minum freon- seal'dest thuu mee naevre aan
dum gewistfullode : t^k'en, thset «k rm'd miin'wm
freon'dwm gewe'st'fwl'ode :
30 ac sy^^San ]>es ]>in sunn 30 ak siidb/an thes thiin
com, ]?e hys spede mid myltry- swn'u koom, thee His spee'de
strum amyrde, }m ofsloge him mi'd mil'tristrwm amyrd'e thuu
fsett cealf. of'sloo^lre mm faet &ealf.
31 Da cwae^S he, Sunu, ]>u 31 Thaa kwa3dh ne, Swn'u,
eart symle mid me, and ealle thuu eart sinrle imd mee, «nd
mine J?ing synd ]?ine : ]>e geby- eal'e miine thzq smd thirne :
rede gewistfullian and geblis- thee gebyr'ede gewz'st'M'ian
sian : for^am ]>es fin broker waes and gebh's'ian forthrtm- thes thiin
dead, and he geedcucode ; he broo'dher wa3s dead and. ge,ed-
forwear^, and he ys gemet. kuu'kode ; He forweardlr, and
He is gemeet'.
Verbatim Translation.
29 Then quoth he, his father an- perty) with mistresses lost, thou
swering, Lo ! so many years I thee slaughterest for-him fat calf.
thaned (served), and I never thine 31 Then quoth he, Son, thou art
bidding not neglected, and not soldest ever with me, and all mine things are
(gavest) thou me never one kid, that thine ; to-thee belonged to-feast and
I with my friends feasted : to-hliss ; for-that this thine brother was
30 Eke (but) sithens (since) this dead, and he again-quickened ; he
thine son came, that his speed (pro- forth-worth (perished), and he is met.
2. ICELANDIC AND OLD NORSE.
In the ix th century, Iceland was discovered and colonised by
the Scandinavians. The writing at first used was runic, but
Homan Christianity and Roman letters, which seem to have always
gone hand in hand, were introduced in the xi th century, and MSS.
of the xii th and xmth centuries still exist. The sea usually
unites ; but large tracts of dangerous wintry sea, and a climate
which for months in the year closes the harbours, separate. The
Icelandic colonizers were so separated from their native country
that their tongue was practically unaffected by the causes which
divided it on the continent into two, mutually unintelligible, literary
languages, the Danish and Swedish, and the numerous unwritten
Norwegian dialects.1 In Iceland, therefore, we have the strange
1 " On the older Eunic stones alto- But the Old Norse began also first to
gether the same tongue is found in all decay in Denmark, and therefore took
three kingdoms, and in the oldest laws the name Norra^na (Norraarna), be-
of each people very nearly the same. cause it was probably spoken best and
This tongue occurs first under the most purely in Norway .... Before
denomination Donsk tunga (Dcensk the Union of Calmar [between Den-
tuuq-ga) because Denmark was in the mark, Sweden, and Norway, 1397], it
oldest times the mightiest kingdom. . . . was materially changed both in Sweden
538 ICELANDIC AND OLD NORSE. CHAP. V.
spectacle of a living medieval tongue, with all its terminations, in
flections, and vowel changes, whether of mutation (Umlaut} or
progression (Lautverschielung\ practically unchanged, and in daily
use. The language of the oldest MSS. scarcely differs from that
of the most modern printed books as much as that of Chaucer
from that of Shakspere. Practically the study of Icelandic is
the study of the language spoken by those fierce invaders of our
Eastern coasts, whose tongue has so powerfully and permanently
affected all our Eastern and Northern dialects. It is, therefore, o"f
extreme interest to all students of dialectic or early English.1 But
its orthographic laws are so different from those with which we are
familiar, and many of its sounds are so singular, — living remnants
of habits which seem to have been widely diffused in the xth
century, but which have become lost, and generally misunderstood
in modern times — that a careful examination and explanation of
their nature is necessary. As no treatise has as yet appeared which
conveys satisfactory information, I have availed myself of the kind
ness of Mr. Eirikr Magnusson,2 who, to a perfect knowledge of his
native tongue joins a long and familiar acquaintance with the
language and pronunciation of England, and who has taken the
greatest pains to enable me to render the following account as
complete and trustworthy as possible.3 "Whether the actual pro
nunciation of Icelandic is or is not the same as that in use in the
x th century, it is not easy to determine. The antecedent probability
and Norway ; then arose the name graphy adopted in ancient manuscripts
islenska (iis-lenska) which the tongue are given in an appendix. A gram-
has kept to the present day." — Rasls, mar is to follow, and in the meantime,
Gram. art. 518. "From the North Dasent's Rask's Grammar may be used,
the same tongue was spread over the The following are Icelandic Diction-
Ferro, Orkney, Shetland, and Western aries of repute, which have superseded
Isles, and from Iceland to the coast of Bibrn Haldorson's Lexicon Islandico-
Greenland : but the old Greenland has Danicum, edited hy Eask, Copenhagen,
been now for a long time lost, and since 1814, 2 vols., 4to. Sveinbjbrn Egils-
the Scottish Isles were joined to Scot- son, Lexicon Poeticum antiquae Linguae
land, the Old Norse language has given Septentrionalis, Copenhagen, 1840, 8vo.
way to the New English. On the pp. 932. Erik Jonsson, Oldnordisk
Ferro Isles a dialect is still spoken, Ordbog, Copenhagen, 1863, 8vo. Fritz-
which comes very near to the Icelandic, ner, Ordbog over det gamle norske
but is of little interest since it has no Sprog, Christiania, 1867.
literature except some popular songs." . -T.J-, f ,> • j j-.- »,i
-Ibid. Art. 520. These songs were T ' E<^or of the revised edition of the
published with a Danish translation by *c"c V,™ -°f ^ff^JZ *he
Lyngbye, Randers, 1822 (Dasent's Bl^sh *nd. Foreign Bible Society,
note?. See also Ivar Aasen's Diction- author of Legends of Iceland, and
ary of the Dialects of Norway. translator of various sagas.
1 Prof. Th. Mb'bius's Analecta Nor- 3 Mr. Henry Sweet, of the Philolo-
rcena, and Altnordiscb.es Glossar, re- gical Society, having acquired the pro-
cently published, will be found useful nunciation of Icelandic from another
for students who are acquainted with teacher, Mr. Hjaltalin, I requested him
German. The glossary extends to to inform me where his impressions dif-
several other selections named in the fered from mine. The observations
preface. A uniform modern orthogra- which he has been kind enough to
phy is adopted in all the extracts, but furnish, are added in the shape of foot-
carefully printed specimens of the ortho- notes, signed H. S.
§ 4, No. 2. ICELANDIC PRONUNCIATION. 539
is that there are differences, and with respect to y this probability
amounts almost to a certainty. But Eask, Eapp, and Grimm1
differ most materially in their views, and as they cannot all be
right, it is very likely they are all wrong. None of them seem to
have pursued a satisfactory course for arriving at the truth, which
would require a long study of the phonetic relations of existing
dialects in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Iceland, the careful
examination of ancient manuscripts, of rhymes and assonances, and
of the internal phonetic relations of the language itself. Mr. Henry
Sweet having carried out this programme to a great extent, has
obligingly furnished me with his own views on the subject, which
I have appended to a tabular account of the opinions of Eask,
Eapp, and Grimm, at the close of this section. It is first necessary
to ascertain existing usage.
Icelandic now possesses eight simple vowels, a, e, i, i, o, o, u, it
= (a, e, *, i, o, ce, 9, u) either short or long, the shortening being
generally indicated by two following consonants, or a doubled con
sonant. The letters y y are at present identical with i, i. It has
also six diphthongs ; namely, three i diphthongs, ce au, ei or ey,
the two last being at present identical = (aa«, oece?, eei] ; two u
diphthongs, d, 6 = (aau, oou), the great peculiarity of all these
diphthongs being the importance of the first element, and the
brevity of the second, which in the case of ei, 6 amounts to that
faint indication of an (i, u) heard in the English day, knoiv (dee'j,
noo'w"), in Icelandic letters dei, n6 ; and one acknowledged diph
thong with (i) prefixed, e or e as it is now written, and which
might with equal propriety be written j'e, for in fact there are
numerous other diphthongs of the same class, now written with a
prefixed/, but formerly written with a prefixed i.
The consonants b, d, h, j, I, m, n, p, r, s, t, v = (b, d, H, J, 1, m,
n, p, r, s, t, v) almost invariably ; / varies between (f, v) and some
times (b, m) ; £, g are properly (k, g) but are often palatalised to
(k, g}, and g takes all guttural phases of (gh, gh, jh ; gwh, wh),
down to (j, w), and complete disappearance ; c used to be employed
in the combination ck only, and q in the combination qv, but as
neither c or q belong to the language, they have been both super
seded by k ; x is occasionally used for h, or gs ; and z is employed
for the sound of s before which a dental has been omitted, but not
very consistently. The old letters ]>, ¥> are retained as (th, dh),
although d is often employed for ^ in older printed books. The
combinations hj, hi, hn, hr, hv are called (jh, Ih, nh, rh, wh). The
double letters II, nn are mostly (dl, dn) when medial, and (tlh, tnh)
or (dtlh, dtnh) when final. In the doubled U, the first t indicates
an assimilated guttural, which however is generally more or less
heard. The following is a particular alphabetical account of the
behaviour of each letter and principal combination.
1 A Grammar of the Icelandic or fort, Jaeger, 1843. The Swedish title
Old Norse Tongue, translated from is : Anvisning till Islandskan eller
the Swedish of Erasmus Rask by G. Nordiska Fornspraket, af Erasmus
"W.Dasent, London, Pickering; Frank- Christian Rask. Fran Danskan b'fver-
540 ICELANDIC PRONUNCIATION. CHAP. V.
Icelandic Alphabet.
A, distinctly (aa, a), not so low as (aa, a], and never rounded to
(0h), tut occasionally as high as (aah, ah), though this may be an
individual peculiarity, and was certainly unintentional.1 Most of
the words cited by Grimm as having short (a) are now pronounced
with long (aa). Ex. hann (nan) he, alt (alht) all, hafSdi
(Havdhfc), landTS (landzdh) the land; drafi (draavi) husks, matar
(maa'tar) meat = food, taka (taa'ka) take, ma%ur (maa'dh^r) man?
sag^i (saah[_gh-dlu)3 said. In unaccented syllables, where open or
closed, the short a is general.
A, a clear diphthong (aau), with the first element predominant,
and the final short, and thus distinguished from the German au
(au). Not (ao, ao) as suggested by Rapp. Never (A A), but con
founded occasionally with o in MSS, with which compare the
Welch confusion of aw, o (au, oo). When a is final and emphatic
there seems to be an inclination to sound after it a whispered u
('u), or the labio-gutturals (wh, gwh), just slightly touched, as d
(aauj^wh) river, fa (faau[_wh). Before a doubled letter the first
element is somewhat shortened, and before doubled t, the guttural
is decidedly touched, as dtti (au^kwht'ti) had, but the whole com
bination is spoken with extreme brevity.
.2E, the diphthong (aaz), taken by Rapp as (ae), from his inability
to appreciate (*) ; distinct therefore from German ei, ai (ai). There
is an unacknowledged tendency to develop a palato-guttural sound,
as (j, jh, ^h, &h), after ce, when final, or before a vowel, as : ae
(aa^jh) aye ever, a?a (aarja) to cry for pain. And before two con
sonants or a doubled consonant, the first element is shortened, as :
aetla (a«Vla) to think ffittir (aet'tw1) oughtest.
AU sounds to me as the diphthong (oecee), scarcely differing from
the French ceil on the one hand and the Dutch ui on the other.
Rask refers the Icelandic sound to the German eu, as Dr. Gehle did
the Dutch (supra p. 235, n. 1, and p. 295, n. 1), and Rapp, as I
understand him, says that Rask pronounced the diphthong au as
(ces), which pronunciation seems to furnish the key to the ortho
graphy, for a changes its sound by Umlaut to e through a following
i, and to 6 (oe) through a following u (?\ as : fa'Sir, fo^ur (faa'dhzr,
fceo3'dh0r). This organic law of change was probably the cause
why au was written for o in old MSS. quasi, a as altered by the
influence of u, and the same spelling was also used for 6u (03030)
most naturally. Now since (&} is often confounded with (y), and
(y), when brief, is easily confounded with («), we see how au might
satt och omarbetad af Forfattaren, bles, and in accented intermediate to (ah)
1818. Physiologic der Sprache von and (a). — H.S. Is this sound (a f) ?
Dr. K. M. Rapp, vol. 2 (1839), pp. 2 Compare the Norfolk mawther, a
128-139, vol. 4 (1841) j>- 246. Ver- girl, and the observation in Nail's
gleichende Grammatik, vol. 3, (1859), Glossary. This Icelandic word was
pp. 39-41. Deutsche Grammatik von formerly mannr, modern Danish mand.
Jacob Grimm, vol. 1, 3rd ed., 1840, 3 For the use of [ to signify a scarcely
pp. 421-495, 2nd ed. 1822, pp. 280-330. audible utterance of the following ele-
1 Decidedly (ah) in unaccented sylla- ment, see supra, p. 419, note, col. 1.
§ 4, No. 2. ICELANDIC PRONUNCIATION". 541
come to be (oeces, oeoey, 0303&), and, in the present absence of (y)
from the language, would naturally rest in (oeoe^). The German
eu is very variously pronounced (supra p. 321, note 2). Rask must
have alluded to the somewhat rare (0y) sound, which he heard as
(oay). If the view here taken be correct, the sound (033) was pro
bably the oldest form of this diphthong, and the antiquity of the
(0) sound of u, is also rendered probable.1 Ex. hlaup (Ihoe^'p)
course, lauf (loeoe/v) leaf, skaut (skoeoez't) lap, kaupa (koacerpa) buy.
B is always (b).
C is " used by old writers indiscriminately with k, especially at
the end of monosyllables. It is now used only in ck for kk, but
many write kk and thus shut c entirely out of the language, a
custom which is already (1818) old, though not general." — Rask.
D is always intended to be (d) according to the present orthogra
phy, but in older printed matter it also stood for ¥>. It is found only
at the beginning of words and syllables, and after I, n, m, and d. It is
occasionally written when not pronounced, as: syndga (snrga) to sin.
D is precisely the English (dh), but never occurs initially in
Icelandic, where it is found in place of (d), after vowels and r, f, g,
and "in old writers it is sometimes found after I, m." — Rask.
There are some districts in Western Iceland where it cannot be
pronounced, and is replaced by (d). It has disappeared in Swedish,
but is heard though not written, in Danish. The present use of
]>, ¥> in Icelandic accords generally with their written use in Anglo-
saxon, and consequently there is a presumption that the English
use of an initial (dh) is modern, see supra p. 515.2
1 This conjecture will be incorrect if, however, may be a remnant of the form
as seems probable, Mr. Sweet's views thocht, possibly a form of thought, for
are to be adopted, infra, p. 559. which initial (th) would be regular.
2 Since p. 515 was sent to press, Mr. As regards Anglosaxon, the real usages
Henry Sweet has read his investigation of MSS., disregarding the manipula-
of the meaning of ]? "5 before the Phi- tion of editors, are very uncertain, ac-
lological Society (4 June, 1869). He cording to Mr. Sweet. The Northum-
considers that the sound was originally brian writings use t> everywhere, except
uniformly vocal = (dh), in the earliest in the contraction )>*. Rapp (Verglei-
stages of the Teutonic languages, and ehende Grammatik, iii, 128) complains
that the non-vocal (th) is a later and that a great mistake has been made
progressive development. He believes respecting Anglosaxon ]? $, especially
that the earliest Icelandic of the xm th in England. The Anglosaxons, he
century had the same pronunciation of says, probably wrote first with runic,
]> ft as the modern, except in the words then with Latin letters, and there being
which have . exceptionally an initial no Latin letter for (th), the sound was
vocal form in English, thus, ancient represented in three ways ; occasion-
ftat, ftessi 'S«=modern b«'S, ]>mt, ]>u. ally, even in the oldest monuments, by
But the testimony of Icelandic MSS. th, [compare supra p. 525, 1. 22] ;
he finds to be very uncertain. In mo- afterwards by the runic j>, and thirdly
dern Icelandic, iS is often evanescent by the Icelandic ft. Englishmen could
(l<lh), according to Mr. Sweet,and in the not but feel that ]>, ft were convenient
Norwegian dialects it disappears entirely representatives for their own two sounds
leaving an hiatus. See Eapp's opinion, (th, dh), although a cursory inspection
infra p. 555, n., col. 2. Itshouldbemen- of the MSS. would shew the discord-
tioned that one of our words having an ance ; so that some inverted the order
nitial (dh), though, is pronounced with and made }>, ft = (dh, th), [supra p. 515,
initial (th) in Scotland, (thoo), which note 1]. Neither the Anglosaxon nor
542 ICELANDIC PRONUNCIATION. CHAP. V.
E is properly (ee, e) long and short.1 The sound did not appear
to me to be so low as (EE, E), and certainly was not so high as (ee, <?).
Grimm (ib. pp. 427-432) endeavours to divide the sound into
two, (e) corresponding to Gothic a, and (e), which he writes S, cor
responding to Gothic «. There is no trace of this in the spoken
language. Ex. ennfremur (en'free'msr) and further ; sem (seem)
who ; herrar (Her'rar) lords, verk (verk) work, etc. Initially it is
occasionally pronounced like e, as : eg (jee0rh) I.
E', Ev, the form e was proposed by Rask, and has been generally
adopted, the older writers employ b or omit the accent altogether,
leaving it to be supplied by the reader — either form is considered
equivalent to je, and should therefore be (jee, je), but in fact, as
in many cases where j is written, the result is often a diphthong
with the stress on the first element, as : tre (triee) tree, m^r (mieer)
to me ; but : fenu (free'na, fie'eTia) fees, property, rettur (rjet'ter)2
right, fell (firedtlh) fell, etc.
El, EY. These two signs are now identical in signification.
Rask says that the two sounds are still distinct in Norway, where
ey = (cei), and in the Perro dialect, where it is commonly (oi). At
present, however, both are (eei) or (ee1]}, not sensibly differing from
southern English day, and having its first element distinctly (ee)
and hence materially differing from e. It is occasionally shortened
by shortening the first element, and then may be written (e\i} to
shew the brevity of the second element, so that the effect is almost
(e~). Ex. seil (seeiY) towing line, heill (H^'dtlh) whole, ]?eirra (thejjr-
ra) of them, eytt (e\ii} wasted.
P, properly (f), with a very mild hiss, scarcely more than a
single tooth being touched by the lower lip, so that it approaches
(ph). It has this sound only at the beginning of syllables, or before
s. or when doubled. At the end of a word or between vowels it
falls into an equally mild (v). Before I, n, at the end of syllables
it falls into (b), but if d or t follow the n, then fnd, fnt become
(mnd, mnt), most generally, though some say (mnd, fnt). Ex.
fotur (foou'ter) foot, ofsi (ovs») arrogance-, haf (naav) sea, arfr
(arvvr) inheritance; tafia (tab'la) table, nafn (nab'nh) name', nefna
(neb'na) to name, nefnt (nemnt) supine of nefna; jafnt (jaft), from
the pulpit (jamnt) equally *
G is the most changeable of all the letters, and it is difficult to
lay down rules which should apply to every case. At the begin
ning of syllables it is (g) before a, d, o, 6, u, in, d, au, and (^) before
te, e, ei, i, I, y, y, ey and also before j. The first group corresponds
Early English use ]> or ft in place of and ft eliminated. He even assumes ini-
an organic (d). The Englishman now tial </t = (th) in Chaucer, see the intro-
pronounces the demonstrative pronomi- duction to Chap. VII. § 1, near the end.
nal family with initial (dh), which l I took the e for (E) instead of (e).
no one has yet asserted for Anglosaxon — H.S.
(was noch niemand im Angelsuchsischen a The sound before tt is a pure
behauptet hat}. He considers that Eng- aspirate without consonant quality,
lish (dh) has arisen partly from (th) rett (riEH't). — H.S.
and partly from (d), and that in Anglo- 3 Jafnt or jamt with voiceless m
saxon )>, d, must be everywhere restored, (jamht) . — H. S.
$ 4, No. 2. ICELANDIC PRONUNCIATION. 543
to non-palatal vowels, and the second to palatal vowels, but this
division is not exact, for e, u d (e, 9, 03) have precisely the same
elevation of the tongue as ei (eei], and <e (aa&) is a back vowel,
before which the use of the palatal (g} is exactly similar to that in
older English regard, sky (ri^aard-, siai), supra p. 206. The palatal
k, g are expressed by kj, gj before the first group, and should always
be so expressed. G after a, o, becomes (gh), and after 6, u, it falls
into (wh, wh, w) or almost entirely disappears. But after an (i)
sound, it becomes (gh, Kb.} or even completely (jh, j), and occasion
ally disappears as (i). These changes are extremely interesting be
cause they shew the stages through which the ags. 5 passed in older
English before it entirely subsided into the present (j i, w u) or
totally disappeared. We have, therefore, an actual living example
of the intermediate sounds, already suggested by theory, establish
ing the correctness of the previous hypothesis, supra, p. 512. Ex. :
(g), gafa (gaau'va) gift, gas (gaaus) goose, gaukur (gceoee'^r) cuckow,
glo'S (glooudh) live coal, go^ur (goou dhsr), gora (#o3O3Ta) to
make.
(g}, gaes (^raaz's) geese, gseta (^aarta) to keep, geit (geeii] goat, gjof
(^io303v) gift, gjarn (^iadtnh) prone, pyngja (piiq-yia) purse,
gefa (^ee'va) give.
(gh) og (oogh) and, dogum (doeoegh^m) to days, sag^i (saah|_glr-
dlw) daglaunamenn (daai_ghioeoernamen-) day labourers,
(gwh, wh, w), ljuga (Lniu'|_gwha, Lnzu^wha, Lruu-wa, Lrau-a) to tell
a falsehood, all varieties of barely pronounced (gwh) being per
missible, and the last two forms being most common. This
disappearance of (gwh) strongly calls to mind the absence of
(gh) in the "Welch system of mutation of initial consonants,
thus (b, f, m ; d, dh, n) should have in Welch a correspond
ing (g, gh, q), but instead of (gh) an hiatus is substituted as :
eu gafr, dy afr, fy ngafr (ey gaav'r, da aav'r, va-qaav'r), their,
thy, my goat, where we ought clearly to have (da ghaav'r).
(^h, jh) mig (m?«^h) me, eigum (eeigh-ffm) possessions, sig (sw^h)
himself, eg (jeeyh) /, gna3g^S (gnaaz'Lyhd), enough,
(kh) fjarlsegt (fiar-laa«|_^ht) far lying.
(j) feginn (fee'jm) fain, segja (seeiva) to say, dragrS (draa-jedh),
draw, put, bogi (boo'Ji) bow for shooting, agi (aav») chastisement,
bagindi (baauvmd^) troubles.
In addition to these we must reckon the cases where a scarcely
perceptible (#h, jh, gw>h, wh) is developed from (i, uu) as : ae, bii
(a&'|_jh, buuLwh) ever, farm. The Swedish reading of gn as (qn) is
unknown except when d, t follow as lygndi (kVqn'dt) became calm,
rigndi, rignt (m'qn'dt, rzVqnt) was rained on. "When s follows the
n is lost, as gagns (gagks).
H before vowels is (H', H) and is never dropped. Before conso
nants it is used simply to make them voiceless. Thus we have the
remarkable set of digraphs, HJ, HL, HN, HR, HV, existing as
distinct (jh, Ih, nh, rh, wh), as was conjectured for Anglosaxon,
544 ICELANDIC PRONUNCIATION. CHAP. V.
p. 513. HJ = (jh) is precisely the same as the initial element in
my pronunciation of hue (jhi'u), and is not (Kh, #h), tut of course
only slightly different. HL = (Ih) is the true whispered (1), with
the breath passing out at each side of the tongue, and hence dif
ferent from the unilateral "Welch II (Ihh), so that Welch : lladd
(Ihhaadh) to kill, and Icelandic : hla'S (lhaadh) a street, a mound,
are perfectly distinct in sound. This (Ih) sound is also frequently
developed from II final, intended for dl, but called (dtlh) as all
(audtlh) eel, and even before t, as : alt (alht) all. It would
therefore naturally replace our English final ('!) in fiddle, if I
occurred final after a consonant, just as the modern French stable
(stablh), p. 52.1 This is really the case with HN = (nh), which not
only occurs initially, as hm'fur (nhirv^r) knife? but in nn as : einn
(ffdtnh) one, and : vatn (vatnh) water. In HE = (rh) the Icelandic
possesses perfect whispered r, which on the analogy of (Ih, nh)
is the sound of the favourite nominative termination -r in old
Norse, as : bleikr, deigr (blm'Mi, deezyrh) pale, wet, but the modern
custom is to use -ur (-0r) in its place, and this pronunciation has
probably arisen from the sound (rh) having been dropped, and (r)
simply retained, as (blm'kr) with a distinct trilled (r) not forming
a syllable, and different from (blm'k'r), into which it probably sank,
before the transition into (blm'ksr) took place, as the Icelander
naturally conceives all indistinct sounds to be (0) which is his
"natural vowel." The close resemblance of (rh) to (s) however,
and the correspondence of the Icelandic -r with the Gothic -*,
renders the old sound (rh) extremely probable, and possibly the
old Latin confusion of terminal s, r as arbos arbor, honos honor,
may rest upon a similar antecedent whispered pronunciation of r.
The use of HV = (wh) is the most singular, because (w) is not a
recognized element in the language, and it will be best considered
under V.
I is distinctly (ii, i] both long and short, the very sounds which
we were led to attribute to i in the xrv th century (p. 297). It is
interesting also to see that foreigners, unable to appreciate the true
(ii i}, confuse it with (ee, e},3 which is a corroboration of the re-
1 The sound of hi is more correctly 3 Rask says that the " sound espe-
(Ijh). — H. S. See infra, p. 546, n. 1. cially when it is long seems to approach
to that of the deep e («)." Eapp says
2 Compare Cooper, p. 32, " N For- "folglich t = e gilt," i.e. consequently
matur ab extremitate linguae superio- i = («). Grimm says: "Wahrend der
rum dentium radici apposita (si spiri- unterschied zwischen i und i in solchen
tus utrinque per labia etflatur formatur zweisilbigen formen beinahe unmerk-
l) huic correspondet hn, quam scribunt lich sein, z. b. qvifla poema fast lauten
Angli per kn,\know know, cognosce." musz wie qvfSa metus, obschon kurzes
— p. 37, " hn quam scribimus kn." i im munde des Islanders sich dem
— p. 38, "zA, wh, sh, th, hn in Alpha- elaut nahert," i.e. he considers that the
beto non numerantur." — p. 39, " kn dissyllables qvrSa poem, qvifta fear
ponitur pro Aw." — p. 67. " Kn sona- ought to be nearly indistinguishable,
tur ut hn ; knave nebulo, knead mala " although in the mouth of an Icelander
cisso, kneegenu, kneel ingeniculor, knife short t approaches to the sound of e."
culter, kniyht eques, knif-necto, knock (Gr. I3, 486). Mr. Sweet says than
tundo, know nosco, knuckle articulus ; in unaccented syllables » is rather (e)
quasi hnnve, etc." than (»').
§ 4, No. 2. ICELANDIC PRONUNCIATION. 545
mark, p. 271, and even in some terminations, e often stands in
MSS. for i, as in : haskalegr, misseri, lande, for haskaligr, missiri,
landi (naaus'kahYg^r, im's'sz'm, land'«Y) dangerous, quarter year, to a
land. At the present day, however, the («Y) is very distinct, as is
never confused with (ii), thus : vinum mmum (vn'nsm mirmm) do
not rhyme, and children in repeating the alphabet never confuse i with
i, that is (M) with (ii). Icelandic is the only language I have met
with which distinctly recognizes this long (#»), though we have seen
that it is occasionally generated in English (p. 106). The short i
is the true usual English (»'), and is perfectly distinct from (i). In
older books i before a vowel was used, where j is now employed.
T on the other hand is (ii, i), generally long, but short in un
accented syllables. It is not, however, found short in closed ac
cented syllables as in Scotch and French.1 Rask considers i, u as
diphthongs, as it were ij uv = (n, au), but there is no foundation for
this in actual speech, and the conception seems due to the mode of
writing.
J was used as the ancient capital of i, at the beginning of words,
but as it was there pronounced as (j) before vowels, it has in recent
times been used in the middle of words before vowels, even though
the sound was not always the pure consonant (j), but much more
frequently an (i) diphthongising with the following vowel. It
changes a preceding k, g from (k, g) into (k, g\ but the sound of (i)
is still heard as much as in the Italian : chiaro, ghiaja (Aiaa'ro,
^iaria) clear, gravel. It does not seem to change a preceding I, n
from (1, n) into (Ij, nj), as Ija (liaau) new cut grass, Ijo^ (lidoudh)
poem, liufur (limrwr) gentle, Ijee (liaaz) to lend; nialgur (niaauT-
g?r) hedgehog . In some cases the sound of (j) would be difficult
as: fjarins (fiaau'rinzs) of the fee, fjarla3gt (fiaar*laat|_Aht) far-lying,
bjost (biooust) busked, brjosti (briooust'ji) breast, hljop (Ihiooup)
leaped. Hence j must be merely looked upon as a dipthongizing (i),
not (*'). In all these cases, however, a simple (j) would be con
sidered correct, thus (Lraau, Lrooudh, Lruuwr, Lraae, iuaaurg0r,
fjaau'rins, fjaarlaa^/cht, bjooust, brjoous't/, Ihjooup).
K is (k) before a, a, o, 6, u, u, o, au and (K) before «, e, ei, i, I,
y, y, ey, j, thus kirkja (jfor/fcia) church, contains the true inter
mediate sound between the Scotch kirk (kerk) and Chaucer's chirche
(tshirtsh'e), supra pp. 203-6.2 K does not assume the forms (kh,
Kh, kwh), and hence diflfers materially from Gr.
L is usually and always intentionally (1), but the sound of (Ih)
is sometimes produced by a following t, as alt (alht) all. In the
case of II, the first I is pronounced as (d), and if the second is final,
it becomes (lh\ and thus generates a (t) in passing from (d), so
that the combination becomes (-dtlh), and the first (d) is frequently
scarcely audible, as (-|_dtlh), the whole combination being rapidly
1 Short (i) in J>ing (thiqg). I think 2 I thought k before e, i, etc., was
Mr. Hjaltalin said that the pronuncia- really (kj) not (kj = A:), but this was
tion (thzqg) with open (») sometimes probably incorrect. — H. S.
occurs.— H. S.
35
546 ICELANDIC PRONUNCIATION. CHAP. V.
pronounced,1 and rl is treated in the same way, thus : kail karl
(kai_dtlh) calling, churl. Between two vowels, II is distinctly (dl)
as k~alla (kad'la) to call. See N. For hi see H.
M is always intentionally (m), but may be voiceless (mh) before t.
N is always intentionally (n), but after t, It final, (nh) is generated
as : vatn (vatnh) water, regn (reg|_knh) rain, vagn (vag|_knh) wain,
and nn rn are both (-Ldtnh) final, see L. Thus klenn (klieLdtnh)
small, finn (fii|_dtnh) fine, jam (jaauj_dtnh) iron. " But should
nn belong to the following syllable, or if it be a simple vowel that
goes before, the sound is (n), as a-nni (aun'm) to the river, dat. sing.
with art., ey-nni (mrm) to the island? so also : kanna (kan'na) to
survey, hann (nan) he, brenna (bren-na) to burn, etc. Old writers
often used II, nn, in all cases before d, t without regard to the
radical form, though the custom was never general. This nnd has
been long since entirely laid aside, as also II, d where the root has
a simple I, Ij." — Rask.3 In NGr 'the n becomes (q), and the g has
its full sound of (g), thus ]nng (thiiqg)4 council, assembly, and the
preceding vowel is always one of the accented series d, i, 6, u, y.
Konra^S Gislason, however, maintains that the vowel should always
be unaccented in old Norse ; but his opinion does not find much
favour. NK is also pronounced (qk) as : )?anki (thaauqk'i) mind,
thought, hanki (naauqk^') handle of a basket, ear of a jar.
0 is the pure (oo,) long and short, supra pp. 94-96, quite dis
tinct from the English (AA, o),5 and is identified by Rask with the
Swedish a, Eussian and Finnish o, but as he also makes it the same
as English o (o), some doubt attaches to the other indications.
0' is the pure English diphthong (oou) as heard in know. The
final u here generates a -(w) when another vowel follows, as soa^i
(soo-wadhi) wasted. When a doubled U follows, where there is an
assimilated guttural, the first element is shortened, and the guttural
is faintly heard, as dottir (douLgwht'tzr) daughter. When 6 is final,
the (u) is heard quite as distinctly as in English, thus sko (skoou)
shoes, is a perfect rhyme to know.
0, CE,6 is (ceoe, ce) long and short, and is kept quite distinct from
(99, 9), as in dogum (dceoegh^m) to days. The form ce is only used
by theoretical writers.
P is always (p), except in the combination pt which is called (ft)
as lopt (loft) air, but modern writers, and among them the learned
Jon porkelsson, are beginning to employ /£ by preference.
1 LI, nn = ('dlh, 'dnh) between bles being etymological, not phonetic ,
vowels generally, as well as final, falla, in Icelandic, -nn is said to belong en-
allra, einna = (a'dlhrah), etc. L is tirely to the second syllable, but a dis-
generally rather (Ij). One Icelander tinct (n,n) is really pronounced.
(Mr. G. Vigfusson) said he could not 3 Before t, n is voiceless as beint
sound the English I. Thus/aWa is more (bm'nht).— H.S.
correctly (fa'dljhah).— H,S. * See p. 545, note 1.
2 In both these cases -nni stands for 6 I took the o for (a) not (o). — H.S.
-inni and is the dat. fern, of the suffixed 6 In old Icelandic there was a long
definite article, so that it has no ety- ce distinct from sc, but it seems to have
mological connection with the preced- been absorbed by 83 at an early period.
ing d, ey, and the division of the sylla- — H.S.
§ 4, No. 2. ICELANDIC PRONUNCIATION. 547
Q,V is found in old MSS. but even there interchanges with Jcv,
At present q has no value different from (k), and consequently (£)
is now generally written.
R is a strongly trilled (.r) as in Scotland, and when doubled, as
in fjarri (fia.r.rj) remote, the number of vibrations of the tip of the
tongue is very great. Final -ur (-0r) is however more lightly pro
nounced. In the following transcription I shall simply use (r).
but the reader must be careful never to say (i). The combinations
rl, rn are considered under L, IS", The final -r after consonants,
was probably (rh) see hr under H, but it is now generally replaced
by -ur (-^r).1
S is always intentionally (s), and never (z), but (z) is sometimes
generated, although it is not recognized. Thus (s) final after I, n,
and perhaps in other cases, generates an intermediate (z). For ex
ample, if we compare : ems, sins (m'nzs, siinzs), with English
stains, scenes (stmnzs, siinzs), we shall see that the difference
of the terminations, here written alike, arises from the (s) in Ice
landic being intentional and predominant, but the (z) generated
and therefore lightly touched, while in English the (z) is inten
tional and predominant, and though the (s) is often prolonged,
and in the church singing of charity children, not unfrequently
painfully hissed, it is yet merely generated by a careless relaxation
of the voice, and its very existence is unknown to many speakers.
"We might therefore write the Icelandic (-n|_zs) and the English
(-nz[_s), but (-ns, -nz) is sufficient for most purposes. I found also
that there was an unacknowledged tendency to pronounce s final
after long vowels, in the same way ; thus : las, has, meis, vis, hris,
ros, hus, inus sounded to me (laauzs, baauzs, meeizs, viizs, rhiizs,
roouzs, HUUZS, muuzs) halter, stable, manger, wise, vegetable, rose,
house, mouse, the two last words sounding quite different from the
Scotch (HUS, mus). Even in the name of Iceland itself, Island, I found
the s varying from (z) to (s) at different times, as (iisiand, iiz'land).
Between two vowels s may similarly have a tendency to become (z),
but I have not had time to examine the numerous words of this
class orally, and it would be necessary to examine natives who had
not learned the sound of (z) from other languages. We may
always pronounce (s) without offence, but (z) would be frequently
very offensive. Initially before /, s seems to assume the form (sj )
or (shj), the latter was the sound I heard in sjukur (shjuu'ksr)
sick. Icelanders have a difficulty in acquiring the sound of English
(sh), except in such a word as sugar, which they probably call
(shjuug'0r).2
T is the usual (t), but in it, where the first t stands for an assimi
lated guttural, while both letters are pronounced (t,t), the guttural
still generally asserts itself, see JE, A, 0'.
p is (th), and that invariably, although it stands in places where
1 In rt, the r is voiceless, as hart pronounce (sh, tsh). They sound our
(narht). — H.S. church as (siErhs). They also find our
2 Most Icelanders seem unable to (z) very difficult. — H.S.
548 ICELANDIC PRONUNCIATION. CHAP. V.
(dh) is now pronounced in English. Rask, however, excepts " pro
nouns and particles which in daily speech are attracted like en
clitics to the foregoing word, as a sefi-Jnnni1 in thy days, hafir jm
hast thou ? where it has the sound of ¥>. The word }m is often thus
contracted with verbs, in which case u loses its accent, and )> is
changed into ¥>, d, or t, as the foregoing letter may require ; as
haf-'Su (navdhs) Imper. of hafa to have, kom-du (kom'ds) Imper.
of koma, rfs-tu (riis'fo) of rfsa to rise." These are equivalent to
Chaucer's saystow wiltow (sais'tu, ws'lt'u), gayest thou, wilt thou,
(supra p. 371, art. 98, c, Ex.) the vulgar German haschte (Hash-to)
= hast du, hast thou, etc. They are generated, unintentional sounds.2
TJ seems to he pure (99, 0} long and short, and the existence of
the forms d, 6 (aau, oou) would seem to indicate the absence of any
letter for (u) even in ancient times, and au for (cece) and (03033) ap
pears to imply that this value of u was ancient, see AU.3 This
sound of (d) is often confused with (y), on the one hand, and (ce) on
the other. Thus to Mr. M. Bell the French u sounds (0), and to
me (y). In our own provinces (y, 0} seem to be heard indifferently,
thus I heard both (tyy) and (te0) for two in Norwich. See also the
Devonshire sounds in (p. 301 note). In Scotland (y) and (0} are
both used, though only (y) is generally recognized. I hear (0) for
the French e muet, but others hear (a, 0h). In some parts of Ger
many (03) and in others (0} are used for 6. Hence we must not be
surprised at Rask's finding Icelandic u "almost like deep4 Swedish 6
in hog rok," probably (0), or "German ti," which he may have heard as
(9], wishing to keep it distinct from (i) into which his own Danish
y had fallen. He adds that "the word gu^S God is pronounced
nearly as gvo'S or gvirS," but to me it sounds (gv00dh) or (gMwdh)
where the inserted v, or a labialized g arising perhaps from an
intense effort to avoid any palatisation of the g into (gj). The
distinction between the sounds of u, 6 (0, ce) is, if I rightly ap
preciate it, precisely the same as that between i, i (i, i), or (e, e)
that is, the position of the tongue and lips is the same for both
elements in each pair, but the whole of the back part of the mouth
etc., is wider for the second element in each pair than for the first.
If is (uu, u), long in accented, short in open unaccented syllables.5
Rask says that it has two sounds, apparently (uu, «), but his expla
nation is quite unintelligible, owing to his confusing vowels so un
like, as (a, 9, o, u). No such distinction was admitted by Mr.
Magnusson. It seems impossible to an Icelander to pronounce
final u without some labio-guttural intonation after it, such as (wh,
gwh), thus : bii (buu) or rather (buu[_wh) farm.
1 The change of ]> to $ is rare in ology, thus art. 15, he speaks of "a or
this case. high e iQ the Swedish word engel,
2 See note on $, supra, p. 541, n. 2. French e in aprei, English e in fellow
1 See, however, a different opinion or ai in hair," and " the lower sound
advanced by Mr. Sweet, infra, p. 559. of e in the Swedish lefv a, vela, French
e."
1 Rask calls (e) deep, and (e) high, 6 Short (u) in J> fingr, not (9) as if
which is contrary to the usual termin- spelled «. — H.S.
§ 4, No. 2. ICELANDIC PRONUNCIATION. 549
Y is (v) with so slight a contact of the lower lips with the upper
teeth as to vary in effect at different times as (bh, v), but I did not
feel justified in noting it as (bh) without having an opportunity of
hearing the sound from numerous speakers.1 That it was not
originally (v) is clear to me from the combination HV, which
is called (wh) in the southern, and (kwh) in the northern districts
of Iceland, corresponding to the English and Scotch sounds of
wh, and the South and North Wales pronunciation of chw. These
point to an original (w) and to the transitional sound (bh) before
falling into (v). For the unvoiced (v) could only be (f), the
Aberdeen expression of wh; and the unvoiced (bh) would be
(ph), neither of which sounds seem to be used, although / now
falls into v. It is very possible that in earlier times / had the
true sounds of (f, v), and that v, then not distinguished in writing
from M, was (w), whence hv would be (wh). At the present day, v,
hv = (v, wh) is an anomaly, which could hardly have been original.
X is traditionally used for ks, gs, without any known reason,
except custom, and shortens the preceding vowel like a doubled
consonant.
T has precisely the same value as i (i) and is only employed to
point out certain grammatical or etymological relations. But in
some valleys it is yet called (y), and this was possibly its original
sound. The present sound is supposed to have taken its rise in the
xii th century, and to have become prevalent in the xiv th.
Y' is now the same as i (ii). " The name of the letter, however,
is pronounced altogether as it is in Swedish and Danish," says
Rask, that is, as (yy) or more commonly ypsilon.
Z has always the sound of (s), its use is merely etymological
or literary, shewing that some letter has been lost before s, and as
it is not consistently employed, it would be better disused altogether.
The alphabet is read thus, in Icelandic orthography ; a a be ce
de e^S e e eff ge ha i i jo^ ka ell emm enn o 6 pe qu err ess t& u ii
vaff ex ypsilon ypsilon zeta }>orn. ae = (aa aau bjee sjee dree
eedh ee jee ef gsee naau ii ii joodh kaau edtlh em en oo oou pjee
kuu er es tree 09 uu vaf eks «ps&lon iip'se'lon see'ta thodtnh aaV).
Both ss and ce are written occasionally, but they are not distin
guished in sound, and are both named (aai).
The stress is on the first syllable of all words long or short,
simple or compound, but in the case of compounds each component
has an accent as if it were simple, and the chief stress lies on the
first. A single final consonant, or a single consonant between two
vowels, leaves the preceding vowel long, as : vel (veel) well, man-
saugur (maan-scecei'j^r) lovesong, ve'S (veedh) pledge, }?at (thaat)
that, til (tnl) to. A doubled consonant, or two consonants (of
which final r is not one) shortens and " stops" the preceding vowel,
and diminishes the length of the first element of diphthongs.
Doubled consonants are fully pronounced, as in Italian, supra p. 55.
1 I thought at first that v was (bh), Mr. Hjaltalin that it was a dental
and I was only induced to consider it sound. — H. S.
as a (v) by the distinct statement of
550 ICELANDIC PRONUNCIATION. CHAP. V.
Rask asserts that all vowels and diphthongs are nasalized when
standing immediately before m and n, but if such nasalisation
exists, it must be very slight, and I did not detect it. But see
infra p. 558, 1. 25.
When three consonants come together one is usually omitted, as
halft (naaulht) half, volgt (volht) lukewarm, margt (maart) much.
Similarly islenzskt (iis'lenst) Icelandic, danskt (danst) Danish ;
gagns (gagks) of use, hrafns (rhafs) a crow's, vatns (vas) water's.
Similarly r is little heard before st and nd, as verstur (vestvr) worst,
fyrstur (f&Vter) first. For rl, rn, see L,N; forfnd, fnt, see F, for
gnd, gnt, see GK
These observations will give the reader a tolerably complete
notion of Icelandic pronunciation, and enable him, with a little
attention, to read intelligibly. There is no sound really difficult in
the language, but the combinations are unusual, and will require
care. It is therefore necessary to have an example, for which, as
already mentioned (p. 534,) the parable of the Prodigal Son has
been selected. The text is taken from that revised by Mr. Magnus-
son,1 and the pronunciation was written down from his dictation,
and afterwards carefully compared with his reading. The transla
tion is constructed on the same principles as before (p. 534). The
reader is recommended to read the words of one verse over with
care and repeat them till he can form the sounds with ease and
rapidity from memory before proceeding to a second verse. If he
proceeds through the whole parable in this way, and commits the
text to memory, he will -be able to read any Icelandic book in
telligibly to an Icelander.
Liikasar Gu^Sspjall 15, 11-32. Luuk'asar Gv^dh'spiatlh, 15,
11-32.
11. Ennfremur sag^i hann: 11. En'free'mOT saaLgh'dlu
ma^ur nokkur atti tvo sonu, nan: maa'dh9rnok'k*rau(_ktt>ht'-
ii tvoo soo -n0,
12. Sa yngri ]?eirra sag^i vvS 12. Saauiiq-grith<?[irra saa[ghl
fo'Sur sinn : fa'Sir ! lat mig fa dh& v«lh fceoedh'sr sin : faa'dntr !
J>ann hluta fjarins, sem mer laaut nm^h faau than Ih^'ta
ber; og hann skipti milli ]?eirra fe'aau'rinzs, seem mieer beer;
fenu. oogh nan akif'tt nu'd'b'
Verbatim Translation.
Luke's Gospel, 15, 11-32. father his: father! let me fang that
11. Still-further said he : man cer- lot of-the-fee which to-me are-borne;
tain had two sons, and he divided between them fee-the.
12. The younger of -them said to 13. Some days since, took the
1 Hit? Nya Testament! Drottins vors The New Testament of-Lord ours Jesus
Jesti Krists, ksamt me^ Davifts Sal- Christ, together with Davids Psalms.
mum. EndurskotSuS fitgafa. Oxford : Revised Edition. Oxford ; printed in
prentaft i Prentsmi'Sju Hask61ans i Print-smithy of -High -school -the in
Oxford, a Kostna'S bins Brezka og Oxford, at cost of -the British and
Erlenda Bifliufelags. 1863. Literally : Foreign Bible-fellowship.
§ 4, No. 2.
ICELANDIC PRONUNCIATION.
13. Nokkrum dogum srSar tok
sa yngri alt fe sitt og ferSa^ist
i fjarlsegt land ; ]?ar soa^i hann
fe sinu i ohofsomum lifna^>i.
14. Nu er hann haf'Si eytt
ollum eigum sinum, kom j?ar
miki^ hallaeri i landi'S, tok
hann ]?a a^ IfSa nau'S,
15. For hann ]>a og re'Sst til
eins borgara i Jm landi, sem
sendi hann ut a bu sitt, sc<S gaeta
}>ar svina sinna ;
16. VarS hann J?a feginn, sc6
se^Sja sig af draft jm, er svinin
atu ; og einginn varS til a'S
gefa honum nokku'S.
17. Nu er hann ranka^i vift
ser, sag^i hann : hversu marga
daglaunamenn heldur fa^ir
minn, sem hafa gnaeg^ matar en
eg ferst i hungri ;
18. Eg vil taka mig upp og
fara til fo^ur mins, og segja vi'S
hann : Fa^ir ! eg hefi syndga'S
moti himninum. og fyrir |>er,
19. Og er ekki leingur verSur
a^ heita sonur ]?inn. Far J?u
med mig eins og einn af dag-
launamonnum jrinum.
13. Nok'krsm dceoagh^m sii'-
dhar toouk saau iiq'gri alht free
set oogh ferdhadbist ii fiaar-
laa^^ht land; thaar soo'wadht
nan free sirna ii OOU'HOOUV-
sceoemsm
14. Nuu er san savdhi e\_ii
cetism eei\_ghdm siin^m, koom
thaar meV'^'dh nad'laam ii land--
*'dh, toouk nan thaau aadh lii'dha
ncecej'dh.
15. Foour nan thaau oogh
rieedhst t«Vl eeinzs bor'gara ii
thvii land'«, seem send'i'nan nut
aau buu|_gwh sit, aadh ^raait'a
thar sviin'a sm'na.
16. Yardh nan thaau feevm,
aadh seedh'ja siigh aav draav*
thvii, er sviin'm aau't*, oogh
«L«q-gwi vardh titl aadh ^ee'va
Hoo'nsm nok'ksdh.
17. Nuu er nan rauq'kadhi
vndh sfeer, saah[gh'dh« nan :
wher's? marg'a daa|_gh'lo3oerna-
men- neld^r faa'dh^r mm, seem
naava gnaa»L^hdh maa'tar en
jee^h ferst ii nuuq'gri
18. Jee^h v^'l taa'ka miigh 0p,
oogh faa'ra tiil foaoedh'^r miinzs,
oogh seeiva v^dh nan : Faadlrir!
jee^h Heev* sm'gadh moou't?
mm'nindm oogh fw'r^r thieer,
19. Oogh er ek'ki lee\_iq'g0T
verdh'^r aadh neerta soo'nsr thm.
Faar thuu meedh meV[gh eeinzs
oogh eeitnh av daa|_gh'lo3oerna-
thiinvm.
Verbatim Translation.
younger all fee his and fared in far-
lying land ; there wasted he fee his in
un-measure-some living.
14. Now as he had wasted all own-
ings his, came there much hard-ear
ing (famine) in land- the, took he then
to suffer need.
15. Fared he then and betook-him
to one citizen in that land, who sent
him out to higging (farm) his, to keep
there swine his :
16. Was he then fain to fill himself
of husks those, which swine-the ate;
and no-one worth to (became to, was
at hand) to give him anything.
17. Now, as he came to himself, said
he : how many day-loans-men holds
father mine, who have enough meat
and I perish in hunger ;
18. I will take me up and fare til
father mine, and say to him : Father !
I have sinned against heaven-the and
before thee,
19. And am not longer worthy to
hight son thine. Fare thou with me
like as one of day-loans-men thine.
552
ICELANDIC PRONUNCIATION.
CHAP. V.
20. Bjost harm J?a til ferSar
til fo^ur sins ; en er hann var
enn nu langt f burtu, sa fa^ir
hans hann og kendi i brjosti um
hann, hljop og fell um hals
honum og kysti hann.
21. En sonurinn sagfti vift
hann : Fa^ir minn, eg hefi synd-
ga'S moti himninum og fyrir
)>er, og er nu ekki framar ver8ur
a% heita sonur ]?inn.
22. J)a sag^i fa^irinn vrS
Vjona sina : faerrS hinga'S hina
beztu skikkju og faeri'S hann i ;
dragrS bring a bond hans og
sko a faetur honum ;
23. KomvS me^S alikalf og
slatri^, svo ver getum matazt
og verrS gla^ir ;
24. J?vf )>essi sonur minn, sem
var dau^ur, er lifna^Sur aptur,
og hann, sem tyndur var er
fundinn ; toku menn nu a^S
gle^jast.
25. En svo bar vr3, a^1 eldri
bro^ir hans var a akri, og er
hann kom og nalga^ist husi^,
heyr^i hann samsaung og dans ;
26. Kalla^i hann }?a a einn
af jjjonustumonnunum, og fretti
hann, hva'S um va3ri ;
Verbatim
20. Busted (arose) he then to faring
to father his ; but as he was even now
long on way (away), saw father his him
and moved in hreast for him, leaped
and fell over neck to-him and kissed
him.
21. But son-the said to him : Father
mine, I have sinned against heaven-
the and before thee, and am now not
further worthy to hight son thine.
22. Then said father-the to thanes
his : Fare hither the best robe and
fare him in ; drag ring on hand his
and shoes on feet to-him.
20. Biooust san thaau tn'l
ferdh'ar twl foeoedh'sr siinzs ; en
er nan vaar en nuu laauqt ii
bsrt's, saau faadh'jT nans nan
oogh ^end'i ii briooust'i 0m nan,
Ihiooup oogh fietlh 0m naaulzs
Hoo'nsm oogh kis-ti nan.
21. En soo'n^rin saah|_gh dht
v«Vdh nan : FaadlrM' mm, jee^h
neevfc' sm'gadh moon'ti nim'ni-
nsm oogh fzV'r/r thieer, oogh er
nuu ek'^i fraa'mar verdh'^r aadh
H««rta soo'n^r thm.
22. Thaau saahLgh-dhi faadh--
mn vndh thioo'na sii'na ; faai'-
ridh niiq'gadh Hi'rna best's
sAe'k'^ oogh faairs'dh nan ii ;
draau'j^dh rhiiqgaau ncendnanzs
oogh skoou aau faaa'tvr Hoo'nsm.
23. Koom'j'dh meedh aa'li-
kaaulv, oogh slaau'trz'dh, svoo
vieer ^eet'sm maa'tast oogh
vee'n'dh glaa-dhn- ;
24. Thvii thes'si soo'nsr mm
seem vaar doaosidh'ar, er lib*-
nadhsr aft'^r, oogh nan seem
tiin'dsr vaar, er fend'/n ; toouk'9
men nuu adh gleedh'jast.
25. En svoo baar veVdh, aadh
el'dr? brooudh'i'r nanzs vaar aau
aa'kn, oogh er nan koom oogh
naaul'gadlwst nuus'idh, xeeir-
dhz nan saam'soeoez'q oogh dans ;
26. Kad'ladln' nan thaau aau
av thfoou'n^stomosn'-
, oogh frfet't* nan, whaadh
9m.
Translation.
23. Come with fatted -calf and
slaughter, so we get to-eat and be glad ;
24. For this son mine who was dead,
is enlivened again, and he, who tined
(lost) was, is found. Took men now
to gladden-themselves.
25. But so bore to, that elder brother
his was on acre, and as he came and
neared house-the, heard he music and
dance ;
26. Called he then on one of thanes-
men-the, and asked him, what about
were;
§ 4, No. 2.
ICELANDIC PRONUNCIATION.
553
27. Hann sag^i : bro'Sir Jinn
er kominn, og fa'Sir Jinn hefir
slatra^ alikalfi, af Jvi hann
heimti son sinn heilan lieim.
28. Keiddist hann Ja og vildi
ekki fara inn. Fa^ir hans for
Jvi ut og bau^ honum inn a%
koma.
29. En hann svara'Si og sag^i
vrS fb'^ur sinn : i svo morg ar
hefi eg nu Jjona'S Jer og aldrei
breytt ut af bo^um Jmum, Jo
hefir Jii aldrei gefrS mer killing,
svo a% eg ga3ti glatt mig
vinum mmum ;
30. En Jessi sonur Jinn, sem
soa^S hefir eigum Jinum me^S
skaekjum, er nu kominn, og
hans vegna slatrar Ju alikalfii.
31. En hann sagfti vi^ hann:
sonur minn, Jii ert alt af me^S
mer, og allar minar eigur heyra
j?er til ;
32. Nu aettir ]>u a'S vera
giaour og i go^u skapi, ]?ar
bro^Sir Jinn, sem dau^ur var,
er lifna^Sur aptur, og hann, sem
tyndur var, er fundirm.
27. Han
brooudh'/r thm er koom'm, oogh
faadh'ir thzn seev^'r slaaut'radh
aa'ltkaooltt, av thvii nan
neeiio.'ti soon s^n Heerlan nmrn.
28. Eetd'dz'st san thaau, oogh
vil'di ekki faa'ra in. Eaadh^'r
nanzs foour thvii nut, oogh
bcecez'dh Hoo'n^m in aadh koom'a.
29. En nan svaa-radlu' oogh
saah|_gh*dhi v«Vdh foeoedh'^r sm :
ii svoo moerg aaur neev* Jee^h
nun thioou'nadh thieer oogh
t bmt uut av boodhvm
thoou Heev«r thuu
^ee'v/dh mieer* k«'dh'Kq
svoo adh jee^rh^aart* glat mn^fh
meedh viin'dm miin'sm ;
30. En thes's* soo'n^r thm,
seem soo'wadh neev^'r eeigh'0m
thirnsm meedh skaarkwrn, er
nuu koonrm, oogh nanzs veg'na
slaau'trar thuu aalikaaul've'.
31. En nan Baahi girdhf vndh
nan : soo'nsr mm, thuu ert alht
av meedh mieer, oogh adt'lar
miin'ar eeigh'sr neei'TB, thieer tiil;
32. Nuu ai[_^ht't/r thuu aadh
veer'a glaadlrsr oogh ii gooudh1^
skaa'p/, thaar brooudh'ir tMn,
seem dceoe/dh^r vaar, er Kb--
nadhsr aft'sr, oogh nan, seem
tiind'0r vaar, er fmd'm.
Verbatim Translation.
27. He said : Brother thine is come,
and father thine has slaughtered fatted-
calf, for that he fetched son his whole
home.
28. Grew-wroth he then and would
not fare in. Father his fared then out
and bade him in to come.
29. But he answered and said to
father his : In so many years have I
now thaned (served) thee and never
deviated out of biddings thine, though
hast thou never given me kid, so that
I might gladden myself with Mends
mine.
30. But this son thine, who wasted
has ownings thine with harlots, is
now come, and his ways (for his sake)
slaughtered thou fatted-calf.
31. But he said to him : Son mine,
thou art all of (always) with me, and
all my ownings belong thee to :
32. Now oughtest thou to be glad
and in good shape, there (because)
brother thine who dead was, is en
livened again, and he, who tined was,
is found.
554
OLD NORSE PRONUNCIATION.
CHAP. V.
PRONUNCIATION OF OLD NORSE.
Eask considers that the modern pronunciation is practically the
same as the ancient, except in a few instances, hence in the follow
ing table the modern forms as already explained, are given in Eask's
column, and his supposed ancient values are bracketed. Eapp gives
an opinion upon nearly every letter in the alphabet, and although he
did not consider that he had arrived at a result sufficiently definite
to give an example, he has transcribed a large number of words into
his alphabet, a selection of which is subjoined. Grimm's pronun
ciation is not easy to be determined, and the sounds which I have
given must be therefore considered to be in great part conjectural.
The vowels are taken from the third, and the consonants from the
second edition of his Grammar.
On these conjectures generally I make no observation, except
to remark that I feel doubtful as to the value which Eask meant to
ascribe to the old u. He says: " «, without accent, may perhaps
have had the sound of the short English u in nut, but, the Danish
o in hos, the Swedish o in sporde, menniskor liirorik, etc." These
sounds are certainly not identical, and I have been accustomed to
consider them as fa, o, 11) respectively. Grimm assumes the Eng
lish u to be a sound between German o and 6, whatever that may
mean.1 Neither he nor Eask, therefore, had mastered the English
(B, a) sounds. I have represented Eask's ancient u by (o, u} doubt
fully, but believe that the latter is more probable.
Letters.
Modern &
[Rask].
Grimm.
Rapp.
Letters.
Modern &
[Rask.]
Grimm.
Rapp.
a
aa, a
a
a
k
k, A
k,kj
k, kj
a
aau
aa
AA
1
1, Ih
1
l'
88
aat
ee
ee
m
m
m
m
au
03oet [oeu]
au
au
n
n
n
n
b
b
b
b
ng
qg
q- qg
d
d, dh
d, dh
d, th
o
00, 0
0, 0
0
%
dh
dh
dh
6
oon
00
00
e
ee, e
e e
e
6
O303, O3
O3, 0
9
6, e
jee, je
ee, see
ee, e
O3
(not used)
O3O3
0303
ei
eei
ei
ai
p
P, f
P' f
P
ey
eei [eei]
ey
ay
qv
k
f
f,y,b
f, T
f
r
r, rh
r
r
(
g» 9, gh
s
a
s
8j> g
g I
g> gj
g» g)
t
t
t
t
h
H
h
kh
j>
th
th
th
hi
ah
khj
u
99, 9 [O, u]
u
03, U
hi
Ih
khl
u
UU
uu
UU
hn
nh '
khn
V
V
bh
bh
hr
rh
khr
X
ks
ks
hv
i
wh
". *
i
khbh
i
y
1
ii, i [9]
ii [n]
y
yy
y
57
I
ii
ii
ii
z
s
s
j
j
i
j
1 Gr. I3, 391, "vor ehfachen con-
sonanten hat u einen latit zwischen
nhd. o und o ; das nnl. u neigt sich
mehr zu ii."
} 4, No. 2.
OLD NORSE PRONUNCIATION.
Old Norse words as pronounced by Eapp : a (AA) in, water, ae (ee)
always, atta (AAt'ta) eight, auk (auk) also, auga (oug'a) eye, bleikr
(bleik-r) joa/e, bleydi (bbydh'i) fear, bles (blees) o&w, blod (blood)
blood, bb'kr (boscek-r) looks, bok (book) book, bruda (bruudlra) of brides,
byd (byydh) wm'te, byggia (byg'ja) build, dagr degi db'gum (dag'r,
dtfg'i, dsg-um) ^«y, £0 a day, to days, dottir (doot'tir) daughter, dypi
(dyyp-i) <&^A, ey (ay) island, eyk (aik) oak, fel (firel) /<?W, fliuga
(fliirga)/y, fotr (fceoet'r) feet, fri (fni)Jree, fullr (fosl-r} full, fylli
(fyH) fullness, gaes (#ees) 0ws0, gas (gAAs) #oose, gora gjort (ysra
gjoort) to do, did, halmr (khAAlnvr) halm, biaup (khlsup) leap, hniosa
(khnioo-sa) sneeze, breinn (khrain-n) pure, hvi'tr (khbhiit'r) white,
kaupa (kaup-a) to buy, kne (knee} knee, krankr (krAAqk-r) sick,
liuga (liuga) to tell a falsehood, opt (opt) often, skapt (skapt) handle
ungr (uuq'g'r) youth, verd (bherd) price, vis (bhiis) w's^.1
Tbe following observations on the Old Norse pronunciation, based
upon a phonetic examination of the structure of the language, its
connection with the Teutonic branches and the usages of Old MSS.,
are drawn up from notes kindly furnished me by Mr. Hemy Sweet,
of the Philological Society (supra p. 539, 1. 9).
1 The following is a translation of
Dr. Eapp's latest views on the subject
(Vergl. Gramm. iii. 40). "Of the
seven long vowels, the two strongest
(ii) and (uu) have remained intact.
The (aa) subsequently, as everywhere
else, degenerated in the direction of (o) .
The mutates of (aa, uu) must here be
(EE, yy). There must be an (ou) cor
responding to the old German diph
thong ei, but it is here written au, since
the mutate, if written ey, could only
mean (oy) ; the Norwegian dialects re
tain (ou). Long (00) afterwards be
came diphthongal, and its mutate coin
cides with (B (EE). The third long
vowel wavers between gothic (iu), be
coming, when softened (aeschwachf)
(io), and confluent (yy). Isolated re
mains of (ee) subsequently passed into
(see) as in Sclavonic ; but the e which
arises from reduplication need not ne
cessarily be long. As regards the mu
tation of the short vowels, the change
of (a) into (e), and of (0, u], into (y) is
clear, but the mutation of (a) into M
through the action of a following (u)
or (0) is more obscure. "We can theo
retically assume an earliest period in
which (a) remained pure, but it does
not agree with the period of existing
monuments. Hence we allow (a) to
pass into (o) but entirely reject the
usual assumption of the generation of
of an — impossible — (03) from (0). The
division (Brechung) of short (e) into
(ia) and by mutation (io), must also be
observed. As regards the consonants
we assume h and *, here as elsewhere,
to have been (kh, sj), though we write
(s). The z was an abbreviation, gene
rally for (ts), occasionally for (st), and
by mistake for other combinations ; the
first alone must be retained. The }> is
initial as in Gothic, but medially and
finally it is softened to $ ; as this also
happens in most cases to the modern
Danish d, both classes must be dis
tinguished from out of the corruption
of writing. This is the weakest point
in northern philology. The old runic
alphabet has only the aspirate ]? (th)
and this is used medially even in the
oldest manuscripts. The modern Ice
landic and Danish 8 (dh) is on the
contrary not an aspirate but a spirant,
which is more naturally developed from
(d) than from (th). But since Scandi
navian orthography is here irremedia
bly confused, nothing remains but to
restore the old essential organic \ in
all places where it is required by Gothic,
Anglosaxon, and Friesic, and in other,
partially doubtful cases, to leave d, so
that the modern "S is altogether elimi
nated. The tt, which arose from an
older (klit), must certainly be sharpen
ed, [that is, make the preceding vowel
short], since reduplication can mean
nothing but confluence ; the prolonga
tion of the vowel in this case is a mo
dern corruption, which even Grimm
has overlooked, and similarly before ng,
nk, and I followed by a consonant, etc."
556
OLD NOESE PRONUNCIATION.
CHAP. V.
When Icelanders first employed the Latin alphabet they had no
written literature at all, and consequently no traditional ortho
graphy to transliterate, that is, no theoretical guide to mislead
them. They had therefore, no means of writing except by ear,
using the Latin letters in their accepted values, and modifying
them for new sounds. Tinder such circumstances, it is scarcely
possible that they should have —
1) expressed one sound in two ways, as in the modern identities
i y, i y, ei ey.
2) made a represent (au) to the exclusion of au,
3) have used au to express a sound (oe«) for which they had a
form to hand, namely oi, unless indeed they had read in
Grimm's Deutsche Grammatik (I8, 474), that old Norse au
corresponds to Gothic au, and had foreseen that the sound
(au) would have been preserved in the German of the xix th
century.
A comparison of the old cognates shews that the difference be
tween a d, e 6, etc., was originally purely quantitative. In modern
Icelandic, as in Modern German, all short vowels before single
consonants have become long, but in old German the length or
shortness of a vowel was quite independent of the following con
sonant, as is proved by the metrical laws. In the same way the
non-accentuation of fa&ir, father, in Icelandic originally meant
that the vowel was short, and the accentuation of moftir, mother,
that the vowel was long, as in Latin pater, mater.1 If this view
be well founded, the vowels in each pair, as a, d, e, £, etc., must have
had the same quality, but different quantities, a, e, etc., being
always short, and d, d, etc., always long; and diphthongs must
have had the sounds of their elements connected by the glide. The
following sounds appear then to be the only possible.
a, a)
e, e, E)
i, t)
0, 0, A, 0)
u, «)
y, i, »)
d some modification of (o)
au (au, #u)
ei (ei, ei, Ei)
ey fey, ei, e»)
ee (ai, ai)
or fee, ee, EE)
ae (oi, of, oe, oe, OE)
or lengthened 6
The two principal criteria for selecting the correct vowel are —
1) The palatisation of k, g, and 2) the action of vowel-mutation
or Umlaut, (unrlaut).
1 As Icelandic still possesses really
doubled consonants, the device of
doubling the consonant to indicate the
brevity of a preceding vowel was not
likely to occur to the writer. That the
length of a vowel depends in any way
upon the number of following conso
nants is a delusion, to be classed with the
notion that all vowels under the stress
must be long, and deducible probably
from the false statement in Latin pro
sodies, that a short vowel might become
long "by position" before two conso
nants, the length of the vowel being
confounded with the length of the
syllable ; but the Latins no doubt dis
tinguish est, is, from est, eats, as (est,
eest), and the old school joke: JUea
mater est mala sus, could not have been
ambiguous to a Latin, who would have
probably distinguished the two mean
ings as (me-a maa-ter est mal'a suus ;
me-aa maa-ter, eest maa-la suus.) —
A.J.E.
$ 4, No. 2. OLD NORSE PRONUNCIATION. 557
1) The palatisation of £, g, from (k, g) into (kj, gj) naturally
takes place before front vowels (p. 13), while these consonants
remain unchanged before back vowels (p. 13). Existing habits as
to palatisation would hence determine
e, i i, y y, a*, ei, ey to be front vowels, and
a d, o 6, u* u, o* au* to be back vowels,
whereas those marked * transgress this rule, <#=(aaV) commencing
with a back vowel, and u, 6, au = (&, ce, cecej.') with a front vowel.1
2) Vowel mutation is the result of the partial assimilation of two
vowels, not in juxtaposition, but in consecutive syllables, whereby
the first or accented vowel becomes modified in the direction of the
second. This may be expressed by such a formula as (a . . i = e),
meaning that (a) in the first syllable acted on by (i) in the second
is converted into (e}. The original sounds of these mutated vowels
or mutates, have been so changed in Icelandic, that it is necessary
to examine the other Teutonic languages where they are better
preserved.
(a , .i=E, e), giving (E) ; old Ger. hari (nar'i), modern G. heer (HEEI) army.
(*' . . a = e, E), giving (e} ; Gothic niman (ninran) modern G. nehmen (nee-men) to
take ; the (i, e) forms are confused in modern German.
(o .. i— sh, 9, i), giving (0h) ; old Ger. seoni (skoo'ni), mod. G. schbn (shojoen)
beautiful.
(u .. a—o, A), giving (o) ; Gothic siulan (stul'an), mod. G. ge-stohlen (ge-shtoo1-
len), stolen.
(u .. i=i), giving (i)) ; old G. sundia (sund-ja), mod. G. siinde (zynd'e) sin.
In Icelandic we find, her, nema, stolinn, synd (neer, nee'ma,
stooWn, smd) all with mutates. The equation of the last word
with modern pronunciation is (u . . i = i} which is not a mutation
at all. The old sound must have been (i) or (y), as these are
the only possible intermediates. The vowel mutation also proves
that the modern sound of c& is inorganic.
(aa .. I = EE), old Ger. wuri (bhaa-ri), Icel. vtzri.
(oo .. i = »h), Gothic ? forjan (foorjan), Icel./<zra, ol&fcera.
The genuineness of the sound (ce) is made doubtful by the non-
palatalisation of k, and this doubt is confirmed by the equation
(a..u=o), as in dogum for dagum. As both vowels are back, the
result, cannot be front. And the back sound of u is shewn 1) by
the preservation of that sound in long w, 2) the nonpalatisation of
k before it, 3) the vowel mutation. The a.. u=o, is merely a
reversal of (u . . a=o) in stolinn, ge-stoltlen, and both are quite paral
lel with (a.. i=e, i..a=e).
The above conclusions result from the structure of the language,
1 The remarks on p. 206 shew that (0, ce), as we see from the fact that
this criterion cannot be relied on so although both sounds are used in dif-
far as se is concerned, and, indeed, the ferent parts of Germany for 6, which
palatal action of ae on k, g, while a, d, is also frequently called (ee) or (ee),
produced no such action, may have yet the k, g, of komy, Goethe, are never
arisen from the anticipatory action of the palatalised. This criterion can there-
second element (i) . Nor is there any fore only furnish an a priori proba-
organic necessity for the palatalisation bility. — A. J. E.
of k, g, before such obscure vowels, as
558
OLD NORSE PRONUNCIATION.
CHAP. V.
the following is almost positive evidence of the usages of the xrr th
century, poroddr, the grammarian, circa 1160, remarks on the
necessity of an A, B, C, and after stating that the English have
made an alphabet for themselves by adopting or modifying the
Latin letters, he proposes to perform the same service for his
countrymen — oss fslendingum, saying :
" To the five original Latin vowels a, e, i, o, u, I have added
four : 0 [now o], e [now e, at], <f> [now oe, se], y [now y]. Of these
^ has the curve of a and the ring of o, because it is blended of their
two sounds, being pronounced with a less open mouth than a, but
a more open mouth than o ; ^ has the curve of a and the whole
figure of e, for it is composed of these two, being pronounced with
a less open mouth than a, and with a more open mouth than e ; (j>
is composed of e and o, being pronounced with less open mouth than
e, and with more open mouth than o ; and q is composed of » and u,
being pronounced with less open mouth than i and with more open
mouth than «."
He proceeds to give examples, shewing that e and e short cor
respond to modern «, e long to modern e, e long to modern «, o to
modern o, g to modern 6, and (f> to oe now ce. And then he remarks
that each of these vowels begets another by being sounded in the
nose, which he marks by a point above the letter. This probably
corresponds to the palaeotypic (,), not to (A). It is now quite lost.
Hence Rask's imaginary nasality, supra p. 550, 1. 3.
poroddr further states that each of these 18 vowels can be long
or short, and proposes to mark the long vowels with an accent. His
examples shew that he places this accent in those places where an
accent (indicating a diphthong in the case of a, 6), now exists in
Icelandic. Then he concludes by enumerating the diphthongs,
describing accurately the nature of diphthongs in general. Among
these diphthongs appear au, ei, ey, but not d, 6.
The older MSS. follow poroddr with some variations. Thus the
diacritic is often written as a full letter, as ao for p, ae for e whence
modern «, and the diacritic is not unfrequently entirely omitted, so
that e, o, are confounded with e, o.
The following examples shew poroddr's spelling compared with
that now used, and the probable corresponding pronunciation.
Abbreviations — p. poroddr's spelling, M. modem spelling, OP. old
pronunciation, MP. modern pronunciation.
p.
M.
O.P.
M.P.
P-
M.
P-
M.
O.P.
M.P.
P-
M.
a
a
a, a
a aa
far
far
P
o
0
03 0303
9l
51
a
a
mi. aa
au aau
sar
sar
£
o
oo
0 00
v§n
von
e
e
e
e, ee
>el
>el
u
u
o
9 99
runar
runar
9
e
•0
e, ee
vjsnia
venja
6
u
uu(.)
U UU
riinar
rftnar
e
6
ee
JE
mer
mer
y
y
I
i ii
flytr
flytr
*
33
EE
ai aai
Ver
Taer
1
y
II
i ii
flytr
flytr
i
i
i
t n
vH
vil
au
au
au
oei O3O31
i
i
ii
i ii
vil
vil
ei
ei
ei
ei eei
0
0
0
0 00
go>
go«
ey
ey
•f
ei eei
6
6
00
ou oou
g«J>
g6«
§ 4, No. 2. OLD NORSE PRONUNCIATION. 559
The sound of the various <?'s is evident from the remark that e is
pronounced more openly than e, and more like a. The higher
sound was given to the i as mer, German mir. The other e was an
0, venia, old German wanian. In ql, the anglosaxon ealu explains
the vowel mutation. In von the o is a mutate of a, produced by
the preceding v, and the pronunciation has been preserved un
changed. The ey is a mutate of au, heyr a = Gothic hausjan, thus
(#u . . i=Ei) the (i) soon drawing up the (E) to (e).
Modern Changes. — The change of (EE) to (ai) is merely the con
verse of the Latin ce to e.1
The a (aa) was first rounded (oo) and then broken up into (aau),
as is shewn by the occasional MS. spelling o for a.
The change from back (o) to front (ce) is paralleled by the English
and most modern Danish pronunciation of (se) for (a).
The au changes are very complicated. First, the a was rounded
by the u into (o), as appears by the MSS. shewing gu, aou, ou for
au. Next the resulting first element, being now identical with o
(o) was, with it, changed from back to front, into o (ce). Lastly
the second element u (u) was changed by the action of the new
front element (ce) into some front element as (i) which finally
became (i). Thus we have the stages (au . . ou . . oeu . . ceui . . cei),
where (ceu, cera), represents Rask's conjectural forms.
poroddr counts U, nn, among the doubled consonants. He allows
a double final consonant, which of course must have been a length
ened or 'held' consonant (supra p. 52), as in hann=(n:ami), not
(nan). He writes ]> everywhere, to the exclusion of ¥>, but whether
this establishes a uniformity of pronunciation is very questionable.
The following few lines will give a notion of this conjectured
ancient pronunciation, which is placed under the present ortho
graphy, a verbatim translation being also interlined.
Haustldng. (Haustlo,qg.) Autumn-long (night}.
E^Sr of-ser, er ib'tna otti let ofsottan
(Edh'r ov-seer, er iot'na ooi'ie \eei ovsoot'ta^n)
Again thou-seest how of-the-giants the-terror let-sought
Hellisbrb'r a hyrjar haug Grjotuna bauge;
(Hel'lesbror aa< syriar Haug Grioo'tuu(na bau'ge ;)
Of-the-cave-the-dweller in of-ftre the-hill of-Griotim with-ring
'Ok at isarnleiki JarSar sunr, en dundi
(00k at ii'sarnleike lardlrar s^nr etn du(n'de)
Drove to the-iron-play Earth's sun, and resounded
svall Meila bro^ur manavegr und hanum.
(Moo'dhr swall Meil'la^ broo'dhur maa{n-a£wegr u4nd Ha^'u^m.)
Rage swelled Meili's of-the-brother moon-way under him.
1 This converse action is rare, but supra p. 294, bottom, and note 2, and
we nave a living English example, p. 454, note 1.
560 GOTHIC PRONUNCIATION. CHAP. V.
Knattu 611 en Ullar endilag fyrir magi
(Knaat'tu, oil ecn uliar e,n-delaag fyrer maa-ge)
Could all and Ullr's under-lying before the -kinsman
Grand vas grapi hrundin ginnungave brinna;
(Grutnd was grap-0 rhujid'^n gi(n-nuutqga-wee bri4n-na4;)
The-ground was with-storm shaken the-wide-dwettings burn ;
J?a-es hofreginn hafrir hogrerSar fram drogu
(Dhaa-es novreg^nn navrer Hoog'mdhar fratm droo-guj
When the-temple-god the-goats of-the-elegant-chariot forwards drew
gekk Svolnis ekkja sundr at Hrungnis fundi.
(Sedlrr geekk Swcel'nes ekkia su,ndr at Rhuu^qg'nes fujrd^.)
Nearly went Svolnir's wife asunder to Hrunynir's meeting (Jind).*
3. GOTHIC.
In order properly to crown the edifice of the low German and
Scandinavian dialects, it is necessary to consider the pronunciation
of Ulfilas as collected from his Gothic translation of the Testament,
etc. Grimm, Rapp, Gabelentz and Loebe, and "Weingaertner,2
are the principal authorities. Prom a study of these works and
the grounds on which they rely, I have arrived at certain conclu
sions of my own, which must be understood as referring to the pro
nunciation of Gothic at the time of Ulfilas, considered as a com
paratively modern stage of the language. There are good etymolo
gical grounds for believing that many Gothic words containing at,
au, iu had at some previous time, a different sound from that which
I have assigned, as for instance (ai, au, fu), supra, p. 236, note 1.
But details are here purposely omitted. The following table con
tains the opinions of the writers cited, as nearly as I could appre-
1 The title means Autumn-long, [that is, p6rr] drove to the iron-play
long heing the fern, of the adj. longr ; [fight], anger inspired Meili's brother
nott= night, seems to he understood; [another name for forr], and the moon-
compare the similar old German phrase way [= earth] resounded under him.
"den sumerlangen tac," the summer- All the wide dwellings [= the air] could
long day. None of the editors trans- hurn [burned], and the ground lying
late the word, and they seem not to beneath was shaken with the storm
understand it. The subject of the before the kinsman of Ullr [p6rr again]:
poem is a fight between the god porr Svolnis wife [eklcja literally widow =
and the giant Hriingir. The poet earth] nearly went to pieces, when the
describes the fight as depicted on a goats drew forward the temple-god of
shield. The meaning of the passage, the elegant chariot to meet Hrungnir.
which is very obscure in the above 2 /. Grimm, Deutsche Grammatik,
verbatim translation following the in- I2, 33-74 ; I3, 39-71 ; M. Rapp, Phys.
verted order of the poet, seems to be d. Spr., i 371-401 ; Dr.H.C. von Gabe-
as follows : Again thou seest [on the lentz und Dr. J. Loebe, Grammatik der
shield] how the terror of the giants Gothischen Sprache, 1846, pp-22-52.
[meaning p6rr], let sought [let peri- Wilhelm Weingaertner, Die Aussprache
phrastic=tn'st'<erf] the cave-dweller in des Gothischen zur Zeit Ulfilas, Leip-
the Gri6tun-hill with a ring of fire, zig, 1858, pp. 68. This last work con-
[porr's chariot was accompanied with tains complete references to all the
thunder and lightning]; Earth's sun former essays and books on this subject.
§ 4, No. 3.
GOTHIC PRONUNCIATION.
561
ciate their meaning, a (?) indicate the chief points of doubt. The
transcription used is that employed in Gabelentz and Loebe's well-
known edition but the letters are arranged in the order of the
Roman Alphabet, reckoning J? as th. Leo Meyer's work (Die
Gothische Sprache, ihre Lautgestaltung u.s.w.) came to hand too
late to be consulted in the construction of this table.
THE GOTHIC ALPHABET OF ULFILAS.
Abbreviations. — G Grimm, G L Von Gabelentz and Loebe, E Ellis, L letters,
E Eapp, "W "Weingaertner.
L
G
E,
GL
W
E
L
G
E
G L
W
E
a
a
a
a
a
a
j
j
j
rfl
j
j
ai
e, ee
e, ee
e, ee
e, ee
1
k
k
k
k
k
(ai)
e?
1
1
1
1
1
1
(ai)
ai
m
m
m
m
m
m
au
o, oo
0, 00
o, oo
A, AA
n
n
n
n
n
n
(ad)
oP
0
00
00
00
00
au)
au
p
p
p
p
p
p
b
b
b
b,bhP
b
b
q
kbh
kbh
kbh
kw
d
&
d
d
dh
d dh?
t
e
ee
ee
ee
ee
ee
s
s
SJ
s
s
s
ei
ei
ii
ei
ii
ii
t
t
t
t
t
t
f
f
bh
f
f
>
th
th
dh
th
th
g
g
g
g, gh
g
g
u
u
0, UU
U, UU
u
U, UU
gg
q?
qg
q.qg>
q> qg
q. qg
V
bh
bh
bh,
bh, v
W
gk
qk
qk
qk
qk
W
khbh
khbh
ph.HV?
kwh
b.
kh
kh
H, kb
H'
H',kh
X
k
k
k
k
i, i
i
e
i
i
i
y
i, ii
i, ii
iu
iu
iu
iu
ii
yy
z
ds
SJ
z
z
z
In order to compare this dialect with the related Anglosaxon and
Icelandic, I annex the conjectured pronunciation of the same para
ble that was selected for examples in those languages. This is also
the same example or Gothic as Dr. Eapp has given. The verbatim
translation is, as before, intended merely to shew the grammatical
signification of each word.
Gothic, Lucas 15, 11-32.
11. manne sums aihta tvans
sununs.
12. jah qa]> sa juhiza 'ize du
attin. atta. gif mis. sei undrin-
nai mik. dail aiginis. jah dis-
dailida im sves sein.
Conjectured Pronunciation.
11. Man'nee sums ekht'a
twans smruns.
12. Jakh k^'ath sa jukh'iza
iz'ee du at'tin : At'ta, gif mis,
sii und'rin'nee mik deel eeg'inis.
Jakh disdeel'ida im swees siin.
Verbatim Translation.
11. Of-men certain owned two sons.
12. Eke quoth the younger of-them
to dad : Dad, give to-me, which unto-
runs me, deal (part) of-ownings. Eke
asunder-dealed to-them property his.
36
562
GOTHIC PRONUNCIATION.
CHAP. V.
13. jah afar ni managans
dagans brahta samana allata sa
juhiza sunus jah aflaij? i'n land
fairra visando jah jainar distah-
ida bata sves seinata libands
usstiuriba.
14. bibe ban fravas allamma.
varb huhrus abrs and gavi jaina-
ta. jah is dugann alabarba vair-
ban
15. jah gaggands gahaftida
sik sumamma baurgjane jainis
gaujis. jah insandida ina haibjos
seinaizos haldan sveina.
16. jah gairnida sad 'itan
haurne. boei matidedun sveina.
jah manna imma ni gaf.
17. qimands ban in sis qab.
wan filu asnje attins meinis
ufarassau haband hlaibe. ib ik
huhrau fraqistna.
18. usstandands gagga du
attin meinamma jah qiba du
imma. atta. fravaurhta mis in
himin jah in andvairbja beinam-
ma.
19. ju banaseibs ni im vairbs
ei haitaidau sunus beins. gatavei
sve ainana asnje beinaize.
13. Jakh af'ar ni man-agans
dag'ans brakht'a sanrana al'lata
sa jukh'iza sun/us, jakh afleetlr
in land ferra wis'andoo, jakh
jeen-ar distakh'ida that'a swees
siin'ata lib'ands usstyyr'iba.
14. Bithee* than frawas* al'-
lam'ma, warth H'uukh'rus ab-'rs
and ga'wi Jeen-ata. Jakh is
dugan* al'atharb'a werth'an.
15. Jakh gaq'gands gan'aft'-
ida sik sunvanvma bArg-janee
jeen'is gAA'jis. Jakh insand'ida
in'a n'eeth'joos siirreezoos n'ald'-
an swiin'a
16. Jakh genrida sad it*an
KAi'nee, thoo'ii mat'id^d'un
swiin'a. Jakh man'na inrma ni
gaf.
17. k^im'ands than in sis,
kwath : Kwhan fil'u as-jaee at'-
tins miin'is uf'aras'SAA sab'and
khleeb'(?e, ith ik n'uuklrrAA
frak^ist'na.
18. Us'stand'ands gaq'ga du
at'tin miin'am'ma, jakh kwrith/a
du im'ma : At'ta, frawArkh'ta
mis in n'im'in, jakh in and--
werth'ja thiin'am-ma,
19. ju than'asiiths ni im
werths ii H'eet'eedAA sun'us
thiins ; gata'wii mik swee een*-
ana
Verbatim Translation.
13. Eke after not many days
brought together all the younger son,
and off-led (departed) in land far being,
eke yon asunder-tugged (dissipated)
the possession his, living out-steeringly.
14. By-that then from-was of-all,
worth (became) hunger strong against
region yon, eke he began quite-needy
to-worth (to-become).
15. Eke ganging joined himself to-
certain of-burghers of-yon region ; eke
in-sent him of-heath his to-hold swine.
16. Eke yearned full to-eat of-horns
(husks), which meated (ate as meat or
food) swine ; eke man to-him not gave.
17. Coming then in himself, quoth :
How many hirelings of-dad mine in-
overmuch (abundantly) have of-loaves,
but I by-hunger perish.
18. Out-standing I -go to dad mine,
eke say to him, Dad, I-from-wrought
(I-sinned) for-me in (against) heaven
eke in face thine.
19. Now the-since (longer) not am
worthy that I-may-hight son thine ;
y-do (make) me as one of-hirelings
thine.
§ 4, No. 3.
GOTHIC PRONUNCIATION.
563
20. jah usstandands qam at
attin seinamma. nauh]?anuh )?an
fairra visandan gasaw i'na atta 'is
jah 'mfeinoda jah )>ragjands draus
ana hals 'is jah kukida 'imma.
21. jah qaj> 'imma sa sunus.
atta. fravaurhta 'in himin jah in
andvairjrja J^einamma. ju j>ana-
seij?s ni i'm vairj^s ei haitaidau
sunus )>eins.
22. qaj? ]?an sa atta du skalkam
seinaim. sprauto briggij> vastja
J?o frumiston jah gavasjij? 'ina
jah gibij? figgragul]? 'in handu 'is
jah gaskoh ana fotuns 'is.
23. jah briggandans stiur
)?ana alidan ufsneijn]?. jah mat-
jandans visam vaila.
24. unte sa sunus meins dau]?s
vas jah gaqiunoda jah fralusans
vas jah bigitans varj>. jah dugun-
nun visan.
25. vasu^an sunus 'is sa
aljriza ana akra jah qimands at-
'iddja new razn jah gahausida
saggvins jah laikans.
26. jah athaitands sumana
magive frahuh. wa vesi J?ata.
20. Jakh us-stand*ands
at at'tin siin'am'ma.
than'ukh than fer'ra wis'andan
gasakwh- in-a at'ta is, jakh
infiirrooda jakh thrag7ands drAAs
an-a H'als is jakh kuk'ida im*ma.
21. Jakh kwath im-ma sa
sun'us : At'ta, frawArkht'a in
ninvin Jakh in and'werth-ja
thiin'am'ma, Ju than'asiiths ni
im werths ii H'eet'eedAA sun'us
thiins.
22. Kwath than sa at'ta du
skalk'am siin'eem : SprAA.t*oo
briq'gith wastva thoo frum*-
istoon jakh gawas'jith in -a jakh
gib'ith flq'gragulth in n'and'u is,
jakh gaskookh' an'a foot'uns is.
23. Jakh briq-gandans styyr
than-a al'idan uf-sniith ith, jakh
mat'jandans wis'am weel'a.
24. n'e, sa sun'us mns
dAAths was jakh gakwyyrrooda,
jakh fralus'ans was jakh bigit--
ans warth. Jakh dugun'nun
wis'an.
25. "Was'uth'than smrus is sa
al'thiza an'a ak'ra, jakh k«/;im'-
ands at'id'dja nekwh raz-n, jakh
gan'AAS'ida saq'gwins jakh
leek'ans.
26. Jakh at'H'eet'ands sunr-
ana mag-iwee frakh-ukh,
'i that'a.
Verbatim Translation.
20. Eke out-standing came to dad
his ; still then far heing saw him dad
of-him, eke pitied, eke running fell on
neck of-him, eke kissed him.
21. Eke quoth to-him the son, Dad,
I-from-wrought (I-sinned) in (against)
heaven eke in face thine. Now the-
since (longer) not am worthy that
I-may-hight son thine.
22. Quoth then the dad to servants
his, Quickly bring vest the from-est
(first, hest), eke in-vest him, eke give
finger-gold in hand of-him, eke shoes
on feet of-him,
23. And bringing steer the fatted
up-cut, eke meating (eating food) let-
us-be well.
24. Unto-that (because) the son
mine dead was, eke y- quickened, eke
lost was, eke be-gotten worth (became).
Eke they-began to-be (to feast).
25. Was-then son of-him the elder
on acre, eke coming to-went (ap
proached) near house, eke heard song
eke games.
26. Eke to-calling certain of-boys,
asked, what were that.
564
GOTHIC PRONUNCIATION.
CHAP. V. $ 4, No. 3.
27. J?aruh i's qaj? du i'mma.
J>atei brofar J?eins qam. jah
ufsnai]? atta J?eins stiur J?ana
alidan. unte hailana i'na and-
nam.
28. J?anuh modags var]? jah ni
vilda inngaggan. \]> atta 'is us-
gaggands ut bad 'ina.
29. J>aruh i's andhafjands qa]>
du attin. sai. sva filu jere skalk-
inoda Jms jab. ni wanbun an-
abusn J?eina ufariddja. jah mis
ni aiv atgaffc gaitein ei mi]? fri-
jondam meinaim bivesjau.
30. it J?an sa sunus J^eins.
saei fret }>ein sves mib kalkjom.
qam. ufsnaist i'mma stiur }>ana
alidan.
31. baruh qab du i'mma. barn-
ilo. Jm sinteino mi]? mis vast jab
'is. jah all bata mein bein i'st.
32. vaila visan jah faginon
skuld vas. unte brobar ]?eins
dau]?s vas jah gaqiunoda. jah
fralusans jah bigitans var}?.
27. Thar-ukh is kwath du
im-ma: That-ii brooth-ar thiins
kt^am, jakh uf'sneeth* at'ta
thiins styyr than-a al-idan, \rnftee
n'eel-ana in-a andnam.'. .
28. Than-ukh mood'ags warth,
jakh ni wil'da in-gaq-gan. Ith
at'ta is us-gaq-gands ut bad in-a.
29. Thar-ukh is andn'af-jands
k^ath du at'tin: See, swa fil-u
jeeree skalk'inood-a thus, jakh
ni kwhan'H'un an'abus-n thiin-a
uf-ar,id'dja. Jakh mis ni eew
at-gaft. geet'iin ii mith fri'-
joond'am miin-eem biw^s'JAA.
30. Ith than sa smrus thiins,
sa,ii* freet thiin awees mith
kalk-joom, kwam, uf-sneest* im-
ma styyr than-a al-idan.
31. Thar-ukh kwath du im-
ma : Banriloo ! thu sint'iinoo
mith mis wast jakh is ; jakh al
that-a miin thiin ist.
32. "Weel-a wis-an jakh fag--
inoon skuld was un-tee brooth-ar
thiins dAAths was jakh ga-
k^yyn-ooda, jakh fralus-anz
jakh bigit-ans warth.
Verbatim Translation.
27. Then he quoth to him, that
brother thine came, eke up-cut dad
thine steer the fatted, unto-that (he-
cause) whole him received.
28. Then moody worth (became),
eke not would in-go. But dad of-him
out-going out bad him.
29. Then he to-heaving (answering)
quoth to dad, Lo, so many years served
to-thee, eke not whenever command
thine over-went (transgressed), eke to
me not ever at-gave goat, that with
friends mine might-feast.
30. But then (when) the son thine,
who devoured thine possession with
harlots, came, thou-up-cuttest for him
steer the fatted.
31. Then quoth to him, Little-son,
thou always with me wast, eke art, eke
all the mine thine is.
32. "Well to-be eke to rejoice due
was, unto-that (because) brother thine
dead was, eke y-quickened ; eke lost,
eke be-gotten worth (became).
CHAP. VI. § 1. VALUE OF LETTERS. 565
CHAPTER VI.
ON THE CORRESPONDENCE OF ORTHOGRAPHY WITH PRO
NUNCIATION FROM THE ANGLOSAXON TIMES TO THE
PRESENT DAY.
§ 1. The Value of the Letters.
The several conclusions arrived at respecting the sounds
of the letters in English orthography are necessarily very
irregularly scattered through the preceding pages. The
nature of the investigation which obliged us to commence
with the xvi th century, then descend through the xvn th
to the xviii th, and immediately jump to the xivth, and then
after a glance at the xv th, commence the consideration of
the xiii th century, has not produced an order which is con
venient or satisfactory to the reader. In the present section
then the results will be arranged in a tabular form, in alpha
betical order. A reference to the pages in which the several
statements are established, is occasionally given, but as it
was found impracticable to introduce it concisely into the
text in all cases, the indices at the end of the book must be
consulted. The outline index annexed will enable the reader
to refer immediately to the principal combinations.
The construction of the Table is as follows. All the single letters
or combinations of letters which have been used as parts of words
in English orthography, from the Anglosaxon period to the present
day, such as a, aa, <z, ae, a-e (meaning a followed by some consonant
and then by e final), af, -age (meaning age final) ah, at, al, all, an,
-ange, ao, aou, ar, as, -aste, ath, au, auah, aun, aw, aww, ay, ayo, b,
etc., are placed in alphabetical order at the head of separate para
graphs, as in a dictionary, and then the history of the different
sounds that each has represented is sketched in accordance with
previous results, using
ags., for the Anglosaxon period,
13., for the xnith century and earlier.
14., 15., 16., 17., 18., 19., for the xivth, xvth, xvith, xvnth,
xvm th, and xrx tn centuries respectively.
The passages inserted in brackets at the end of some articles,
signed P., are due to Mr. Payne, see infra, pp. 579-80.
566
VALUE OF LETTERS. INDEX. CHAP. VI. § 1.
INDEX TO THE PMNCTPAL COMBINATIONS.
Anglosaxon period : p. 610.
Thirteenth Century and Earlier : pp. 423, 431, 439, 467, 471, 476, 480, 484,
487, 496, 498, 606.
A
El, EY
M
R
14. 259,
14. 263,
14. 315,
14. 316,
16. 59,
16. 118,
16. 17. 18. 188.
16.17. 18. 196.
17. 65,
17. 124,
N
S
18. 74.
18. 129.
14. 315,
14. 317,
AI, AY
EO
16. 17. 18. 188.
16. 17. 18. 214.
14. 263,
14. 260.
NG
SH
16. 118,
EU, EW
14. 315,
14. 317,
17. 124,
14. 301,
16. 17. 18. 188.
16. 17. 18. 214.
18. 129.
16. 136, 137,
0
T
AH, AW
14. 263,
17. 139,
18. 141.
14. 266,
16. 93,
14. 317,
16. 17. 18. 203.
16. 136, 141,
17. 147,
18. 149.
14. 308,
16. 17. 18. 219.
17. 99,
18. 103.
OA
TH
14. 317,
16. 17. 18. 219.
14. 266,
B
14. 308,
16. 93,
H
14. 308,
16. 17, 18. 203.
17. 99,
14. 298,
16. 17. 18. 203.
GS
18. 103.
16. 160, 163.
c
14. 310,
OH
17. 171,
14. 308,
16. 17. 18. 209.
V/.EJ
14. 260.
18. 184.
16. 17. 18. 203,
214.
CH
14. 308,
16. 17. 18. 203.
GN
14. 308.
H
14. 314,
16. 17. 18. 220.
T Y
01, OY
14. 268,
16. 130,
17. 133,
18. 135.
HI, HY
14. 269,
16. 17. 18. 135.
V
14. 317,
D
14. 270,
00
16. 17. 18. 219.
14. 308,
16 104
14. 266,
W.
16. 17. 18. 203.
JLvJ» J.VJ Tcj
17. 116,
16. 93,
14. 317,
E
18. 117.
17. 99,
16. 17. 18. 184.
14. 260, 318,
IE
18. 103.
WH
16. 77,
14. 260,
OH, OW
14. 317,
17. 81,
16. 104,
14. 303,
16. 17. 18. 184.
18. 88.
17. 116,
16. 136, 149,
X
EA
18. 117.
17. 156,
14. 317,
14. 260,
J
18. 160.
16. 17. 18. 214.
16. 77,
17. 81,
14. 314,
16. 17. 18. 203.
P
14. 316,
Y vowel, see I
18. 88. \
K
16. 17. 18. 203.
Y consonant.
EE
14. 315,
PH
14. 310, 317,
14. 260,
16. 17. 18. 203.
14. 316.
16. 17. 18. 184.
16. 77,
L
Q
Z
17. 81,
14. 315,
14. 316,
14. 310, 317,
18. 88.
16.17. 18. 193.
16. 17. 18. 203.
16. 17. 18. 214.
CHAP. VI. § 1. VALUE OF LETTERS. A — AGE.
567
CHRONOLOGICAL ACCOUNT OF THE VALUES OP LETTERS.
A ags. was both a short and a long
sound (a, act), but the long sound was
sometimes written d. Short a in an
open unaccented syllable was probably
(a). After ags., a'in an open accented
syllable was considered as long, and in a
closed syllable generally short. In 13.
14. 15. 16. a seems to have been (a, aa),
although in the earlier part of this time
it may have been (a, aa). Probably
towards the end of 16. it passed into
(ah, aah), a sound frequent in 19. In
17. it became (ae, seae), and at the latter
end of 1 7. and beginning of 1 8., it seems
to have fallen into (se, ee). These
changes seem to have occurred towards
the close of 15. or even earlier in Scot
land, p. 410, n. 3, and perhaps in the
Northern and West Midland Counties,
p. 450, n. 2. See references under
ey. Perhaps during the latter part
of 18. there came into use a distinc
tion, thoroughly established in 19.,
that long a should be (ee} unless fol
lowed by r, and that then it
should be (ee) ; compare naming, Mary
(neem-iq, Meerrt). In 19. long a is
frequently pronounced (eei) in place of
(ee), as (neeiw.) for (nem), pp. 234, 272,
n. 3 ; 294, n. 2. Short a has re
mained (se)' from 17. to 19. These
general usages have been crossed by
the action of a following /, n, r, s, th,
see af, an, ar, as, ath, and the other
combinations which follow. An initial
(w) acted in the latter part of 17. and
subsequently, in many, but by no means
all words, to convert (ae) into (A) or
(o), as in was, what, etc. In 19. a has
been variously degraded as in : hating,
father, water, many, hat, want, riband
= (neet't'q, faadhu, wAAtu, men-f, Hset,
WAnt, rib'im).
AA was in 14. occasionally used for
(aa) in closed syllables. Otherwise it
was only employed in biblical names,
as Aaron, Isaac, and then it followed
the sound of long or short a. It was
occasionally for German aa, and then
from 17. it was (AA).
M ags. (ae, aeae), p. 510, in 13. sank
to (E, EE) or (e, ee), pp. 487, 496,
498. It was rarely used in 13., and
not at all afterwards, except in words
borrowed from the Latin or Greek, and
then it was (ee) till 18., towards the
close of which it became (ii) in such
cases. But scholars still occasionally
say (e) as in: Paestum = (Pest"em)
rather than (Piis-tern), which is also
heard. [In 13. <z = (ee) in Norman
and English.— P.]
AE was never an English combina
tion, but, resulting from biblical names
or Latin adaptations, it seems to have
been treated as a+e, or 83. In 19. we
have a«rie, Michael, aerial, Israel =
(eei'ri iirri, Markul, e,ertBl eerriel
iirriBl, Jz-reel Jz-rel JZTB!). [In 13.
«e=8e = (ee) in Norman and English.
r*]
A — E, that is a followed by some
consonant and a final e, which, when
pronounced, had the effect of putting a
into an open syllable, and therefore
making it long, so that when the final e
ceased to be pronounced, it was presumed
to have the same effect of lengthen
ing the preceding vowel. Hence a — e
was assumed to be long a, with the
sound of the time, from 16. to 19. Per
haps this feeling came in towards the
close of 15. The rule is not con
sistently carried out in 19, ; compare :
hate, are, landscape, furnace, have =
(aeet, aai, Isend-sktp, frnys, naav).
Even in 16. the vowel was not long in
unaccented syllables.
AF, this combination presents no
thing peculiar till 18. or 19. and then
only in certain words : graff, staff, dis
taff, quaff, aft, after, abaft, haft, shaft,
raft, craft, draft, graft, waft, and laugh,
calf, half, which must be considered to
have the same combination. Here
usage differs. The common southern
pronunciation is (aaf), and even (aaf)
may be heard ; the fine educated nor
thern pronunciation is (aaf). Ladies in
the South and many educated gentle
men say (ahf) or at most (aahf). But
(af) is also heard. Those who use the
finer sounds, ridicule the others as
vulgar, and write them larf, etc., de
claring that an r is introduced, but
this arises from their own omission of
(r) and preservation of (aa), in : barm,
starve, etc. See ar, or, and the cita
tion under o, p. 575, col. 1.
AG in late ags. and 12. or 13. was
probably equivalent to (ai).
A^s, Orrmin's form of (ai), p. 488.
-AGE. In 16. the ge = (dzh) seems to
have influenced the preceding a by in
troducing an (i) sound, as (aidzh), p.
120 ; and in 17. to 19. this a has fol
lowed the fortunes of ai, which see.
568
VALUE OF LETTERS. AH — AR. CHAP. VI. § 1.
AH, as an exclamation, has probably
always represented (aa), although the
corresponding exclamation was not
always represented by ah. In dahlia
it is now pronounced (ee).
AI in 14. =(ai, aai), which sounds
apparently remained to the end of 16.,
though the pronunciation (ee) was in
use by a large number of speakers. In
17. after a passage through (ahi, aei),
the sound rapidly sank to (ee), but
whether the sound (eei) was not occa
sionally heard cannot be ascertained
with certainty. In 19., (ee, eei} are
both usual forms. Various degrada
tions are heard in 19., as : demam, sail,
Saint John, satd,[platd, Britem (dimiin%
seel, Sih'dzhim, sed, plaed, Br«t-'n), and
dais, which was a monosyllable in
Chaucer, 372 = (dais), but has be
come dissyllabic = (d^-is). For 13. see
pp. 431, 440, 467, 473, 506 ; 14. 459,
462 ; 15. 447. See especially p. 459,
n. 1, and the passages there referred to,
and also Chap. VII. § 1. The use of
(ai) for (ee) seems fixed in Scotland at
the beginning of 16., p. 410, n. 3. [In
13. and 14. ai=ay = (ee) in Nojman
and English; in 16. often, if not gene
rally =(ai) in English, infra p. 582.
•*•]
AL, ALL in 16. and hence probably
for some time previously the I had be
gun seriously to influence the preceding
vowel, by being pronounced ('!) with a
very appreciable length of murmur or
being labialised into (Iw) ; the result
in either case, accepted as (ul), pro
duced the diphthong (aul), which was
firmly established in 16. See I, p. 193.
This was occasionally followed by the
total disappearance of the I, as in : talk,
calm = (tauk, kaum). Then this al
was considered as tantamount to au,
and followed its changes, becoming
(AA) in 17. and in most words so re
maining to 19. ; but in some words, as
(pa/m, c«/m), although occasionally
called (pAAm, kAAM) in 17., and in
Irish-English, p. 76, the combination
seems to have generally resisted the
change to (VA), and rather to have
passed from (aau, aa') to simple (aa), as
we still hear (paam, Vaam), refined by
some to (paahm kaahi.., ^seaem kaeffim,
psem ka3m) ; while others, \ inorgani
cally and purely orthographi ^ally, at
tempt to say (paelm, kselm). ^See au,
MM.
AN. In 16. French words now
having the nasal vowel (&A.) were
heard as having (aun), p. 143, and
hence the writing aun much prevailed
then ; and as we also find this ortho
graphy in 14., probably the same effect
was produced on English ears by that
French sound. In 16. aun was occa
sionally replaced by an, as commaund,
command, but probably the sound (aun)
remained. In 17. the sound became
(AAU), and during 18. and even into 19.
this sound remains, although there is,
and perhaps always was, a tendency to
fall, on the one hand into (aan), on the
other into (an), with their various re
finements ; see of. Thus romance
romantic have now generally (sen), but
(AAU) is occasionally heard, and forty
years ago I was familiar with (romAAns-,
romaans-). In command, demand, etc.,
the contest is among (an aan, an aan,
sen aeaen, ahn aahn). In daunt, gaunt,
haunt, gauntlet, jaunt, taunt, vaunt, all
the last named sounds may be heard,
and also (AAU), but never (AH). It
would be convenient to use (aan) for
(an) in all words where it corresponds
to the modern French (aA). See au.
-ANGE. In 16. the sound (i) was in
serted as (aindzh),p. 120, and the com
bination was treated in 17. as if written
-ainae, the a becoming (ee) and then
(ee) or (eei) in 19. In unaccented
syllables it drops into (-«ndzh, or
-tndzh) properly (-yndzh), as oranges
AO. This is never recognized as a
true English combination, though it
occurs in gaol now (dzheel), and by
accidental attraction in extraordinary,
now (ekstrAAj'dtnert), and foreign
words, as : Pharaoh, aorta, Chaos, now
(Feerro, e,M-tv, Keels'). The old pro
nunciation of gaol is doubtful. Extra
ordinary was probably always treated as
a compound, compare " afford no extra
ordinary gaze," Henry IV. part 1, act
3, sc. 2, v. 78.
AOTJ. This French mode of writing
(au) is only met with in caowtchouc,
generally called (kautsh-wk), but occa
sionally (kuut-tshwk) in 19.
AR. The vocal character of r as
('r) seems to have acted upon the pre
ceding vowels in all cases after 16.
Probably ar, when not followed by a
vowel, remained (ar) or (aa), though
unacknowledged, during 17. 18. 19.,
with the variation (aaa), which is in 19.
CHAP. VI. § 1. VALUE OF LETTERS. AS — CCH.
569
frequently reduced to simple (aa). But
ar was frequently called (ser) or (sea) in
17. and 18., and the sound is still heard
in American English. In the present
usage of the South of England the
(a) is practically dropped, pp. 196, 245.
See o, or, r.
AS. In a few words of 19. the s
seems to react on the a, as : pass, class,
mast, fast, in which a receives all the
variety of sound noticed in af, an, as
(pa3s passes, pas pass, pas paas, pahs
paahs). In other words, as : passage
classify, (classics sometimes follows
the rule of class], gas, (mastiff is doubt
ful), no such action takes place. It is not
noticed by older writers, and is there
fore probably modern, but it may be
merely a remnant of the 16. and earlier
(as).
-ASTE, in 16. and earlier (ast), but
in 19. we have : haste, paste, taste,
waste (now distinguished from waist,
which was not the case in 16., see p.
73, note 1) = (H.eest, -peest, ieest, weest).
Here the action of s is precisely con
trary to that in as. No clue to this
change has been discovered, but we may
conjecture an intermediate (H3ea3st,
paeaest) during 17. Could there have
been an inserted t, as indicated by the
spelling waist in one sense of 16. waste,
analogous to that in -ange, ash, lash,
pp. 120, 264 ?
ATH. In : path, bath, lath, wrath,
th seems to have acted as /, * (see af,
as) in preserving the (a) sound, or its
modern variants (a se ah), short and
long, in 19.
AU. See aww. At a very early
period in 13. and 14. au, aw were
(au), which sound remained to 16.
Either at the close of 1 6. or beginning
of 17. it seems to have passed through
(au, aau, aa') into (AA), in which form
it was firmly established in 17. and has
remained with little or no change, but
is occasionally (aa). See aun, an. In
19. we have isolated degradations,
compare : gawging, aunt, hawl, h««teur,
Jervawlx, lawrel, meerschawm, Mene-
1/zMS = (g««dzh't'q, aant, HAA!, Hootjj-,
Dzhaaa-vts, lArel, miirslrem, Meni-
), where the foreign words have
received an English pronunciation, fin
13. and 14. au generally (au), but be
fore n, especially in 14. = (aaa) in Nor
man and English, infra, p. 583. — P.]
AUGH. This must be considered
as. a double combination au+yh, the
first part follows au, the second gh,
hence in 14. laugh = (laukh, laukwh,
lauwh), in 16. = (laukh, laun'), in 17.
(leeaaf) or (laef), perhaps also (laaf) as
in 19. See of. The gh becoming
occasionally mute, augh was treated
altogether like au, as in: taught,
caught = (tAAt, kAAt).
AUN. See an.
AW. This was precisely equivalent
to au. In 14. it was used in the
middle as well as at the end of a word.
In 16. and afterwards it was seldom
used except when final, though we still
write : awl, awning, brawl, crawl,
prawn, sprawl, etc.
AWW. Orrmin's form of (au), p'
488.
AY. Precisely equivalent to ai. In
14. used in the middle as well as end of
words ; in 16. and afterwards generally
final. See references under ai, ei.
AYO. In the word mayor = (meea)
in 19., ayo may be considered as a single
combination, but it is properly ay+o ;
Mayo is generally called (Mee-o).
B. Ags. to 19. = (6), but in 19. not
unfrequently written when not pro
nounced as in de#t, douit, lam£, Sdel.
Hum, suitile ; in debt, douit it was not
pronounced and generally not written
in 16., p. 211, n. 2. It was mute in 17.
in all the cases in which it remains so
in 19.
BB. Like other doubled letters, had
the sound of the single letter (b), being
only used to indicate a preceding ac
cented short vowel.
C. In ags. always (k) or (&), but at
a later period of ags. the (A) seems to
have become (tsh), p. 511. See ch.
In 13. it is apparently not used before
(e, i), except in the combination -sce=
-sse, and then it was (s) ; but in 14.
when French words were freely intro
duced it was (s) before e, i and (k)
otherwise, and so it has remained ; but
see ce-, ci.
CC. In ags. the same as c, but indi
cating that the preceding vowel was
short and generally accented ; in later
times either (k) or (ks) as in : account,
accident = (aekaunt-, aek-szchjnt) in 19.
CCH in 14. used for fc/» = (t+tsh),
and pronounced (tsh), shortening the
preceding vowel.
570
VALUE OF LETTERS. CE — EA. CHAP. VI. § 1.
CE. Till 18. this seems to have been
simply c + e. At the end of 17. it
changed to (sh) in in ocean. See ci,
ti, ti.
CH. Not used in ags., but in 13.
found in the signification of (tsh), the
Bound into which (&) had fallen, and as
such it has remained. In words from
the Greek as architect it is (k) in 19.,
and probably was so in 14. ; in words
from the modern French as cAaise it is
(sh) in 19., but for French words intro
duced before 18. as chain, the sound
(tsh) seems to have prevailed. In a
few final syllables as : Greenwich,
Woolwich, Norwich, it has become
(dzh) in 19., but in others it remains
(tsh), as Ipswich, locally (/ps-idzh), p.
612, n. 2. In fucAsia = (fhrshia) it is
mute. See si-. In 13. it was rarely
used as^A = (kh), p. 441. In modern
Scotch it has the three sounds (&h, kh,
kwh) determined generally by the pre
ceding vowel.
CI-. Till 18. this appears to have
been simply s+i, but then it fell into
(sh), as special, specious, ofli«'al =
(spesh-el, spirshus, ofish'Bl). See si-, ti-.
CK. This means kk or (k) from 14.
to 19., but in 14. kk is frequently used.
CW in ags., p. 514, probably = (kw)
that is nearly (kw) j replaced by qu
CZ. This is a modern combination
used chiefly in Sclavonic words, as
Czech, Bohemian (tshekh), but English
(tshek) : Czar is called (zaai) in 19.,
but its Russian initial is (ts).
D ags. to 19. = (d). When, how
ever, the past participle ed dropped its
e, the d changed to (t) after mutes or
hisses, as : capped, sacked, quaffed,
kissed, at least in 17. and probably
even in 13. as bliscedd= (blist), p. 444,
note 2. In 19. d is palatised into (dj,
dj), and ultimately (dzh), in many cases,
acknowledged or repudiated, as : soldier
= (so01-dzha),verdure = (vi-diua, vrdjur,
vrdjur, vadzhu), the last having the
same sound as verger. It is generally
mute in : riband, We<?nesdl1y.
DD. Whenever used =(d), except
in compounds.
DG = (dzh) from 14. to 19., before
a palatal vowel, as e, i as : ju<fye, brio^-
ing and sometimes this sound is re
tained, even when an e has been ortho-
graphically omitted, as judgment.
D In ags. ft was either (th) or (dh)
perhaps used indifferently in the MSS.
which we have, p. 515. In some more
recent ags. and in 13. ft was used as
the only sign for both (th, dh), in
others )> was the only sign, After 13.
ft seems to have been discontinued, and
only J? used in 14. and part of 15.
Even in 13. th was occasionally used
for either ft or J>. Judging by modern
Icelandic habits ft was (dh) when
medial or final in ags. See also p. 541,
n. 2, p. 555, n. 1.
E=ags. (e, ee), and this sound it
seems to have retained to the middle of
15. Then some of the words with e
long had the sound of (ii), but e short
has remained (e) to 19. The use of
long e as (ee, ii) fluctuated much during
16. and 17., but in 18. the sound (ii)
established itself and has remained.
See ea, ee, In 19. it has a few anoma
lies, compare : be, clerk, pretty, let, resin,
hideous, open = (bii, klaaik, pritf, let,
razin, m'd'jas, oop-'n). Finale seems
to have been pronounced, at least in
the Southern parts of England, till the
beginning of the 15. with certain ex
ceptions, pp. 318, 364. During 15.
most final e's lost their sounds, and in
16. e final was considered to indicate
that the preceding vowel had its long
sound. The final e seems to have be
come silent even in 14. or 13. in the
northern parts of the country, p. 410.
Usages differ in existing MSS.
EA. In ags. this seems to have
been a true diphthong (ea) with the
stress generally on the first but occa
sionally on the second syllable, indi
cated by (ea, ea), p. 511. Although
found in 13. pp. 467, 498, we may con
sider that with ags, it passed out of use.
It is occasionally found in 14. as (ee).
It was not till the middle of 1 6. that it
was extensively used to mark those
long e's which retained the sound of
(ee) in contradistinction to those which
had fallen into (ii), the latter being
written ee. This distinction was how
ever not consistently carried out even
at first, some words having the (ii)
sound being spelled with ea, and all
sounds having the (ee) sound not being
spelled with ea. In 17. still more of
the words with ea became sounded as
(ii) without any change of spelling,
and by the middle of 18. the use of ea
generally as (ii), and rarely as (ee, ee)
as in : bear, great, was established and
CHAP. VI. § 1. VALUE OF LETTERS. EAU — EU.
571
has remained to 19. Many words in
ea which had long (ee) in 14. were
pronounced with short (e) at an early
period, as : head, lead. s. In the earlier
part of 18. the sound of (ii) was applied
to words such as great, break, which are
now generally pronounced with (ee).
The 19. varieties are seen in: heal,
great, heart, guinea, head, react, area,
= (mil, greet, naait, gin'i, ned, riaekt',
eerri,is). [In 13. and 14. ea=ae = ai=
(ee) in Norman and English, infra, p.
582.— P.]
EAU. This form was not employed
in 14., hut ew was used in place of it ;
even Levins, 1570, has bewtye. In the
earlier part of 17. eau was (eu), in the
later |part and since, (iu). As usual,
19. furnishes varieties, as in : Beaw-
champ, heau, beawfin, beawty = (Biitslr-
«m, boo, bz'Nn, biu'tt). [In 14. eau
— eal, iau in Norman of I3.=eu,ew,
= (uu) in Norman and English, infr^
p. 586.— P.]
EE. Invariably represented (ee) in
14. and was generally used in closed
syllables. At beginning of 16. it was
sometimes (ii) and sometimes (ee).
During the latter half of 16. it was
fixed as (ii), the (ee) sound being gene
rally written ea (which see). So it
has remained. In 19. breeches is
(bn'tsh-yz).
E'E. A 17- and later contraction
for eve in e'er ne'er and pronounced
(ee) up to 19.
E-E. The affixed mute e rendered
the preceding e long, and hence in 16.
the sound was generally (ee), but in
some cases (ii). The spelling was then
discontinued, ea, ee taking its place,
thus Salesbury's chepe, chese became
cheap, cheese. At the beginning of 18.
the sound of (ii) prevailed and has con
tinued ; but 19. shews : these, there,
allege = (dhiiz, dheei, aledzh-).
EG in later ags. and in 12. (ei, ai).
E££. Orrmin's form for (ei), p. 489.
EH, the exclamation (ee, ee).
EI. In 13. seems to have been (ei,
ai). In 14. when used, which was rarely,
ey being the common form, it was (ai)
sometimes (aa,i) pp. 264, 476. See the
references given under ai. In 16. it
varied as (ei, ai), and in 17. became
(ai) or more usually (eei, ee). During
the latter part of 18. it changed to (ii),
where it generally remains, with va
rieties of (ai, ee) as in : conceit, veil,
forfeit, hetfer, de«'pnosophist = (konsiit*,
veel, foxftt, nefu, daipnos'ofrst). In the
words either, neither, ei was generally
(ee) in 18. ; in 19. usage fluctuates be
tween (ii, ai), some still use (ee),
p. 129, n. 1. [Precisely the same as
ai, ay, infra p. 582. — P.]
EO. In ags. this seems to have been
generally (eo) but occasionally (e6).
In 13. eo interchanged with e and the
sound was (ee), p. 487. The combina
tion then went out of use, although
both eo and oe are found in 14. in the
sense of (ee). In 17. therefore it be
came (ii) in people, and even in yeoman,
though this has now (oo). As eo is
rare and has come from many sources
it is very variously pronounced in 19.,
as : people, Georgies, yeoman, galleon,
Theobald, leopard, dungeon, Macleod,
fend, theologian, theology = (pii'p'l,
Dzhoi'dzh«ks, joo-men, gseluun', Te'b1-
uld, lepud, dan'dzh^n, mseklaud', fiud,
thii,oloo<dzhi'Bn, thiol'odzhi). [In 13.
and 14. eo, oe— (ee) generally, but often
= (uu) in Norman, and sometimes in
English, infra p. 586.— P.]
EOU, EOW, perhaps (eou) or (eu),
p. 498. [In 13. and 14. eow in Eng
lish = (uu), infra p. 586.— P.]
ER in ags. was probably always (er,
eer) or (e.r, ee.r) with a strongly trilled
(r). It is still so in Scotland and Ire
land. There is no notice of its having
varied in sound till 18., when (i) was
recognized as a second sound of r and
then er was taken to be (ei). In
19. Mr. M. Bell takes it to be (gar). I
conceive it to be properly ('.<), but to
be generally ('i), see p. 196. Although
there is no notice of this sound in
older writers, yet there is reason to be
lieve that something approaching to it
was known in 16. and that it was well
marked in the latter part of 17. In
17. the practice of reading er as ar in :
clerk, Derby, servant, service, Hertford,
still more or less heard in 19. came into
use. Confusions of er, ar, are common
in 13.
EU. The oldest sound of eu seems to
have been (eu). In 14. it was generally
(eu), but in words of French origin
(yy), p. 302. The division became
confused in 15., and in 16., though both
sounds were heard, the line of distinc
tion seems arbitrary, see lists, p. 301.
In the course of 17. most eu became
572
VALUE OF LETTERS. EW — GN. CHAP. VI. } 1.
(iu) though some remained (eu). In
18. this distinction was swept away
and all became and have remained (iu),
except after r when they are generally
(uu) as Reuben, rew>, rheum. In mo
dern French words in eur as : amateur,
grandeur, hauteur, usage varies, (iur,
eei, uui, 'j) being all heard occasion
ally, the last being meant for the
French (»r). [In 13. and 14. eu, ue,
ew, w, each= (uu) in Norman and
English, infra p. 586. — P.]
E"W was identical with (eu}, but was
more often used, especially in 13., and
afterwards became the common final
form, see eu. Some of the words in
ew passed into (oo, oou), at least as
early as 17., but shew, sew are in 19.
usually spelled show, sow, and chew,
eschew, shrew, shrewd have (iu) or (uu).
In Shrewsbury, present usage varies
between (uu) and (oo). Shrow was
used in Shakspere's time. [See eu. — P.]
EWE only occurs in the word (ewe),
in 19. (jiuu) and (JOG), which is found
written awe in 13, p. 428 In the
middle of a word ewe occurs as ew + e,
and the e may be or may not be silent,
as in : sewea, brewed, jewel = (sood,
bruud, dzhiu-el). The word sewer, a
drain, was (shooi) in 18., but in the
middle of 19. the pronunciation (siuj)
prevails. Sewer a waiter is (shr'a), one
who sews is (soo-'j).
EWW. Orrmin's form of (eu), p. 488.
EY. The same as ei, see p. 459, n. 1,
and the passages there cited. See also
Chap. VII. § 1, near the beginning. It
was common in 14. as (ai), in 16. as (ei,
ai), in 17. as (eei, ee), in 18. and 19.
generally (ee} sometimes (if), as in key,
they, turkey, eying = (kii, dhee, trkj,
9i-»q). [See ei.— P.]
EYE seems to occur only in eye =
(91), which was (ai^h-e, ai&lre, «-e) in
14., (ei, ai) in 16., and generally (ai)
in 17. to 19. [In 14. eye = (ee-e), in
Norman and English, infra p. 582. — P.]
F. In ags. (f) and between vowels
often (v). In 13. to 19. generally (f),
in the middle of 17. of became (ov) but
it was not generally recognized till 18.
The use of (v) for (f ) was common in
the dialects of 14., p. 409.
FF. Formerly in MS. of 13. and
later ff was written for F. Through-
out, in the middle of a word / was = (f ) .
G. In ags. (g, gh; g, gh, jh, i).
In 13. a distinction was made between
ff Z' ff being pure (g, g), and z guttural
or palatal. When French words were
introduced more freely in 14. g became
(dzh), and was then (dzh) or perhaps (zh)
in French. The sound (zh) is compara
tively modern in France, though it was
certainly known in 16., p. 207, and it
is used in Modern English words taken
from the French as : routing (ruuzh-tq).
GG. Identical with g, but always
(g), never (dzh), as in rugged = (rag-ed).
GH. Even in 13. occasionally used
for z when sounded (gh, kh), the
(gtoh, wh). In 16. it was generally
called (kh) but said to be lightly pro
nounced, and some call it (H'), others
(wh), and in a few words this (wh) had
passed into (f). In other words it
gradually became mute, in which case
the preceding vowel had generally
been previously altered. In 17. sigh
drought, height, were sometimes called
(saith, drAAth, Haith, and the town of
Keighley is (Kiith-lz) in 19. An un-
historical h has been inserted in : ghost,
ghastly, in which ffh = (g). The (kh)
sound is retained in : lough, (lokh),
though it has generally become (k) as
(lok), and as: shough, hough = (shok,
Hok) but sometimes (naf) in groom's
language. The change of gh into (f)
prevailed more extensively in 17. than
in 19., and is still heard more in the
provinces. Varieties in 19. : Caliban,
hiccough, Bellin^Mm, hou^A, ghost,
laugh, Kei^Aley = (Kael-aTi8en, nik-kap,
BeHndzhuin, nok, goost, laaf), besides
being mute. Augh, ough, must be
taken as au+gh, ou +yh.
GL. Generally g+l, but in the Italian
word seraglio, either (b) or (1) from
17, at least.
GN. Initial, up to 16. (gn), but in
17. and afterwards, the g was dropped-
Medial, in 14. it seems to have been
simple (n), p. 309, and this sound has
generally remained to 19., although gn
is incorrectly considered to lengthen
the preceding vowel, merely because an
e has been omitted, as in : sign, benign,
impregn, impugn, in 14. (stih-e, be-
nn'-ne, tmpree'ne, tmpyyne), and hence
in 16. (sain, benain-, impreen-, zmpyyn-),
and in 19. (sain, binain-, impriin-, tm-
CHAP. VI. § 1.
VALUE OF LETTERS. T ? — J
573
pimr). In such combination as : dig
nity, signify, impregnate, repugnant, it
was probably always (gn). Gill, 1621,
acknowledges (qn) as (beniq-n), and
some MSS. of 15. spell beningne. [In
13. and 14. gn medial = (n) in Nor
man and English. — P.]
g ? Used extensively in 13. and 14.
for the sounds of (gh, ^h, kh, Ah, j).
The figure of y in the sense (j) seems
derived from 3. The form } being
identical with the written form of z,
then in use, z was also used for 3 even
in print, see nz, z. After printing came
into use 5 was soon discontinued, and
gh, y became the usual forms. Some
times confused in writing with s, p. 464.
jh used for (gh) in Orrmin, p. 488.
H. In ags. initially, before a vowel
(H) or (HI). Before /, r, n, w it may
have been originally (kh), but til, hr,
hn, hw seem to have become (lh, rh,
nh, wh) in ags. times, p. 512, as they
are in Icelandic, p. 544, and in 13.
only (lh, wh) remained, which were
frequently, interchanged with (1, w).
(Wh) remains in 19., but is uncertain
in the South. In ags, h final = (kh,
Ah). In 13. the sound of h seems to
have been very uncertain, and in 14. it
was lost in those words before which a
vowel was elided. In 16. it was pro
nounced or not, differently from the
present custom. In 19. it is much
more pronounced than formerly, but in
the provinces and among the unedu
cated, it is almost always lost.
I vowel, for t consonant see ./. In
ags. (i, ii) or (i, if). This sound seems
to have been prevalent in 14., and the
short value (t) lasts in 19. During 15.
many of the words having long (ii) re
ceived' short (t) owing to throwing back
the accent, but those long («) which
retained the accent became (ei), and
retained that sound in 16., changing to
(ai) in 17., where they remain. Only
a few modern French words have (ii),
as invalid (inveliid') also called (inval
id), in another sense.
IA. [In 13. and 14. ia, ya, (in one
syllable) =ai, ay = (ee) in Norman and
English, p. 582.— P.]
IE, medial. Occurs occasionally in
14. as simple (ee). In 16. it was not
much used, though it seems then to
have been (ii) even in friend, and in 17.
it was firmly established in a few words,
without any historical or etymological
reason, as (ii), and has so generally re
mained. In final syllables it was much
used in 14. as (-w'-e) and in 16. as re
presenting the 14. final -ie, -e, and
sometimes -y. This termination was
generally called (-»') but sometimes (ei,
ai). In 17. it was gradually replaced
by y. In a few words as die, lie, etc.,
it remains with the sound (ai). [In
13. and 14. ie (in one syllable) =ei=
(ee) in Norman and English, infra p.
582.— P.]
I-E is properly identical with long
t, which see ; but owing to a prejudice
against ending words in v, and to the
necessity of putting an e after g final
to indicate the sound of (dzh), it some
times represented short f (i), as in 19.
give, b've, bridge. In modern words
from the French it is (ii), as: antique,
oblique, routine, machine, pique.
IEU is a purely French combination,
and in 16. interchanged with eu being
probably pronounced (eu) ; in 17. it
was (iu), and so it has generally re
mained, thus lieu is (liu) or (luu), but
lieutenant is usually called (leften"ent,
or (luuten-ent), andBeauh'ewis (Biu-K).
[Ieu, iew in English, hypothetically =
eue, ewe Norman of 13., would, if
found = (uu), infra p. 586. — P.]
IEW. In the word view written both
vewe and view in 16., it is a final form
of ieu. [See ieu. — P.]
10. [In 13 and 14. to (in one sylla
ble) = oi = (uu) generally, in Norman
and English, infra p. 587. — P.]
IR not before a vowel, was pro
bably not distinctly separated from
er even in 14. as we have both first
and ferst. In 16. and later it seems
to have been the same as er, and in
19. it is either ('i) or ('^), as in: sir,
fart, fir.
IU. [In 13. iu (in one syllable) =
tw = (uu) in Norman and English,
infra p. 586. On p. 506, n. 2, for
(ritrle) read (ruu-le). — P.]
J or i consonant of the 16. and 17.
centuries in which the distinction i, /
was not observed in writing. In 14.
introduced for French words, and with
the French sound (dzh) which it re
tains, though in France j has become
(zh). In the Hebrew hallelujah it was
and is read (j), but not so in other
Hebrew words. (Maaatsh-bseqks) for
574
VALUE OF LETTERS. K — NG. CHAP. VI. § 1.
Marjoribanks, is an obviously recent
corruption.
K from its earliest introduction in
the latest ags. to the present day has
retained the same sound (k), with per
haps occasional unacknowledged pala-
tisation into (k).
KK, often used in 14. where ck
was afterwards employed, as (k) after
a preceding short accented vowel in a
closed syllable.
KN initial, in 14. to 16. and per
haps for some time in 17. was = (kn),
but in 18. and 19. the (k) was dropped.
It is, however, still pronounced in Low
land Scotch. In 17. Cooper con
sidered £»= (nh), p. 544, n. 2.
L from ags. to 19. = (1). The 19.
colonel = (kj-nul) is remarkable. L is
occasionally not pronounced, but in
disappearing leaves an effect on the
preceding vowel as in : talk, half, alms,
now (tAAk, naaf, aamz), where I seems
to have been lost generally in 16. See al.
LD. The I was omitted in 17. in
could, would, should, having been erro
neously introduced into the first, though
heard in 16. In GuiMbrd, the d is
usually silent.
LE final, after a consonant, from
16. to 19. = ('!), as: fiddle, beadle =
(fid-'l, bii-d'l).
LF. In alf, the I was omitted in
16. and a became (au), which was (AA)
in 17. and has in 19. returned to (aa).
See al.
LH. Occasionally used in 13., pro
bably for (Ih), a remnant of ags. hi, see
h, but as it interchanges with lt this
pronunciation is doubtful.
LL, Much used as a final, and after
a short accented vowel in a closed syl
lable, as ^1). In compounds sometimes
I + 1, as in soulless. In Welsh words
initially, the Englishman says (1) in
Lloyd (Loid), Welsh (Ihhuid), but in
Llangollen he generally uses (thl) as
(Thlsen-goth-len), Welsh (Lhhan--
golhh-en).
LM, aim final, omitted the I in 16.
changing .(a) into (au) which became
(AA) in 17. and in 19. has become (aa)
with its variants, as in balm, see al.
LN final presenting some difficulty
in speech, one or the other letter was
often dropped : I was omitted in Lin
coln, and probably in Colne in 17., n
was omitted in kiln in 17., changes
which remain,
LZ. Old form of l? = (lj). Dafeiel
in Scotland (De-El) in England (DaK
zel). See p. 310, note 1.
M, from ags. to 19. = (m). In 16.
probably, and later, when following
any consonant but I, r, m was ('m) as in
chasm = (kaez-'m) although the ('m)
was not allowed to constitute a syllable
in^verse.^ Some in 19 call -lm, -rm
(-I'm, -r'm) and this was recognized
by Bullokar in 16.
MB final, probably omitted b in 16.
and certainly in 17. to 19. as limb.
MM medial only, after an accented
short vowel = (m), from 14. at least.
MN final = (m) probably always in
column; and initial = (n) probably
always in mnemonics.
MP. Omp, which was a French
combination, now called (OA), was in
accented syllables in 14. = (uun), in 16.
(oun) and 17. 19. = (aim) as in Compter-
unaccented it was (kon) as Comptroller.
In 19. Campbell is often (ksenvel).
Otherwise (mp) is fully sounded as :
camp, limp, thump.
N. From ags. to 19. = (n). Proba
bly before / it fell into m, as in Banff.
See also nc, nk, ng.
NC. Chiefly in compounds as in-come,
or in the termination -nee, and then =
(nk, ns) ; but some in 19. and probably
early, changed n into (q) before c= (k).
ND. Generally (nd), but the d is
sometimes mute, as in riband, h&nd-
kerchief, and in the latter case the n
becomes (q) notwithstanding the com
posite nature of the word = (naeq-ker-
tsher) in 17. and (nseq-katshif) in 19.
NG. The difficulty of pronouncing
pure (n) before the gutturals (g, k),
caused n in such cases to pass into (q)
in the earliest times. It is difficult to
determine before 19. whether ng was
simply (q), or (qg) when final or medial.
In 16. and later the 19. customs ob
tained, namely ng is (q) when final,
and preserves that sound generally
when the word is lengthened by in
flection, and in a few cases ng = (qg).
Thus : I long, thou longest, low^er s.
a long way, have all (q), but longer a.,
longest a., stronger, strow^est have (qg),
Compare liw^er, fiw^er, siw^er. When
ng occurs before th, it is usually called
(qk) as length, itrength (leqkth,
CHAP. VI. § 1. VALUE OF LETTERS. NH — O-E.
575
streqkth) or (qqh), but many persons
say (lenth, strenth) which Walker
notices as an Irishism. In French
words M^ = (ndzh) from 16., some in
19. say (nzh) but it is against analogy,
as change, siw^e, (tsheenzh, smzh) for
(tsheendzh, smdzh). Though chafing
is used, siw^eing is employed to keep
the word distinct from singing. Ng
initial = (q), is only found in foreign
words.
NH. A Portuguese combination for
(nj), used in 19. in ipecacuanha as (n).
NK. In one syllable = (qk), or as
some believe (qhk) from ags. to present
day, see ng.
NN. After short accented vowels
= (n) from ags.
NZ. In a few names, the old form
of Saxon wj, with the sound (q) as
Me«sies = (Mt'q't'z), or with the sound
(nj) as in De«zil = (Den'jil), see Iz, and
p. 310, note 1.
0. From ags. to 16. apparently (o,
po), but during 15. many long o fell
into (uu) and for some the orthography
was changed in 16. to oo, while for
others the o was retained, as in do, who,
move (duu, whuu, muuv), and in 17. go
was occasionally pronounced (guu).
The short o also frequently represented
(u) both in 14. and 16. In 17. the
long sound of o in those words in which
it had not fallen into (uu) became (oo)
and the short either generally (A, o) or
even (a) in case of those words where
0 was (u) in 16. In 19. the long sound
is (oo) or as some pronounce (oou) and
even (ou), while the short sound is (o).
Before r = (i), the long sound remains
(oo), as ore=(oox) although some say
(ooi, oo'a) and even (oo-,'j) dissyllabic-
ally, the same as ower. The short o
before r = (j) is supposed to remain (o),
as fork (faak), but it frequently becomes
(AA) and the (i) is then often dropped,
so that Lord laud theoretically (load,
lAAd) are confused as (lAAd). See pp.
196, 245. In comic verse or, aw, are
allowed to rhyme as in Hood's Epi
curean Reminiscences of a Sentimen
talist.
"We went to , it certainly was the
sea-side,
For the next, the most blessed of
morns,
1 remember how fondly I gazed at my
bride,
Sitting down to a plateful of prawns.
0 never may mem'ry lose sight of that
year,
But still hallow the time as it ought,
That season the "grass" was remark
ably dear,
And the peas at a guinea a quart.
— Comic Annual, 1831, p. 171.
See the remarks under (i), infra § 2.
The properly short o is in 19. some
times prolonged before s, f as cross off
= (kros of, kroos oof) or (kroos oof),
and occasionally quite (krAAS AAf).
Possibly in 17., whole, stone were (HO!,
ston) as these pronunciations exist in
America, which is tinged with 17., and
are still heard occasionally here, being
common in Norfolk; from (ston) ap
parently, or else from (stwn), comes the
familiar (stan) as a weight. The 19.
varieties : are go, do, women, bettor, on,
son, woman, compter, choir, reason =
(goo, duu, wraren, bet'i, on, san,
wum-Bn, kaun-ti, kwaii, riiz-n).
OA. This is found in 13. when it
seems to have been (aa) or (aah), or
simply (aa), pp. 467, 498, 506. It was
hardly used afterwards, till in the latter
part of 16., when it was introduced as
a new sign for (oo), the form (oo) being
appropriated to (uu). In 17. the sound
changed to (oo) at which it has re
mained, with a tendency in 19. towards
(oou, ou). In the three words : broad,
abroad, groat, it was = (AA) in 17., and
still so remains, though groat is often
called (grot), and in groats, a farina
ceous food for children, it is (grits).
It was occasionally o+a as in oasis,
coart, coagulate. [Infra p. 586. — P.]
(E. Used in 19. in some Latin
words as foetus, foetid = (fii'tas, fet-«d).
OE was uncertainly used as a final
in 16., with the sounds of (oo) gene
rally, and (uu) occasionally, Levins
1570 has : doe, foe, roe, toe, sloe, goe,
forgoe, moe, hoe, loe (our lo !) with
(oo), and: shooe, fordoe, vndoe (but
doo), with (uu), but considers these
and : bio, twoo, no, so, tho, to, vnto,
as words " in o desinentia." In 17. oe
was generally (oo), but was (uu) in
shoe. In 19. we find doe, shoe, felloe,
does = (doo, shuu, feH, daz), and oe=
o+e in: coeval, poet (ko,ii'VBl, poo*et).
[See oe, p. 586.— P.]
O-E. From 1 6., marks o long, but
in some words, when v is the interposed
consonant, as : move, prove, the o was
sounded (uu) from 16. to 19.; love,
576
VALUE OF LETTERS. OEU — OU. CHAP. VI. § 1.
formerly (luuv), passing through
(luv), became lav). In a few words
as: hove, rove (oo) remains. Other
wise the sound was that of the long
o of the time. The anomaly one
(wan) is recent ; the time of its intro
duction is unknown, but it was not
before 18. Jones 1701 gives (waen,
waens, wsenst) as curiosities, but does
not name (wan) ; Buchanan 1766 has
(waen, waens) also, as the correct sounds,
but Franklin, 1768, has (wan, wans).
The Scotch (jtn, j«n) for ane, seem to
have been introduced about the same
time. The old sounds were, English
(oon), Scotch (aan). The 19. varieties
are: horse, cove, move, Tollemache,
forehead, love, Bolingbroke, one =
(nors, koov, muuv, Tael-maesh, fored,
lav, Bwl-t'qbrwk, wan).
OEU. A French combination, na
turalized as (uu) in manoewvre, in 19 ?
[A combination not known in France
until 15., represented in 13. and 14. by
ue, eu, eo, oe=(uu). — P.]
OH has perhaps always represented
the exclamation (oo), although the ex
clamation was not always represented
by it.
01 is not found often enough in 13.
to determine its sound, it was appa
rently (ui) in 14. in French words,
but occasionally (ue ?), and sometimes
(oi?); in 16. (uui, m) and also (oi),
in 17. the (ui) class became (ai) and
this remains as an unrecognized vul
garism in boil, pomt, etc. ; in other
words it was (AI) or (oi) or (oi), and
occasionally (oi) is heard, often (AAi).
Dialectically oi was occasionally pro
nounced (w, ee) in 14., p. 450, note 2.
The 19. varieties are : chamois, connoz's-
seur, avozrdupoise = (shaenv i, shaenvwA,
konesxr, sevadiupoiz-). Chot'r was also
writen quire in 17., and since then pro
nounced (kwair), but chorister was
(kM«r»ster). Memoe'r is called (menr-
WDJ) in imitation of the French. And
sometimes oi = o+i. [In 13. and 14.
oi, oy=«o=(uu) generally, in Norman
and English, but very often also = (ee),
infra p. 587.— P.]
OL, OLL. In 16. the I being
sounded strongly as ('!) or (lw) de
veloped a (u), so that ol became (ooul)
in roll, toll, etc., p. 193. In 17. this
remained or became (oul), and as such
passed to Ireland. Even in 18., (oul)
as well as (ooul) was heard. In 19.
(ooul) is considered inelegant, but is
common, and (oul) unbearable, and
(ool) is the only recognized sound.
00. In 13. and 14. = (oo), rare in
13., frequent in 14. During 15. this
sound split into (oo) and (uu) and in
the latter part of 16., oo was appro
priated to (uu), where it has since re
mained, with a few exceptions. In
some words the (uu) became (u) and
some of these naturally fell into (a) in
17., as : flood, blood ; others, however,
resisted this tendency, but became (M)
as : good, wood, stood. These changes
remain in 19. Before k it is the cus
tom in Scotland to use (u) and in the
North of England to preserve (uu), as :
book (buk, buuk), while in the South
the sound is fully (M) as (bwk). In
some words 00=0+0, as zoology, zoo
phyte, Laocoon = (zoal-odzhz, zoo-ofait,
Leok-oon).
OR. There is no reason to suppose
that this was different from (oor, or) in
accented syllables; finals were gene
rally written our up to 17. and even
later, some still remaining, originally
to indicate the sound (uur, ur) p. 304.
In 17. these final unaccented or, our
became (ar) or probably (ai, j), and
are (i) in 19. In accented syllables, in
17. it was sometimes (oor) and some
times (Ar) or (AAT), (foorm) a bench,
(fAArm) a shape, and this distinction
remained through 18. It has nearly
disappeared in 19. The present theo
retical sound of or not followed by a
vowel is (oi), which passes into (AAJ)
and (AA) simply, see the citation in o,
p. 575. Before a vowel or = (or).
OU was introduced at the close
of 13. and beginning of 14. for (uu)
and so remained to 16., being occa
sionally used for (u), and occasionally
for (oou), which was generally
written ow. Some writers pronounced
it (uu) till past the middle of 16.,
but about that time the general pro
nunciation had become (ou), some
words only remaining (uu) or (u).
Most of the latter became (a) in 17.,
but some (uu, u) remain to 19. The
ags. words in aw, ow, which came to be
written ou, ow, were till 17. called
(oou). In 17., (oo) without an after-
sound of (u), was and still is the recog
nized pronunciation, but as the after-
sound exists still as (ooiu, oo'w), it pro
bably existed in 17., and its repudiation
by orthoepists then arose very possibly
from the same cause that it still arises,
CHAP. VI. § 1. VALUE OF LETTERS. OUGH — RR.
577
namely, the tendency to give this after-
sound (i u) even in words where there
is no historical authority for its use,
see ow. Before gh the sound was ap
parently (ou) or (oou) in 14. In 17.
this changed to (AA), gh being dropped,
and has so remained. The 19. varieties
are : ought, soul, soup, hough, double,
wowld, nown = (AAt, sool, suup, nok,
dab-'l, w«d, noun), and it is sometimes
o+ti. [In 13. and 14. ow=(uu) in
Norman and English. — P.]
OUGH, properly = ou + gh, and its
noted varieties arise from the combina
tion of the varieties of these two sym
bols, which they do not exhaust. In
19. they are : though, tough, hiccow^A,
plough, through, lough, hough, ought =
(dhoo, taf, Hik-kap, plou, thruu, lokh,
Hak, AAt). These are only eight ;
as there are at least seven varieties of
ou and of gh, ough might have had 49
sounds. It is not the combination of
the most varied pronunciation, as is
generally supposed, for simple o has at
least 10, and eo 11 uses, see o, eo.
OW in 14. was generally used for
(oou), but sometimes was written for
ou and pronounced (uu, u). In 16.
those words which had (oou) retained
the sound. In 17. they changed (oou)
into (oo) which remains. There is a
strong tendency to say (oou) in 19., and
as this tendency is as strong for no as for
know, orthoepists disapprove of it in
both cases, p. 234. Those words in which
ow was called (uu) in 14., were pro
nounced with (ou) in 16., and (au) in
17., which remains as how, now. The
19 varieties are: know, Cowper, know
ledge, bellfltps, now = (noo, Kuu-pi,
nol'.ydzh, bel as, nau). Coivper is some
times called (Kaupu). [In 13. and 14.
ow generally = (uu) in Norman and
English, and sometimes (oou) in Ensr-
lish.— P.]
OY can only be regarded as another
form of 01 from 14. to 19. It is now
generally final. [In 13. and 14 oy =
(uu) generally, but often = (ee) in Nor
man and English, infra p. 587. — P.]
P. From ags. to 19. =fp). In cup
board it is in 19. assimilated to the
following b, or rather lost= (kab'id).
PH was introduced at the earliest
periods lor Greek <f>, and probably
always = (f). In nephew the ph was
a mistake, and it is called (neviu) in
19. In Cla/?//am, etc., ph=p+h and
the h is dropped (Klaep-em). Seephth.
PHTH, properly ph+th, is only used
in Greek combinations. From the dif
ficulty of saying (fth), the- following
changes arise : phthisis, phthisical, apo
phthegm, diphthong = (tai-sz's, ttz-tkpl,
sep'othem, dzp-thoq). The last at any
rate was in use in 17. We find even
in ags. (pth, kth) used for $6, x& *&
transliterating Greek, p. 523. Some
say (dif-thoq) in 19.
PN initial loses p, as in joweumatice
= (niuma3t-£ks).
PP after short accented vowels = (p).
PPH after short accented vowels
= (f).
QTJ from 14. to 19. had the sound
(k«>) or (kw). In a few words from
the French it is (k). These were for
merly spelled without qu, compare 14.
licour, 19. liquor =(likuur, Itkvi).
QUH. An old Scotch orthography,
probably representing (ktch),the Scotch
substitute for English (wh).
R. From ags. to 19. before a vowel
= (r), and perhaps once (.r). In Scot
land always (r) or (.r) wherever occur
ring. There is no mention of any such
sound as (j, j,) till 19., but there it
reason to think (i) may have existed in
16. and still more that it existed in 17.
For its use in 19. see table on p. 197.
There are many varieties of defective
utterance. The Northumberland burr
is (r) or (grh) and sometimes (gh, g)
simply, the French r grasseye ou pro-
venc,al is (r), and the Dutch g eh have
often the same sound, thus schip = (srep) .
RE final, seems to have been occa
sionally (er) in 14., but when the e was
inflectional (re) remained. In 16. and
later it was always (er, ur) or (i) in
French words.
EH initial in Greek words and in
Ehine, Ehone = (r).
RE. Generally after a short vowe
= (r), and possibly always so before 17'
In 19. it is generally (r) after a short
vowel, except there is acknowledged
inflection, and then it is (ar), but after
a long vowel it is always (jr ). Thus :
marry, merry, spirit, horrid, hurry =
(mart, men', spi'rz't, nor/d, Hart').
But occur, occurrence, occurring, infer
ring = (okr, okar-Bns, okj-rzq, thfr,
tnfrrtq). After a long vowel rr is
seldom written, the single r being then
pronounced as (ir), compare : earring,
heaiing = (iirriq, Hiiinq). But we
have : tar, tarry = covered with tar,
37
578
VALUE CF LETTERS. RRH — p. CHAP. VI. § 1.
star, starry = full of stars, = (taai,taarrt
staaa, staaa-ri), and in Ireland «rr
always = (aajr) or (aeaer) as in barrel in
England (barrel), in Ireland (baaa-rel)
or (baeae'rel), which seems to imply a
similar English pronunciation in 17.
RRH, in words from the Greek
only, in 19. used precisely as r, rr, as in
catarrA, diarrhoea = (kBtaar, daiurii'B).
S. One sense of this letter from ags.
to 19. has always been (s). Whether
in ags. it was ever (z) is difficult to
determine. Judging from the Ice
landic, as the representative of medieval
languages, s was always intentionally
(s) in ags ; but the sound of (z) was oc
casionally generated, llapp takes it to
have been always (sj). This is not
necessary. There is no (z) in Spanish,
nor in the Dyak languages, and pro
bably many others. In 14. there
seems no doubt that * was occasionally
(z). There are some traces of its being
changed into (sh) by a following pa
latal vowel at the end of 16. and be
ginning of 17. (p. 215), and later on
in 17. Miege, a Frenchman, notes :
sure, leisure, usual, as being (shyyr,
lee'zhar, yyzh-yael). See sci- si. These
sounds remain. In 19. we have : see,
as, sugar, leisure = (sii, sez, shug-j,
lezh'j). In some MS. of 13., st is
used for ^t = (Arht), probably a mistake
arising from the confusion of 3, }, z,
see p. 464. [In 13. and 14. s = (s) in
Norman and English. — P.]
SO. The initial sc before palatals
was (s) in 16., and probably always.
/Sceptic was often spelled skeptic. In 19.
we have : viscount, scene, discern, sceptic
= (vai-kaunt, siin, dizin1, skep tik).
SCH. in Greek words, seems to have
been considered as sk (sk). The words:
seAism, schedule, have always presented
difficulties. They are now generally
(st'z-'m, shediul). In 13. and 14., and
even later, sch was used for the mo
dern shy which see. In 13. it is some-
-times she. The celebrated German
name of Jloth*c//ild, properly (Root1-
shild) = red-shield, is generally mispro
nounced in English as (roths-tshaild),
quasi Wroth'* chi/d ! where the familiar
word child has evidently misled the
reader to separate the combination scA.
SCI-. Treated as si- = (si) till 17.,
and then often (sh), as in 19., conscious
= (koii'shus).
SH. Orrmin uses this compendious
form of sc/i, but it did not come into
general use till end of 15., or beginning
of 16. It represented the effect of pala-
tizing (sk), and hence converting it
into (sh). The sound (sh) has re
mained. Sh is occasionally s -|- A, and
the h is occasionally dropped, as 19.,
compare misAap, disAonest, disAonour,
MasAam = (nu'sHsepp, dison-est, dizonu,
Mses'Bm) ; but many persons ignore
the composition, and call : HorsAam,
WindlesAam (Hoish'Bin, Wtn*d'ldmn).
The pronunciation (thresh'Hoold) for
thresAold, ags. J?resc-wald, Chaucer
threisshfold, 3482, Promptorium
threschwolde, is a modern etymological
error for (thresh 'cold).
SI-. Treated as (si) till 17, and
then often (sh), and sometimes (zh), as
19., mansion, decision = (maen-slren,
disizh'Bn). After a short accented
vowel it is more usually (zh), and (sh)
is then kept rather for ci-, or ssi.
SS was occasionally used for (sh) in
13. and 14. (pp. 409, 448).
SSI-. See si.
T from ags. to 19. = (t); but see *»'-.
TCH intended as double cA, and
used after a short accented vowel ; the
spelling is modern, the 14. form is cch.
In both cases the sound was probably
(tsh) simply.
TH, even in ags. used as a trans
literation of 6, p. 523, and sometimes
used for ]>, VS, in 13., having both the
sounds (th, dh), which were probably
distinguished as at present in 16., with
some doubtful cases, as wi*A (with,
widh). Sometimes = t + h, sometimes
t + th, or th + A, being obviously con
tractions. In a few words th = (t, d) in
16. In 19. we find : <Ayme, burMen
(generally written burrfen), thigh, <Ay,
po^Aouse, eigtuA, SoufAampton = (taim,
bad-n, thai, dhai, pat-Haus, cetth,
SauthHsem-t'en). In Havelock th is
found for jt, as Jcnith, but the sound is
unknown ; it may have even been really
(th), compare siyh, Keighley, under Gh,
or else simply (t), p. 477.
TI. In the termination -tion, pro
bably (si) from 14. to 17., and then
fenerally (sh), following si-, ci-, set-,
t may, however, have been exception
ally (sh) even at the beginning of 17.
TTH, the Greek rO, probably al
ways (th) in Ma/Mew.
p ags. (th) or (dh). It is impossible
to distinguish between ]> "S in ags. and
Early Engl^h. In 13. and 14. used
for both (th, dh). In ags. it is safest
CHAP. VI. § 1. VALUE OF LETTERS. U — UY.
579
to use (th) initial, and (dh) medial and
final, p. 515 and p. 541, n. 2.
U vowel, for u consonant, see v. In
ags. (uu, u). In 13. the long u was
(uu), but may have been occasionally
pronounced (yy) likewise, while short
«, though generally (u), was occasion
ally either (y), or (i, e). This usage of
short M is too general to be considered
as dialectic. In 14. long u was always
(yy), the (uu) sound being represented
by ou, on', which see. Short u was
more uniformly (u), though this sound
was occasionally written ou, as the use
of short u for (i, e) had not died out.
In 19. this use of short u is only re
tained in: burial, bwry ; bwsy, business.
In 16. long u was (yy), and short u (u)
almost uniformly. In the beginning of
17., and perhaps earlier (p. 227, n. 1),
long M was called (yy) by some, and
(iu) by others, the latter sound pre
vailed, and has remained to 19., except
after r, as in trwth, rule, and after an
* palatalized into (sh, zh), as : sure,
leisure, when it becomes (uu), or is
lost in 19. as : (truuth, ruul, shmu,
lezh-i). There is, however, great di
versity of practice, and an (i) is more
or less distinctly introduced before the
(u), as (iu, iu), or fused with it in (yy,
uu). Again, in the middle of 17. short
u became generally (9), which was a
new sound in our language, not men
tioned by any writer before Wallis,
1653, and the extent to which it was
used is very undefined ; but it prevailed
generally, and only a few (u) remain in
19. which are now properly (M), as:
pwt, Ml = (put, fid). This uncertainty
is well illustrated by the dialects of the
peak of Derbyshire, chap. XI.. § 4. In
16. short M was occasionally called (*'),
but this was reckoned an affected pro
nunciation. The use of u for w in
perswade, etc., is modern, imitated from
its use in qu. In 16. or 17. arose the
practice of using gu to represent a hard
9 (g) before an e, as in #«ess, a French
practice, borrowed also from qu ; and to
this, and the wish to indicate a long
vowel by final e, must be attributed
plague, vague, fatigue, rogue, etc.
With usual inconsistency a long vowel
is not always indicated by a final -gue,
as epilogue, synagogue, or tongue.
These spellings are not found before
16., and they greatly vary in 16. [In
13. and 14. u accented and long = (uu)
in Norman and English ; M unaccented
and short = (e, e, i}, and u with the
secondary accent = (9, e, t), infra p.
583.— P.]
UE used in later spelling as a final
u, owing to a rule made by no one
knows whom, no one knows why, and
no one knows when, that no English
word can end in «. [In 13. and 14.
tte = ett = w = (uu) in Norman and
English, p. 586.— P.]
U— E from 16. indicated long «, and
was so pronounced, see M.
UI. This is not properly an Eng
lish form, but it is found rarely in 14.
in place of oi, with, probably, the
sound (ui). In some words it may
have been (yy), as in them it often in
terchanges with simple «, p. 136 and
170. See also p. 424, note 3. Some
times it replaced i, see p. 452, note,
col. 2, 1. 8. To this custom is perhaps
due its present existence in bwild, which
Gill 1621 calls (byyld, baild, biild, bild),
and which is spelled beeld, bild in
Promptorium. After g the u was only
the French method of hardening g to
(g) and the combination gut must be
considered as g hard + «, as : guilt,
fuide, guile. In more recent 17.
'rench words, «f was treated as long.
«, and this treatment remains with the
sound (uu) after r as usual, and some
times after s, as swz't, 17. (suut), 18.
(shuut), 19. (siut). Occasionally «i =
w + i, or = u + i. Hence we get the
19. varieties: mosqwzto, fruit, bwtld,
guiding, suit, languid, quirk, frm'tion,
anguish = (moskii-to, fruut, bzld, gaid--
iq, siut, Iseq-gwtd, kw;erk, fruzsh-wn,
ergiu.zsh.) It is continually used in
Scotch for (yy) or (a) as : puir, guid.
[In 13. and 14. ui = ity=iu = (un) in
Norman and English, infra p. 5S6.-P.]
UO. [In 13. and 14. uo=ou = (\m),
when u is not a consonant, in Norman
and English.— P.]
UOY is confined to the word buoy,
called by Hart 1569, (buee) = (bwee),
in 17. (boi), frequently (bwoi) and by
sailors (buui) in 19.
UR, from the time that u short re
presented (a),wr = (ar, w, 'r, a), see p.
200, er and r.
UW, an unusual and hence doubtful
combination, probably (yy). [In 13.
and 14. uw = (uu) in Norman and
English, infra p. 586.— P.]
UY, a modern spelling, found in:
b*«/, plag«y = (b3i, ple«-g<). The sound
of buy, spelled : bye, beye, 14. was
(bu'-e, bai-e), p. 285. [In 13. and 14.
580
VALUE OF LETTERS. V — Z,
CHAP. VI. $ 1.
«y = tti = tw = (uu) in Normal and
English, infra, p. 586.— P.]
V consonant, for v vowel see a. This
seems to have been invariably (v).
W vowel, is only used as part of a
diphthong, see aw, ew, ow. Several
writers, however, consider w to be
always a vowel. In 13. occasionally
used as long M = (UU), especially where
(uu) dialectically replaces (wuu, wu) ;
in 14. occasionally used as ou also =
(uu) ; probably double v was dialectic-
ally used as the simple v vowel, that is
«, with its local sound (uu) or (yy).
[In 13. and 14. w=ew=u = (n\i) in
Norman and English, infra p. 586.
-PO
W consonant, corresponds to ags. p,
which was (w) p. 613. This sound
has remain to 19. ; and is often con
sidered to be a vowel, but it is not so,
compare woo, wood, woman = (wuu,
wud, wtmvBn),in which those who con
sider w as a vowel have to write (uu,
ud, urn-en), as is and probably was
frequently said in various parts. Mute
in 19. in : gunwale, boatswain, answer,
Chiswjick, sword, two, twopence ; the
last word was (top- ins) in 17. In ags.
p. 614, and down to 16. at least wr-
mitial was probably a labial r or (rw)
as write, (ureit) in Hart, (wrait) in
Gill, but simple (rait) in 19. Ags. wl-,
p. 514, was probably a labial I or (Iw),
which changed to (1) or (fl), compare
ags. wlaenco, Scotch wlonk, modern
flunkey ; Is Iwkewarm a transposition
of aga. wlaec P Orrmin has wlite.
WH, in ags. hw, was perhaps very
early = (kwh), but is not likely to have
been (khw). In Scotland it is assumed
as (kii'h,) see quh. Probably in later
ags. times it was (wh) and it has since
so remained, though there was a ten
dency even in 13. to call it (w) when
initial, and that tendency is strong in
the South in 19. In 16. who was called
(whuu), which in 17. had become (HUU)
where it remains, (whoo, whuu) being
heard from elderly provincials. The
final wh in 14. formed the transition
from (kwh) to (f), and in Aberdeen
(f«t) is still said for (kit-hat) quhnt,
what, the same transformation occur
ring initially.
WL. See w.
WE. Seew.
X was in early writings used for
Greek % in Xpi<T-r6s, whence the con
tractions Xp' = Xp. Xmas, etc., for
Chriut, Christmas, etc. ; land was then
= (k). Its general' early use was for
Latin x, and it seems to have been
always (ks) and never (gz). In 19. it
is sometimes (gz), and being treated ad
k+s, or ff+z, the latter letter may be
palatalized to sh, zh. In French words
it follows the French pronunciation
(s, z), and as an initial in Greek words
as pronounced in English it was (s) ia
17. and is (z) in 19., as Xantippe,
Xenophon, Xerxes, now = (Zaenttp-i,
Zen-ufen, Zerk-ziiz). Hence the 19.
varieties: except, beaux, ve#, axiom,
example = (eksept-, booz, veks, ak'shitnn,
egzaam p'l). [In 13. and 14. x = (&)
in Norman, and often perhaps in Eng
lish.— P.].
Y vowel, was in earlier ags. (y, yy),
but in later ags. times it was confused
with (i, ii). In 13. to 16. it was used
indiscriminately with f, as of precisely
the same meaning. In 17. and subse
quently the use of y was more limited
to the end of words, where it arose
from the termination -ij, the y being
in 14. the substitute for 3, in this sense,
and the f omitted. Throughout, the
Latin practice of transliterating Greek
v by y was followed. The pronuncia
tion of y vowel was the same as t vowel
throughout, see i. In 19. compare
marry, myrrh, flying = (meer*, mi,
flai'i'q.)
Y consonant. This was a substitute
for ags. 3, and its use probably arose
from the sound of 3 as (j). It has
been used for (j) from 14. at least. It
was also used in contractions for J>, as
ye yt-j,e ]jget.
YA. [In 13. and 14. ya (in one
syllable) = ay = at = (ee), in English
and Norman, infra p. 582. — P.]
YE. [In 13. and 14. ye (in one
syllable) —ey in medial, and sometimes
probably in final syllables = (ee), in
Norman and English.infra p. 682. — P.]
YH. This is found in 13. in place of
1 when it had the sound of (j), p. 431.
Z is not an ags. letter. In 14. it
was freely used for (3) even in plurals,
see Alliterative Poems, edited by R.
Morris, and also for 3, and had there
fore both sounds. The use of z for 3
remained into Roman type, see 3 and *.
In 16. its use was confined to (z), and
it was abandoned in plurals. In 19 it
is palatalized and a few Italian z's are
found, hence : mezzotint, real, azure =
(met-sot/nt, riil, «"zha). [In 13. and
14. z, es = (s), in Nor. and Eug., and
sometimes perhaps (ts) in Norman.-P.]
CHAP. VI. § i. MR. PAYNE'S RESEARCHES. 581
Having learned that Mr. Payne in the course of his Norman in
vestigations (supra p. 438, n. 1) had arrived at several results
which were inconsistent with the preceding investigations, I re
quested him to give me that brief statement of his opinions which
has been added in brackets to several of the above articles, and also
to furnish an abstract of the grounds on which he relied. This he
has been so kind as to do, and it seemed to me so important that
the reader should be in possession of his arguments, that I have
here appended them in extenso. In his Memoir, above referred to,
the several points here shortly touched upon will be fully illustrated
by citations and references. It would be impossible fully and
satisfactorily to criticise his investigations without studying those
additions. At present I can only add brief notes, pointing out the
radical difference between our views, which, as respects ay, ey and
long u, will be further illustrated at the beginning of Chap. VII.
§ 1, and state my opinion that, as far as English is concerned, suf
ficient weight has not been given by Mr. Payne to the dialectic
peculiarities of the scribes of MSS. Thus it appears to me that
the Alliterative Poems in the West Midland dialect of the xrv th
century, afford no proper evidence for Chaucer's pronunciation in
the South, and the late xv th century MSS. of Alisaunder used by
Weber (supra p. 451, note, col. 2) is no authority at all for the
pronunciation of the xinth century to which the original poem
belonged. The assumption that so many forms were used to express
the same sound, so that the vowels (uu, ee) must on this theory
have been predominant in the English and Norman of the xmth
and xiv th centuries, seems also incompatible with the known ten
dency of all illiterate speech to diversity of pronunciation. Thus
stone was ags. (st<mn), and is in ordinary Scotch (stem), but in
Aberdeen (stiin), in Cumberland and Westmoreland is dubiously
(stjaan, stiraan, stii"en), in the XVITH century probably (stoon) as
it now is frequently in the provinces, in the xvnth century and
still theoretically (stoon), but probably often in xvn th century, as
it still is in Norfolk and the United States (ston), whence the com
mon form (stan) for the weight, and perhaps the most usual em
phatic .southern pronunciation is (stooun). Such diversities in olden
times must have produced diversities of spelling. See also supra
p. 473, note, col. 2, for (ee, ai). I take this opportunity of pointing
out the necessary deficiencies of my own investigations upon
English pronunciation during the xm th century, which ought to
have been based upon an extensive examination of existent English
dialects, and a thorough comparison of the various MSS. of the
same works written by scribes in different parts of the country,
as checked by the knowledge thus gained of their local peculiarities.
Had I waited until this was possible my book would probably never
have been written, and the circumstances under which this part of
it was unavoidably composed did not even leave time to undertake
so thorough an examination as I could have wished of all existing
documents and sources of information. The reader is therefore
requested to consider Chap. Y. rather as the commencement than
582
MR. PAYNE ON AE, EA, AI, IA, El, IE. CHAP. VI. § 1.
the completion of a research, which the labours of such competent
investigators as Mr. Murray for the Scotch dialects, Mr. Sweet for
the Northern languages, and Mr. Payne for the Norman element,
will contribute to advance, but which may require many years of
patient study both of existent and extinct dialectic usages, not only
in England, but low Germany and Normandy, to bring to a
thoroughly satisfactory conclusion.
The remainder of the text of this § is written by Mr. Payne ; the
footnotes are by myself, but have been signed for greater distinctness.
BRIEF ABSTRACT or SOME OF MR. PAYNE'S RESEARCHES ON THE VALUE OF
THE LETTERS IN NORMAN AND ENGLISH, DURING THE THIRTEENTH AND
FOURTEENTH CENTURIES.
AE, EA, AI, IA (IN ONE SYLLABLE), El, IE (IN ONE SYLLABLE), WITH THB
VARIANTS AY, YA, EY, YE = (ee).
Assuming the Norman long or tonic
e to have been = (ee), and finding it in
Norman poems of 13. frequently rhym
ing with ei, at, as : feel conseil, defens
mains, estre maistre, nestre maistre,
fere plaire, retraire manere, hrait set,
plein foren, reis Engles, reis pes =paix,
consail vessel, reis lees — lo is, jammes
curteis, feiz turnez past participle, re-
fait Dtf, etc., etc., and finding also :
faire fere, maistre mestre, aveir aver,
conrai conrei conre, trait treit tret,
etc., etc., continually interchangeable
with each other, we can scarcely help
concluding that Norman ai, ei^ee).1
We infer then that pat's of the Saxon
Chronicle and Layamon, pays of Robert
of Gloucester, payse of Dan Michel,
were (pees), and this inference is con
firmed by finding the ai, ay, translated
into e, ee in pes of Owl and Nightingale,
pees of Piers Plowman and Chaucer,2
whether these be considered as literal
adaptations of the Norman form (see
above), or phonetic representations of
the English ai. On the one hypothesis
the Norman ai seems to be established
as (ee), and the Norman faile, fai, crei,
which are found rhyming respectively
with English taile, dai, awey, must
have been (feel-e, fee, cree) ; and if so
i See cause for doubting the generality
of this conclusion, supra, pp. 454-459.— A. J.E.
* This point is considered in Chap. VII.
1 1, near the beginning.— A.J.E.
* For evidence that day, way were not so
pronounced, see the table p. 489.— A.J.E.
* This is also Rapp's hypothesis, but to
me the origin and progress of the orthopra-
phy appears to have been entirely different.
Supra p. 425, and infra p. 588, n. 4.— A. J.E.
6 West Midland, and hence of no autho
rity here. See supra p. 451, n. c. 1.— A.J.E.
it is difficult to see how the English
words could have been other than
(teel-e, dee, awee-)-3 On the other
hypothesis ee represents, at the will of
the writer, English ai, and, therefore,
the Norman and English phonetic
systems being by hypothesis the same,*
English ay, ey, would, correspondingly,
represent Norman e, ee. And this we
find to have been the case. The Nor
man word jornee or jurnee, became in
Genesis and Exodus iurne, which in
the Alliterative Poems is jownay*
and in Mandevile journei,6 probably
pronounced (dzhBrnee-). The English
ay is here obviously employed to re
present the Norman ee. The word
contrey in Alisaunder,7 contraye in Dan
Michel,8 similarly represents Norman
cuntre or contree, and in regard to both
words it is difficult to see how the fact
that the English ay, ey = (ee), could
have been more clearly expressed.9
The ay, ey, being no part of the Nor
man word, would appear to have been
chosen as suitable phonetic equivalents
to the Norman ee. These words con-
trey, contray, jornay, rhyme in their
turn with Norman fey, fay, and thus
shew that the Norman ai, ei, were also
= (ee). The general argument is con-
6 There is no contemporary MS. authority
for Mandevile. — A.J.E.
7 A discredited MS. for this purpose,
supra p. 451, note, col. 2. — A.J.E.
* Dan Michel's use of ay is considered in
Chap. VII. \ 1, near the beginning. There
is no reason to suppose that such an inde
pendent orthographer was guilty of such a
solecism as to use ay and e indifferently. —
A.J.E.
8 There is a great accumulation of evidence
on the other side, already given in this
work.— A.J.E.
CHAP. VI. § 1.
MR. PAYNE ON AU AND U.
583
finned by the rhymes : maide misrede,
maide grede, in Owl and Nightingale,
and : maide muchelhede in Floris and
Blancheflur (E.E.T.S. ed. p. 52),1
which form a parallel to : retraire fere,
maistre nestre, etc. in Norman. We
conclude then that ai, ay, ei, ey,
whether Norman or English was in
13. and 14. = (ee).2 This sound may
have persisted generally, therefore,
to 15. also, but in 16. Mr. Ellis's
authorities and arguments (supra pp.
118-124) seem to prove that it was for
the most part superseded by (ai), though
the old pronunciation was probably still
extensively used.3 But the sound (ee)
had other graphic representations. On
the hypothesis, which there seems much
reason for adopting, that both in Noi-
man and Early English the transposi
tion of the vowels of the digraph,
made no difference in the sound, ae, ea,
ai, ia (in one syllable), ei, ie (in one
syllable), with their variants ay, ya,
etc. would all = (ee). There is, how
ever, no adequate space here to illus
trate this position.
AU = (au) AND (aaa) OR (aaa).
As au in Latin was most probably
pronounced (au), there seems every
reason to believe that the initial and
medial au was the same in Norman.
This is confirmed by a remark of Beza's
(supra p. 143, note), who especially
distinguishes the Norman pronunciation
of au from the ordinary French, telling
us that in Normandy in 16., autant was
pronounced nearly — perinde pene acsi
scriptum esset — a-o-tant.* This pro
nunciation is also, I believe, still heard
in some parts of Normandy. The old
spellings Awwstin for Austin (supra
p. 489) fawte faute, maugre maugre,
haute haute, hawnteyne, corruption of
haultain ?, pawtenere pautoniere, etc.
seem to confirm this notion. In the
case, however, of the termination —
-aunce, found not earlier than 14., and
U LONG, TONIC = (uu). U
If the medieval Latin long u was
(uu), which is generally acknowledged,8
it is difficult to see how the Norman
long u, which often rhymed with it,
1 These are considered in Chap. VII, } I,
near the beginning.— A. J.E.
2 The evidence here, necessarily imper
fectly, adduced, does not incline me to
change the opinions heretofore expressed,
of which corroboration is afforded by an
examination of the usages in seven MSS. of
Chaucer's Prologue and Knightes Tale, in
Chap. VII. { 1. See also p. 459, n. 1.— A.J.E.
* This hypothesis seems to me incon
sistent with the general custom of the change
of pronunciation. The change of (ai) into
(ee) is common, p. 238, and could not but
have proceeded with different velocities in
different countries and parts of the same
country. — A.J.E.
* Beza, as quoted by Diez, also says p. 41,
" majores nostri — sic efferebant ut a et t,
raptim tamen et imp vocis tractu prolatam,
quomodo efferimus interjectionem mcitantis
hai, hfti, non dissyllabam, ut in participio
hui (cxosus), sed ut monosyllabam, sicut
then taking the place of a previous
-ance, there is much reason to doubt
whether the rule applies.5 The u is
evidently not organic. It seems to be
merely intended to lengthen out the
sound of the a, and thus emphasise
more strongly the accented syllable. It
is most unlikely that a sound which
had been established for ages as (aa),
should suddenly change to one so
different as (au).6 This view is con
firmed by the fact that in Anglo-Nor
man texts — it is found in no other —
ance very frequently rhymes with aunce.
The same remarks apply, mutatis mu
tandis, to such words as graunt granter,
haunt banter, commaund commander,
etc., which were most probably pro
nounced (graaant, naaant, komaaand'),7
if indeed the u was really sounded at all.
SHORT, ATONIC = (B, a, e, »').
as : la sus equinoctius, juggium con-
jugium, etc., could have been anything
else. If, however, it is objected that
these Latin terminations are not long,
Picardi interferes hodie quoque bane vocem,
aimer pronuntiant." The histories of ay,
aw are parallel. — A.J.E.
* See the quotations from Palsgrave and
Salesbury, suprk pp. 143 and 190, for the
reality of (au).— A.J.E.
6 There is no change of the vowel, merely
the insertion of a new vowel, which did not
produce a labialisation of the first element
for more than 200 years.— A.J.E.
7 This almost agrees with Bullokar's
views.— A.J.E.
8 It is no more likely that different
countries should have pronounced the Latin
« alike in the middle ages, than at present.
The French may then, as now, have called
it (yy), supra p. 246, 1. 27. It was (yy) in
England in 16. See infril p. 586, n. 5, for
remarks on the provincial character of th»
Alliterative Poems and Sir Qawayne. —
A.J.E,
MR. PAYNE ON U.
CHAP. VI. § 1.
the answer is, that they are long as
being under the accent, so that -us,
-urn, would be (-uus, -uum).1 Applying
this test to English we should treat the
w in English thus (C. T. v. 13384) and
the -us in ignotius, which rhymes with
it, as both long, and = (uus). If then
the Norman « was = (uu), as most of
the authorities allow, though some of
them speak of exceptions which they
• do not cite,2 adventure, quoted on p.
298, would have been (adventuure)
and lure, with which it rhymes, (luure),
and nature (natuure). (See nature
written natwre in Alliterative Poems,
p. 59, and salue rhyming to remwe in
Sir Gawayne, p. 47). I'here appears
indeed no proof whatever that the
French (yy) was known in 13. and
14., but there are many proofs that u
was consistently (uu).3 But as it is
generally allowed that the English
or Anglosaxon long u of those times,
with which the Norman is continually
found rhyming, was (uu), proofs are
scarcely necessary.4 The greater diffi
culty lies in proving that the short u,
or unaccented u, was not (u, «), but a
different sound, approaching, if not
identical with the obscure sound heard
in the atonic a in a man, e in the mdn,
o in to-day, and represented generally
in palaeotype by (B) or (a, e, e, i).
It is highly probable that this sound
scarcely, if at all, differed from the
atonic e of the French le in le livre, and
that, in time, it generated the proper
French eu. The development of this
doctrine is essentially connected with a
true conception of French, or, as far as
we are concerned, the Norman system
of accentuation. The Norman dialect,
— and the remark applies equally to
1 That the accent lengthens the vowel on
•which it falls, is a phonetic theory which
has been long since abandoned. See supra
p. 556, n. 1.— A.J.E.
9 But see supra p. 424, and especially the
latter part of note 3. — A.J.E.
8 That English « in 14. -was (uu) and not
(vy) seems inconsistent with the double or
thography u, ou. See supra pp. 298, 303, and
infra Chap. VII. \ 1, near the beginning.
See also p. 583. n. 8.— A.J.E.
* It seems to result from my investigations
in Chap. V. that u ceased to represent (uu)
in English during the period 1280 to 1310,
when ou was gradually introduced as the
representative of that sound. See especially
p. 471, n. 2.— I don't know to what other
•writers Mr. Payne alludes.— A.J.E.
* Direct proof would be necessary to es
tablish this remarkable difference between
the actual Norman patois, — seems to
have been characterised by an extremely
strong and emphatic delivery of the
accented syllable. The general prin
ciple of the accentuation consisted in
singling out for the tonic accent the
syllable which was accented in the
Latin original, so that, for instance,
Norman raisun from ration-em WHS ac
cented raisun, honor or honur from
honor-em honur, etc., with a very
forcible impact of the voice upon the
last syllable.5 The effect of this pre
dominant influence of the accented syl
lable would necessarily be, the trans
formation of the atonic syllables.6 We
see evidence of this result in the not
unfrequent appearance of henor, enor,
and annor in the place of honor honur.
An instance, however, perhaps bearing
more directly on our present purpose,
is afforded by the derivatives of the old
French or Norman eoer or cuer (cceur).
There is little doubt that this was
originally pronounced (kuur).7 When,
however, by the addition of -age, there
resulted cordge, curdge, and courage, all
13. forms, both the quantity and qua
lity of the original (uu) was affected,
and almost of necessity the atonic
cor, cur, cour, would become (ksr), and
the entire word (ksraadzh-B). In the
process of development cordge next
receives the syllable -os or -MS, and
becomes coragos, coragus curagos, or
curagus, all of which are admissible
Norman forms. The lately long vowel
a is now changed both in quantity and
quality, and has become (e, i, o) or
(a, v), it is not easy to say which, and
the result may be probably considered
as (kareguus1).8 Similarly it might be
shewn that curt cour = (kuurt), becomes
the old Norman system of accentuation, and
that evidently adopted by Chaucer, which
agrees with classical French, supra p. 331.
A.J.E.
6 Admitting that this obscuration of un
accented vowels often occurs, and has been
especially active in many languages, I must
deny it to be a necessity of pronunciation,
any more than the prolongation of a vowel
by the accent, witness the clear unaccented
but extremely short a, and the decidedly
short but accented o in the Italian ami
(amo-). See infra p. 585, n. 4.— A.J.E.
7 Not having sufficiently studied Norman
orthography and pronunciation I am un
able to speak on this point. — A.J.E.
• It seems to me extremely doubtful that
such a sound as (a) was known to the Nor
mans, when regard is had to its very late
introduction into England, supra p. 17-.
CHAP. VI. § 1.
MR. PAYNE ON U.
585
curte'is (ktjrtees1), and this again cur-
teisie (kartesii'tj), or perhaps, at least
occasionally, (kartesee1).1 The last
word became, as is well known, in
English curtesie, cortaysie, courtaysie,
all of them, by the above theory, being
pronounced (kartesii-e) or (kBrtesee'B),
or very nearly, accentu mutato, as the
modern courtesy, that is (kar'tes/).2
The spelling could not on this theory
have affected the pronunciation,3 which
was determined by the power of the
tonic accent obscuring and transform
ing the independent value of the atonic
syllables. It may further be observed,
that the u in the former cur, being so
close to the predominant accent, be
came positively eclipsed by it, and
would therefore be exceedingly short
and obscure, as (B) in English, while
the u in the second cur, receiving a
secondary accent, would probably have
a clear and definite sound, equal to
(kar). It is this sound which the
English derivatives would receive when
no longer under the influence of the
Norman accentuation, but subjected to
the entirely different system of the
English. Hence the Norman : jurnee,
trubler, colur, cumfort, suverain, doz-
aine, covert, custume, dobler, cur tine,
hurter, cumpainee, turnoiement, sujur-
ner, sucur, etc., when they became re
spectively : j6urney, trouble, c<5lour,c6m-
fort, s6vereign, ddzen, covert, cQstom,
double, curtain, hurt, company, tourna
ment, sojourn, sticcour, etc. would
naturally be pronounced very nearly as
they now are, or very recently were.4
In the present sound then of these
words, we see the Norman influence
still persisting.5 Exceptions may no
doubt be taken to this general assertion,
but the main principle can hardly be
affected by them. It may be further
remarked, that the continual inter
change in early English, of u, e, i, in
such instances as : werk wirk, chirche
cherche churche, kirtel kertel kurtle,
erth urthe, sunne sinne, sturn stern,
cherl churl, segge sigge sugge=sa#, in
bdthud, etc., compared with bathed,
etc., in tellus for telles, ledus and ledys
for ledes, and in such plurals asfemdlus,
sydus, coupus, (see Anturs of Arther
passim,) tends to shew that the short u
had the same sound both in Norman
and English.6 It is impossible to con
ceive that the unaccented us, which
merely stands in these instances for -es,
was pronounced (us). It must have
had the same obscure sound as the u in
curteis. When, however, this obscure
unemphatic sound is required to take
the accent, then it assumes the clear
utterance of the u in curtesie. Hence
the u in churche, urthe, sunne, sugge,
was not unfrequently found inter
changing with e and i short. The
sound then of short u seems, in
words of more than one syllable, to
depend on the principal accent, and
when atonic to be (a), and this was
also the sound in monosyllables na
turally short, as church, churl, etc. The
merits of the general theory, which I
have here attempted to expound, can,
however, hardly be fairly judged of by
this brief and imperfect representation
of it.
I do not feel satisfied that the above ac
count of the successive formations of cceur,
courage, courageux, is historically correct.
—A.J.E.
1 If this termination were ever (-ee), it
was only through the West Midland con
fusion of i, e, and rejection of final e, cer
tainly not from reading ie as ei, and calling
that (ee). It was dialectic, not literary. —
A.J.E.
* The absolute ignorance of the sound (a)
shown by all the authorities of 16., makes
me inclined to reject at once the hypothesis
that courtesy could have been called (kar--
tesi) in 14. With regard to the second syl
lable of the word, more is said in Chap.
VII. } 1, near the beginning. — A.J.E.
» Although after the invention of print
ing, spelling may have affected pronuncia
tion, in 1'2. 13. and 14. we have no reason,
to assume anything but the converse,
namely, that pronunciation affected spell
ing.— A.J.E.
* But they were not so pronounced in 16.,
as we know by direct evidence, and they
are not now so pronounced by the illiterate
in our provinces. It was only the other
day that I heard a porter at Clapham
Junction shouting out many times in suc
cession (Klap'am Dzhwq'shwn). with pure
(u) and not (a), and without any obscura
tion of the unaccented vowels. — A.J.E.
* The history of the introduction of (a)
being now on record, and the battle be
tween (a, u) being still undecided, I do not
see how this conclusion can be admitted.
—A.J.E.
6 See supra p. 299, and 300, n. 2, also p.
425, p. 507 and numerous instances in Chap.
V. \ 1, No. 3. But there seems no reason
for supposing this M to have been anything
but(y, e, »).— A.J.E.
586
MR. PAYNE ON OE, OI, UE, UI. CHAP. VI. } 1.
OE, EO (IN ONE SYLLABLE), 01, 10 (m ONE SYLLABLE), UE, ETJ, UI, IU
(IN ONE SYLLABLE), AND THH VARIANTS EOU, EOW, EOUW, EW,
IEU, IW, IEW, W, UW, EACH = (UU).
The illustrations and arguments by tritoe, or trwe, it could only have been
which the above proposition is sup
ported, are given at some length in my
paper. A brief summary, which under
states the proof, is all that can be given
here. Assuming that Norman long or
tonic u = (uu), it was ascertained l that
Norman ui, and inferred 3 that the in
verted iu, had the same sound as M
alone, that is, that «wtY = (nuut), fruit
= (fruut),3 riule = (ruul'e). These con
clusions depend on the light shed by
Norman and English on each other.4
Thus in English texts frute rhymes
with dedute, i.e. Norman deduit, and
again frut with dedwt, whence ui
— u = w = (uu). Again Norman
suir, siur to follow, becomes siw in
Layamon, suwe in Ancren Eiwle,
swe in the Alliterative Poems, and
sewe in Chaucer, shewing ew, ui, iu,
iw, «M> = (UU), and therefore sewe of
Chaucer = (suu-e).6 The argument thus
gained, applied to triw-e (Robert of
Gloucester), trewe (Chaucer), truwe
(Occleve), and treue (Audley), gives
theoretic (truu-e;, which is shewn to
be correct by trwe in Alliterative Poems,
p. 27, where due also rhymes with it,
supported by Promptorium Parvulorum
trwe.5 Thus, in addition to the digraph
above given, ue and eu also appear to
= (uu). If then the ags. treowe, which
appears as treowe and treouwe in Laya
mon' s earliest text, and as trewe in the
later, had a sound different from trewe,
1 The proof must be sought in the paper
referred to, and having not seen it, I can
only express my own doubts of its correct
ness founded upon my own small amount
of observation, see p. 458. — A.J.E
* Apparently from the theory that an
inversion of the order of the letters in a
digraph does not affect its value, which is
to me extremely doubtful.— A.J.E.
* In nuit, fruit, the f, still pronounced,
is as much a representative of the lost gut
tural, as the y in day, may. — A.J.E.
* Which I doubt.— A.J.E.
« An examination of the age and locality
of MSS. is necessary before judging of the
value of their orthography in determining
sounds. The Alliterative Poems, Sir
Gawayne, and Anturs of Arther are West
Midland, in which part of the country a
very peculiar pronunciation still prevails,
so different from the South Eastern, that
the ancient orthography of that district re
quires especial study. It is very probable
that (uu) was unknown in those districts as
a sound of it, w, but that it was always
replaced by (yy, y) or some cognate Bound.
for a short time, and it may probably
be assumed to have been the same.7
The supposition, then, that ew had one
sound in words of Norman origin, and
another in those of native growth (p.
302) is unnecessary, and indeed incon
sistent with the fact that, though it
may be true that Chaucer does not
rhyme together words in ew of different
origin, other writers do. As a case in
point we find in Alliterative Poems, p.
13, trwe English, blwe probably Nor
man, grewe preterit, remwe Norman,
and again knewe English, (which is
also found written knwe) swe Norman
due Norman, hwe English, ttntrwe Eng
lish and remwe Norman, all rhyming
together.8 We note also in this text
Chaucer's newe alwavs spelled nw or
nwe. We should, therefore, perhaps
read such rhymes as those found
in Lyrical Poetry, p. 37, viz : reowe,
newe, heowe, kneowe ; as (ruu-e, nuu-e,
Huu-e, knuu-e). Many confirmatory
instances might be cited from various
texts, but the above may suffice to^shew
the great probability that Norman and
English ue eu, ui iu, eou, etc. were in
13. and 14. = (uu), and hence that the
modern pronunciations of : rue, true,
sue, suit, rule, pursuit, bruit, fruit, and
the vulgar sound of: nuisance (nuu),
duty (duu), new (nuu), beautiful (bun),
are but echoes of that of 13. and 14.'
On Layamon see p. 496, and on the Ancren
Riwle, see p. 506. The orthography of these
works offers so many points of difficulty
that it cannot be safely appealed to for any
proofs. The whole of our Western provin
cial pronunciation has first to be studied. —
A.J.E.
8 In the last note it was conjectured that
the w of the Alliterative Poems may have
been (yy). As regards the Promptorium
the a'jth'or only knew the East Anglian pro
nunciation (supra p. 23, note 2), and to this
day the East Anglians use (yy) for (uu).
The above inference is therefore in the
highest degree hazardous. — A.J.E.
7 On treowe see p. 498, 1. 14. No Anglo-
saxon scholar would be likely to admit eo
to have had the same value as v. See p.
511.— A.J.E.
8 Probably all these rhymed as (yy), as
they still would in Devonshire. See supra
n. 5.— A.J.E.
9 This conclusion is directly opposed to
all I have been able to learn on the subject.
—A.J.E.
CHAP. VI. § 1. MR. PAYNE ON OI, IO, OE, EO.
587
01, 10 (IK ONE SYLLABLE), OE, EO = (uu) OK (ee).
It is remarkable that two sounds so
remotely allied as (uu) and (ee) should
frequently, both in Norman and Eng
lish, be used one for the other. No
thing, however, is more probable than
that oi in early French generally,
must have represented the sound (uu).
Nothing at the same time is clearer
than that in the Norman texts the
oi of Central France is very gene
rally to be read (ee). Thus the forms
moi, toi, etc., which in proper Nor
man would be mei, lei, etc., are by
no means excluded from Norman texts,
but are constantly found rhyming with
the Norman ei or ee. Thus tei rhymes
with moi, moi with/oz, voir with veer,
roi with lei, etc., and are therefore to
be pronounced (mee, veer, lee), etc.
The concurrence, however, of such
forms as : genoil genou, genoul, genue ;
acoiller, acuiller, where ui = (uu) ; agoille
aguille ; angoisse, anguisse, angusse ;
noit, nuit ; poi,pou peu ; fusoyn (rhym
ing with corbiloun in De Biblesworth,
Wright p. 158), seems to shew that oi,
MJ = (UU). This conjecture may be
further confirmed by assuming oi=oe,
and observing that oile oil of 12. be
comes oele and uille in 13., and liuile
in 15., while buef, boef are bouf=
(buuf) in De Biblesworth. This word
he rhymes with ouf ceuf, of which the
variants were oef, uef. Again boe,
moe, roe of 13., become later boue, moue,
roue. But eo also = (uu), as is seen in
the numerous words of the form em-
pereor, etc., which became emperour,
etc. The most difficult case is that of
t0=0t = (uu). It is proved, however,
by the formation of such words as
mansion, which became by the loss of
the n and fusion of to into u, maisun.
Raisun may be explained in the same
way, as may also mayun mason, from
low Latin macio. The word in its
Normanised form machun occurs in
Layamon, and is erroneously translated
machine by Sir F. Madden. These
views respecting Norman oi io, oe eo =
(uu), are singularly confirmed by Eng
lish examples of adopted Norman words.
Mr. Ellis's inferences (p. 269) I should
generally endorse, except that, as before
1 In this further investigation respect
•would have to he paid to the principle of
palatalization produced hy an inserted i,
familiar to those who have studied phonetic
laws, and well illustrated by Prof. Halde-
stated, I should pronounce boiste, for
which buiste is also found (buust'e) not
(buist'e), and perhaps Loi, coy, and boy
(Luu, kuu, buu). Merour mirror of
Chaucer, is directly taken from Norman
mireor. It occurs as myroure in Po
litical Songs, Wright, p. 213. Norman
poeste also appears constantly in English
as pouste. The case of io = (uu) is not
considered by Mr. Ellis. It is, how
ever, rendered more than probable by
our word warrior written werroure by
Capgrave, and referable to Norman
guerreur, which by analogy =guerrour.
Analysing the ou = (uu) into oi = io, we
obtain the modern English warrior.
Similarly we may trace carrion to Nor
man caroine. So the word riot, con-
jecturally referred by the editor of
Ancren Eiwle to route, may be really a
variant of that word. It must be
remembered, however, that the English
riot came directly from Norman riote,
and the variation, if variation it be,
must have belonged to the original
source. Diez, Menage, Scheler and
Burguy virtually give up the ety
mology altogether. It is only probable
then, but not proved, that Normaii
caroine and English carrion, might
have been (karuune), and that riot
might have been sometimes (ruut).
The subject requires further investi
gation.1 The fluctuations of Norman
orthography suggested the enquiry that
has been sketched, but the results lead
us on still further, and render it pro
bable that eo, oe, etc., when found in
pure English words, had also the
sound (uu). Heo she, therefore, with
the variants hu and hue, was probably
(HUU), as it still is in Lancashire.
Heore their, too, and huere, interpret
each other, and so do, duere and deor,
beoth and bueth, beon and buen, preost
and pruest, glew and gleo. We infer,
then, that in Layamon's beorn warrior,
cheose, leode, leof, lease the eo = (\m).
The subsequent forms burn (Piers Plow
man), choose, luve, loose, etc., and the
contemporary form lued for lead, (Pol.
Songs, p. 155), render this hypothesis
very strong, while such forms as goed
good, compared with goud (Layamon,)
man, in his article on Glottosis Analytic
Orthography, pp. 67-71. So far as I can
understand them, I entirely dissent from
the views expressed in the text.— A.J.E.
588
EXPRESSION OF SOUNDS.
CHAP. VI. § 2.
toen town, proeve Norman preove Eng
lish, doel and deal sorrow, shew that oe as
well as eo = (uu) . The great difficulty in
assigning the phonetic values of oi, eo,
oe arises from the undoubted fact that
they were represented both by (uu) and
by (ee).1 Thus we find that nearly
all the Norman and English words
cited above appear to have both sounds.
Thus heo appears as he, heore huere as
here, dear duere as dere, beoth bueth as
beth, beon btten as ben, preost pruest as
prest, cheose as chese, lease as Use, etc.,2
also proeve preove as preve,3 caroine as
careyne carayne, puple, pueple, people
as peple, etc. This divarication in
the case of Norman words, was more
apparent than real, since the usual
Norman sound of oi was (ee). Yet
the numerous examples of oi also =
(uu), as for instance in the normal
termination of the third person sin
gular of the imperfect tense of the
first conjugation, which was -out = (uut),
while in the other conjugations it was
-eit = (-eet), render the determination of
the law of divergence very difficult.
This law, however, must apparently
have equally dictated the interchange
of the sounds as well in English as in
Norman, and this fact is only one proof
more of the remarkable correspondence
(in spite of all orthographic variations)
between the phonetic systems of the
two languages, and illustrates the ge
neral position that the Norman and
English pronunciations respectively
help to determine each other.*
| 2. The Expression of the Sounds.
The list in the last section suggests its counterpart, how
have the sounds of the English language been expressed by
letters at different times ? Up till the invention of printing
at least, the object of writers seems to have been to represent
their pronunciation, and the possibility of using the same
symbols with altered values does not appear to have occurred
to them, although each sound was not uniformly represented
by the same sign, and some signs had more than one value.8
It is also not at all improbable that very provincial writers
may have been accustomed to attach values to the letters
corresponding to their local pronunciations, and have then
used them consistently according to their lights. From
these causes arose the occasional picturesqueness of scribal
orthography, which was unchecked by any acknowledged
1 My own indicated explanation of the
phenomena to which Mr. Payne refers are
to be found on p. 269, and 131, note, col. 1,
p. 138, note col. 1. The question seems to
be one affecting the treatment of Latin e, o,
in the Romance languages. — A..1-K.
* These anomalies, occurring in MSS. not
expressly named, seem readily explicable
by the known interchanges of eo, e, p. 488,
and of u, e, supra p. 585, n. 6.— A.J.E.
» Oe, eo are so rare in Chaucer, see p. 262,
1. 33, that I have not been able to judge of
their origin or intentional use as distinct
from (ee). But we must not forget the two
modern forms reprove, reprieve. — A.J.E.
* The Norman was an old Norse phonetic
system modifying the langue d'oil, so that
the latter had the main share in the result.
The English was a pure Anglosaxon system,
slightly modified by an old Morse element.
There seems to be no connection between
the two systems of sound. The orthogra
phies were both derived from the Latin,
but the Norman spelling came direct from
Roman sources, and the Anglosaxon was
only a priestly transcription of the pre-
existent runic. The whole application of
the orthographies was therefore diverse.
The Norman accidentally came into collision
with the English, but the developments
seem to have proceeded independently, and
the share of Norman in 13. English was
scarcely more than that of English in 13.
Norman. Ultimately the whole character
of our language, both in idiom and sound, be
came English, and Norman words were ruth
lessly anglicised. Hence, I am not inclined
to admit Mr. Payne's conclusion. — A.J.E.
* See the table on p. 407, where in col.
2, " (ou) o oo oa" is a, misprint for " (oo)
O 00 00."
CHAP. VI. § 2. EXPRESSION OF SOUNDS. 589
authority. At the present day we have nothing to guide
us but the usage of printing offices, on which (and not
on the manuscripts of authors) our orthographical laws and
the pages of our dictionaries are founded. The most in
geniously contradictory reasons are given for preferring one
spelling to another. Sometimes a man with a name, as
Johnson in England and Webster in America, proclaims his
own views and is considerably followed, but Johnson's favourite
-ick as in mttsick has disappeared, and no Englishman likes
to see the American orthography.1 During the last fifty
years a habit of eye has been generated, and spelling has
been dissociated in our minds from the expression of sound.
But even in the xvth century this was not the case in
England, although the disappearance of final e from pro
nunciation introduced more and more confusion as the
century advanced, and the original value of the e was less un
derstood. When printing commenced, there was a necessity
for printers to introduce some degree of uniformity, and, as I
have had personal experience of the difficulties thus created,3
I can well understand the slowness with which even toler
able uniformity was attained. It took fully two, if not
three, centuries to reach the present system. During this
time several experiments were made, among which I do not
reckon schemes for an entire renovation of our orthography,
as proposed by Smith, Hart, Bullokar, Gill, and Butler, in
the first century and a half after Caxton set up his press.
The last great change was made in the xvi th century, when
the orthographies ee ea, oo oa, were settled (pp. 77, 96),
how, and by whom, I have not yet discovered. The intro
duction of ie, in place of ee, was not of the same nature, and
did not take root till the xvnth century (p. 104). In the
course of that century many little changes were tried, but
the gradual loss of the feeling for the meaning of ea, and its
perversion in the early part of the xviu th century (p. 88),
undid most of the good effected in the xvi th century. No
1 Since the publication of the Die- suivies d'une histoire de la refonne or-
tionary of the French Academy, it has thographique depuis le XVe siecle
become the sole rule in France, or jusqu1 a nos jours, 2nd ed. Paris, 1868,
rather each of its six editions of 1694, 8vo. pp. 485.
1718, 1740, 1762, 1795, 1835, has be
come the rule till certain points were 2 In 1848-9 I conducted a phonetic
reconsidered and changed in subsequent printing office with a view of trying
editions. " Le Dictionnaire de 1'Aca- the experiment of a phonetic ortho-
demie est done la seule loi," says the graphy, and I had to drill compositors
most competent authority in France, of all kinds of pronunciation to a unt
il. Ambroise Firmin Didot, in his ex- form system of spelling, in order that
tremely interesting Observations sur all my books, and all parts of mj
1'Orthographe ou Ortografie franchise, books, should be consistent.
590
EXPRESSION OF SOUNDS.
CHAP. VI. § 2.
great change was effected by Johnson over Dyche and
Buchanan, but he became a name, and a refuge for the
printer's reader. We have not yet settled how to write
between two and three thousand of the words in our lan
guage,1 although it must be confessed that we do not find
1 E. Jones, The common sense of
English Orthography, a guide to the
Spelling of doubtful and difficult words,
for the use of printers, authors, ex
aminers, teachers, and students gene
rally, 1867. It may be observed that
he puts printers first. He lays down
as " the principles of English ortho
graphy," first, "the law of abbrevia
tion or contraction," illustrated by
music, blest, things, inferior, baking,
entrance, wilful, fetter, for musick,
blessed, thynges, inferiour, bdkeing, en-
terance (?), willfull, feetter (?), second
" preference for, or aversion to, certain
letters illustrated by the disuse of y in
middle, and use of it at the end of
words." The statement that "the
desire to produce an agreeable succes
sion of sounds, or euphony, is also an
important principle in the spelling of
words," is unintelligible in an ortho
graphy which does not regulate the
sound. He classifies the doubtful
words thus : 1 . honor, honour (30
words) ; 2. movable, moveable (Johnson
inconsistent) ; 3. civilise, civilize ; 4.
traveler, traveling, traveled, traveller,
travelling, travelled ; 5. enrol, enroll ;
6. pressed, dressed, prest, drest; 7.
mediaeval, medieval ; 8. monies, mo
neys ; 9. hinderance, hindrance ; 10.
alcali, alkali; 11. Frederic, Frederick;
12. connection, connexion; a license,
to license, advice, advise ; 14. centre,
center ; 15. bark, barque ; 16. tong in
xvi th century, tongue; 17. controul,
control. And he then proceeds to give
rules for spelling in these doubtful
cases. His arguments do not merely
affect the words he cites, but large
numbers of others which he does not
presume to alter, because they are not
considered doubtful. This is the most
recent attempt at giving "principles"
to regulate our orthography. The
reader will find a Ilepovi on this work
by Mr. Ilussell Martineau, in the
Transactions of the Philological Society
for 1867, Part II., pp. 316-325. M.
Didot, in the work cited on p. 589, n.
2, in anticipation of a revision of
French orthography in a contemplated
new edition of the dictionary of the
Academy, says : "L" usage si frequent
quej'aidu faire, et que j'ai vu faire
sous mes yeux, dans ma longue carriere
typographique, du Dictionnaire de 1'
Academic, m'a permis d' apprecier
quels sont les points qui peuvent offrir
le plus de difficultes. J'ai cru de mon
devoir de les signaler. L' Academic
rendrait done un grand service, aussi
bien au public lettre qu' a la multitude
et aux etrangers, en continuant en 1868
1'ceuvre si hardiment commencee par
elle en 1740, et qu'elle a poursuivie
en 1762 et en 1835. II suffirait,
d'apres le meme systeme et dans les
proportions que 1' Academic jugera con-
venables : 1° De regulariser 1'ortho-
graphe e tymologique de la lettre Xi c^ >
et de substituer aux 0, th, et <f>, ph, nos
lettres franchises dans les mots les plus
usuels; d'oter 1' h a quelques mots od
il est reste pour figurer 1'esprit rude (*);
2° De supprimer, conformement a ses
precedents, quelques lettres doubles qui
ne se prononcent pas ; 3° De simpli-
fier 1'orthographe des noms composes,
en les re"unissant le plus possible en un
seul mot ; 4° De regulariser la desi
nence orthographique des mots ter-
mines en ant et ent ; 5° DC distinguer,
par une legere modification (la cedille
placee sous le <), des mots termines en
tie et tion, qui se prononcent tantot
avec le son du t et tantot avec le son
de \'s ; 6° De remplacer, dans certains
mots, Vy par 1' i ; T De donner une
application speciale aux deux formes
g et ff au cas ou le j, dont le son est
celui du g doux, ne serait pas preferable;
8° De substituer 1's a \'x, comme
marque du pluriel a certains mots,
comme elle 1'a fait pour lois, au lieu de
loix (lex, la loi, leges, les lois). Parmi
ces principales modifications generale-
ment reclamees, 1' Academic adopters
celles qu'elle jugera le plus importantes
et le plus opportunes. Quant a celles
qu'elle croira devoir ajourner, il suffi-
rait, ainsi qu'elle 1'a fait quelquefois
dans la sixieme edition, et conforme
ment a 1'avis de ses Cahiers de 1694,
d'ouvrir la voie a leur adoption future
CHAP. VI. § 2.
EXPRESSION OF SOUNDS.
591
much inconvenience from the uncertainty, and most writers
select the spelling which their hand takes from habit with
out consideration, and do not call the compositor to order
if he alters it in print. And compositors, with their
authorized superiors, the printers' readers, have habits of
their own as to spelling and punctuation, regarding their
author's MS. as an orthographical exercise which it is their
business to correct ; so that, except in extremely rare cases
where the author is opinionated and insists on the com
positor " following copy," 1 no printed book represents the
orthography and punctuation of the man of education
who writes, but only of the man of routine who prints.3
as I know, I am fully convinced that
it is largely of printing office origin."
As this sheet was passing through
the press my attention was directed to
the following letter from the Mr. Jones,
mentioned p. 590, n. 1, in the Athe-
nceum, 10 July 1869, in which he
seems to be endeavouring to give effect
to his views by means of an association.
The "Fonetic Nuz " Spelling alluded
to, is that employed by the present
writer in the Phonetic News in 1849 :
" Spelling Reform. — Perhaps you will
allow me a short space to lay before
your readers a brief statement of the
objects of the Spelling Reform Asso
ciation. The very mention of ' Spelling
Reform ' suggests to most people some
thing like the 'Fonetic Nuz' system,
which has been the subject of so much
ridicule. Permit me then to say, with
out expressing any opinion upon the
phonetic method, that the Spelling
Reform Association does not propose to
introduce that mode of Spelling the
English language, but that our recom
mendations are based upon the follow
ing assumptions, which most persons
will readily admit : — 1. No one would
desire to stereotype and hand down to
posterity our orthography in its pre
sent state ; but there is a vague
notion that at some time and by some
means the thing will be rectified. 2.
England is about the only country in
Europe in which the orthography has
not been, in some way or other, ad
justed ; and orthography is one of the
very few subjects in England which
have not been adapted to modern re
quirements. 3. The anomalies of the
orthography cause serious obstruction
to the education of the people, most
of the time in Government schools
au moyen de la formule : Quelques-uns
ecrivent . . . : ou en se servant de
cette autre locution : On pourrait
dcrire .... Par cette simple in
dication, chacun ne se croirait pas irre-
vocablement enchaine, et pourrait ten
ter quelques modifications dans 1'ecri-
ture et dans 1' impression des livres," p.
23. This is the latest French view of
the question.
1 And then the compositor can
easily take his revenge, and disgust his
author, by copying all the careless
blunders which haste and the habit of
leaving such matters to the printer
have engendered in our writers. The
literal exhibition of the greater part of
" the copy for press," and still more of
the correspondence, of even esteemed
men of letters, would show that our
present orthography, including the use
of capitals and punctuation, is by no
means so settled as printed books, and
the stress laid upon " correct" spelling
in Civil Service Examinations, would
lead us to suppose.
2 Some months after this paragraph
was written, I received a letter from
Prof. F. J. Child, of Harvard, in
which he says : " I wish you may make
the Philological Society take some
tenable ground as to orthography in
their dictionary. Nothing can be
more absurd than the veneration felt
and paid to the actual spelling of Eng
lish, as if it had been shaped by the
national mind, and were not really im
posed upon us by the foremen of some
printing offices. In America all books
printed in New York exhibit Webster's
spelling, and most books printed at
Cambridge (a great place for printers),
Worcester's. Although we cannot
trace the English spelling-book, so far
592
EXPRESSION OF SOUNDS.
CHAP. VI. § 2.
Still there is a latent spark of that fire which warmed the
original writers of our own manuscripts, and there is a
notion that certain combinations have an inherent tendency to
represent certain sounds, and conversely that certain sounds
are naturally represented by certain combinations. The last
section will have shown with what allowances the first state
ment must be received in the xix th century ; the following
table will show how varied are the combinations which have
been and are employed to represent the sounds.
In drawing up the list of sounds represented, it was
necessary to include all the sounds which, so far as the
preceding investigation shews, previously existed in our
language, and those which recent and minute examination
establishes to exist at present, including those newly in
troduced French words which are spoken in a semi-French
pronunciation. The following list is an extract from the
completer list of spoken sounds in the introduction, and for
convenience is arranged in the same order. The same
abbreviations are used as in the last section.
being occupied in teaching reading and
spelling — with arithmetic — with miser
able results, as to the proportion of
children turned out of these schools
having the ability to read with intelli
gence and to spell correctly. 4. The
various examinations conducted by the
Government, the Universities, and other
examining bodies, give a fictitious value,
and virtually give the sanction of their
approval, to a system which has no
claim whatever to be regarded as ' the
best method of spelling words,' a sys
tem which has been described by high
authority as ' an accidental custom, a
mass of anomalies, the growth of ig
norance and chance, equally repugnant
to good taste and to common sense.'
6. A simplification of the orthography
would do more to give the people the
ability to read with intelligence and to
spell correctly than any amount of
Government grants or any legislation
whatever. 6. No individual or society
under present circumstances would
have sufficient influence to introduce an
improved system of orthography ; if
done at all, it must be by the co-opera
tion of literary men. teachers, examin
ers, printers, and the public generally.
7. It is possible, by observing analogy
and following precedent, without in
troducing any new letters or applying
any new principle, to simplify the or
thography so as to reduce the difficul
ties to a minimun, and to replace con
fusion and caprice by order and symme
try. The Spelling Keform Association
invite the co-operation of all literary
men and friends of education in this
desirable object. E. JONES, Hon. Sec."
The opinions entertained by the pre
sent writer on the subject thus broached
by Prof. Child, and Mr. Jones, will
be developed in the subsequent sections
of this chapter, and the same remarks
apply mutatis mutandis to M. Didot's
French proposals. It will there ap
pear that I do not see how any " tenable
ground" can be taken by the Philo
logical Society " as to the orthography
of their dictionary," beyond the accident
of present custom in London. Much
might be said on Mr. Jones's sevea
points, which he believes "most per
sons will readily admit." Why our
present orthography should be con
sidered so much less worthy to be
handed down to posterity than one
modified on Mr. Jones's "principles,"
and how any such modificadons would
render its use beneficial in schools to
the extent anticipated, I am at a loss
to conceive. To Mr. Jones's seventh
proposition, if I understand it aright,
my own orthographic studies lead me
to give an unqualified denial.
CHA-. VI. $ 2. EXPRESSION OF SOUNDS. (A—
593
CHRONOLOGICAL ACCOUNT OF THE EXPRESSION OF SOUNDS IN ENGLISH
WRITING.
(A a), was always represented by a
from 13. to 19., the sound went out
in 17., and now only exists in rather
a rare pronunciation of: ask, staff,
command, pass, and similar words,
and is considered to exist in : star,
card, by those who believe the vowel
short ; it is common in the provinces
in place (ae).
(A a), was probably the ags. sound
written a, possibly the sound meant
by oa in 13. ; it is now lost in Eng
lish, but is heard in Scotch.
(:A A), according to "Wallis, etc., the
sound into which short o fell in 17.
when " fall folly, call collar, lawes
losse, cause cost, aw'd odd, saw'd
sod," were considered as perfect
pairs. In 19. this short o is (o).
The distinction is delicate, but may
be rendered appreciable by drawling
odd into (oad) which will be found to
be different from awed (AAd), or by
shortening the vowel in the latter
word, producing (Ad) which is dif
ferent from odd (od). In 19. a after
a (w) sound, as what, watch, squash,
(whAt, wAtch, skwAsh), is the sole
representative of this sound, and
even here most speakers use (o).
(Aa aa) was represented by a always
in 13., and by a in open, and fre
quently by aa in closed syllables in
14. In 16. it was still written a
without any indication that the syl
lable was long, except by an occa
sional mute final e. The sound was
lost in 17-, except perhaps before r,
so that ar, er in tar, clerk, may have
represented (aar), though they were
acknowledged, and perhaps most fre-
Juently pronounced, as (aer) only,
n 19. the indication of length and
quality is variously made according
to the origin of the word in : father,
me (but not in bare, fare, etc.),
seraylio, ah, alms, Maftnesbury, eclat,
aunt, b^rqwe, clerk, heart, guard, but
its principal indication is a before
r = (i) professedly, but intended to be
omitted by those persons who write
larf to indicate (laaf). In London
ar, when not followed by a vowel,
may be regarded as the regular sign
for (aa), and is so used by many
writers. The ah ! of the exclama
tion is, however, nearly as certain,
and does not involve the r difficulty.
(Aa aa], this appears to have been the
long a of ags. It has since disap
peared from acknowledged sounds.
It is, no doubt, heard in the pro
vinces, and it is by some recognized
as the common London sound meant
for (aa), which see.
(:AA AA), unknown previously to 17.,
and then represented by au, aw,
augh, ouah ; these sounds and nota
tions still prevail. It replaced the
sound of (au), and hence was repre
sented by a before I, as now ; or by
at, with a mute I. It was identified
with the German a, and is often
called " German « " in pronouncing
dictionaries ; it was also identified
with French <2, and Miege could
not hear the difference. See Eron-
dell's remarks supra p. 226, n., col. 2.
In 17. oa represented it in broad. The
following may be considered as its
representatives in 19. : fall, aam.
Magdalen College (MAAd'len), ma/*l-
stick, wa£k, barman, liaul, Mawde,
naughty, Naughan, auln, awful,
awe, broad, so/der (spelled sawder
in Sam Slicfy, ought. The com
bination or is theoretically (01),
e-actically (AAI), or (AA) ; so that
ickens, in Pickwick, writes Smorl
Tork as a name to indicate small
talk. See supra, p. 575, under o.
Hence, extraordinary, Georgic,
George, fork, horse, may be reckoned
as other examples, even by those
who do not include the r in the
combination.
(Aah aah). This delicate sound pro
bably formed the transition from
(aa) to (3333) in 17., and it is occa
sionally heard from "refined"
speakers, as a variety of (aa), which
they consider too " broad, while
(aeae) used by others is too " minc
ing." It is a mere variety of (aa),
and is represented in the same way.
(JE ae) was probably the short ags. SB,
but in ags. it rapidly became con
fused with (E, e), and was then
lost. It reappears in 17. as a sub
stitute for (a), and was represented
by a and the same varieties as that
sound. So it has remained, but by
omitting letters, and reducing many
(aa), and even other sounds, to this
favourite short vowel, it is seen va
riously represented in 19., as: sat,
594
EXPRESSION OF SOUNDS. (&<&— D). CHAP. VI. § 2.
Isaac, Maekay, drachm, have, always
(naav) down to 16., bagnio (baen-jo),
Taffhmon (Tfjonvtm), plat'd, salmon,
harangue, ClapAam, considered as
(Klaep-aem), but really (Kla3p-Bm),
Tollemache (Tael-maesh), piqwont.
In 17. one, once were (wsen, wsens).
It is in 19. also used by very delicate
speakers, especially educated ladies
in Yorkshire, in such words as :
basket, staff, path, pass, awnt, in
which (ah, a) and (aeae, aah, aa) are
also heard. This vowel is now cha
racteristic of English, and is the
despair of foreigners.
(JEse seae). The long (sese) replaced
(aa) in 17 , and was represented in
all the ways in which (aa) had been
previously pronounced. No change
was acknowledged. The sound ra
pidly died out into the (ee) of 18.,
but it is now preserved in the "West
of England, where (Bicseth, kseseid)
are pronounced for Bath, cord. It
is the name of the letter A in Ire
land. Twenty years ago it was, and
probably still is, a fashionable long
sound of A in Copenhagen. It is
sometimes heard in 19., especially
from ladies, as a thinner utterance
of (aa) than (aah) would be.
(JEu ecu). See (eu).
(Ah ah). This thin sound is seldom
heard in 19., except in the pronun
ciation of delicate speakers, in such
words as : basket, staff, path, pass,
flwnt, and, as Mr. M. Bell believes,
for the unaccented a in amount,
canary, idea, and rapidly pronounced
and. It is also the first element in
the diphthongs : high, how, as pro
nounced by some (Hahi, nahu) in
place of (nai, H9u). It may have
been the transition sound between (a)
of 16., and (ee) of 17. It has the
same representatives as (aa, a), gene
rally a, sometimes au.
(Ahi ahi). See (ai, ai).
(Ahu ahu). See (au, au).
(Ai ai), if this diphthong occurred at
all in ags. it was represented by aj,
and seems to be the ajj of Orrmin.
In 13. it was written ei, ey, ai, ay, and
this representation continued, per
haps, through 16. After 16. the
sound seems to have disappeared,
but probably remained in a few
words, and in 19. it is generally
heard in the affirmative ay, or aye,
and from many clergymen in Isaiah.
In the provinces it is a common
pronunciation of long i. Mr. M.
Bell considers that sound, however,
and the German pronunciation of
ei, ai, to be («ri), and (ai) to be the
general sound of English long i ; in
that case (ai) would then have the
expressions given below for (ai).
(AA aA), this French sound has only
recently been introduced into Eng
lish, but is firmly established in aide-
de-camp (ee di kaA), the last word
being called (kAAq, koq, kaemp) by
different orthoepists, but (kAq, koq)
would not be endured, and (kon) is
more often said. In ewvirons (aA1-
viroA, envaii-ronz), an envelope
(aA'vilup, en-velap), custom varies.
For ennui the pronunciation (aAwii'J,
or (onwii), is common, (oqwir) is
passe, the old form was annoy, =
(anui-). Perhaps it would be more
correctly written (AA) as pronounced
by Englishmen, the labialisation
being disclaimed by Frenchmen.
(Au au), in Orrmin aww, in 14. to 16.
au, aw. This sound was lost in 17.
and has not been recovered, though
some declaimers still say (aul) for (AA!)
all. Heard in the provinces. It is
the German sound of au. Mr. M.
Bell, however, considering this last
to be (au), and believes (au) to be the
usual sound here assumed to be (au),
in which case it would really exist
in the language, and be expressed as
(au) is stated to be below.
(B b), always expressed by b, or bb.
The mute final e, and assimilated
letters, have produced the 19. va
rieties : be, ebb, ebbed, habe, Cock-
burn (Koo'bin), Ho/6orn, cupboard
(this was also in 17.), hautboy (HOO--
boi). In 17. Jones finds deputy,
cupid, etc., pronounced with (b).
(Bh bh). It is doubtful whether this
sound was ever known in England,
but Dr. Rapp considers it was ags.
w. It is possible that the southern
(London and Kent) tendency to con
vert (v} into (w) may arise from
some original mispronunciation of v
as (bh) . The sound is not only not
acknowledged, but is rarely under
stood by Englishmen. Even in parts
of North Germany (bh) has been re
placed by (v). See the description
of the sound, p. 513, note 2.
(D d), always expressed by d, dd. The
mute final e, and assimilated letters,
together with foreign words, have
produced the 19. varieties : Wellium,
CHAP. VI. § 2. EXPRESSION OF SOUNDS. (Dh— E).
595
deep, add, Buddhist, trade, Wyno*-
Aam, loved, would, burden, usually
burafen. In 17. they had: souldier,
•would, etc., burthen, murder, etc.
(Dh dh), this sound must have existed
in ags., but it is not possible to say
whether )>, or ft, was meant for it.
In Icelandic )> is (th), and ft (dh),
but they must have been confused in
ags. at an early period. See supra
p. 515, p. 541, n. 2, p. 555, n. 1,
col. 2. Even Orrmin does not dis
tinguish them. When th was intro
duced it was used indiscriminately
for (th, dh). The 19. sign is still
th, though there seems to be a feeling
that e final will ensure the sound
(dh), as brea<A, \>reathe (breth,
briidh). Some literary men write
dth to indicate the sound.
(Dj dj), an unacknowledged English
sound, common in speech in 19., and
represented by d before w, as : ver
dure = (vrdjta), when the speaker
wishes to avoid (vi'dzhi). It is pa
latalised (d), a transition sound be
tween (d) and (dzh), and is distinct
from (dj). Vulgar speakers do not
change would you ? into (wwdzh-j),
but into (wwdj-e). Some even say
(Dwdw). See (dw;).
(Dw Aw] is perhaps the true sound
heard in : dwell, dwarf, generally ac
cepted as (dw), with doubts as to
whether it is not (du). It seems to
be an unacknowledged lip modifica
tion of (d), so that (d) and (w) are
heard simultaneously, rather than
consecutively, the lips being rounded
as for (w), while the tongue is raised
for (d), and the separation of the lips
and of the tongue from the palate
taking place at the same time to
admit the passage of the vowel.
How long this sound has existed as
distinct from (dw, du) cannot be
said.
(Dzh dzh), does not seem to have oc
curred before 13., and arose first
from palatisation of final (g) in ags.,
which, after short accented vowels
in closed syllables, passed through
the form (</), rather than (^h), and
hence generated (dzh) in place of (j),
as : edge, hedge, ledge, fledge, com
pare ags. ecg, hege hseg, lecgan,
flycge ; and, secondly, from the
French i consonant, and g before e, i,
which there is good reason to sup
pose was pronounced at one time as
(dzh), and which is said to be (dz)
in present Provencal, by a writer
who confuses the Spanish ch, which
is (tsh), with (ts), (Mireio, Mireille,
poeme provenc.al de Frederic Mistral,
avec la traduction litterale en re
gard, 8vo., 1868, p. vii). Hence it
is expressed by i consonant, g, gg,
dg. Subsequently only j, g, dg
(the latter before e generally) were
used, but not consistently. In 19.
we have : Greenwich, soldier, which
was also heard in 17., with omitted
I, as (soo'dzher, sAdzh-er), juo*^-
ment, ridge, Wednesbury (Wedzlr-
beri), gem, college, Belling Aam
(BeHndzhBm), /ust.
(E e), this, or (E) was the ags. short
e, and has prevailed in one form or
the other to this day. I am myself
in the habit of saying (e), but this ap
pears too delicate to Mr. Melville
Bell, who prefers (E), which is
the Scotch sound, and is in Scot
land by many English people con
fused with (se), see p. 271. It was
occasionally expressed by u from 13.
to 16. Being an exceedingly com
mon sound, it easily absorbed related
sounds, and hence even in 17. had
numerous forms of expression, the
only normal form both then and
now being e, but ea was very common
in 17. as in 18. and 19., and ai in
17. in unaccented syllables as cap
tain, now (kaep-tyn), nearly (keep-ten)
or (kaep-tm). Before r it seems to
have been the refuge of other sounds,
which however may be more pro
perly (B). The following are 19,
varieties : many, Pontefract (Ponr-
fret), Ptpstum, Michael, Thames,
said, Abergavenny [(JEbugent) writ
ten Aburgany in the Shakspere folio
1623, Hen. vm. i, 1, speech 49, where
it must be in four syllables for the
metre ; this is not the Welsh pro
nunciation, but is common in Eng
land,] says, let, head, debt, Wednes
day, allege, foreAead, heifer, Leicester,
leopard, cheque, rendezvous, rhetoric,
friend, conscience, foetid, connoisseur,
b«ry, guess, panegyric, [this pro
nunciation is going out, as also that
in spirit, syrrup, stirrup], gunwale,
Thomas's ( Tom-Bsez). If the sound
is admitted in the syllable (ei) for
(i) then we might add : sabre, virtue,
Bn'dlington, sapphire, bettor, Ur-
qw/iart, answer. Most of these ex
pressions are highly exceptional, and
596
EXPRESSION OF SOUNDS. (E— ga
CHAP. VI. § 2.
arise partly from assimilations and
omissions, and partly from inser
tions. Still the spelling has re
mained and has to be separately
memorized by those who would use
it, as no rule can be assigned.
(E e). It is impossible to say whether
this sound occurred in ags. or old
English as distinct from (e). Whe
ther the final unaccented e of 13. and
14. had the sound of (e) or (e), or
whether it was not rather (v), is also
impossible to determine. In 19. the
sound only occurs as short and un
accented, in some words, as aerial,
aorta (eeriel, eoj'ta), for which some
would read (aim-tali). It is the
French 4.
(:E E). This is a variety of (e) and in
the pronunciation of some persons
uniformly replaces it, and has been
therefore always expressed as (e) was,
wherever it occurred. See (e).
(g; a). This sound does not appear in
English till the middle of 17. It
is not named by Butler, 1631. It
is distinctly recognised by Wallis,
1653, and Wilkins, 1668, and all
subsequent writers. It replaced (u)
and was expressed as (u) had been by
u, o and occasionally ott, and these
have remained its principal forms
to 19., but numerous degradations
have occurred especially in unac
cented syllables, where, however,
stricter analysis seems to shew that
the sound is now rather (e). Thus
we have the 19. varieties : riband,
meerschawm, escutcheon, humble,
motion, consctows, son, does, love, tor
toise, Lincoln, flood, dowble, tongw«,
bellows, twoppence (in 17 ), — and if
we consider that (.1) is properly (ai)
we have this vowel in : amate«r,
cupboard, avotrdupoise, colonel,
liqueur, liqwor. Mr. M. Bell uses
(a) for (e).
(3" ')• This French sound should of
course be used in those French words
containing it, which are used in
English, but it is always replaced
by the familiar (9, .1).
(ft B). This faintly-characterised vowel
is recognized by Mr. Melville Bell
as the real sound in unaccented syl
lables, where 19. orthoepists usually
assume (9, a) to exist, before n, I, r,
and «, as: motion ocean, principal,
Tartar, facetww*. It is therefore
expressed by any combination de
noting unaccented (9, ae).
(Ee ee.) In earlier English down to
18. we cannot distinguish (ee, ee).
In ags. it seems to have been re
presented only by e or £ In 13. it
was also represented by ce, and oc
casionally by ea, eo, at least, these
forms all interchange with e. In 14.
eo was almost quite dropped (though
both eo, oe are occasionally found),
and ea was very sparingly used, but
ee was common, especially in closed
syllables. In 16. the practice was
introduced of representing (ee) by
e, ea only, to the exclusion of ee.
During 17. ai, ay, ei, ey were used
as well as e, ea, but the two latter
forms were less and less used as (ee),
till they became exceptional expres
sions in 18. and 19. In the middle
of 18. the usual forms were a (with
any addition which shewed prolon
gation, as a final mute e), ai, ay,
occasionally ea, and ei, ey, but the
two last forms were rapidly going
out, and at the end of 18. and be
ginning of 19. few remained. In
19., if not earlier, (ee) was separated
from (ee}, and the sound of (ee) was
only used before r (i), but it was ex
pressed by all the same forms as (ee).
This limitation of the sound of (ee)
reduces the number of its forms in
19. where we find: Aaron., mare,
aerie, air, 4yr, mayor, pear, ere, e'er,
their, eyre, heir. See (ee).
(Ee ee). This sound was not consciously
separated from (ee) till the end of
18. or till 19. Even now many
Persons do not perceive the difference
w, ee), or if they do hear the sounds
they analyse them as (eei, ee). In
some parts of England (ee) alone is
said, in the South many people can
not pronounce (ee) before any letter
but (j), and cannot prolong (ee)
without dropping into (i), thus (eei).
Some assert that (ee) is never pro
nounced, but only (eei), with which
they would write the words : mate,
champagne, da/ilia, pain, campaign,
etraiffAt, trait, halfpenny, often
(naa-peni) in the North, gaol, Cars-
hiillon (kees'HAAt'n), gauge, plagtw,
play, great, eh ! veil, reign, vreigh,
they, eyot.
(39 99). Never a recognized sound,
but one from which (11) is with
difficulty distinguished. It is there
fore heard in place of (91, ei), or
rather (xi, a.i), by the representatives
of which it is always expressed.
CHAP. VI. § 2. EXPRESSION OF SOUNDS. (Eei— F).
597
(Eei eei.) In 16. Gill acknowledges
(eei) and frequently writes it in the
word they (dheei). It probably ex
isted in 17., as it is partially ac
knowledged by Cooper. If so it was
written ei, ey, at, ay. Most probably
its use increased in 18., but there is
no proper note of it.
(Eei eei.} This sound is not acknow
ledged before 19., and then the ex
tent of it is disputed. Some make it
coextensive with the spelling ai, ay,
others make it replace the sound of
(ee) under whatever form it is ex
pressed. Some persons in the South
of England seem incapable of sus
taining (ee) or (ee) without rapidly
falling into (»', i). See (ee).
(g;h ah.) This replaces (a) under what
ever form it may be expressed, in the
pronunciation of many persons. It
is the form acknowledged by Mr. M.
Bell.
(Ei ei.) In 16. this is acknowledged
by Salesbury, and Hart as the sound
of i long and of ei, ey. Smith ac
knowledges it in a few words, con
taining ei, ey, where he doubtfully
distinguishes it from (ai), but he
marks i long as a separate vowel,
which he identifies with the English
words for "ego, oculus, etiam," J,
eye, aye. Gill sometimes writes (ei),
sometimes (eei), in the same words,
and considers long i to be very nearly
the same. Wallis does not acknow
ledge the sound, and it seems to have
expired in 17. It is, however, re
viving, although unacknowledged, as
a substitute for (eei) and that for
(ee}, as (rein) rain.
(Ei ei.} A variant of (ei), which
cannot be properly distinguished
from it in accounts of pronunciation,
but seems to be the true sound of
the modern Scotch long t in many
words, see p. 290.
(;ji ai), or perhaps (az) is acknowledged
by Wallis and Wilkins in 17., and
was perhaps intended by Gill as the
sound of long i, and has since re
mained that sound, though individu
ally and provincially replaced by (ai,
ahi, ei, ei), etc., see p. 108. It is
expressed by any combination of
sounds which indicate that * or y is
to be long. Hence in 19. we have :
naive, aisle, d«pnosophist (and as
many pronounce cither, neither)
height, the older sounds (neet, neeit)
are occasionally heard, (aekht) is
still heard in Scotland, (nekth) has
been noted in the neighbourhood of
Ledbury, Herefordshire, (naitth,
haith) are mistaken pronunciations —
eying, eye, rAmoceros, 'Rhine, rhym
ing, rhyme, hind — this mode of ex
pressing long t is found as early as
16., — indict, die, live, sign, sigh,
sighed, v&count, isle, begMz'ling, be-
guile, buy, ny, dye, scythe.
(EA CA) is not an English sound, and
no attempt to pronounce it occurs
before 18. In 19. coup de main,
which Feline writes (ku-d meA), is
written (kuu'dimaeq) by Worcester,
(kuu dimseq-) by Webster, (kuirdt-
maaq) by Knowles, (kuu-damaeq:) by
Smart, (kuu'dimeen) by Mavor. It
is generally called (kuirdi HICA),
though some affect the complete
French pronunciation.
(;JA a A), this is also not an English
sound and is so rare in French that
it is seldom borrowed in English,
except in the name of the game
vingt et un, usually called (veAtaA-)
in England, often corrupted to (vaen-
tiun-, va3ndzhon'), just as rouge et
noir becomes Russian war, from the
older pronunciation, still occasionally
heard, of (Ruu-shen wAAr).
(Eu eu) Common in 13. and 14. as the
sound of eu ew, from ags. eaw, etc.
Less frequent in 16., expiring in 17.,
and lost in 18. In 19. it is frequent
as a London pronunciation of (au),
thus (deun teun) for down town, and
either in this form or (EU, a?u) com
mon in Yankee speech, and in the
East Anglican dialect. It is acknow
ledged in Italian and Spanish Jbropa,
and in modern Provencal, both eu,
and ie'u (EU, ie'u) are distinguished,
the last word being the French je.
(:Eu, EU). See (eu).
(gu au). Not known before 17. In
17. and since, acknowledged as the
sound heard in now how, though some
pronounce (au, ou, ou, au, ahu) and
even (seu, eu). Expressed generally
by ou, ow, with or without mute
letters. In 19 we find : caoutchouc,
Macleod, hour, compter, noun, douot,
renounce, bough, cow, allowed.
(F f). From ags. to present day re
presented by /, ph, with their dupli
cations ff, pph. From 16., at least,
occasionally expressed by gh. In 19.
we find : /oe, nfe, stiff, stu/ed,^ugle-
man — a mere corruption — often,
langh, half, sapphire, lieutenant.
598
EXPRESSION OF SOUNDS. (G— I). CHAP. VI. § 2.
(G g). From ags. to present day ex
pressed by g. In 14. also by gg and
in 15. also by gge final. Ghost is
found in 16. In 19. we have \>\&ck-
gu&rd, go, egg, Pegged, ghost, guess,
Tpl&gue.
(Gg) or (gj), palatalized (g). Probably
in ags. g before a palatal vowel, subse
quently (dzh) . After that change (g)
cannot be clearly traced before 18.,
but it is still found in 19., represented
by g, gu, before a (aa, aa) or long i
(ai), as : garden, guard, regard, guide.
In 18., it seems to have been also
used before short a (ae).
(Gh gh). In ags. perhaps more cer
tainly in 13., expressed by 3, after
a, o, u long and followed by a vowel
as o%en. Possibly the sound after
o, u was labialized to (gwh) . Whether
these sounds were entirely lost in 14.,
being replaced by (kh, kwh), it is
difficult to say ; probably not. As
long as they lasted they were ex
pressed by 3, gh. It must have been
lost in 16.
(Gh gh). In ags. perhaps, more cer
tainly in 13., expressed by 3 after
e, i long or short, and occasionally
after r, I, in which case it fell into
(i). In ags. perhaps the initial
sound of 3 before palatals, which in
13. was replaced by (j). In 13.
written 3, jA, yh. After 13. gene
rally replaced by (&h, j), and written
3, gh, y.
(Grh grh). Only known as a local
peculiarity, the Northumbrian burr,
and then expressed by r, rr as in
Harriet (Hagrh-iot). See (r).
(Gw gw). The labial modification of
g, confused with (gw), from which
it differs almost as simultaneity from
succession, (gw) resulting from at
tempting to pronounce (g) and (w)
at the same time. How long it has
been known in English cannot be
determined, but it is probably a very
early combination in the Romance
languages. In 19. it is expressed by
gu in : ^waiacum, ^wano, <?wava
(gwarakam, gwaa-no, gwaagva).
(Gwh gwh). Probably an ags. sound
of j after labials, and occasionally
r, I, in which case it became (u, o).
In 14. probably expressed by gh
after o, u. Perhaps lahh, laugh,
lauwh, indicated (lagh, laugwh,
lauwh) passing to (laut). But the
sounds may have been (lakh, laukwh,
lawh).
(H H). The true aspirate consisting
of a jerked emission of the following
rowel without the previous inter
vention of the whisper, was, proba
bly, the genuine old form of aspira
tion, as shewn in the Sanscrit post-
aspirates. It was frequently inter
changed with (H', kh, gh), the last
(gh) being the value of the Sanscrit
^ usually considered as h. Repre
sented whenever it occurred from
ags. to 19., by A. See (H').
(H' H'). The jerked utterance accom
panied by a whispered breath pre-
ceeding the vowel. The jerk is of
importance; ('a-aa), is different from
(H-'a-aa=H*aa). Constantly occur
ring, and represented by h, but in
16. occasionally by gh. In 19.,
either (H) or (H') according to a
speaker's habits of utterance, and fre
quently according to the momentary
impulse of the speaker, is expressed
by the following varieties : CaUa^Aan
— and by gh in many other Irish
names — Aole, Colquhonn, whole.
Uneducated speakers, especially when
nervous, and anxious not to leave
out an h, or when emphatic, intro
duce a marked (H') in places where
it is not acknowledged in writing or
in educated speech. On the other
hand both (H, H',) are frequently
omitted, by a much more educated
class than those who insert (H'), and
in the provinces and among persons
below the middle-class in London,
the use and non-use of (H, H') varies
from individual to individual, and
has no apparent connection with the
writing. Hence its pronunciation
has become in recent times a sort of
social shibboleth. The very uncer
tain and confused use of A in old
MSS., especially of 13., serve to
make it probable that there was
always much uncertainty in the pro
nunciation of A in our provinces.
The Scotch never omit or insert
it, except in huz (naz), the emphatic
form of us. The Germans are equally
strict. But the sound (H) or (H') is
unknown in French, Italian, Spanish,
modern Greek, and the Sclavonic
languages.
(I i). Whether this sound existed in
closed accented syllables before 16.,
is doubtful, probably not. After 16.
there is reason to suppose that if it
did exist, its use must have been
CHAP. VI. § 2. EXPRESSION OF SOUNDS. (/— Iu).
599
very limited. In Scotland it both
did and does exist. In all cases it
was represented by i, y. As a short
sound in open syllables it was pro
bably quite common, and was in ags.
to 14. represented by i. In 16. this
short open (i) was e as in : beleeve
(biliiv). At present the distinction
between (i, i) in such cases is rather
doubtful, and both are apt to be
merged into (e). But where the
distinction is made, short (i) is
always expressed by e ; see (t).
(J t). This seems to have been the
common sound represented by short
i in close accented syllables in
ags., and by short i, y, and occasion
ally u in this situation from 13.
to 19., and with tolerable certainty
from 14. to 19. In 16., as a final,
it was frequently written ie. Or-
thoepists, however, constantly con
fuse (i, i) both in closed and open
syllables, so that any real separation
of (i, t), is hazardous. In 19., (t)
in closed syllables is expressed in a
great variety of ways, owing to
various degradations, but generally
as i, y with some letters which have
become mute, and when in final
open syllables, generally by y or
some variety of the same. The fol
lowing forms may be noticed. In
closed syllables : landscape, Saint
John (Si'n-dzlren) as a family name,
Jervattlx (Jaai-vis), pretty, guineas,
beaunn, breeches, forfeit, Theobald
(T*'b"eld) the recognized name of an
editor of Shakspere and a street
in London, housewife (iiaz'if) a
threadholder, exMrt't (egzib'it)
some say (eWHHlrtt) with a very
marked (H'), rAythm, pit, mar-
riages, marriage, pitted, to live,
sieve, fivepea.ce, women, groats
(grits), Jervoz's, Mispress (Mis-is),
bwsy, lettwce, bwi'ld, business, Tyr-
whitt (Ti'n't), Chism'ck (Tshiz-i'k),
physic, Wymondha.ro. (Wind'Em).
In open syllables, many of the above
forms and : Rothsay, money, Annie,
Beauliew (Biu-li"), felloe (fel-t),
chamois leather (BBceort). plagwy.
(li ii). In ags. either (ii) or (11),
which see, was always expressed by
i long, and so on to 14. and part of
16. After 15. (ii) was only rarely
expressed by i long, but more and
more frequently by e, ee, and in 16.
frequently by e ee and rarely by ea,
ie. The expression by ea, ie increased
slightly in 17. In 18. e, ee, ea, ie,
were the rule, and ei, ey the excep
tions. In 19. the two latter also
became the rule. The Latin se, 03
were also added to the list, and vari
ous degradations swelled the expres
sions of (ii) in 1 9. to the following
extraordinary variety : minutio?, de-
main, Cai'ws College, be, each, fleaed,
leave, Beawchamp (Bee'tsh/em),
league, feet, e'en, complete, sleeve,
impreyn, ~Legh, conceit, conceive,
seigniory, Lei^A, receipt, Be^voir,
people, demesne, key, Wemyss
(Wiimz), keyed, diarrtea, invalid,
gri'ef, magazine, grieve, si^niour,
nisiV, debris, intrigue, fcetns, quay,
quayed, mosqwi'to, turqwoi'se (tikiiz1)
according to Walker, Smart, and
Worcester, more commonly (tyr-
(Ii it). In 14., and most probably
earlier, the sound of long i and y.
During 15. this sound nearly ex
pired and was only retained by a
few individuals in 16., being re
placed by (ei, «') according as the
syllable in which it occurred retained
or lost the accent. It is heard in
Scotch in 19., where a short (t) is
accidentally lengthened as : gi'e, wi'.
In English it is an unacknowledged
sound often heard from singers who
lengthen a short (i), as (still) for
(sti'l) still, as distinct from (stiil)
steal, see pp. 106, 271.
(In iu iuu). These sounds cannot well
be separated. They probably never
occurred initially. When Smith
wrote iunker in 16. he meant (juq--
ker). The sound was not recog
nized till 17., when it was generally
expressed by long M, or eu, ew. The
same combinations used initially, as
in use, wnite, ewe, probably expressed
(jiuu, jiu, jiuu). In my phonetic
spelling I have seldom thought it
necessary to distinguish (iu, iuu)
and have frequently omitted to pre
fix the (j). From these sounds
should be distinguished (juu, ju)
which are also confounded with
them, but are usually written you.
With these the sounds (jhiu, jhiuu)
often confounded with them, had
best be considered. The following-
are the 19. varieties of expressing;
these sounds :
(iu) monwrnent, docwment, incttbate,
mantwamaker.
(iuu) beawty, feed, feudal, dewce,
600
EXPRESSION OF SOUNDS. (J— Lh). CHAP. VI. § 2.
Jjeveson, new, adieu, view, viewed,
ftwgleman, amwsing, fuchsia, (fiiur-
shia), cue, amwsc, queue, impw^n,
bwAl, suit, puisne, (pmirnt), lute
string (liuu-stn'q,) fugue.
(jiu) Mnite, Eugene (Jiudzhiin-)
(jiuu) euffh, ewe, yew, yule.
(ju) in 16. young = (juq) like present
German juny.
juu) you, youth.
jhiu) Awmane.
jhiuu) Awman, hue, Hugh, Hughes.
(J j). The palatal consonant into
which ags. initial (^h) degenerated,
generally confounded with an initial
unaccented (i), whence it is occa
sionally derived, and often confused
with the palatal modification (j)
from which it differs as (w) from
(w). Apparently in use from 13. to
19., expressed in 13. and often in
14. hy 2, j, whence the modern forms
y, z, p. 310, and p. 298, note. The
varieties in 19., are : hideous, om'on,
hallelu/ah, yard, Densil.
(Jh jh). Orrmin's jh in -&heo she.
The whispered (jh) differs from (j),
as (£h) from (gh), but is by Germans
confounded with (kh), although often
prononnced by them quite distinctly
in ja (jhaa) for (saa). It has pro
bably often been pronounced in
English, but it is not recognized,
and even in the words cited under
(iu) it is not now generally acknow
ledged, (jhiuu) being taken as (H'JUU,
H'iuu) sounds which are not easy to
utter. It has no special representa
tive, but is implied by any combina
tion apparently expressing (n'+iu).
(K k). The sound has been in use
from ags. to 19. In ags. expressed
by c invariably. In 13. generally
by c, occasionally by k. In 14. by k
and occasionally by kk, ck, but fre
quently in words from the Latin and
French by c, cc. In 16. by c, ee, k.
ck, and occasionally ch. In 17. ffh,
qu were added to the list. All these
remain, except kk, which was dis
used before 16. In 19. we have :
can, account, Bacchanal, scAool, ache,
hack, hacked, acquaint, hongh, kale,
hake, -walk, <?uack, quay, antique,
Urquhart, viscount, hatchel (nsek-'l)
also written hackle, heckle, except.
(2T k). This is the palatalized form
of (k), see g, and its existence was
acknowledged, and expressed in 18.
by c, k before a (aa, sa, ae) and t (ai)
as in: cart, candle, sky. This is
regarded as antiquated in 19. but is
still heard.
(Kh kh). In ags. expressed by h, hh ;
in 13. by 3, gh, and very rarely by ch,
p. 441, from 14. to 16. by gh. After
16. lost in English, though common
in Scotch, where it is usually written
ch. At no time were the palatal
and labial modifications (kjh, kw>h)
distinguished in writing from (kh),
but there seems reason to suppose
that a preceding vowel when palatal
determined (kh = kjh), when gut
tural (kh) and when labial (kw>h).
See also (gwh).
(Zh kh}. See (kh).
(Kw kw). This sound has always
been confused with (kw), but there
is reason to suppose that (kw) has
been the real sound from the earliest
times, pp. 512, 514, 561. In ags.
(kw) was expressed by cw, in 13. qu
seems to have been introduced and
to have remained to 19.
(Kwh kwh). See (kh).
(L 1). From ags. to 19. I and from
14. to 19. II is frequent. In 19.
mute letters have occasioned the fol
lowing varieties : sera^io, maMstick,
/ace, Guildford, ale, ill, travelled,
kiln, isle, hristly, victualler (vt't'Li).
('L '!). In 16. certainly, this sound
was expressed by final -le forming a
syllable, and it was recognized by
Bullokar after a and before another
consonant, as halm (na'lm) where
others read (ul). In 19. several
phonetic writers incline to (ul), but
the majority consider (1) only, to
be the sound. Mr. M. Bell considers
it to be (11) that is lengthened (1).
It is always represented by -le or -I.
It generally falls into (/) when a
vowel follows as double doubling
(dab'l dab'lt'q), but some persons re
tain the (') and say double-ing (dab1-
'hq).
(Lh Ih). Not now a recognized Eng
lish sound, but it occasionally arises
when instead of prolonging an (I)
with the full murmur, the action of
the vocal ligaments ceases, while the
tongue remains in position, and the
unvocalized breath escapes on both
sides as (fAAllh). It is also recog
nized by Mr. M. Bell in felt (fslht)
or perhaps (fsllht), as he woula
write. In Modern French it is very
common for (!') as (tablh) table, and
hence it has been recently imported
into the English pronunciation of
CHAP. VI. $ 2. EXPRESSION OF SOUNDS. (Lhh— (E).
601
French words. It was probably the
sound written hi in ags. and Ih in
13., as it is now represented by hi in
Icelandic.
(Lhh Ihh). Few Englishmen can pro
nounce this Welsh sound properly,
but as Welsh names of places are
current in English, as Llangollen
(Lhhangolhh-en) it should be recog
nized, and not treated as (thl) or
(tl), as in (Thlangoth-len). For a
description of the sound see Chap.
VIII, § 1, under II.
(Lj, Ij). An unrecognized English
element, often generated in the pas
sage from (1) to (j) or (i) before
another vowel. Thus million, bul
lion are rather (nuHjun, bwHjim)
than pure (rm'l'jen, bwl'JBn) because
there is no break, thus (l,j), but the
(1) is continued on to the (j) pro
ducing (Ij = 1* j) . Some Englishmen
pronounce seraglio, lieu, lute, as
(seraa'ljio, Ijiuu, Ijiuut) others say
(seraa'lio, luu, luut).
(M m). From ags. to 19. m, and
from 14. often mm. In 19. we have
the varieties, chiefly assimilations
and degradations : arachm, phlegm,
psaJm, Gholmondeley (Tshamit), am,
lamb, tame, hammer, shammed,
hy»m, Campbell (Ksenvel), Bawff
(Itemf), Powtefract (Pom-fret).
('M 'm). Certainly from 16. when it
was recognized by Bullokar. Not
distinguished from (m) in writing,
and not recognized as a syllable in
poetry, as : schism, rhythm (s«'z''m,
n'th-'m).
(Mh mh). Recognized by Mr. Mel
ville Bell in 19. before p, t, as lamp,
ewpt (Isemhp, Emht) or (laemmhp,
Emmht).
(N n). From ags. to 19. n and from
14. nn. Silent letters and assimila
tions, etc., have produced the 19.
varieties : stu^'w^sail (stan-s'l),
opting, gnaw, John, know, Coln-
brook (Koon-brwk), Galne (Kaan),
>wwemonies, compter, can, riband,
cane, ipecacuanha, mawwer, planned,
gunwale (ggn-el), reasoning, pneu
matics, puiswe (piuu-m).
('N 'n). Certainly since 16., repre
sented by -en, -on, as in: op«w,
reasow. When a vowel follows the
(') is lost, though some say (lait-'m'q)
and others (lait'm'q) lightening, light
ning.
(Nh nh). Recognized in 19. by Mr.
M. Bell in tent, which he writes
(tEnht) or (tEnnht).
(Nj nj). An unrecognized English
sound produced by continuing the
sound of (n) on to a following (j, ti
as onion, more properly (an-nJBn)
than (an-,JBn). Some call new
(njiuu), others (nuu). Common
French and Italian gn.
(0 o). This seems to have been the
original ags. and English short o up
to 16., and to have been lost, except
in the provinces, after the middle of
17. when it was replaced by (A, o).
It is the French hommage (omazh)
as distinguished from 19. homage
(Honrydzh). It is Italian short o
aperto. It is also heard in Spain,
Wales, and a great part of Germany,
though it is liable to fall into (o)
on one side and (o) on the other.
In old English invariably o.
(0 o}. This short sound in closed sylla
bles is not recognised in 19., but it
is heard the provinces and in America
for short and sometimes long o ; thus,
whole stone (nol, ston), and then is
scarcely distinguishable from (M) or
(9), and is confounded by some with
(a). In open syllables it is not un
common, as in : oblige, memory, win
dow (oblaidzh-, memort, wm-do),
where it is often confused with (a, B),
and even, when final, with (i). It,
probably, came into use with (oo) in
17., but was not distinguished from
it. Generally expressed by o, ow, as
above, and in 19. we call Pharaoh
(Feei-ro).
(Q o). In 17. short o passed from(o)
to (A) or (o). The distinction be
tween these sounds being of the
same degree of delicacy as that be
tween (i, i) and (E, ae) renders it
difficult to determine which sound
was said. In 19. (o) prevails, though
(A) is occasionally heard, and may
be heard when the expression is a,
au, or (a) influenced by (u) in any
way. See (A). The general ex
pression of (o) is o ; but in 19. we
have the varieties : resin, Aonour, on,
froat, forehead, cognisant, JoAn,
owgh, pedagogwe, knowledge. In
or not followed by a vowel, the theo
retical sound is (oa), the actual sound
scarcely distinguishable from, if not
identical with (AA', AA). See supra
p. 575, under o.
((E 03) is not a recognized English
sound, but is heard in the provinces
602
EXPRESSION OF SOUNDS. (g)— Q).
CHAP VI. § 2.
and in Scotland, and written o, oo.
Confused in English with (a).
Hao). Recognized in 19. by Mr. M.
ell as the vowel in : prefer, earnest,
firm, myrrh, gwmlon, where he
writes (aoa) for the italicized letters.
I do not distinguish these sounds
from (j), and in general find them
confused with (j). See these sounds.
(CEce O3ce). Occurs in the provinces,
and probably in Scotch. It is the
German long oe, as in Goethe
(Gceoe-te).
(Oi oi). With this must be taken (Ai,
oi, oi ; At, ot, oi). It is very difficult
to determine the limits of these
sounds in time or place. Probably
in 16. when oi, oy were not (ui),
they were (oi). In 19. (&i, o») pre
vail, (oi, ui) are provincial. The
expression is always oi, oy, with
or without some additional mute
letters. In 19. we have : bourgeois
(bidzhots') not'sy, noise, potynant,
coigne, boy, enjoyed, Boyle, qwott ;
some say (kwaz't), buoy ; some say
(bwoi), bum), buoyed.
(Oooo). From ags. to 16. this was
the recognized long sound of o, and
expressed by o, oo. It is still heard
in the provinces. It was apparently
lost in the received dialect in 17.,
but revived in 19. before (i), as in :
oar, ore, o'er, moor, mowm, powr, fowr,
sword. Sometimes heard before/, *,
th, as : off, cross, broth (oof, croos,
brooth), where it is apt to degenerate
into (AA, oo), or sink into (a).
(Oo oo), From 17. the recognized
sound of o long, and generally re
presented by o, o-e, oa, and occasion
ally by oe, ou, ow. In 19. we have
the varieties : hawteur, hawtboy
(Hoo'bas), beau, yeoman, shew, now
frequently written show, sewed, fre
quently written sowed, post, oats,
provincially (wats), Soame, boats
wain (boo-sen), Coc&burn (Koo-bon),
doe, bone, oglio, oh, scntoire (skru-
toor), according to Sheridan, "Walker,
etc., now generally (skrutwor), yoflc,
brooch, apropos, Grosvenor, depot,
soul, rogue, Yewyhall (JOO-HAA!),
though, know, towards, owe, Knowles,
qwoth (kooth) ; some say (kwooth).
See (oou).
(QO oa). The drawl of short (o) is
only heard in drawling utterance, as
(ood) for (ad) odd, as distinct from
awed. Preachers often say (Gaod),
but seldom or ever (GAAd) for God.
In America some say either (daag,
laaq), or (doog, looq) for dog, long,
etc., which the phonetic writers there
recognize as (dAAg, lAAq), and the
two sounds are difficult.to separate.
(OA OA). This present French nasal is
in older English represented by
(uun), as retained in our modern
balloon. In recently imported French
words the (OA) is intended to be re
tained, together with its French
expression, as bonbons, bon mot, on dit
(boAboAZ, boA mo, OA dii). But
the usual substitutes are (an, oq), and
occasionally (oon, an).
(Oou oou). From 13. to 16. the pro
nunciation of those ou, ow, which
represented an ags. dw, 6w. Lost
in 17.
(Oon oou). From 17. to 19. the usual
pronunciation of those ou, ow which
represent an ags. dw, ow. This pro
nunciation has been, however, gene
rally ignored, or, if recognized,
reprobated by orthoepists. Some
speakers distinguish wo, know, as
(noo, noou), orthoepists generally
confuse them as (noo), compare the
list of words under (oo) ; others
again confuse them as (noou). Mr.
M. Bell states that every long o is
(ou), meaning the same as I mean
by (oou). Some Englishmen say
that it is not possible to lengthen (o)
without adding (u), and pronounce
nearly (ou, ouu).
(Ou ou). In 16. the general sound of
ou, replacing the previous (uu) which
however was heard contempora
neously through the greater part of
16. In 17. the sound was recognized
as (au), and the sound (ou) was lost.
(On ou). The modern provincial sub
stitute for (ou), not recognized.
(QU ou). In 18. orthoepists recog
nized ow as having the sound (ou)
or (AU). It was probably an erro
neous analysis, which even yet oc
casionally prevails, owing to the
usual orthography ou, ow. Provin
cially however (au, AU) may occur.
(P p) was from ags. to 19. represented
by p, and from 14. to 19. by pp
also. In 19. we have the varieties,
biccongh (nik'kap), pay, ape, Claph-
am, napper, flajt^m.
(Q q) was from ags. to 19. written n
or ng, sometimes nz for nj. In 19.
we have the varieties : fiwger, hawo"-
kerchief, singer, winged, Birmingham,
tongue, Mewd.es (Meq-t'z), p. 310.
CHAP. VI. § 2. EXPRESSION OF SOUNDS. (Qh— S).
603
(Qh qh), is recognized by Mr. M. Bell
in 19. as the sound of n before k, in
think (ttu'qhk) or thtqqhk)
(R r) was from ags. to 19. represented
by r before a vowel ; and probably
from ags to 16. represented also by
r even when not before a vowel.
Perhaps lost in the latter position in
17. Preserved pure in Scotland.
In 19. we have the varieties : right,
rhetoric, write, hurry, catarrAal.
('R *r) How soon this sound came
into English, cannot be precisely
determined. There is reason to think
it may have been used in 16. and 17.,
and that it generated (i). At pre
sent in : fearing, pairing, debarring,
ignoring, poorer, fiery, bowery, there
is a doubt whether the sound heard
is best expressed by ('r) or (ir). Mr.
M. Bell gives the first, I have gene
rally preferred the second, see p.
197.
(R r). This peculiar guttural r so
common in France and even in Ger
many, but unknown in Italy, seems
to be only a softer form of the Nor
thumbrian burr. It is not recog
nized in writing as distinct from r.
(•g; i). Probably recognized in 17. as
well as in 18. and 19. as the peculiar
English untrilled r, not heard before
a vowel, and represented by final r
together with mute letters in 19., as :
spare, corps, burr, mortgage. It
has always a tendency to change
preceding (ee, oo, uu) into (ee, oo,
««), while short a, o become (aa, oo),
or theoretically (a, o) ; and short (i,
e) according to Mr. M. Bell fall
into (ao), which see. Short (a) is
supposed to remain, as cur (kai), for
which I prefer (ki, k'j, ku) and
generally write (ki) as quite suffi
cient. In place of (i) provincially
(ahi, 9x, «hi) are heard. The phy
siological distinction between (a) and
(i) is very difficult to formulate.
There is uo doubt that in many cases
where writers put er, ur, to imitate
provincial utterances, there neither
exists nor ever existed any sound
of (r) or of (i), but the sounds
are purely (a, a). Thus bellows in
Norfolk is not (bel-erz) but rather
(bEl-az). There also exists a great
tendency among all uneducated
speakers to introduce an (r) after
any (a, a, a, A) sound when a vowel
follows, as (drAA'n'q, sAA'n'q) draw
ing, sawing, in Norfolk, and this
probably assisted in the delusion
that they said (drAAi mi, SAAI wwd)
and not (drAA mii, SAA wwd). In
London: father farther, laud lord,
stalk stork, draws drawers, are re
duced to (faadh-B, lAAd, stAAk,
drAAz), even in the mouths of edu
cated speakers. I have usually
written (i) final in deference to
opinion, but I feel sure that if I had
been noting down an unwritten dia
lectic form, I should frequently write
(B, a, a). Careful speakers say
(faa'dh'B, lAA'd, stAA'k, drAA'z) for
farther, lord, stork, drawers, when
they are thinking particularly of
what they are saying, but (fardher,
lord, stork, drAA'erz) is decidedly
un-English, and has a Scotch or
Irish twang with it. See p. 196.
(#• ^). I use this (A) to represent the
sound expressed by Mr. M. Bell as
(ecu), see (ao). Thus, myrrh, differ
= (au, di£r). But I do not find
(i, ^) generally distinguished, and
consequently write (mi, difr) more
frequently than (nw, difr). The
physiological distinction between
(aa) and (^) is very difficult to for
mulate. See (i), and p. 196.
(.R .r). This strongly trilled (r) is
only known as an individual or local
peculiarity. In Scotland the trilled
(r) not before vowels, as firm (ferm)
often gives rise to a sensation of (.r),
as (fe.rm) , and many Scots and Irish
use (.r) as work, arm = (wa.rk,
se.rm). It is not recognized ortho-
graphically.
(Rh rh) is not now a recognized
English sound, but is occasionally
imported from the modern French
final -re, as sabre (sabrh) for (sabra),
into the modern English pronuncia
tion of anglicised French. Probably
ags. hr, as it is Icelandic hr. The
Welsh rh is rather ('rn) than (rh),
as generally supposed.
(S s). From ags. to 19. commonly re
presented by s. Rapp imagines the
ags. sound to have been (sj). In 14.
(s) was represented s, ss, and by c
before e, i in words taken from the
French, and occasionally by sc before
e, i. In 19. we have the varieties : cell,
ace, Gloucester, ^salm, Circwcester
(Si's'«'sti), "Worcester (Wwst'i), see,
scene, coalesce, schism, MasAam, hiss,
hissed, listen, episde, etc., since 17.,
mistress (nu's'iz), sword, bnYzska
(bn's-ka), bellows, mezzotint.
604
EXPRESSION OF SOUNDS. (Sh— Ui). CHAP. VI. § 2.
(Sh sh). This was not an ags. sound,
but it was already developed in 13.,
and it was generally written sch, but
sometimes sh, ss, in 13. and 14.
Orrmin writes sh, ssh, and this was
used at the end of 15., and generally
afterwards. At the latter end of 17.
(sh) was expressed by * before (iu),
so that siu became (shuu). Traces
of this found in the early part of 17.
Towards end of 17. also expressed by
«'-, si-, set-, ssi-, ti-. In 19. we
have the varieties : chaise, and fre
quently in French words, fucAsia,
special, pshaw I sugar, schedule, con-
scious, sAall, wisAed, AssAeton
(JEsh'tun), compression, motion.
(T t). From ags. to 19. the regular
expression is t. In 19., however,
we have the varieties : debt, yacht,
indict, sucked, songht, phthisical, re
ceipt, toe, thyme, hatter, two, mezzo
tint.
(Th th) was in use from ags. to 19.
In ags. it was written either J> or ft,
or both indifferently. In 13. and
14. it was sometimes "S, but gene
rally ]>, and occasionally th, which
last expression has remained to 19.
In 17. m si^A it was written gh, and
probably in other words. In 19. we
have the varieties : "Keiffhley (Kiith--
li), eigh^A (eetth), apophthegm (a?p-o-
them), Southampton (SauthHffinv-
ten), thin, \)]ithe (blaith), or (blaidh)
Matthew.
(Tj tj). An unrecognized English
sound, generated by the action of a
following (in), when the speaker
avoids the stiffness of (t,j), and
wishes also to avoid (tsh), as : vir
tue, lecture (v^-tju, lek'tjwj), com
monly (vrtshu, lek'tshi). See (dj).
(Tsh tsh) was generated, at least, as
early as 13. from ags. (&), and
written eh, and in 14. also cch. The
form ch has remained, but since 16.
at least cch has become tch, very
common as a final in 19., in which
some importations and assimilations
have produced the varieties : vermt-
celli, chain, arched, cAzoppine, Mar-
jbrtbanks (Majtsh'bseqks), ma<<?A,
matched.
(Tw tw). An unrecognized English
sound, usually confounded with (tw),
but it is (t*w) the action of (t) and
(w) taking place simultaneously, and
not successively, in twine, twain, etc.
Written tw.
(U u). It is probable that (u) was
used in 16. at least, and perhaps
earlier, but it is not easy to dis
tinguish (u, u) as short sounds be
fore 19., and even then few persons
acknowledge that pool, pwll, have
vowels of different quality, as well as
length (puul, pwl), and that the true
short sound (u) is heard in French
poule (pul). Mr. M. Bell considers
that the Scotch and English pronun
ciation of book differ as (buk, bwk).
To my ears the Scotch have preserved
also the original length of the vowel,
and say (buuk), or at least give it a
medial length. Hence, taking (u,
w) together, we may say that the
sound has existed and been expressed
by u from ags. to 19. In 14. it was
also expressed by ou, ow, and the ex
pression ou was continued in a few
words in 16., and is not yet quite
lost as could (kwd). In 16. (u, M)
was occasionally expressed by oo,
still common in wood, book (wwd,
bwk). In 14. and thence to 16., o
was often used for (u, u), and is still
found in a few words. During 17.
most of the words having (u, u) lost
the sound, and were pronounced
generally with (a). There is still a
ght between (u, a), and in some of
the Midland Counties the usage is
just reversed from that now accepted,
thus (bwt, kwt, rwb) = but, cut, rub,
and (fat, pat, fal, bal) = foot, put,
full, bull. And generally (wad,
wanvsn) are not uncommon for (wwd
wwnven) —wood, woman. The key
to this mystery seems to be a pro
vincial (a) which becomes labialised
after labial consonants. In the pro
nunciation of the Peak of Derbyshire,
I have found it very difficult to
choose between (a, o, un., M) for such
words. See below Chap. XI., § 4.
In 19. we have the varieties: wo
man, Bolingbrok<9, wood, worsted,
"Worcester, caoutchowc, could, bull.
(Vu). See (u).
(:U u). This unrecognized English
sound seems to occur as a variant of
(y) in Cumberland, Lancashire, and
East Anglia, and is written as long u.
(Ui ui), Apparently one of the oldest
forms of the diphthong oi, cy, pro
bably the usual sound in 14., when
it was also written ui, uy. Still
used in many words in 16. and even
17. In the provinces it may be still
heard in boy (bui), and it is the
sailor's pronunciation of buoy.
CHAP. VI. § 2.
EXPRESSION OF SOUNDS. (Uu— Z).
605
(Uu uu). In ags. written u, in 13. u,
of which this is a characteristic
orthography. Between 1280 and
1310 both u and ou were used. In
14. ou, ow were generally written,
but o alone was also employed, and
has remained in many words. In
16. ow was quite discontinued, and
ou sparingly used, but oo was intro
duced as the usual form, and has
remained to the present day. How
soon the (iu) of 17. became (uu)
after r is not ascertained, but it is
now the rule (except in the pro
vinces), that long M after r = (uu).
Hence in 1 9. we have the varieties :
galleon, Rez^ben, Bucclew^A (Bakluu1),
brew, brewed, rheum, rAwbarb, do,
shoe, move, mancewvre, too, wooed,
sowp, bowse (buuz), throw^A, Brow^-
ham, rendezvous (rondevmr), surtow£
(sjtuu-), billetdowz (bz'h'duu-), Cop
per, trwe, rwling, rwle.br wz'sing, brwz'se,
Hwlme (Huum), two, who (HUU).
(:Uu uu). A provincial variety of
(yy), expressed only as long w.
(V v). In ags. possibly and Orrmin
(v) was expressed by / between two
vowels, otherwise it would seem not
to be an ags. sound. In 13. (v) was
expressed by u consonant and v con
sonant, and so through to 17. when
v consonant was exclusively applied,
and u consonant and v vowel discon
tinued; but it was seldom repre
sented by any but a v form after
wards. In 19. we have : of, Befeoir
(Bii-vj), "halve, nephew, Grosyenor
(Groovnj), veal, have, rendezvous.
(W w). Apparently a peculiar ags.
sound, and hence expressed by a pe
culiar letter p when the Roman
alphabet of the time was adopted, p.
613. For this in 13. wwas adopted,
and has remained to 19. The sound
was sometimes expressed by u, but
persuade was often written perswade.
In 19. we have : choir (kwaii), the
labial modification assumed as (w),
see (kw>), perswade, war. In the
word one the initial (w), which is
not written at all, dates probably
from the latter part of 17.
(pi ra). Defective trill of the lips
substituted for a trill of the tongue,
not recognized except as a defect,
and then written w, but " Lord
Dundreary " distinguishes (fraend)
from (fwend), which last he indig
nantly declared he did not say for
friend.
("Wh wh) was probably expressed in
ags. by hw, and was the wh of 13.
to 19. It is still distinctly pro
nounced by most northern and careful
southern speakers, but is rapidly
disappearing in London.
(Y y). This was probably the sound
of ags. y, and possibly of short M in
13. It is very doubtful whether
this short sound has been used at
all since 13. It seems to have been
replaced by (t, e). It probably
occurs, either in this or the cognate
forms (u, i) in the provinces, and is
recognized in Scotland.
(Y y}. According to Mr. M. Bell this
is the indistinct sound only used in
unaccented syllables in English, and
written e in: houses, goodness
(nauz-yz, gwd-nys), etc., where or-
thoepists are doubtful whether it is
(t) or (e). He also identifies it with
the "Welsh u, y having a similar
sound. Not generally recognized,
and not provided with any distinct
form.
(Yi yi). The French ui was confused
with (wu) in 16. It is kept in
some recent words as suite, though
persons ignorant of French say
(swiit).
(Yy yy) was probably written long y
in ags. This sound seems to have
disappeared in 13., or at any rate its
traces are uncertain. In 14. it re
vived with the introduced French
words, and was written u, eu. It
remained into 1 7. written u, eu, ew,
when it was still recognized by Wal-
lis, although his contemporary "Wil-
kins seems to have been unable to
pronounce it, and it was subsequently
replaced by (iu). It is, however,
still common in East Anglia, in
Devonshire, in Lancashire, and pro
bably other parts of England, and
in Scotland, where it appears as a
substitute for (uu), as was already
the case in 16. The provincial
sounds vary as (n, uu, 99, yy).
(Z z). Not recognized as distinct
from (s) in ags. but probably existing
always, as in 14. it was not unfre-
quently written z. It has, however,
been generally confused with s, ex
cept in a few words from the Greek.
The sound seems to have remained
with few exceptions in the same
positions from 14. to 19. In 19.
we have : sacrificing, sacrifice, which
some pronounce as a substantive with
606
HISTORICAL PHONETIC SPELLING. CHAP. VI. $ 3.
(s) and as a verb with (z), czar,
"Windsor (Wm-za), Saftsbury(SAAlz--
bert), as, discern, ease, dishonour,
business, scissors, Keswdck (kezik),
he bellows, beaux, zeal, size, whiz
zing, whizzed.
(Zh zh). Hart 1569 recognized this
sound in French but not in English.
Its earliest recognition in English is
by Miege 1688, who being a French
man distinguished it from (sh) with
which it was long confused. It is
derived generally from (zi) and hence
is generally spelled s, z except in
some recent words, where the Modern
French sound is employed. In 19.
we have : routing, rouge, /eu de
mots, which Worcester writes (zhuu--
d«'mo<r) in place of Feline's (zhce d-
mo), pleasure, division, abscission,
azure.
(') When a mute (p, t, k) ends a
word, and a pause follows, as the
contact is loosened, a slight breath
escapes, not marked in writing, but
very apparent in (kaep', bset',
This was probably always used in
English, and its absence, which ren
ders the consonant difficult to be heard,
was probably the occasion of the
suppression of such final consonants
in French.
(') If a sonant (b, d, g) end a word,
many speakers force out a faint mur
muring sound after removing the
contact, as (eb', aed', baeg') ebb, add,
bagg, similar to the French indica
tion of their e muet in such a place.
In some speakers this amounts to
adding (B), and then it is recognized
in satirical orthography by writing a
as ebba, adda, bagga.
). The cluck indicated by tut.
]. The cluck indicated by cl'ck.
•) The primary accent which has
never been indicated in English
orthography.
(:) The secondary accent, which has
never been indicated in English or
thography.
§ 3. Historical Phonetic Spelling.
The great multiplicity of forms for the same sound, joined
to the existing variety of sounds for the same form,1 shewn
in the preceding sections, has urged many persons to attempt
correcting both by one stroke, as a matter of literature and
science, and still more with a view to education and uni
formity of pronunciation, and with a hope of making our
language more easy to acquire by foreigners. The device
has generally consisted either in the introduction of new
letters, or in giving constant values to known combinations,
so that the same sound should be always represented by the
same letters and conversely. In the xn th or xm th century
we had Orrmin, in the xvi th Smith, Hart, Bullokar ; in the
xvn th Gill, Butler, Wilkins ; in the xvm th, Franklin and
many others after him in the same and in the xix th century
both in England and America. The most persistent attempt
is the phonotypy which grew out of Mr. Isaac Pitman's pho
nography or phonetic shorthand, and which in various forms
1 The strange fank«tical variety of purpose (like an honest man & a souldier)
our orthography, when Mewed solely and now is he turn'd orthography, his
from the phonetic point of view, could words are a very fantasticall banquet,
not fail to attract Shakspere's atten- iust so many strange dishes." Much
tion. Hence he makes Benedick speak Ado, ii. 3, speech 5, fo. 1623, p. 107,
thus of the love-sick Claudio : " He col. 2.
was wont to speake plaine, & to the
CHAP. VI. § 3. HISTORICAL PHONETIC SPELLING. 607
has been regularly used in printed periodicals from 1843 to
the present day.1 Such schemes are different from those
which aim at a universal alphabet for the purposes of science
or missionary enterprize, such as the alphabets of Max Miiller,
Lepsius, Merkel, Melville Bell, and the palaeotype used in
this volume. And neither have the slightest connection with
the scheme of a universal language, or with any view of
altering our language in any way, although they have been
often confounded with such impossibilities.
After reviewing the two preceding sections the question
naturally arises : is it possible from the general, firmly estab
lished English uses, to construct a system of orthography which
should represent our pronunciation at the present day ? If such
a spelling were possible it would clearly be so suggestive
that it would be legible to the mere English reader almost
without instruction. It seems possible, and at least worth
the trial, for numerous instances occur in which it is ad
visable to attempt indicating sounds to purely English
readers by combinations of the letters with which they are
familiar. It is also only by exhibiting such a tentative or
thography that the possibility of altering our spelling so as
to more or less indicate our pronunciation, but without alter
ing our alphabet, could be properly considered. The follow
ing scheme is based upon the two preceding tables, and will
be termed GLOSSOTYPE, as suggested on p. 13, from its main
use in compiling provincial glossaries.
In the phonetic alphabet used by Mr. I. Pitman and myself,
only 34 simple sounds, 4 vowel diphthongs, and 2 consonant diph
thongs, were represented, giving a total of 40 letters in the follow
ing order : (ii, ee, aa, AA, 00, uu ; i, e, se, a, a, u ; ai, oi,
9u, iu ; j w H ; p b t d tsh dzh kg, f v th dh s z sh zh, r
1 m n q). The numerous texts which have been printed in this
alphabet have shown that it suffices for printing our pronunciation
with sufficient accuracy to satisfy such ears as have not been
sharpened by a phonetic education. We may, therefore, commence
our investigations by determining the best representatives of these
sounds.
Prom the xvi th century ee, oo represent (ii, uu) with certainty,
from the xvnth ai, au represent (ee, AA) with almost, but not
1 The writer of this treatise was If an alphahet differing entirely from
much connected with this last scheme the Roman is to be used, and none
from 1843 to 1849, and in 1848-9 pub- other can be expected to find favour
lished two editions of the Testament, for all languages, the principles upon
many books, and a weekly newspaper, which Mr. Melville Bell's various
the Phonetic Newt, in the alphabet alphabets of Visible Speech, for print-
settled by Mr. I. Pitman and himself ing, long and short hand writing, are
in 1846, which differs in many respects formed, seem to be the best hitherto
from that now used by Mr. I. Pitman. proposed.
608 HISTORICAL PHONETIC SPELLING. CHAP. VI. § 3.
quite, the same certainty. But there is no usual way of repre
senting (00). The combinations oe, oa are so unfrequent that they
would occasion hesitation in unusual positions, as : hoep, hoap,
for hope. Symbols for (aa) have disappeared since the xvn th
century. The two exclamations oh ! ah ! present the only com
binations to which no other value seems to have been assigned ; but
the combinations oh, ah, are scarcely used in other words. We
have then ee, ai, ah, au, oh, oo, as the only certain represen
tatives of the six long vowels (ii, ee, aa, A A, oo, uu).
The short vowels (i, e) have been uniformly represented by i, e
from the earliest times, and it would be impossible to obviate the
ambiguity of their also representing (ai, ii) in accented syllables,
without pursuing Orrmin's plan and doubling the following con
sonant, when it is one of possible initial combination ; thus, vibrait
would suggest (varbrart), rather than (vtb-Teei}, which would
require vibbrait for certainty, and this notation may be adopted
at the pleasure of the writer. From the XVH th century a, o, u
have been in like manner the constant representatives of (se, o, a),
although they would also require duplication of the following
consonant to preserve them from the ambiguity of (ee, oo, iu), as :
fammm, notting, fussi = famine, knotting, fussy, compared with :
famous, noting, fusee =faimus, nohting, fiwzee, or fyoozee. The last
short vowel sound (u} occasions great difficulty. In fact it is not
recognised generally as distinct from (uu), except in such rare
pairs, as fool full, pool pull. As oo, u have already been appro
priated, and as ou, employed for this sound in would, could, should,
would inevitably suggest the sound (au) in other situations, we are
driven to some modification of oo, u. The form uh is not English,
and has been frequently used conventionally for (aa), so that it is
excluded. The exclamation pooh ! although dictionary makers
seem only to recognize the orthography pugh, is yet sufficiently
familiar in the other spelling to all readers,1 and suggests the form
ooh for the sound of (w). It is certainly long, but it is known,
and could only mislead so far as to cause the reader to substitute
(uu) for («). The six short vowels are, therefore, t, e, a, o, u, ooh.
Of the only recognised forms for diphthongs : oy, ow, ew = (oi,
au, iu), as in boy, now, new, the first is unobjectionable, but the
other two do not begin with the elements represented by o, e, (o, e).
The common diphthong (ai) has no representative distinct from
*, y, which are already appropriated. For writing provincial
dialects a careful separation of the various diphthongal forms is
important. Hence a systematic mode of representing diphthongs is
indispensable, and it must be founded upon the historical use of
y, w, as the second element, which involves the rejection of such
final forms as ay, aw, for the sounds already symbolised by ai, au.
By simply prefixing any of the vowels ee, ai, ah, au, oh, oo,
i, e, a, o, u, ooh, to y, w, we obtain most suggestive forms
1 As in Prof. Max Muller's pooh- Lectures on the Science of Language,
pooh theory of the origin of words, i, 344.
CHAP. VI. § 3. HISTORICAL PHONETIC SPELLING. 609
of diphthongs, containing those vowels run on to a final ee, oo,
typified by the y, w. Thus : aiy (eei) is the usual English may, —
ahy (aai), aye, or German ai, — any (AAi), a broad sound of joy, —
oh// (ooi), a provincial sound of boy, — ooy (uui), the Italian \ui, and
common sailors' buoy, — ey (ei), the Scotch bz'te, — ay (a3i), a Cockney
long i, — oy (oi) the usual boy, — uy (ai) the usual buy, Guy ; — eeto
(iiu) an exaggerated Italian iu, — aiw (eeu), an exaggerated Italian
eu, — ahw (au), the German au, — auw, a broad provincial how, —
ohw (oou) the common English know ; — iw (m) the American and,
perhaps, the common English new, for which both Wallis and
Price (p. 139) used the sign iw, — ew (eu) the true Italian eu, — aw
(asu) the Norfolk pownd, — ow (ou) a provincial ow, — uw (au) the
common English now. The use of y, w being only a systematisation
of an old extinct method of writing diphthongs may be fairly re
garded as historical, and gives great power to this system of writing.
The sounds of (j, w, H) must be represented by y, w, h, having
no other historic equivalents. But as y, w have been already used
for diphthongs, and A is a modifying symbol in ah, oh, ooh, in which
sense it must also be employed amongst the consonant combinations,
whenever y, w, h occur in such situations as would occasion
ambiguity, the recognized expedient of inserting a hyphen, as ai-y,
oh-iv, o-h, must be resorted to. The sound of (wh) must be re
presented by the historical symbol wh, instead of the anglosaxon
hw, which is now uncouth.
The consonants and consonantal diphthongs must be p I, t d,
ch y,1 k a, f v, th dh, s z, sh zh, r I m n ng, for although dh,
zh are unhistorical, they have long been generally recognised as
orthoepical symbols: To these it seems best to add the historical
nli for the unhistorical ngk (qk) ; but ngg must be used for (qg)
to prevent ambiguity, as in singer, fingger. Hyphens must be
employed in t-h, d-h, s-h, z-h, n-g, n-k, when each letter represents
a separate element. All truly doubled consonants must also be
hyphened, as boohh-kais, bookcase, distinct from boohkhing, booking,
and un-ohnd, unowned, from un-nohn, unknown.
The practical writing alphabet of the English language will
therefore consist of 42 symbols, which may be fairly called " his
torical," namely : ee, ai, ah, au, oh, oo ; i, e, a, o, u, ooh; uy,
oy, uw, iw; y, w wh, h; p b, t d, ch j, k g; f v, th dh,
s z, sh zh, r I, m n ng nJc. But the use of this alphabet would
soon point out deficiencies, for example air, ohr, are no adequate
representatives of the words : air, oar. The indistinct murmur
which forms the conclusion of these words as generally pronounced
may be written ('), as the historical representative of an omitted
found, and the full theoretical sound may be indicated by '•/•. This
1 As these letters are really con- for thth, dlidh, shsh, zlizh (although in
tractions for Ish dzJi, when they are older English ssh is ofteii used for
doubled to shew that the preceding shsh], because tth represents a really
vowel is short, it is natural to double different sound, thus Mali.hiw would
only the first element, and write Ich, dj, be (Mset'thiu) nob (Mgetlriu,) and
meaning ttsh, ddzh. But it is not ai tth = (eetih), eighth,
allowable to write tth, ddh, ssh, zzh
610 HISTORICAL PHONETIC SPELLING. CHAP. VI. § 3.
full sound is always heard if another vowel follows, as hearing,
potfring, pod'rer, fuy'ri, luw'ring= hearing, pouring, poorer, fiery,
lowering. Such sounds as her, cur, as distinct from herring, occur
rence, require a means of representing the fully trilled r after a
vowel, as common in Scotland and Ireland, and the examples chosen
suggests the expedient commonly employed of writing rr, so that
herd or he'rd is English, and herrd is Scotch ' heard.' The vowels
in " air, oar, her" however, as distinct from those in "hale, hole,
herring," have not yet been represented, and several other signs
will be found indispensable in writing those dialectic sounds which
are here of prime importance.
Now, on examining the long and short vowels, ee i, ai e, ah a,
au o, oh u, oo ooh = (ii i, ee e, aa ae, AA o, oo a, uu «), it is readily
seen that they are more distinct in quality, than in quantity. In
fact Englishmen find the true short sounds of the long vowels, and
the true long sounds of the short vowels difficult to distinguish from
the long and short sounds respectively. This suggests the employ
ment of the quantitative signs (") and ("), when prominence is to be
given to the quantity, the unmarked sign being regarded as doubt
ful, just as in Latin, Italian, Spanish, Welsh, and generally. Thus
Ken is Scotch, een Yorkshire for the plural of ' eye ' ; wait or waiyt
is English, wait Scotch, stdhn is Norfolk and American "stone,"
bdok is Scotch, btiohk southern English, book northern English,
"book," Bath is the local, Bahth the usual pronunciation of
"Bath," and the true sound of "air" is perhaps tfr, for which afr
is practically sufficient, and the true sound of oar is very nearly,
but not quite o V. Another way of representing the quantity is the
thoroughly English method introduced by Orrmin, to which we
have already found it convenient to have occasional recourse,
namely, to allow a single following consonant to indicate the length,
and two following consonants the brevity, of the preceding vowel,
open vowels remaining ambiguous. Thus the preceding examples
may be written in order : eenn een, wait waitt, stohnn, bookk,
boohkk, book, Bath, Bahth, the short sounds of the two last becoming
Bathth, Bahthth. Other methods of representing quantity in con
nection with accent will be given presently.
Any one who tried to write down provincial or foreign sounds
would still find considerable deficiencies. The following sixteen
additional vowel signs are, however, all that it seems expedient
to admit, the principle of ambiguous quantity applying as before.
For ordinary purposes, use : —
eh—(E\ for the broader sound of e verging into a, heard in Scotland,
and generally in the north of England in place of (e), French
btte, Italian open e. This may also be taken as the sound of
ai in air, which may be written ehr.
oa= (o), for true sound of oa in oa'r = oar, known provincially
even when not followed by r, a broad sound of oh verging to
au, Italian open o.
ta=(y), for Scotch ui, French u, German ii, being ee or rather »
pronounced with rounded lips.
CHAP. VI. § 3. HISTORICAL PHONETIC SPELLING. 611
<?«=(*), for close French eu, which has two sounds, close as in
jeune, and open as injeune=(9, oe), not ordinarily distinguished
by Englishmen ; the first is ai, the second e or eh, pronounced
with rounded lips.
H=(A), to represent French nasality when it occurs, as in enfant,
vin, Ion, un, which might be written airfaN, ON, JON, UN.
kh, gh=(kh, gh), for the Scotch and German guttural ch, but (Ah)
may, when desired, be distinguished as yh, and (kwh, g*0h)
may be written kwh, gwh.
/A=(lhh) for the common Welch II.
rr=(.r) for the strongly trilled Scotch r not preceding a vowel, as
herrd.
rA=(grh) or (r) for the French, German; and Northumbrian so
called r grasseye, guttural r or burr.
For still more accurate dialectic writing, use :
ae= (ah) for the fine southern ah verging to a.
aa=(aa) for a deeper sound of ah.
«o=(ah) for the broad Scotch ah verging to au.
uh= (a), for that deeper sound of u which it is necessary to distinguish
in the provincial diphthongs uhy, uhiv (ai, am), if not elsewhere.
«0=(g)), for a still deeper sound of u, occasionally heard.
M0=(wh) for the ooh verging to oh, or the oh verging to oo, heard in
many provincial dialects, the true Italian close o.
ih, ue=(i, IT) for the sound of ui verging to ee or oo respectively, as
heard dialectically in English, German, and French, ih being
a frequent form of the German it, and ue being the Swedish M.
0e=(ce), for the true German 6, and open sound of French eu$ de
scribed under eu above.
e' or 0=(ao), for the sound of u in " cur," or e in herd, which may be
written Jeer, herd, (or kdr hsrd, if the type e is deficient,) when
it is considered necessary to distinguish them from her, herd.
a or v = ('B), for that frequent obscure unaccented a found in canary,
real, ten.-mt, which may be written kiinehri, reedl, tenniint, (or
if the type a is deficient, IcvneJiri, reevl, tenuanf], when it is
thought necessary to distinguish it from a or u.
'i or t = (y) for the obscure sound of e goodness, which would be
written goohdriiss, (or, if the type 2 is deficient, goohdmss,)
when it was thought necessary to distinguish it from e.
By thus adding from 4 to 12 vowels to the original 12, only 8 un
usual, or obscure vowels, out of the 36 recognized in Palaeotype,
viz., back (a?), mid (Y, ah, oh, oh, oh) and. front (&h, seh), are left with
out signs, and these probably do not occur in any provincial English
dialectic pronunciation, but might, in case of necessity, be repre
sented by 6 ; u, eh, uoh, oah, aoh ; euh, oeh, respectively, the first
two on accoiint of their partial resemblance to the German o, u,
and the others on account of their being liable to be confused with
the sounds already represented by e, uo, oa, ao, eu, oe, respectively.
The sixteen additional vowel signs are therefore d, aa, ae, ao, e, eh,
eu, z, ih, oa, oe, ua, ue, uh, ui, uo, and although they are chiefly
612 HISTORICAL PHONETIC SPELLING. CHAP. VI. § 3.
unhistorical, they are so suggestive that they could be readily
fixed on the memory. Compare aesk dent=ask. aunt, in southern
English, ask ant in fine Yorkshire ; il el English, el ehl Scotch =
ill ell; mdon Scotch = man, unku gend sheun Scotch = unco guid
shoon; noa dod'nt goa Norfolk = no don't go; Goete b6ekke German
= Goethe bocke, muen Devonshire =moon, len Cockney = learn,
puir btihdi Scotch = puir body.
The system of diphthongs may now be completed by using the
16 additional vowels as prefixed to y, w ; and also by using all
the 28 vowels as prefixes to (') and to ui. The (') diphthongs
are not uncommon provincially, the ui diphthongs are rare, but are
found in Germany and the Netherlands. The easy method thus
furnished for representing complicated diphthongal sounds, which
are so frequently met with in provincial utterances, is one of the
greatest recommendations for glossotype as a means of writing
English dialects.
Any mode of marking the position of the accent is unhistorical,
but it is so important in unknown words, as all written in Glosso
type must be considered, that the Spanish custom of marking its
position, when not furnished by some simple rule, is well worthy
of imitation.1 This rule for English has been laid down thus by
Mr. Melville Bell : The accent is to be read on the first syllable,
unless otherwise expressed.2
The accent mark on an ambiguous vowel or diphthong will be
the acute on the first portion of the symbol, as reedeem, obtain. The
accent mark on a short vowel will be the grave, and on a long
vowel the circumflex, thus combining the notes of quantity and
accent, as : deemdhnd, deemdhnd. When the accent falls on more
than one syllable, it should always be written, as : A%Mw=high-
way, dondhbzdibdhre = unabsehbare, German. The evenness of
French accent had also best be noted in this way for English
readers, as ON/ON = enfant, or otherwise an exception to the rule
must be made for French words only, which would then have to be
specially named. The small number of accented letters supplied to
English founts renders it advisable to have a substitute for these
accent marks, and the turned period used in palaeotype will be
found most convenient. A device familiar to writers of pronounc
ing dictionaries will enable us to indicate the long vowel by placing
1 This language seems to he the only so hy writers I cannot say. "When I
one, except Greek, in which the neces • printed phonetically I carried out a
sity of marking the position of the ac- similar system, hut the value of it was
cent has been acknowledged. In Por- not sufficiently appreciated, for few or
tuguese. Italian, English, and Russian, no persons used accents in writing, and
the position of the accent is a constant Mr. Isaac Pitman, and almost all other
source of difficulty to foreigners. The phonetic printers, have utter y ignored
Spanish Academy in its anxiety to accents, at least for all na'.ive words,
avoid many accent marks, ar.d its desire Mr. Melville Bell has however con-
to prevent ambiguity, lays down five sis'ently carried out his one simple
rather lengthy rules for placing the ac- rule, which is here recommended to
cent mark, which are generally adopted Glospotypists.
by Spanish printers, whether they are 2 Visible Speech for the Million, p. 6.
CHAP. VI. $ 3. HISTORICAL PHONETIC SPELLING. 613
the turned period immediately after it, as reesee-d, and the short
vowel by placing it after the following consonant, as empirik.
This principle may be applied to monosyllables, thus readily dis
tinguishing: Yorkshire boo-k, Scotch book-, English boohfc, with
out having to double the following consonant. The principle may
also be applied to shew the length of the first element of diphthongs,
so that the true English " may know," may be written mdiy ndhw,
or mai'y noh'w, while lUiyd, ndaw or baiyd noaw would indicate
(beid nou), which are the Teviotdale pronunciation of "bide, knoll."
Great care has been bestowed upon this system of writing from
a belief that it is not a philosophical toy or a plaything, but may
prove extensively useful to writers of pronouncing vocabularies, to
provincial glossarists, to travellers forming word lists, to writers of
Scotch novels, and authors of provincial poems and tales, all of
whom at present introduce more or less unsystematic, ambiguous,
or unintelligible orthographies.1 It will be employed, therefore,
for the representation of dialectic English and Scotch in Chap. XI.
§ 4. Except for the closest scientific purposes, for which palaeo-
type, or some system as extensive, is requisite, Glossotype as here
presented, will be found sufficient.2
The practical use of this system of writing3 has suggested some
improvements in the tabular arrangement, and the preliminary table
on p. 16, must therefore be considered as cancelled and replaced by
those on pp. 614-5. In the first of these, the simplest form of
Glossotype, which may be fairly termed historical phonetic spelling,
is presented, containing only two of the additional vowels, eu, ?«',
without which no dialects could be even approximatively written,
In the second, these two and the other fourteen are briefly ex
plained, some vowel progressions are introduced which may assist
the reader in forming a conception of the sounds, and the exact
value of the 28 glossotype vowels, the diphthongs and consonants
is fixed by a comparison with palaeotype.
1 In Mr. Peacock's Glossaries (Iran- to prefix a key conspicuously, but has left
sactions of the Philological Society, it hidden in a footnote to an appended
1867, Supplement Part II.) a partially essay, as if it were of no consequence,
systematic method of writing is adopted, instead of being of prime importance,
explained in the annexed Essay on One consequence of this to myself was,
Some Leading Characteristics of the that I did not discover the key till I
Dialects, etc., p. 11 note; but on en- had with great difficulty, and much
deavouring to transliterate the speci- uncertainty, made one for myself by
mens of the North and South Lonsdale examining the whole glossary. To
dialects there given (pp. 31, 32) into form a system of writing requires pe-
glossotype, I found several combina- culiar studies. The present glossotype
tions and signs employed which had is the result of much thought and ex-
not been previously explained, and perience extending over a great length
which I had simply to guess at. Yet of time, combined with long practice
Mr. Peacock's writing is a gem com- in phonetic writing,
pared to most which I have met with, 2 Oriental signs can easily be bor-
for they generally leave me in a state rowed from palaeotype, or supplied by
of utter bewilderment. Few writers other conventions,
even condescend to give a key at all, 3 The information from my dialectic
and in Mr. Peacock's Glossaries, the correspondents (p. 277 note 1) was
editor has not considered it necessary chiefly collected by means of Glossotype.
614
HISTORICAL PHONETIC SPELLING.
CHAP. VI. § 3.
KEY TO GLOSSOTYPE.
Especially intended for writing dialectic English according to literary English
analogies. Isolated letters and words in Glossotype should be in Italics. No letter
or combination is ever mute ; thus, final e is always pronounced as in German. Never
use ay, aw, etc., for ai, au, etc., even when final. C. Cockney, D. Dutch, E. English,
f. French, G. German, J. Italian, P. Provincial, S, Scotch, W. "Welsh.
VOWELS.
DlPHTHONGS.
CONSONANTS.
& gnat
i knit
&J&P.C.
aw P. C.
b lee
ngg finger
ah father
o not
ahy G. ai
ahw G. au
ch chest
nk think
ai wait
oh. rose
aiy may
aiw C.
d doe
ny /. gn
au all
oo wooed
ey 8. lite
ew /. eu
dhthe
p pea
Q net
ooh wood
euy F. ceil
euw D.
f fee
r ray
ee meet
u nut
iw mew
gao
'T air
eu F. eu
ui F. u
oy boy
owP.
y
&.D.G.g
rr LS. r
(') an indistinct murmur.
ohy P.
ohw know
hhe
rh P.F. r
(<) nasalized utterance.
oojI.F.P.
1 jay
8 see
N F. nasal n is written n
uy high
uw how
j j^y
k coo
sh she
Obscure vowels
dotted in her
are double
reedl goohd-
uiy F. ui
kw queen
t tin
riis, for which turned letters
may be used if types run
In all these diphthongs
the first element has the
kwh 8. quh
th thin
short, as : b.9r ree^l goohdms
sound assigned in the
kli G. ach
v vale
All vowel signs are ambigu
ous, short or long, and may
have their quantity distin
guished when desired, by a
single or double following
consonant, by the signs of
quantity (" v), or (A v), or
preceding column, which
is run on quickly, with a
glide, to a following ee
or oo written y or to.
Numerous other diph
thongs can be formed on
the same model.
1 lo
Ih W. 11
lyl.ffl
m me
w wail
wh why
y yet
yh S. nicht
a turned period (•) placed
Diphthongs may also be
n no
z zeal
immediately after a long
vowel and after the conso
formed by affixing (') as
roh'd almost rohad rohud
ng thing
zh vision
nants following a short
vowel, as, Yorkshire book
= road, and by affixing
ui, as 2). heuuis = huis,
Foreign and Oriental sounds
book book or boo'k, S. bookk
bdok book or book", E.
but it is generally suffi
cient to treat this ui as
must be represented by
small capitals, &c., by special
boohkk boohk boohk or
y, thus : heuys.
convention.
boohk-, E. noh-w = know,
Teviotdale noaw= knoll.
"When accents are not marked
In the rare cases when any
of the above combinations
do not form single vowels
Really doubled consonants
should be separated by a hy
phen, as MM-«oAn=unknown.
by (') for ambiguous vowels,
or diphthongs, introduce
When any of the above com
or (A " •) for long and short
vowels as above, the accent
a hyphen, as ah-yont=
ayont 8. Observe that
binations do not form single
letters introduce a hyphen,
must be placed in reading
the w and y of the conso
as mad-huws, Bog-hed, Mak-
on the first syllable of a
nants wh, yh, never be
heeth, in-grdin, in-kum,
word.
long the preceding vowel.
mis-hdp, pot-huws, etc.
CHAP. VI. § 3.
HISTORICAL PHONETIC SPELLING.
615
EXPLANATION OF THE ADDITIONAL AND FOBEIGN VOWELS.
a obscure a in real, cristal.
aa deeper sound of ah, in G. and F.
ae between a and ah, fine southern E. a
in staff, ask, path, pass, command,
ao between ah and au, broad S. a in man.
'e the obscure sound of e in herd, when it
can be distinguished from e or u.
eh between e and a, broad northern E. and
S. e, I. open e, F. 6.
en produced by pronouncing ai with
rounded lips, F. close eu vajeune.
i obscure » or e in goodness.
ih resembling w» verging towards ee, P. G. u
oa as heard in oar, between o and oh,
P. E. broad o, I. open o.
oe produced by pronouncing e or eh with
rounded lips, F. open e« in jeune, G. o.
was very deep sound of western E. u.
ue resembling ui, verging towards oo,
Swedish u.
uh deeper and broader sound of «, general
in P. E. and S.
ui produced by pronouncing ee or i with
rounded lips, S. ui, D. F. u, G. ti.
uo between oh and oo, a broader ooh,
I. close o in somma, Edinburgh coal.
VOWEL PROGRESSIONS, arranged to shew approximative^ how the (italic) sixteen
additional and foreign vowels lie between the (roman) twelve usual English sounds.
1. palatal to guttural: ee i ai e eh a ae ah
2. guttural to labial : ah aa ao au o oa oh uo ooh oo.
3. labial to palatal : 1) oo ue ui ih ee ; 2) oh oe eu ai
4. deep to high, obscure : ua uh u a e 'i.
GLOSSOTYPE COMPARED WITH PALAEOTTPE.
When more than one palaeotypic symbol is placed after a single vowel, the first
represents the sound that would be naturally given to it by an English reader, and the
two may be distinguished, when required, as previously explained. Glossotype in Italics,
Palaeotype in ( ). The arrangement is partially systematic.
Vo
Historical.
WELS.
Additional.
DlPH'
T series.
[•HONGS.
W series.
CONSONANTS.
Pairs. Single.
ee (ii i)
*(#)
aiy (eei ei)
aiw (eeu e\i)
p I (p b)
h (H H')
ai (ee e}
eh (E EE)
ehy (EI)
ehw (EU)
* <* (t d)
rA (grh r]
ae (ah aah) aey (ahi)
aew (ahw)
^(kg)
r (T)
ah (aa a)
aa (aa a) \ ahy (ai aai)
ahw (au aau)
%yy(ki gj)
V(jr)
au (AA A)
ao (ah aah") aay (ai aai}
0020 (au)
^to ^w (kw
rr (.r)
oh (oo o)
oa (oo o)
ohy (ooi oi)
ohw (oou ou)
gw) W(lhh)
oo (uu u)
ue (TJIT tr)
ooy (uui ui)
wA w (wh w) ^ (1)
ui (77 y)
uiy (yi)
m'w? (yu)
/«(fy)
'/ ('!)
i (i ii}
^h (n i)
iw (iu ju)
^A <?A (th dh)
^ (lj)
e (e ee)
eu (99 9}
ey (ei)
ew> (eu)
* z (s z)
m (m)
oe (oeoe oe)
euy (9\ cei)
euw (0u osu)
sA zA (sli zh)
'm ('m)
a (ae aeae)
«(«)
ay (sei)
a«c (asu)
chj (tsh dzh.) w (n)
o (o oo)
e (9330 93)
oy (oi)
ow (ou)
yh y (jh 7ch j) 'n ('n)
u (a aa)
uh (a aa)
uy (ai)
ww (au)
M^A (kh gh) ny (nj)
ua (a))
uhy (ai)
w/«^ (au)
^z^A ^A (kwh ng (q)
ooh (u uu)
uo (uh uuh}
gwh) «/c (qk)
Murmur ' (') FRENCH NASALS — aN «N ON MN (aA CA OA SA).
The eight omitted palaeotypic vowels may, when required, be indicated by writing —
o ; it, eh, uoh, oah, aoh ; euh oeh
for ce ; Y, ah, oh oh, ah ; ?h, sen
616 HISTORICAL PHONETIC SPELLING. CHAP. VI. § 3.
The historical spelling from which Glossotype has been evolved,
is, of course, not proposed for immediate adoption in literature,
although there is no historical or etymological reason against its
use. In order to shew the effect of adopting such an orthography
in place of that now current, I have annexed the glossotypic
spelling of some lists of words already given in the previous
section on the pages referred to in each case, in which the reader
will find the solution of their orthographical riddles. As these lists
contain the principal anomalies of spelling in our language, the
absurdity of propagating them will appear strongly in reading over
their sounds, without having the orthography immediately present
to the eye. The historical letters only are used, hence the un
accented vowels, and some shades of sound are not discriminated
with perfect accuracy, and the intention has been rather to en
deavour to give the letters which an average speller, acquainted
with the ordinary orthography, would select when intending to
write his own pronunciation glossotypically, than to aim at or-
thoepical accuracy, as the appearance which would be presented
if such a style of spelling were adopted, could not otherwise be
imitated. For this reason duplicated consonants, are freely ad
mitted, when they would be likely to suggest themselves to the
writer, but are not used systematically, and only the ambiguous
accent ( ) is employed. The order of the sounds is that given in
the last paragraph of p. 609.
ee, p. 599. miniwshiee, deemeen, moov, man6over, too, wood, soop, booz,
Keez Kolledj, bee, eech, fleed, leev, throo, Broom, rondev6o, surt6o, billi-
Beechum, leeg, feet, een, kompleet, d6o, Kooper, rooling, troo, rool, brooz-
sleev, impreen, Lee, konseet, konseev, ing, brooz, Hoom, too, boo.
seenyuri, Lee, reeseet, Beevur, peep'l, », p. 699. lanskip, Sinjun, Jahrvis,
deemeen, kee, Weemz, keed, duyareea, pritti, ginniz, biffin, britchiz, forfit,
invaleed, greef, maggazeen, greev, Tibbuld, huzzif, egzibit, rith'm, pit,
seenyur, fiwzee, debree, intreeg, reetus, marrijiz, marrij, pittid, too liv, siv,
kee, keed, muskeetoh, turkeez. fippens, wimmin, grits, Jahrvis, Missis,
at, p. 696. mait, shampain, dailia, bizzi, lettis, bild, biznis, Tirrit, Chizzik,
pain, kampain, strait, trai, haipeni hah- fizzik, Windum, Rothsi, munni, Anni,
peni, jail, Kaishaut'n, gaii, plaig, plai, Biwli, felli, shammi, plaigi.
grait, ai ! vail, rain, wai, dhai, ait. «. P- 596. menni, Pomfret, Pestum,
ah, p. 693. fahdhur, ahr, serahlyoh, J^W TemZ 8ed Abbergeni sez, let,
ah, ahmz, Mahm/.ben, aiklah, ahnt, £ed> det' Wenzdi, aledj, forred, heffer,
bahrk, klahrk, hahrt, gahrd. Le^er' lePPe[d, chek, rondev6o, ret-
,„„ f , ,, ,, tunk, trend, konshcns, icttid, konesur,
aw, p. 693 faul, aum, Maudlen berri ges 'ijerrik, gunnel, TomI
Kolledj, maulstik, wauk, baumun haul, mase' * ^ ^'^ Berl\ t
tud, nauti, Vaun aun auful, au, saffer/better, Urkert, ahn^er-or saibur
braud sauder aut ekstraudineri, ^ B^^ 8aff bett '
Jaurjik, Jaurj, faurk, haurs. Urkurt, ahnsur.
oh, p. 602. hohtur, hohboy, boh, a> p. 593. satj Uyzak> Makki) dram>
yobman, shoh, sohd, pohst, ohts wuts, hav, banyoh, Tammun, plad, sammun,
Sohm bohs n, kohburn, dob, bohn, harang, Klappam, Talmash, pikant. '
ohlyoh, oh, skrootohi : skrootwaur, yohk 0> p. 60i. rozzin, onnur, on, grot,
brohch, aprohp6h, Grohvnur, deep6h forred, konnisant konnis'nt, Jon, hok,
deppoh, sohl, rohg, Yoh-haul, dhoh, peddagog, nollcdj.
noh, tohrdz, oh, Nohlz, kohth, kwohth. M) p. 595. ri'bbun, meershum, es-
oo, p. 606. ga!6on, Rooben, Bukl6o, kutchun,umb'l, mohshun, konshus, sun,
broo, brood, room, roobahrb, doo, shoo, duz, luv, tortus, Linkun, flud, dub'l,
CHAP. VI. § 3. HISTORICAL PHONETIC SPELLING.
617
tung, bellus, tuppens, amatur, kubburd,
avvurdiwpoyz, kurnel, likur, likkur.
ooh, p. 604. woohmman, Boohlling-
broohk, woohd, woohstid, Woohstur,
kuwchoohk, koohd, boohl.
uy, p. 597. nuyv, uyl, duypnossoh-
fist, huyt, uying, uy, ruynoseros, Euyn,
ruyming, ruym, buynd, ind&yt, duy,
luyv, suyn, suy, suyd, vuykuwnt,,
uyl, beegiiyling, beegGyl, buy, fluy,
duy, suydh.
oy, p. 602. burj6ys, noyzi, noyz,
poynant, koyn, boy, enj6yd, Boyl, koyt
kwoyt, boy bwoy booy, boyd booyd.
MM;, p. 597. kuwchouk, Makluwd,
uwr, kuwnter, nuwn, duwt, reeniiwns,
buw, kuw, aluwd.
iw, p. 599. monniwment, inkiwbait,
manchiwmaikar, biwti, fiwd, fiwdal,
diws, Liwsun. niw, ahdiw, viw, viwd,
fiwg'lmun, amiwzing, fiwshia, kiw,
amiwz, kiw, impiwn, biwl, siwt, piwni,
liwstring, fiwg, iwnuyt, Iwjeen, iw, iw,
iw, iwl, iw iwth, or yoo yooth, hiw-
main, hiwman, hiw, Hiw, Hiwz.
y, p. 600. hidyus, unyun, halilooyah,
yahra, Denyil.
w, p. 605. kwuyr, purswaid, waur,
wun.
wh, p. 605. when.
h, p. 598. Kala-han, hohl, Koh-
h6on, bohl.
p, p. 602. hikkup, pai, aip, Klap-
pam, flapper, flapt.
b, p. 594. bee, eb, ebd, baib, Koh-
burn, Hobburn, kubburd, hohboy.
t, p. 604. det, yot, induyt, sukt,
saut, tizzikal, reeseet, tob, tuym, hatter,
too, metsohtint.
d, p. 594. dellium, deep, ad, Boohd-
dist, traid, Windum, luvd, woohd,
burd'n.
cA, p. 604. vairmichelli, chain,
ahrcht, chop^en, Mahrchbanks, match,
matcht.
j, p. 595. Grinnidj, sohljurjudjment,
ridj, Wedjberi, jem, kolledj, Belllnjam,
just.
k, p. 600. kan, akuwnt, Bakkanal,
Some readers will naturally object to such orthography that it is
entirely fictitious and not in any respect historical. It is not meant
to imply that the above spelling was ever used at any time, but
only that almost every combination of which each word is composed
has been in use for such a long time, generally more than two centuries,
that its employment in the sense proposed is really historically justi
fied. But how should we spell ? What other grounds of spelling
are there but the phonetic ? There are the purely historical, the
etymological, the typographical. The purely historical, however,
skool, aik, -bak, hakt, akwaint, hok,
kail, baik, wauk, kwak, kee, anteek,
Urkurt, vuykuwnt, hak'l, eksept.
y, p. 598. blaggahrd, goh, eg, begd,
gohst, ges, plaig.
/, p. 597. fob, fuyf, stif. stuft, fiwg'l-
man, of n, lahf, halif, saffer, leftenant.
«, p. 605. ov, Beevur, hahv, newiw,
Grohvnur, veel, hav, rondevoo.
th, p. 604. Keethli, aitth, apohthem,
Suwth-hamtun, thin, bluyth, bluydh,
Mathiw.
dh, p. 595. dhee, breedh.
8, p. 603, sel, ais, Gloster Glauster,
sahm, Sissister, Woohstur, see, seen,
kohales, siz'm, Massam, hiss, hist,
lis'n epis'l, missis, sohrd, briska, bellus,
metsohtint.
z, p. 605. sakrifuyzing, sakrifuyz,
zahr, Winzur, Saulzberi, az, dizern,
eez, diz6nnur, biznis, sizzerz, Kczzik,
hee bellohz, bohz, zeel, suyz, whizzing,
whizd.
ah, p. 604. shaiz, fiwshia, speshal,
shau, shoohgger, sheddiwl, konshus, shal,
wisht, Ashtun, kompreshun, mohshun.
zh, p. 606. roozhing, roozh, zh6o-
dim6h, plezhur, divizhun, absizhun,
aizhur.
r, p. 603. (r), ruyt, retturik, ruyt,
hurri, katarral, ('r,ir) fee'ring, pai'ring
debarring, ign6h'ring, poo'rer, fuy'n,
buw'ri, (a) spai'r,kaur koh'r,bur, maur-
gaij, (.<) mur, deefur, or mer deefer.
/, p. 600. serahlyoh, maulstik, lais,
Gilfurd, ail, il, traweld, kil, uyl, brisli,
vitler.
m, p. 601. dram, flem, sahm, Chumli,
am, lam, taim, hammer, shamd, him,
kammel, Bamf, Pomfret, siz'm, rith'm.
n, p. 601. stuns' 1, ohpning, nau, Jon,
noh, Kohnbroohk, Kahn, neemonniks,
kuwntur, kan, ribbun,kain,ippikakkiw-
anna, mannur, Ipand, gunnel, reezning
niwmuttiks, piwni, ohp'n, reez'n.
nff, p. 602. fingger, singer, wingd,
Bermingam, tung, Mingiz — hank, han-
kerchif, link, drunk, ankshus.
618 ETYMOLOGICAL SPELLING. CHAP. VI. § 4.
such as was adopted by the Anglosaxons, and by the best writers in
the xni th and xiv th centuries, was also purely phonetic, reflect
ing the pronunciation of the writer to the best of his ability.
We might adopt that systematised scheme of the xivth century
explained above (p. 401), and illustrated in the next chapter,
but we should find it extremely difficult to make any one but an
Early English student see the value of it, and perhaps even he
might demur to fixing the time at so recent a period, the latest
during which the principle of phonetic spelling actually influenced
the writer. But I know no other period which would in any
respect answer the purpose. "With regard to the words introduced
since then, we should have to consider how they would have been
probably pronounced at that time, and write them accordingly.
The rehabilitation of our orthography on that ground would there
fore be a work of extreme difficulty, and would find a correspond
ingly small number of adherents. Even those who employed it
would have to re-memorize every word in the language, a discipline
to which none would submit who could escape it. The attempt
to introduce such a system could therefore only result in confusion
worse confounded. We may adopt it for our xiv th century school-
books, but we must not ask writers to use it in their everyday
scribbling.
Dismissing, therefore, any purely historical system, we have
only to consider the etymological, and the typographical, which
will occupy the two next sections, while the phonetic ground will
be considered in the last section.
§ 4. Etymological Spelling.
The two tables in §§ 1, 2 may serve to dissipate the phantom
which haunts many brains under the name of etymological ortho
graphy. It seems that the gross departure from the original
phonetic conception which pervades our alphabetic system, and
which degrades alphabetical to hieroglyphical writing, has led
persons to suppose that the phonetically useless and inconsistently
applied letters, which they have constantly to employ, are intended
to convey to the reader the history and origin of a word, whence it
came, how it changed, what was its original meaning, and how
that has been modified. It is true that the recent etymological
labours of Wedgewood and E. Muller, might be sufficient to prove
that such information could not be conveyed by any means, because
it is in many cases unknown now, and was less known to those
who have modelled our orthography, and also that when it is
known, or tolerably certain, there is no generally understood
abbreviated system for conveying the information, which often
requires a considerable amount of words to explain, nor does i
appear possible to conceive that any such system could be invented,
much less brought into use. These matters do not strike those
who are possessed with the etymological conception, for they are
CHAP. VI. $ 4. ETYMOLOGICAL SPELLING. 619
generally very ill -informed respecting the real history -of our
language, and think rather of the recent terms borrowed from the
Latin and Greek, which present no difficulty whatever, and could
scarcely be made to present much difficulty by any freak of ortho
graphy,1 than of the old terms of Germanic, or Norman French
origin, or those, not rare words, in constant use, of which the origin
is unknown. Many of the troublesome additional letters, which
were perhaps inserted from a supposed knowledge of the origin of a
word, are mistakes, few of them are of any assistance, and none of
them are consistently employed.
To take a simple example : those who know that oaJc .corre
sponds to ags. dc, may be inclined to think that the Ic was put in to
show it was Germanic, and not Latinic or Hellenic, whereas we
know that the introduction of k was a mere habit of the xni th and
xrvth centuries ; or that the inserted a was meant to allude to the
old a, while the prefixed o shewed the modern change ; whereas,
we know that the xrvth century wrote simply ok, ook, that in the
xv th, and the greater part of the xvrth century, oke was em
ployed (this is the orthography of Palsgrave and Levins), and that
the a was introduced towards the latter end of the xvith century
as a mere phonetic contrivance to {listinguish (00) from (uu), and
without any etymological reason whatever. It so happens that we
still write stroke, notwithstanding the ags. stracan. There was a
long fight between sope, soap, and it is not to be supposed that
a was carried by Latin sapo. It is but very lately that cloak
triumphed over cloke ; but there can be no etymological reason,
because no one is certain of the etymology, and the middle Latin
clocca, generally adduced, would not favour the a.
Take another simple instance, which, like the former, applies
to numerous cases : In the word name, the final e is supposed to
allude to a former final vowel, and to indicate the lengthening of
the preceding vowel. The ags. had a final a, but the preceding
vowel was short. The a had become long in Orrmin's time, and he
wrote name because he said (naa'me), and not (nanra), which he
would have written namma, and similarly he changed all the other
vowels to accord with his own pronunciation. The meaning of the
added e was lost in xv th century, and in the xvi th it was fre
quently, but of course inconsistently, used to indicate vowel length,
and in this case the length of (aa) as (naam). It was not from
a wish to preserve the a etymologically that it was not changed to
naim in the xvn th century, but it was because ai became settled as
(ee) before name ceased to be (naesem), so that there was a difference
in sound felt nearly up to the time when our orthography crystal
lized in the xvinth century. Should not we suppose same to give
us similar information. It would be wrong if it did, for though
Orrmin has an adjective same, there is no ags. adjective sama, but
only an ags. adverb same.
1 Italian : ipoteca, ipotesi, ipofisi, more difficulty than our bishop, and not
ipofora, filosofo, fisonomia, geroglifico, so much as our church.
epitaffio, epitalamio, etc., present no
620 ETYMOLOGICAL SPELLING. CHAP. VI. § 4.
The reason usually given for wishing to retain the u in spelling
honour, favour, errour is the French orthography -eur, on the plea
that this orthography discriminates those words which were taken
from the French from those where taken direct from the Latin. It is
certainly not obvious that this discrimination is worth any trouble,
or that any one could determine to which class every word ending
in -or or -our really belongs. Nevertheless this etymological reason
has been frequently advanced, and was especially insisted on by the
late Archdeacon C. J. Hare.1 Our investigations, however, shew
that the reason given is altogether fanciful and destitute of any
foundation of historical truth. These words were spelled -our, in
the xrv th century, because they were pronounced (-uur}, for the
same reason that ]>u nu became thou now. Moreover honour could
not have been derived from honneur, because that French form did
not exist when the English honour was adopted. The French used
honor, honur, honour. The mutation of Latin o into French eu did
not take place till a later period.2 If indeed the French had used
eu, which they would have pronounced (eu) or (ey), there is no
doubt that Chaucer who used the sound (eu) and wrote it eu or ew,
would have also written honeur. We see then that honur has more
claim than either honor or honour if we go to the old French;
th'ough honour asserts its right as old English, and just as honos was
old Latin. But such squabbles are trifling. The historical spelling
of § 3, would decide in favour of onur or onnur, which no ortho-
grapher has proposed, although every orthoepist would be scan
dalized at the pronunciation of the " etymological" h.
" Trouth and honour, fredom and curtesie,"
writes the Harl. MS. 7334, v. 46. "What do we gain, either
phonetically or etymologically by writing,
Truth and honor, freedom and courtesy.
Etymologically, trouth agrees better with ags. treow]>e, fredom with
ags. freodom, curtesie with old French curtesie (Roquefort).3 The
spellings true, truth, are certainly etymologically inferior to the
discarded trewe, trouth, which represented the proper sounds of the
time, and we ought, on the same principle now, to write troo,
trooth. The termination -y, used for the threefold termination, -e,
-ie, -y, the last being a contraction for -iy = 25, is a gross violation
of all supposed principles of etymological spelling. It is evident
that these who shaped our spelling had little or no knowledge
of etymology, had no acquaintance with the customs of our ancient
orthography, which many even yet regard as a chaos without law,
or custom, and, except in very rare and very obvious instances,
paid no attention whatever to historical affiliation, or ancient
etymology.
1 On English Orthography, Cam- einfache o," Gram, der Eom. Spr. 2nd
bridge Philological Museum, vol. 1. ed. 1856. vol. i. p. 426.
2 Diez, after citing feti jew, heure, 3 The xiv th century orthography
pleure, etc., adds " in alien diesen of this word is especially considered in
Fallen kennt die alte Sprache auch das Chap. VII. § 1, near the beginning.
CHAP. VI. § 5. STANDARD SPELLING.
621
The first thing which we have to do in studying a new language
for comparative philology, is to determine its sounds, and only
in so far as the orthography enables us to determine the sounds,
is it of any etymological value. Any deviation from phonetic
representation is an impediment in the way of etymology. And
the only true etymological spelling which can he conceived is one
that is strictly phonetic. The investigation which we have just
concluded, by enabling us to restore from the changing orthography
the changing sounds, that is, the changing words of our language,
puts us in a far better position than ever to determine the ety
mological relations. We still want a similar investigation for
French, at least, and for all our dialects, as well as that principal
southern form which alone offered sufficient facilities for examina
tion. All the labour and trouble of such an examination would
have been saved if the writers had had a sufficient alphabet from
the first, and had known how to use it. But, unfortunately, the
true conditions of alphabetic writing have only just been deter
mined, and the number of those who can use correctly even such an
approximation as is furnished by the forty-two historical phonetic
symbols of the last section is very small. No one has ever dreamed
of writing provincial dialects etymologically. It was felt that
by so doing the whole means of representing them was lost ; for,
until they were written their etymology could not be determined.
It was forgotten that our own particular cultivated English lan
guage, is but the most fortunate among many dialects, that,
therefore, its etymology, also, could not be determined till it was
fixed by phonetic writing, and that, consequently, for etymo
logical purposes we should endeavour to represent it on paper
as accurately as the generality can appreciate it. Other reasons
there are in abundance. But on the ground of philology alone, we
can truly say, there is no etymology without phonetics.
§ 5. On Standard, or Typographical Spelling.
It is possible to write a language without any relation to
phonetics. The greater part of the Chinese vocabulary is said to
be of this nature. One system of writing is prevalent throughout
a vast empire, is understood by each province, and is provided by
each with a different set of corresponding vocables. At Pekin they
cannot understand the speech of Canton, but the writing is
mutually intelligible. It is like the cyphers of arithmetic, or the
signs of algebra, and the diagrams of geometry, which are read in
different tongues, but with the same apprehension of their meaning
throughout Europe. This ideal has great fascination for many.
Conceive a grand symboleum, known everywhere, and yet read by
each in his own tongue. Such a conception has been nearly carried
out in England, Germany, France, and Italy, and probably in other
countries. A fixed system of spelling has been, either by aca-
622 STANDARD SPELLING. CHAP. VI. § 5.
demical authority, or through the action of printers, accepted in
each country. No two men in England and Germany, at any rate,
pronounce in the same manner every word which they would write
alike. In Germany completely diverse systems of utterance are
pursued among the educated in different districts. The high
German, as distinguished from all and every of these systems, is
known as "die Schriftsprache, d. h. als diejenige Sprache in der
man Deutch schreibt." l It is a literary, not a spoken language, and
in Saxony, in Prussia, on the Rhine, on the Danube, by the
Vistula, and the Eider, or in Switzerland, the language changes to
the ear.2 The peasantry of Saxony are taught to write High
German ; their spoken Upper German dialect tries a foreigner sorely.
In the same way we have a literary language in England, a
written language, having only a remote connection with the spoken
tongue, and shaped by printers as an instrument intended to satisfy
the eye. Indeed the great objection to any innovation is its "odd
appearance." And persons naturally conceive that to change the
spelling is to alter the language. "We have succeeded in getting
this orthography to be recognised, and there are probably many
who look upon it as an institution as unalterable and natural as the
musical scale (which, by-the-bye, , differs materially in different
countries, and is thoroughly artificial in its origin), and regard any
unwitting deviation from it as unfitting a person for the commonest
occupation,3 and excluding him altogether from the ranks of the
educated, and yet the only "good (!) spellers" in the country are
compositors and printers' readers. A reference to the tables in the
two first sections of this chapter should dissipate all idea of fixed
ness, every notion of a sacred character in our orthography. It is
barely a hundred years old, to give it the longest life. Two
hundred, three hundred, five hundred years ago our spelling was
entirely different. The same letters were used, but differently
collocated, for what only standard orthographers could look upon
as the same word. Notwithstanding this, a standard orthography
is not only a possibility, but an actuality,4 and as long as it is
accompanied by its indispensable adjunct — a pronouncing dic
tionary — it will cease to be detrimental to the philologer, who can
resort to the phonetic representation for what he requires. But it
should remain fixed to be of value. However much the language
may hereafter vary, this crystallized form should remain. No
change of any kind, or from any cause should be permitted.
1 " The language of writing, i.e., dialectic pronunciations are mutually
that language in which we write Get- unintelligible.
man," as distinguished from speaking 3 " Correctness in Spelling," that is,
German. K. F. Becker, Schulgram- habitual use of typographical custom,
matik der deutschen Sprache, 3rd ed. is essential to those who intend to pass
1835, $ 23. any Civil Service examination.
2 This is still more striking, I am * The slight variations and uncer-
informed by natives, in the Arabic tainties pointed out on p. 590, note,
language. The written symbols and may be entirely disregarded for pre-
the literary language are the same sent purposes.
from Morocco to Persia, the native
CHAP. VI, $ 5.
STANDARD SPELLING.
623
Otherwise to the enormous practical evils of an orthography which
has no connection with sound, which helps no one to read and no
one to spell, will be added the last straw of uncertainty.
For my own part I do not see the value of a standard ortho
graphy, but I do see the value of an orthography which reflects
the pronunciation of the writer. Our present standard orthography
is simply typographical ; but in that word lies a world of meaning.
It is a tyrant in possession. It has an army of compositors who
live by it, an army of pedagogues who teach by it, an army of
officials who swear by it and denounce any deviation as treason, an
army, yea a vast host, who having painfully learned it as children,
cling to it as adults, in dread of having to go through the awful
process once more, and care not for sacrificing their children to that
Moloch, through whose fires themselves had to pass, and which
ignorance makes the countersign of respectability. Accepting this
fact, I have arranged all my vocabularies according to this typo
graphical spelling, simply because it will be familiar to all who
read this book, and they will, therefore, by its means most readily
discover what they require.1 But I cannot do so without record
ing my own conviction, the result of more than a quarter of a
century's study, that our present standard typographical spelling is a
monstrous misshapen changeling, a standing disgrace to our literature.
1 For the same reason in any dic
tionary, whether of ancient or modern
English, which is published before a
general revision of our orthography is
effected (the Greek Kalends?), I re
commend an arrangement of the words
according to the orthography in most
general use at the time of publication,
because the intention of such an ar
rangement is to find out a word with
facility, and the most generally used
orthography is necessarily the one best
known. No individual systems such
as "Webster's, or that proposed by Mr.
E. Jones (p. 590, note), or peculiari
ties, such as Mitford's Hand, Milton's
rime, Johnson's musick, which are not
found in one book or newspaper in ten
thousand, should be adopted. Where
there is a concurrent use, do as Min-
shew did (supra, p. 104), give all spell
ings, the explanations under the one
thought to be most usual (to the ex
clusion of all caprice, individual pre
ference, and pet theories of correctness)
and cross references under the others.
To search a dictionary of any extent is
penance enough. The searcher can't
afford to have his labour increased.
Would not a beginner in Anglosaxon
be driven mad by the arrangement in
Ettmuller's Dictionary, to which no
index even is appended ? I have often
regretted the precious time it has cost
me. In Dr. Stratman's excellent Dic
tionary of the Old English Language
" the words are entered in alphabetical
order, under their oldest form, for ex
ample uwen owen under u-^en, 6f en, even
under cefen ; ivel, evel under uvel, etc."
The consequence is the waste of hours.
Such a dictionary should have the chief
article, as in Coleridge's Glossary, un
der the most usual existent form, as
best known, and cross references under
all the old forms, as being unknown.
Individual Glossaries must of course
follow the exact orthography of the
books which they index, but even here
cross references may refer to the chief
article under the usual orthography.
Great advantage would accrue in com
paring all forms of words in all books
by some such arrangement as this.
Where the field is so vast and the
multiplicity of detail so immeasurable,
those patriotic individuals who give us
the result of their labours should do
their best to render them quickly ac
cessible. The increased bulk of any
glossary or dictionary is utterly unim
portant, as compared with the saving
of time to its consulter.
624 STANDARD PRONUNCIATION. CHAP. VI. § 6.
§ 6. On Standard Pronunciation.
For at least a century, since Buchanan published his " Essay
towards establishing a standard for an elegant and uniform pro
nunciation of the English language throughout the British dominions,
as practised by the most learned and polite speakers," in 1766, and
probably for many years previously, there prevailed, and ap
parently 'there still prevails, a belief that it is possible to erect a
standard of pronunciation which should be acknowledged and
followed throughout the countries where English is spoken as a
native tongue, and that in fact that standard already exists, and is
the norm unconsciously followed by persons who, by rank or educa
tion, have most right to establish the custom of speech.
One after another, for the last century, we have had labourers in
the field. Buchanan, 1766, was a Scotchman, and his dialect clung
to him; Sheridan, 1780, was an Irishman, and Johnson, from
the first, ridiculed the idea of an Irishman teaching Englishmen
to speak.1 Sheridan was an actor, so was "Walker, 1791, but the
latter had the advantage of being an Englishman, and his dic
tionary is still in some repute, though those who study it will see his
vain struggles to reconcile analogy with custom, his constant
references to the habits of a class of society to which he evidently
did not belong, his treatment of pronunciation as if determined by
orthography (precisely in the same way as grammarians consider
grammar to mould language, whereas both orthography and gram-
1 " BOSWELL : It may be of use, Sir, Lord Chesterfield told me that the
to have a Dictionary to ascertain the word great should be pronounced to
pronunciation. JOHNSON: Why, Sir, rhyme to state ; and Sir William Yonge
my Dictionary shews you the accent sent me word that it should be pro
of words, if you can but remember nounced so as to rhyme to teat, and
them. BOSWELL : But, Sir, we want that none but 1 rishmen would pro-
marks to ascertain the pronunciation nounce it grait. Now here were two
of the vowels. Sheridan, I believe, men of the highest rank, the one the
has finished such a work. JOHNSON : best speaker m the House of Lords,
Why, Sir, consider how much easier it the other the best speaker in the House
is to learn a language by the ear, than of Commons, differing entirely." Bos-
by any marks. Sheridan's Dictionary well's Life of Johnson, anno. 1772,
may do very well ; but you cannot aet. 63. Dr. Johnson, however, had
always carry it about with you : and, his own fancies : " I perceived that he
when you want the word, you have not pronounced the word heard, as if spelled
the Dictionary. It is like the man who with a double e, heerd, instead of
has a sword that will not draw. It is sounding it herd, as is most usually
an admirable sword to be sure : but done. He said, his reason was, that if
while your enemy is butting your throat it were pronounced herd, there would
you are unable to u<e it Besides, Sir, be a single exception from the English
what entitles Sheridan to fix the pro- pronunciation of the syllable car, and
nunciation of English ? He has, in he thought it better not to have that
the first place, the disadvantage of exception." Ibid, anno 1777, aet. 68.
being an Irishman : and if he says he Dr. Johnson had forgotten heart,
will fix it after the example of the best hearken, wear, bear, to (ear, su-ear,
company, why they differ among them- earl, pcnrl, which all orthoepists of his
selves. I remember an instance : when time pronounce differently from ear.
I published the plan for my Dictionary, On great, seat, see supra, p. 87.
CHAP. VI. § 6. STANDARD PRONUNCIATION. 625
mar are casts, one of speech sounds, and the other of speech
combinations); in short, in almost every part of his "principles,"
and his "remarks" upon particular words throughout his dic
tionary, they will see the most evident marks of insufficient
knowledge, and of that kind of pedantic self-sufficiency which is
the true growth of half-enlightened ignorance, and may be termed
" usherism." Walker has done good and hard work; he has laid
down rules, and hence given definite assertions to be considered,
and he has undoubtedly materially influenced thousands of people,
who, more ignorant than himself, looked upon him as an authority.
But his book has passed away, and his pronunciations are no longer
accepted. Jones, 1798; Perry, 1805; Enfield, 1807; Fulton, 1821 ;
Jameson, 1827 ; Knowles, 1835, need not be more than named.
The last was a corrector and follower of Sheridan. Smart's Walker
Remodelled, 1836, and Worcester's Critical and Pronouncing Dic
tionary, 1847, are those now most in vogue. Smart was a teacher
of elocution in London, who enjoyed a considerable reputation;
"Worcester is an American. In both of these we have a distinct
recognition of the vowels in unaccented syllables, but by no means
a distinct representation of the same ; and in Smart we have great
consideration bestowed upon the final vocal r (j), and its dipth-
thongal action on the preceding vowel.
The vocabulary of our language is so much more copious than
the vocabulary of any individual, and the vocabulary of any writer
is so much more copious than the vocabulary of the same man as a
speaker — unless he be a public orator, a clergyman, a lecturer, a
barrister, an actor, — and the orthography of our language conveys
so little information upon the intended pronunciation of any word,
that there will be many thousand words that even the most accom
plished and varied speakers and hearers have never uttered or heard ;
and other thousands which they have only on the rarest occasions
uttered and heard, of the sound of which they must therefore be
more or less in doubt, unless they feel that confidence in themselves
which will allow them to assert that their own pronunciation is
correct, because it is their own.1 By far the greater number of
1 I .do not remember ever meeting words which I never heard pronounced,
with a person of general education, or From this result some peculiarities
even literary habits, who could read off not unworthy of notice. Many of the
without hesitation, the whole of such a words of my old vocabulary continue to
list of words as : bourgeois, demy, ac- be pronounced in the provincial dialect
tinism, velleity, batman, beaufin, bre- in which they were learned, such as tay
vier, rowlock, fusil, flugleman, vase, for tea, even though I know the right
tassel, buoy, oboe, archimandrite, etc., pronunciation, and generally recollect
and give them in each case the same the error after it has been committed,
pronunciation as is assigned in any I know not that I should regret this,
given pronouncing dictionary now in as it seems to give to my language a
use. Dr. Kitto, who lost his hearing living character, which it would neces-
at twelve years of age, but retained his sarily want, if all framed upon unheard
power of speech, says : (The Lost models. Many such words do not,
Senses, 1845, Series 1, Deafness, p. 23) however, occur, as I have exchanged
"I have often calculated that above many provincialisms for book words,
two-thirds of my vocabulary consist of which I am not in the same way liable
40
626 STANDARD PRONUNCIATION. CHAP. VI. § 6.
speakers, however, do not feel this confidence, and, afraid that the
sounds they are accustomed to use in their own limited circles
would he ridiculed in the higher walks to which they aspire, are
glad to take the "authority" of a pronouncing dictionary as a guide.
Quis autem custodiet ipsos custodes? What guide do the guides follow?
Now our previous investigation shews that at any given time
there has always existed a great diversity of pronunciation, and
that pronunciation has altered with different velocities and in dif
ferent directions in different places, that what was considered
" polite " at one time, was scouted at another, that there never has
been so near an approach to a uniform pronunciation as that which
now prevails, and that that uniformity itself is not likely to he so
great as might have heen anticipated.
Uniformity of pronunciation, necessarily depends upon the
proximity of speakers. We have seen that the great changes in
English were produced by the two civil wars, which mixed up
the elements of our population. In more recent times a certain
degree of uniformity is sustained, by 1) that communication be
tween town and country which disseminates the habits of the
metropolis throughout the provinces; 2) that system of university
education which rubs together the different dialects of England
in a classical mortar, and sends out the product as the utterance of
young men of rank and fortune, and still more effectively, as that
of young clergymen throughout the length and breadth of our land,
and 3) that plan of teaching teachers which instils into them the
pronunciation of the most usual words and enables them to impress
it upon their pupils in the primary schools throughout the country.
But that nothing approaching to real uniformity prevails is easily
seen, and some striking illustrations will be furnished in Chap. XI.
When we listen to a discourse we are by natural habit carried
away with the succession of ideas, and we have great difficulty in
withdrawing our attention from this, and fixing it merely upon the
sounds which are uttered. Any one, however, who wishes to study
to mispronounce. But even ray book rections, than from the curious instinct
words, though said to he generally pro- which has, in the course of time, been
nounced with much precision, are liable developed, of avoiding the use of those
to erroneous utterance through my dis- words about the pronunciation of which
position to give all such words as they I feel myself uncertain, or which I know
are written, and it is well known that myself liable to mispronounce. This
the letters of which many of our words is particularly the case with proper
are composed, do not adequately re- names and foreign words ; although,
present the sounds with which they even in such, 1 am more in dread of
are pronounced. This error of pro- erroneous quantity than of wrong vo-
nouncing words as they are written is calization." The above test words,
the converse of that so common which are not all to be found even in
among uneducated people, of writing Worcester's dictionary, written in glos-
words down according to their sounds. sotype according to my pronunciation,
Many of such faults have, however, would be : burj6ys, deemviy, aktiniz'm,
been corrected in the course of years, veleeiti, bauman, biffin, breeveer, rul-
and it may not now be easy to detect luk, fiwzee, fiwg'lman, vauz, tos'l, boy,
me in many errors of this kind : but ohboy, ahrkimandruyt.
this arises not more from such cor-
CHAP. VI. § 6. STANDARD PRONUNCIATION. 627
pronunciation must be able to do this. It is entirely insufficient
and misguiding to ask a person to pronounce you a given word.
The most you can do is to propound him a sentence, and listen to
him with closed eyes as he repeats it over and over again. Then
you will probably detect differences of utterance at each delivery,
differences which it requires years of care and attention to discrimi
nate and symbolize satisfactorily. Even then, too, each delivery
may be false, that is, not such as the speaker would utter naturally,
when he was thinking of the meaning and not of the sound of the
words. Listen to a preacher, shutting out your sense to his mean
ing, and observe the alternations of loud, distinct, slow, and scarcely
audible, obscure, rapid utterances. Listen to the same man en
gaged in ordinary conversation, and observe the increase of the
rapid, obscure utterances, and the difference occasioned in the
tolerably distinct syllables by the difference of emphasis and de
livery. Then think how difficult it is to determine the real pro
nunciation of that one man. How much more difficult must it be
to determine and then bear in mind the pronunciation of thousands
of other people, whom you only hear occasionally and observe less
frequently, because you wish to know what, not how, they speak.
And yet this has to be done by any one who wishes to discover
what is the real actual existing usage of English speech. It is
needless to say that it is not done. Certain associations of child
hood determine the direction of pronunciation, certain other habits
and associations of youth and early maturity, serve to modify the
original, and, if the speaker inclines to consider speech, he may
artificially " correct," and at any rate, materially change his habits
of pronunciation in after life, but this is an exception. He soon
ceases to hear words, he drinks in ideas, and only glaring differences
which impede this imbibition, strike him and are, more or less
falsely, noted. He is in the habit of using an orthography which
not only does not remind him of the sounds of words, but gives him
the power of deducing great varieties of pronunciation for unknown
words. What chance then have we of a uniform pronunciation ?
What is the course actually pursued by those who seek to deter
mine a standard of pronunciation ? Dr. Johnson laid down as " the
best general rule, to consider those as the most elegant speakers
who deviate least from the written words." l This was entirely
theoretical, and was penned in ignorance of the historical variations
of the orthoepical significance of the "written words." Walker
asks whether the custom of speech to be followed is the "usage of
the multitude of speakers, whether good or bad," epithets which
beg the question, "the usage of the studious in schools and colleges,
with those of the learned professions, or that of those who, from
their elevated birth or station, give laws to the refinements and
elegancies of a court ?" and replies that it is "neither of these . . .,
taken singly, but a sort of compound ratio of all three," which
expression, knowing what compound ratio means, I do not profess
to understand. He goes on to say, " Neither a finical pronun-
1 Preface to Dictionary.
628 STANDARD PRONUNCIATION. CHAP. VI. § 6.
ciation of the Court," — (is then Court pronunciation necessarily
finical?} — "nor a pedantic Grsecism of the schools," — (does this
eixst?) — "will he denominated respectable usage till a certain
number,", (what proportion?) "of the general mass of common
speakers," i.e. those who are neither courtly nor educated? "have
acknowledged them ; nor will a multitude of common speakers
authorize," (to whom?) "any pronunciation which is reprobated
by the learned and polite. As those sounds, therefore," he concludes,
"which are the most generally received among the learned and
polite ; as well as the bulk of speakers are the most legitimate," —
i.e. according to law, but what or whose law ? — " we may conclude
that a majority of two of these states ought always to concur,
in order to constitute what is callefl." by Mr. John Walker,
" good usage." But how does Mr. John Walker, of Colney
Hatch, determine the usages of each of the three classes he
has named, but certainly not defined ? Smart seems to take
refuge in "the mouth of a well-educated Londoner," presumably
his own, and he talks of "vulgar speakers," "an appearance of
pedantry," " quite rustic," "speakers of the old school," "metro
politan usage among educated people," "a vulgar mouth," "an
affected speaker," "the best speakers," " distinct utterance," "ob
scure or colloquial utterance," "irrregularity," "vulgarism,"
"current pronunciation," "actual pronunciation," "broad utter
ance," "affectation," "the most solemn speaking," "vague and
fluctuating," "elegant speaker," etc., etc., words and epithets im
plying theories or foregone conclusions, but not greatly advancing
our knowledge. We may then repeat the question, what is the
course actually pursued by these orthoepical oracles ? It appears
that they have observed somewhat, thought out, practised and
taught more, till they have confirmed a usage in themselves, and
have then announced that usage to be the custom of the "best
speakers," allowing occasional latitude. Worcester endeavours to
judge between past orthoepists, and among them allots the palm to
Smart, but frequently gives several different pronunciations and
says that "the reader will feel perfectly authorized" by Mr. Wor
cester? "to adopt such a form as he may choose." "The com
piler" he adds, "has not intended in any case, to give his own
sanction" to which, however, he seems to attribute considerable
weight, " to a form which is not supported by usage," (which he
has not heard generally used?) " authority," (which some previous
orthoepist has cnot recommended ?) "or analogy," (as derived from
orthography?) He most sensibly concludes that "it would be un
reasonable for hirn^ to make a conformity to his own taste, or to the
result of his own limited observation, a law to those who may differ
from him, and yet agree with perhaps the more common usage."
It has not unfrequently happened that the present writer has
been appealed to respecting the pronunciation of a word. He
generally replies that he is accustomed to pronounce it in such
or such a way, and has often to add that he has heard others
pronounce it differently, but that he has no means of deciding
CHAP. VI. § 6. STANDARD PRONUNCIATION. 629
which pronunciation ought to be adopted, or even of saying which
is the more customary. This, indeed, seems to be the present state
of the case. A large number of words are pronounced with
differences very perceptible to those who care to observe, even
among educated London speakers, meaning those who have gone
through the usual course of instruction in our superior schools for
boys and girls. These differences largely increase, if educated
provincial speakers, especially Scottish, Irish, and Welsh, be taken
into consideration. If our American brethren are included, the
diversities still further increase, though our younger colonies
generally, being of more recent formation, so that few of them can
count even a small number of persons whose fathers and grand
fathers were born and lived in them, do not materially swell the
number. But if we extend our circle to those who have only
received primary education, and still more to those who have re
ceived no education at all, who, not being able to read and write,
or having no knowledge of theories of language, have developed
language organically, we find the diversities extremely great. The
respect which the inferior pays to his superior in rank and wealth
makes him generally anxious and willing to adopt the pronunciation
of the superiorly educated, if he can but manage to learn it.
How can he ? Real communication between class and class is all but
impossible. In London, where there is local proximity, the "upper
ten," the court and nobles, "the middle class," the professional,
the studious, "the commercial class," the retail tradesman, the
" young men and young ladies" employed behind the counter, the
servants, porters, draymen, artizans, mechanics, skilled and un
skilled labourers, market men and women, costermongers, " the
dangerous classes," — all these are as widely separated as if they
lived in different countries. But almost all read, almost all have
their favourite periodical, and all such periodicals adopt, within
narrow limits, the same orthography. If that orthography only
shewed some kind of pronunciation — it is really of very little im
portance which variety of those current among the educated be
selected, or even if different systems were chosen in different news
papers — there would then be some means of comparing pronuncia
tions, something less fleeting and more "questionable" than the
utterance itself, something to which the reader would in the act of
reading teach himself to conform. The educated author who has
fancies of his own respecting pronunciation, could insist on his
printer "following copy" and giving his opinion in his own spelling.
But the printers generally, printers of journals in particular, would
each soon adopt some special form, some vocabulary constructed for
their office (supra, p. 591, n. 2), and in a few years the jolting of
these forms together would yield to some compromise which would
produce the nearest approach to an orthoepical standard we could
hope to attain. Would, however, our pronunciation remain fixed ?
All experience is against its doing so, and consequently spelling
considered as the mirror of speech, would probably have to be ad
justed from generation to generation.
630 STANDARD PRONUNCIATION. CHAP. VI. § 6.
Is such a standard pronunciation desirable ? The linguist and
philologist may perhaps sigh over this unnatural and inorganic
orthopaedic treatment of language. For one, the present •writer
could not suppress a feeling of regret. But the well-being of our
race points in another direction. Recognizing the extreme import
ance of facilitating intercourse between man and man, we should
feel no doubt, and allow no sentimental regrets to interfere with
the establishment of something approaching to a general system of
pronouncing, by means of a general system of indicating our pro
nunciation in writing, as far as our own widespread language
extends. "Without in the least presuming to say that other and
much better systems cannot be devised, the writer may point to the
historical phonetic spelling, developed in §* 3, as a means at hand
for writing the English language without any new types, with as
close an adherence to the old orthography, as much ease to old
readers, and as much correctness in imitating the sounds used by
the writer at any time, as we could hope to be generally possible.
And as to primary confusion, what would it matter, if not greater
than the scarcely observed confusion of speech ? Thus if one writes,
in this spelling :
Ahy deemdhnd leev too plaJint mahy stahf maur fiirmli on dhu pahth.
Wotsiz naiym, sur? Ahy reeuli dohwnt nohw, mum, mahy
memmuriz mizzurubul : —
and another writes —
Ey dimdnd leev took plant mi staf moh'r fermli on dhe path. What
is hiz naim, ser ? Ey reeali dohnt noh, mam, mi memmori tz
mizzeratfl.
both would be intelligible, and a difference of sound not previously
noticed would be forced on the attention, and probably changed ;
provided only that those who say ahy plahnt, &c., will not write ey
plant, etc., because it is "finer," or "neater," or "shorter," or
"nearer to the old orthography," or for any other irrelevant reason,
which is the great danger to be apprehended — as I know by
experience.
At present there is no standard of pronunciation. There
are many ways of pronouncing English correctly, that is
according to the usage of large numbers of persons of either
sex in different parts of the country, who have received a
superior education. All attempts to found a standard of
pronunciation on our approximate standard of orthography
are futile. The only chance of attaining to a standard of
pronunciation is by the introduction of phonetic spelling,
which will therefore fulfil the conditions required by etymo
logical spelling, standard spelling, and standard pronuncia
tion. Our present orthography approximately fulfils only
the second of these conditions, and grossly violates the other
two.
CHAP. VI. § 6. STANDARD PRONUNCIATION. 631
And thus the present writer has been brought round, by a
totally different route, to the advocacy of a principle to which
he devoted many years of his life and a considerable portion
of his means. It is his own conviction, founded not only
upon philological grounds, but upon philanthropical, educa
tional, social, and political considerations, that a phonetic
system of spelling should be adopted for our noble language.
To its introduction he finds but one real objection — the exist
ence of another orthography. Hitherto all phonetic attempts
have made shipwreck on this rock. But the enterprising
spirit of the phonetic navigators is worthy of their arctic
predecessors, and their aim being not merely to solve a
problem in natural science, but to increase the power and
happiness of the vast race which speaks the English language,
is one which is not likely to die out. Even now a phonetic
periodical appears regularly in London, conducted by Mr.
Isaac Pitman, whose widely extended system of phonetic short
hand, has done so much to popularize the phonetic idea.
Even now Mr. Melville Bell has brought out the most philo
sophical phonetic alphabet yet invented, and has reduced it
to a system of writing far simpler and easier than that in
common use. Even now the present writer is engaged in
producing a new edition of his Plea for Phonetic Spelling, for
the second and larger home of our language, the United
States of America.1 It is true that the difficulties in the
1 It was in preparing this new edi- missionaries, travellers, ethnologists,
tion for Mr. Benn Pitman, brother of and philologists ; (7), obscures the real
Mr. Isaac Pitman, and now of Cincin- history of our language ; (8), conceals
nati, Ohio, U.S., that I was fortunate the present state of our language;
enough to discover Salesbury's book (9), hinders the extension and uni-
(14 Feb., 1859), and thus commenced versal employment of English. Pho-
the special series of investigations netic Spelling : (1), renders reading
which have developed into the present very easy ; (2), forms the best intro-
work. The printing of this third duction to romanic reading ; (3), is
edition, after the text was complete, as easy as correct speaking; (4), in
was interrupted by the American Civil conjunction with phonetic reading
War, and the preparation of these facilitates romanic spelling ; (5), ren-
pages has hitherto prevented me from ders learning to read even romanically
finishing the Appendices. It may not a pleasant task ; (6), by economising
be out of place to annex here the head- time, increases the efficiency of primary
ings from this forthcoming work, pre- schools; (7), affords an excellent logical
raising that ordinary spelling is therein training to the child's mind; (8), im-
for convenience termed Romanic. Ho- proves pronunciation and enunciation ;
manic Spelling : (1), renders reading (9), will greatly assist the missionary
difficult, and writing still more diffi- traveller and ethnologist; (10), would
cult ; (2), necessitates the memorizing exhibit the real history of our lan-
of every form in the language; (3), guage ; (11), would exhibit the real
makes learning to read and write a state of our language; (12), would
hateful task ; (4), is one great cause of induce uniformity of pronunciation ;
our prevailing ignorance; (5), mis-trains (13), would favour the extension and
a child's mind ; (6), is a hindrance to universal employment of our language ;
632
STANDARD PRONUNCIATION.
CHAP. VI. § 6.
way are enormous, the dead weight of passive resistance to
be moved is overwhelming, the ignorance of the active re-
sisters stupendous, and the hands of the promoters weak; but
the cause is good, the direction is historical, the means
obvious, the end attainable by degrees, the material results
of even small attempts useful, and one of the most practical
men that ever spoke or printed our language, Benjamin
Franklin, has left on record his own conviction that " some
time or other it must be done, or our writing will become
the same with the Chinese as to the difficulty of learning
and using it."1
(14), would effect a considerable saving
of printing [this does not apply to
glossotype, or any system in which
diagraphs are employed] ; (15), would
bring phonetic shorthand into general
use ; (16), would be of material use in
facilitating, etymological -investigations.
The objections considered are arranged
in five classes; (1). Impossibilities and
Errors: It is impossible to introduce
new letters and a new alphabet, or to
frame a true phonetic alphabet, the
analysis of all so-called phonetic alpha
bets being faulty and insufficient, and
the new letters hitherto proposed con
structed upon an erroneous basis. (2).
Linguistic Losses : The change from
romanic to phonetic spelling would
tend to obscure etymology, would con
fuse words having the same sound but
different romanic orthography in differ
ent senses, would occasion orthography
to differ from person to person, place
to place, and time to time, would ob
scure history and geography, and
unsettle title deeds by altering the
appearance of names, and would in
troduce vulgarisms of pronunciation.
(3). Material Losses: The change
would occasion a great loss of literary
property, and great expense in pro
viding new types. (4) . Inconveniences :
The change would be bad as change,
would be too great, and would amount
to an alteration of the language. (5).
Difficulties : Phonetic books have a
strange appearance, we should have to
learn two systems of spelling instead of
one, the fewness of the phonetic books
renders the acquisition of phonetic
spelling worthless, the change is not
needed, and is useless, because only
partially adopted, and another system
of spelling exists. The author endea
vours to shew the incorrectness of all
these objections, except the last.
1 The whole of Franklin's remarks
will be found in a transliteration of
his own phonetic orthography, i
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