232
NOTES AND QUERIES. [ii s. m. MA*. 25, ion.
See 9 S. xi. 494. The description
"armiger," "gent.," and " pleb." belon,
to the fathers of alumni, and were no
consistently attributed to parents by thei
own sons. A. T. M.
See ' The English Gentleman,' by Sir Geo Sitwell, Bt., F.S.A., in vol. i. of The Ancestor p. 58. R. S. B.
" Armiger " meant originally one entitlec to bear heraldic arms, an esquire. " Gentle man " was a vaguer term, and sometimes no doubt, connoted a man who, originally written " plebs," had prospered in his calling and retired. These distinctions have ceasec to have much meaning ; and in some colleges everybody signs himself as " arm. fil," in others as " gen. fil " sons of clergymen o: the Church of England excepted, who sign as " cler. fil."
The University by its charters claimec jurisdiction over all cases in which " scholaris " or " persona privilegiata " was one of the parties in the suit. A sixteenth- century list gives among privileged persons college manciples, cooks,under-cooks, porters, servants of various dons, a slater, a barber a surgeon, a " scrip tor," a " vergerer," t plumber, four " cantatores Ecclesiae Christi,' and others. A. R. BAYLEY.
TREHERNE : CURIOUS RIMES TO "JOY" (11 S. ii. 426). Are the quoted rimes false ? They are curious, from the change that has taken place, since Treherne's time, in our shifting pronunciation ; just as the corre- sponding rimes in French are curious from the change in Paris pronunciation. Tre- herne's rimes show that in his time " joy " was pronounced by the educated as it is now by the uneducated that is, as in " jyfull " or even as " jay." We know that "boil," "boiler," "oil," "spoil," &c., have to the great majority of English tongues the same sound as in " bile." Spenser in ' Colin Clout ' rimed " kind " \vith "joined," and " lie " \*ith " destroy." If Treherne .rimed "joy" with "convey, 1 ' so did La Fontaine rime joie with envoie and monnoie, which certainly would, have rimed with " convey," for the last two of these French words corresponded both in meaning and pronunciation to our " envey " (or " en- veigh ") and " money." We have kept the original sounds, which Paris has lost in the first word, but has kept in the second, owing to its being included in the partial spelling reform of the eighteenth century which changed it to monnaie.
In nearly all French words containing
oi, oy, this was sounded as ei, e, or with the
w-glide as " we," until the partial spelling
reform induced Paris and the classes under
its influence to think that the unchanged
words must be pronounced differently.
Thus croire (Prov. creire) was pronounced
crere, and croycis, creye (its noun being
credit) ; but when croyois was changed to
croyais, Paris began to pronounce it as at
present. Similarly the early reis and re'ine
(Prov. rei, reino) did not change sound when
written roy and royne ; but the first did
change when excluded from- the spelling
reform, while reine is now pronounced as it
always was under whichever spelling.
But French words passing to England with oi, oy, preserved their true ei sound. To " bray " in a mortar shows the original sound of broyer (Prov. brega, breia) ; " trey " (of dice) that of trois ; to " display " that of ployer (Prov. plega, pleia) ; our statute- French pesson that of poisson (Prov. peis) ; and its " haberdepase " and " habardy peyse " that of avoir de poids.
Even in joie, one of the few words with an original sound of oi (Prov. joio, pro- nounced " dzaw-ye "), this sound gave way according to the general rule that it became e, sometimes with a #<;-glide. This word could thus rime with monnaie, as Treherne's ' joy " rimed with " convey." It is inter- sting to see how the study of English and of French rimes helps in determining the old pronunciation of each language.
EDWARD NICHOLSON. Paris.
CAPT. COOK MEMORIALS (US. iii. 165). There is, I understand, a column to the memory of Capt. Cook on Easby Moor,
orkshire. It was erected in 1827 at the cost of a Mr. Campion of Whitby.
The following paragraph appeared in The Warwick Times of 22 May, 1909 :
' A monument to Capt. Cook, the navigator, tood for many years at Manby Hall, midway >etween Brigg* and Scunthorpe (Lincolnshire), vhich is now in a state of ruin, though at one ime used by the, Yarborough family. Capt. ^ook stayed there for some time before going upon is last voyage. It is now reported that some nknown vandals have wrecked the monument nd upset the upper part of its pedestal, with the esult that it is entirely demolished."
Further particulars concerning both these nemorials would be welcome.
An engraving of the Cook memorial in
- reat St. Andrew's Church, Cambridge,
s given in The Mirror of 5 November,
136. JOHN T. PAGE.
Long Itchington, Warwickshire.
