Imatges de pàgina
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that French words too (as we have just seen cas, pas, solas, &c., made to rhyme with glas and bras) would be drawn into the same vortex of now prevailing English sound. I infer that (blææm) or (blææme), (fææs) or (fææse), (smææl), (tææk), (estææt), (vizæædzh) or (vizæædzhe), (sææv) or (sææve), &c., were Chaucer's sounds.

And this is confirmed by the fact that these words with the long (or at least longer) vowel rhyme now and then with others with the short one. Blade rhymes both with hadde and with panade; spake rhymes with wake, as well as with bak, blak, and demoniac; pace (vb.) with lasse, A.S. læssa, as well as with space, grace, &c. This may be best explained by supposing that while in the one set of rhymes (as blade and panade) the quantity of the vowels was the same, the quality was the same in the other (as blade and hadde).

A in Chaucer

not made (A) by a w preceding.

Finally, whether the vowel was long or short, it was not affected as in modern English by a w preceding: wan rhymed with man, swan with Fovinian; warm with arm, quarte with parte, what with sat, and so on. So it is in the Devonshire dialect to this day. I have a lively recollection of having heard (əs məs wærm 'n)* for "We must beat him," namely the dog; and (wæd i zee) for "What do you say?" is perfectly common.t

Mr. Ellis makes Chaucer's a always (a).

It is certainly a singular instance of Mr.

Ellis's want of discrimination, that he should make the short a in Chaucer always (a), forgetting that it includes the A.S. @ as well as a, and the modern (æ) as well as (a). Many of Chaucer's words in a were spelt with a in A.S.-æt, þæt, hæfð, æsp, (= aspen), æsc, glæs, tæppestre, &c.—and sounded as Mr. Ellis (rightly, I think) supposes, with (a), in the Anglo-Saxon period, and they are sounded with the same sound now: yet they had (a). in Chaucer! This is precisely the kind of "interregnum " which Mr. Ellis elsewhere protests against in somewhat felicitous phrase. Is it in fact in the slightest degree *(Warm) is also used.

+ And compare the modern Scotch pronunciation of wash as (wash).

probable that tapster would be (tæp'estre) in A.S., turn into (tapsteer) in the fourteenth century, and go back to (tæp'sti) in these later centuries? Yet such strange confusion must result if an investigator allows himself to be misled by the notion that 'the orthography [sufficiently] shows the sound.' Surely it is vastly more probable that though the influence of the Norman Conquest so far modified the mode of writing of our forefathers as to cause a with other letters to be disused, yet the mode of speaking in the utterance of common words would remain the same, and the distinction between (a) and (æ), though blotted out of the written language, would yet survive in the spoken language, as beyond question it does for the most part to this day.

Mr. Ellis's inconsistency is all the more remarkable as he supposes some of the words which had (a) in A.S. and assumed the broader (a) in Chaucer to have actually deviated into a thinner sound in the interval. According to his view * our word that was in the A.S. times (thæt), in Henry II.'s time it shrunk up into (dhet), in Chaucer's time it expanded again into (dhat), and in this nineteenth century-and indeed for more than two centuries now— has returned to its original sound, at least as to the vowel. We pass on now to another class of words, those which 78 In a large num- are written with e, which Mr. Ellis affirms was (e), as it still is (when followed by r) in ere, sound as (ii). were, where, there.

ber of 'E' words

tradition fixes the

Now there are certain words to which our provincial dialects agree in assigning the sound of (ii), and which even Mr. Ellis acknowledges to have been so sounded for at least three centuries. Here are some of them: he, she, me, thee, we, ye, the, be, bee, see, flee, tree, three, free, knee, fleece, smeech, feed, breed, need, heed, bleed, meed, speed, reed, weed, lief, week, reek, seek, feel, heel, keel, wheel, field, green, queen, thirteen, fourteen, &c., keen, ween, keep, sheep, deep, weep, steep, beer, here, deer, geese, priest, meet, greet, fleet, sheet, feet, sweet, beet, teeth, seethe. I can find no trace that any one of these words is ever pronounced with (ee) in the western

* See pp. 535, 503, 719, 65.

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dialects or any other. The tradition is uniform with regard to them, and they all are spelt in Early and Modern English with e or ee, three only with ie. In Anglo-Saxon they are also spelt with é or eó; in most cases with the I urge then that, unless there be any insuperable objection, tradition fixes the pronunciation of these words; and that the written é in A.S. is the symbol of the same sound as the ee in Modern English.

accent.

Pronunciation

Do I then suppose thaté and eó were proof A. S. eá and ed. nounced alike in the time of King Alfred? Not quite alike, but I believe that in the diphthongs eá and eó the accent, though written on the second vowel (as we write the accent in Greek), belonged partly or exclusively to the first, the second vowel being the weaker one. This is rendered probable by the fact that the ó in these words is so easily abraded. (I shall return to this subject by-and-by.) "In the Ormulum," Dr. Morris tells us, eo occurs, but with the sound of e, and ea in Genesis and Exodus is written for e." I suspect, however, not the pure (ii) in either case. Mr. Sweet in a recent paper has spoken of as commonly preceded by a pure vowel. In Devonshire it is not so: the A.S. ceól, hweól, seem to be preserved with little change - perhaps none-in the Dev. (kiiǝl), (whiiǝl); and school in Dev. is (skœəl).*

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she.

80 Derivation of And here I may observe that I cannot accept Mr. Ellis's derivation of our pronoun she. He takes it from heó, the A.S. fem. of he. I take it from seó, fem. of se or pat. In sceó, shoe, the e seems to be a mere orthographical expedient to indicate the pronunciation of the sc as the modern sh, and the ó, as I contend, is (uu); so that the word was pronounced 1000 years ago as

*Not (skyyl). I am a Devonshire man, and know most parts of Devonshire pretty well. I have also lived in France, and know French well. And I affirm that I have never heard the pure French u in the Dev. dialect. It is much more nearly the Fr. eu or eû that is there substituted for (uu). (Mr. Ellis tells one he has heard both sounds: I have not. Prince Louis Lucien Bonaparte, certainly a most competent judge, tells me that to his ear the sound is between the Fr. u and eu.)

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it is now. In like manner the e is a mere orthographical expedient in sceáwian, sceaft, sceamu, scearp, &c.; and in gearu, geára, geard, geoc (which was yok in Chaucer's time), geond, geóguð, &c. In seó on the contrary (as in gear, sceáf, sceóp, &c.), the e is not a mere orthographical expedient, but the principal part of the diphthong, the word having been, as I suppose, pronounced (siiu). Then the s, as commonly when followed by (i) and another vowel (e.g. nation, ocean, sure, sugar; vision, pleasure, &c.), becomes sh.* Finally, as in a multitude of other instances, the o is abraded, and the e remains; though sometimes the o had more vitality and overpowered the e, so that sho resulted. Compare sceótan as the original of the O.E. shete as well as the modern shoot; and yeoman as pronounced by Chaucer and by Ben Jonson (Jiimæn), and as now pronounced. That float has prevailed over Chaucer's fleten may be ascribed to the influence of the French flotter on the side of flotian as against fleótan; for there were both these forms in A.S.

The broad sound of e as (ee)

tial: the line

drawn.

But to return. There are many e words in in the Western which modern provincial usage is divided even dialects only par- within the limits of one and the same dialect. Thus in Devonshire we have both cheek and chayke (tsheeik), leech and laych, meal (miil)—from the mill -and mayl, clean and clayn, flea or vlea and vlay, sea and say, heap and hayp, read and rayd, rear and rayr, meat and mayt; and just so in Anglo-Saxon most of these same words appear in more forms than one-léce, læce, méte, mæte, clén, clæn, réran, ræeran, &c. But in the list of words I have above quoted-he, me, 'keep, teeth, &c.—I can find no trace of such diversity of pronunciation either now or formerly. A Devonshire countryman-and I affirm it not merely from my own knowledge, but after inquiry from others, and after having carefully searched Nathan Hogg's

* Instances of this change are so numerous that I cannot believe with Mr. Murray (who also derives she from seó, p. 126) that this form arose in the Northern dialect and then "was adopted also into the Midland and Southern dialects."

Poems and Mrs. Gwatkin's Devonshire Dialogue—may talk of going "to say" for "to sea," but he will never pronounce the verb see as say, nor knee as nay, teeth as tayth, and so on. There are on the other hand cases in which the A.S. word had an e which in some counties is now (ee) or (ee), as crayp (though creep is more common) from creópan; baym from beam or beóm in Sussex and some parts of Cornwall, though (biim) or (biiǝm) is the pronunciation elsewhere. But such words are far from numerous. Almost all the words which in A.S. had é, and which survive in modern English, have the sound of (ii) or (ii).

for

82 Evidence
(ii) from Dutch

and German.

Moreover the Dutch and German forms of many of these words point to the same conclusion as the English dialects, as will be seen from the following list:

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83 Or

a sound near (ii) is found

in the German, Dutch, &c., con

geners of English 'e' words.

Then again in many instances where the German congener of an English word with (i) does not itself contain (i), it has a sound close

akin to (i), but very remote from (e). Thus :

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