Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 3.djvu/337

 s. m. APRIL s, 1905.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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events and facts, which clearly refer only to the Kentish Leeds and its fine old moated castle, for his " wild creations !) at Leeds in Yorkshire. His credulity and disposition to enhance the dignity of himself and his native

a "ace evidently led to all kinds of egregious unders, to be found from preface to colo- phon of his topography and museum cata- logue, which even Dr. \Vhi taker (who married a Thoresby), in his edition of that work in 1816, tells us contains some " trash " and had no right to the high-sounding title ' Ducatus Leodiensis,' a title which has misled a vast number of plagiarists of both the past and the present time.

The result of my deep research 'The History of the Castle, the Priory, and the Dukedom of Leeds 'will be published, and is only delayed because it is in a larger form than was originally intended.

JOHN GATES.

York Villa, 58, Josephine Avenue, S. VY.

ABBEY OF ST. VALRY-SUR-SOMME (10 th S. iii. 168). A history of Sfe. Valery-sur-Somme has been written by the Abbe Caron, archi- pretre d'Abbeville, and published by M. C. Paillard of the last-named place. I am told there is a society of historians at St. Valery who will probably publish a new history of that place. L. L. K.

WINDSOR CASTLE SENTRY (10 th S. iii. 229). This subject has been treated in 1 st S. i. 198, 449 ; 2 n<1 S. vi. 490 ; and in 2 nd S. vii. 14 there is an interesting explanation not only of the possibility, but probability that St. Paul's clock struck thirteen when the Windsor Castle sentry was charged with sleeping at his post. * JAMES WATSON.

CALEDONIAN COFFEE-HOUSE (10 th S. iii. 189). This was on the south side of Russell Street, Covent Garden near the centre. It is no longer a place of refreshment.

WM. DOUGLAS.

125, Helix Road, Brixton Hill.

NAMES OF LETTERS (10 th S. iii. 228). 1. The names epsilon, upsilon, are explained in Liddell and Scott's Greek Dictionary, under the headings c and v respectively.

2. The French y is not the Greek t, but the Greek v, for which the Romans substituted the symbol y. That is, the French y was the Latin y ; and the Latin y was not a Latin letter, but a Greek one.

3. The origin of the name of h is explained in the 'N.E.D.,' under the heading h. Our aitch is from the French ache, which (like the Ital. acca) represents a form *ahha, made by prefixing and suffixing a to a strong aspirate

like the G, ch. The use of the a is to make the sound more audible, just as we prefix e to /, and call it e/', or suffix e to b, and call it be. 4. The English name wai represents a Mid. Eng. wl, just as wain represents M.E. win. And w~i is merely we, with the u sounded (for ease) as a consonant. And ui was a thirteenth-century symbol for the A.-S. y, still retained in E. build, from A.-S. *byldan (from A.-S. bold). WALTER W. SKEAT.

"The name aitch, which is now so remote from any connexion with the sound of our letter A, goes back through M.E. ache to O.F. ache=Sp. ache, It. acca, pointing to a late L. sound. (The earlier L. name was ha.)" Cf. Dr. Murray's elaborate account of the letter hin the'H.E.D.'
 * accAa, *aMa, or *aha, exemplifying the

The modern French name of the letter, viz. hache, where the h is not pronounced, com- pared with the Italian acca and Spanish ache, evidently shows us both the origin of our name and the loss of the aspirated sound, even in the name of the letter h. H. K.

The origin of the terms e \j/i\6v and v \jsi\6v is clearly explained in Prof. Fried rich Blass's edition of Kiihner's 'AusfiihrlicheGrammatik der Griechischen Sprache' (1890, vol. i. p. 41). Their employment as names is due to a mis- apprehension. Byzantine grammarians in giving rules for the spelling of words con- taining cu or (the sounds denoted by these symbols being in their days the same) made use of the term i^iAoV, plain or simple e, to distinguish e from the diphthong at. In the same way j waa distinguished from ot, sounded like it. See Schmidt's article, to which Blass refers. This was brought to the notice of English readers over thirty years ago by Prof. J. E. B. Mayor, in his 'First Greek Reader.' See also Dr. Sandys's 'A History of Classical Scholarship,' vol. i. pp. 90, 385. EDWARD BENSLY.

Hotel du Sud, Via Lombardia, Rome.

DR. KRUEGER asks whence the letter / derived its English namewn'. It is generally agreed, I believe, that the problem has not been solved. He will find a very full and interesting paper on the subject in the London Philological Society's Proceedings for 1883. It was read by Mr. C. B. Cayley, and it discussed three alternative views, none of them quite satisfactory. JAS. PLATT, Jun.

SIR HARRY BATH: SHOTOVER (10 th S. iii. 209). For the origin of the name of Shot- over Hill, near Oxford, see 5 th S. ii. 91, 136, 197, 274 J 6 th S. ix. 407.

EVERARD HOME COLEMAN.