Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 5.djvu/378

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NOTES AND QUERIES, [10* s. v. APRIL 21, 1900.

"WAR": ITS OLD PRONUNCIATION.

(10 th S. v. 228.)

THE form of the word is modern, and the pronunciation illustrates a process of development which reached completion in the course of the eighteenth century. Cognate with Old French werre (Fr. guerre), our term " war" represents O.H. Ger. iverra, vexation, broil. " Were," signifying doubt or fear, used by Chaucer and Langland, is probably the same word ; when Chaucer has the form "war" he means "ware" or "aware of," while his word for active hostilities is " werre." In his long list of the features that distinguish the dwelling described in ' The House of Fame ' he mentions "werres" in the same line with "pes" and "manages"; and in 'The Boke of the Duchesse ' he makes the forlorn knight, in detailing his woes, distinguish between the noun "werre" and the adjec- tive of the same form which signifies "worse." Part of the paradoxical lamen- tation is in these terms :

My love ys hate, my slepe wakynge,

My merthe and meles ys fastynge ;

My countenaunce ys nycete,

And al abawed, where so I be ;

My pees is pledynge, and in werre.

Alias, how might I fare werre ?

Halliwell, in the * Archaic Dictionary,' quotes from 'Religious Poems' of the fifteenth century the reflection that peace is impossible in any country "thereas werre is ny^h-honde." Gavin Douglas, whose trans- lation of Virgil was completed in 1513, uses the forms " were" and " weyr' 1 for warfare, while he has "war" to denote "worse." In a famous passage of '^Eneid' viii. he makes Evander explain to ^Eneas that there was a time in the remote history of his domain when unscrupulous selfishness became the leading principle of conduct, condition: gradually becoming " war and war " till

in the steid of peax, the rage of weyr Begouth succeid, and covatys of geyr.

This form of the word, modified by Si David Lyndsay and others to " weir," linger, to a later date in Scotland than it does in England, although the original sound con tinues to be represented in Southern writer long after the spelling has been changed Robert Sempill (1599-1670), in his famou since the demise of the incomparable Habbie, no one is left to " play before sue I weir-men" ; while Allan Ramsay, who wrote
 * Piper of Kilbarchan,' bewails the fact that

n the first half of the eighteenth century, an still celebrate " brave deeds of weir."

Meanwhile English writers gradually .dopted the form of the word which has orne to receive standard recognition.^ "The ound of Northern vowels," says Mr. Kington Dliphant ('Old and Middle English,' p. 398), ' was, about 1600, to make the conquest of he South. A here replaces e, as hared (vas- avit), farr (remotus), warren (pugnare)." liven Spenser, who still uses " war " for worse," refers to the " Roman warres " and he " war-hable youth " of the early Britons 'Faerie Queene,' II. x. 62). Shakespeare imes "war" with "jar "('Venus and Adonis, 1 . 98), " scar " and " afar " (' Rape of Lucrece,' .831), and "bar" (Sonnet xlvi.) ; while he closes the Prologue to * Troilus and Cressida 5 ,vith the couplet :

Like or find fault ; do as your pleasures are : Now good or bad, 'tis but the chance of war. Shakespeare's rimes are steadily repeated 3y subsequent poets, and only notable varia- tions need be mentioned here. A significant ixample occurs in Dryden's version of Ovid's Speeches of Ajax and Ulysses,' 11. 53-4 : Till one more cunning caught him in the snare (111 for himself) and dragg'd him into war. Several appear in Prior's ' Ode humbly in- scribed to the Queen,' where "war" rimes not only with "star," "care," "compare," and "prayer," but also with "appear" and " spear " (which would in the poet's time be pronounced in the same way as the last trio of these four words) ; and "wars" responds to "bears," "jars," "spears," and "years." In Prior's ' Hymn to the Sun,' st. 4, " wars " and "cares" stand as adequate rimes, while " war " and " here " have the same relations in the seventh stanza of the ' English Ballad on the Taking of Namur.' Pope freely uses " bar,'"' car," "jar," "star," and words of a similar sound to rime with " war' 1 ; and now and again he employs "abhor," which is in- dicative of the changing fashion. In ' Wind- sor Forest,' 1. 105, he utilizes "compare" for his purpose, while in his * Statius's Thebais, Book I.,' 11, 116, 190, and 340 respectively, he has " prepare," " pair," and " tear." " Care " occurs twice in the ' Imitations of Horace, 1 viz., in Satire II. ii. 128 and 2 Epist. i. 273 ; while in 'The Dunciad,' iii. 235, "glare" does the necessary duty, and in the. same book, 1. 281, "mayors " and " wars " are con- joined. In several of his minor poems Young of 'Night Thoughts' not only uses "are," " car," " far," " star," and so on, in response L~ .., byt a ] so na8 "care " and " fear " in in the 'Imperiuni sweet orator " with

to

the

Pelagi,' ii. 13, brackets

same position, and