Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 4.djvu/93

 10th S. IV. JULY 22, 1905.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 73

way places flails are still used. There are farms near us in South Pembrokeshire to which no road leads, only a cart-track across fields, or a soft, macadamless lane; the threshing machine would have much ado to reach them unless in a drought or a hard frost, and the sheaves of their harvest must either be carted to a hospitable neighbour's farmyard, or threshed at home by hand.

I have known a woman to thresh here. A couple of years ago a small farmer brought his corn to our barn, and when we looked in as we passed, the daughter was wielding a second flail with her brother; but it is not usual, for when we looked over the half-door, the girl laughed and stopped.

One or two larger farms here (none are really large) had a fixed threshing machine worked by horses; these have now gone out of use.

M. S. CLARK.

Robeston Wathen, Narberth.

The following paragraph from The Athenæum of 10 September, 1881, bears on the use of the flail:-

"A correspondent sends a piece of folk-lore derived from a Swiss villager ...... When anyone is passing a barn where the threshers are at work, he may know how many persons are handling the flail by attending closely to the rythm of the threshing. If two are employed, the flails seem to say, 'Barthol, Barthol!' if three threshers are at work, the sound is 'Bartholo, Bartholo!' if four, 'Bartholomä, Bartholomä!' if five, 'Bartholomäus, Bartholomäus!' This is the reason, we are gravely informed, why the Apostle Bartholomew obtained the honour of being the patron saint of threshers."

ELLEN MASTERS.

Ealing.

"ENGLAND," "ENGLISH": THEIR PRONUNCIATION (10th S. iii. 322, 393, 453, 492).-The verbal forms to which PROF. SKEAT objects were tendered with other in proof of the general proposition that degradation of a into o was not a criterion of the quantity of that vowel, and not as proof that ô and â in literary Anglo-Saxon were interchangeable. The forms I gave amply supported my statement, the truth of which is not disputed; and they show that PROF. SKEAT's argument was a contingent one, as I said, and that it could not stand alone. They were drawn from Helfenstein's 'Comparative Grammar of the Teutonic Languages,' p. 63, where, under the head-line 'Old and Middle English,' may be read "The Anglo-Saxon â is sometimes retained in late Saxon, sometimes inclines to ô." A list of twelve pairs of words is then given showing the wavering of â and ô in what Helfenstein calls late Saxon, or Old English. It is in this list that hâlic, hôlic, appear. If Dr. Helfenstein included some partly erroneous forms I am sorry to hear it, but it does not affect the truth of my argument, and PROF. SKEAT tacitly admits as much by amplifying his own. For he now says that in Anglo-Saxon â and ô were never interchangeable at any early time. This, of course, would cover the fifth and sixth centuries, from documents of which period the Saxon word Ongle and the Welsh one Eingyl have come down to us. PROF. SKEAT also suggests that I turn to the 'N.E.D.' in order to learn that the degraded vowel in bôn (=bân) was never seen or heard of before 1300. But a reference to the 'N.E.D.' could not prove all that; and in view of the fact that there is an occasional interchange in all the Old Low German dialects between â and ô (vide Helfenstein, u.s., p. 44), I prefer to think that the emergence of ô for â, in England in the thirteenth century, was the triumph of a tendency that had always existed sporadically, and that it was not a sudden and general change of the nature of a vocal epidemic.

PROF. SKEAT twits me with my presumption in endeavouring to correct his spelling of an Anglo-Saxon word; but that is not quite accurate.It is the etymon of an Anglo-Saxon word that I am trying to deal with. Angul, the alleged etymon, with ǎ and u, is repudiated by the sixth-century Welsh word Eingyl, which indicates â or ô, and by the Anglo-Saxon forms Engle, Ængle, which are cases of hidden umlaut. In concluding my remarks on this subject, I would repeat that the etymon postulated by these three forms is ângil.

A. ANSCOMBE.

4, Temple Road, Hornsey, N.

"VESCALION" (10th S. iv. 28).-This is a fearful wild-fowl of a ghost-word. It origin becomes obvious when an appeal is made from "Bohn's foot-note to 'Cicero on Old Age'" to the sixty-ninth Rambler. "Reward the vescalion by conquest, by the pleasures of victory," should, of course, be "reward the vexation of contest by the pleasures of victory." To judge by this sample, Bohn's foot-notes to 'Cicero on Old Age' would seem to be a curious performance.

EDWARD BENSLY.

Uppingham.

Here is a ghost-word with a vengeance! "Rest, rest, perturbed spirit!" The passage in The Rambler runs as follows: "By spirit and vigour we may force a way and reward the vexation of contest by the pleasures of victory."

ST. SWITHIN.

CALDWELL FAMILY (10th S. iii. 468).-I cannot answer C.T.E.'s questions directly. But