10 s. x. AUG. 29,
NOTES AND QUERIES.
175
With reference to MB. MACMICHAEL'
remark about the martlet, may I sugges
a grave doubt whether the marks of cadenc
used by ordinary armigerous persons wer
(except the label) used by princes of th
blood royal ? U. V. W.
INFERIOR CLERGY, THEIR APPELLATIONS "SiR" (10 S. ix. 286, 454). Miss LEGA WEEKES says that she has met conflictin statements as to the use of the prefi " Sir " in this connexion, and asks for som .authoritative information on the point.
Whilst not being, perhaps, very " author tative," the following note may be of servic to her.
In a foot-note to p. 7 of the Preface t the late Mr. J. E. Nightingale's ' Chum Plate of the County of Dorset ' (a work ir which I had the honour of assisting), under taken at the request of Dr. Wordsworth the present Bishop of Salisbury and pub lished in 1889, the author states that th term "Sir" was formerly applied to th inferior clergy as well as to knights. Anc he points out that at Cambridge and Dublin the designation is still applied to Bachelor of Arts. Quoting from Fuller's ' Churcl History,' he continues :
" Such priests as have the addition of ' Sir ' befor their Christian names were men not graduated ii the university ; being in orders, but not in degree , whilst others entitled 'Masters' had commencet in the arts."
Mr. Nightingale gives an illustration of this taken from the inventory of the churcl possessions of the parish of Woolland, a small parish in Dorset, in which occurs " Sir John Whyt, curate." This inventory formed one of those taken by the Commis- sioners appointed in 1552 (6 Edward VI.) of the church goods of the different parishes of the county of Dorset a series now pre- served in the Public Record Office, and con- tained in a very long roll, written on both sides.
Mr. Nightingale expressed a wish that some day a reprint of the whole of this MS. might be made, containing as it does the names of the then officiating clergy as well as some of the representative parish- ioners. That desire has now been fulfilled by the hand of the Rev. W. M. Barnes, Rector of Winterbourne Monkton, near Dorchester (and only son, I believe, of the "Dorset poet," William Barnes), who gives the complete list in vol. xxvi. of the Dorset Field Club Proceedings (1905). In this list frequently occurs the prefix of " Sir " to the names of the local clergy. In corre-
sponding on this subject, Mr. Barnes, in a
recent letter to myself, writes :
"In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the beneficed clergy were addressed as * Sir.' I think they had the status of knights, as the bishops had that of barons."
Not having the above-mentioned volume before me now, I am unable to say, or to test by reference to any other authority that might throw light on the subject, whether this prefix is applied to the beneficed clergy in a parish " the persons charged with the cure of souls " or to a " curate " in the modern sense of " a deputy or assistant to the incumbent," as mentioned by Miss LEGA-WEEKES. J. S. UDAL, F.S.A.
Antigua, W.I.
VOWEL-SHORTENING (10 S. x. 43, 111, 132). I think that vowel-shortening in English is regulated by " law " to a greater extent than is usually supposed. Of course the vowel in such words as maker, loader, is preserved, because the connexion with the verbs make and load is so extremely obvious, and vowel-shortening would obscure . the sense. So, too, finer is the comparative of fine, to which it stands in a very different relation from finial. Timely is a mere com- pound, with very direct reference to time ; and the same is true of most words ending in -ly. Still, even here it is possible to find " shortening " in a very old compound, as, for example, in early, which is connected (not obviously) with ere.
If primer is used as the comparative of prime, or as a verbal agent derived from the verb to prime, the i must needs be long, owing to the closeness of the connexion to be indicated. But when primer is a sub- stantive the case is very different. It is then the representative of the Mid. E. primere, Old French primere, Latin pri- mdrium ; and the i was, in these forms, quite unstressed, with a strong tendency
- o shortness. I believe that it was actually
short ; and that, when the accent was thrown back upon the first syllable, it remained hort still. We shall see how the * N.E.D.' reats this word ; I am willing to abide >y its decision.
What I have called the "law" should ather perhaps have been called a " ten- Lency " ; but it is a natural process, due o the fact that we pronounce words as if ach one had an independent entity, except
n it is necessary for the sense to call xpress attention to the primitive, as in the ase of load-er. Ease of utterance is the rst consideration ; and etymology may ot come in at all. It is not every one who
