Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 5.djvu/379

 io" s. v. APRIL 21, 1906.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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" big man of war." Gray has " afar," " bear," and "car" in familiar passages as proper rimes to " war "; and in * The Fatal Sisters,' 11. 27 and 34, he has respectively " share  and " spare," both representing the earlier pro- nunciation. Another illustration of the same practice is seen in his use of "repair" in his translation from Propertius, Eleg. II. i. 51. With Cowper and Burns the modern usage is practically established. Burns's broad sound of a is, no doubt, represented in "afar," " bar," " jar," and " scar," as well as in "scaur," which are the words he couples with " war " ; but it is interesting to find relics of the old influence in some passages in Cowper. In translating Horace's Satire I. ix., for example, he brackets " war," " catarrh," and " beware; while in his version of Milton's ' To Giovanni Battista Manso,' 1. 92, he con joins "prepares" with "wars."' This recalls the following stanza in the fifth of the 4 Olney Hymns ':

Now, Lord, thy feeble worm prepare ! For strife with earth and hell begins ;

Confirm and gird me for the war, They hate the soul that hates his sins.

Similar things may, no doubt, be found in nineteenth-century verse, but these are to be explained as examples of assonance or poetic licence, and not as deliberate archaisms.

THOMAS BAYNE.

It is impossible to discuss this question within reasonable space. Of course, Pope's pronunciation differed from that now in use in thousands of words. Any one who will refer to Sweet's * History of English Sounds,' pp. 215, 216, will begin to discover the extreme difficulties which attend the study of vowel-sounds in Pope's time.

But the word "war" proves very little. It could be rimed with "far" by convention and tradition, owing to the fact that there had been a time when the rime was perfect. In Chaucer's 'Prologue,' 1.47, "werre," ie., "war," rimes with "ferre," i.e., "farther"; so that when it lost its final e, it naturally rimed with "fer," i.e., "far."

WALTER W. SKEAT.

The following quotation from the first stanza of * Mazeppa ' will show that Lord Byron evidently pronounced "war" in the same way as his favourite Pope : The power and glory of the war,

Faithless as their vain votaries, men, Had pass'd to the triumphant Czar, And Moscow's walls were safe again.

R. L. MORETON.

In Yorkshire "war" still rimes exactly with "tar >} and "car." It is the same word (spoken) as " war," meaning " worse," which

explains why the gaping urchin, asked by the local militia-man if he had never seen a war horse before, replied that he had " seen rnony a war horse, but riivver a war rider. ' I know that this jokelet has been translated into Scots, where " waur " for " worse'' is pronounced as is "war" in modern Eng- lish ; but it originated independently, if not entirely, in Yorkshire.

H. SNOWDEN WARD.

Hadlow, Kent.

"War" is pronounced here to rime with "car," that is, with the open sound of the a, as in " far " and "father." I daresay it will be thus pronounced in other provincial dialects. R. B-B.

South Shields.

NELSON TRAFALGAR MEMORANDUM (10 th S. v. 244). MR. EDGCUMBE has fallen into the mistake, which originated in The Daily Tele- qraph of 6 March, of confounding Sir Rodney Mundy, late Admiral of the Fleet, G-C.B., with his more distinguished uncle, Admiral Sir George Mundy, who was one of Nelson s captains at the battle of the Nile, eight years before his nephew, the later Admiral Sir George Rodney Mundy, was born. The document in question was sold at Christies by the son of Sir George Mundy's butler, who is said to have received it from the master he served faithfully till his death, some sixty years ago. Sir Rodney was the elder brother of my late husband, Major-General Pierre- pont Mundy, late Royal Horse Artillery, and his heir by will ; whilst I am the sole legatee of his brother, and therefore in possession of all familv facts.

GERALDINE H. T. MUNDY.

Thornbury House, Thornbury, Gloucestershire.

UNREGISTERED ARMS (10 th S. v. 228). COL. PARRY would be able to compile nearly a complete list of these if he consulted Mr. Fox-Davies's 'Armorial Families' (published by Messrs. Jack), in which the distinction is shown between arms (officially) granted, and those on record in the Colleges of Arms m London, Edinburgh, or Dublin. R. B.

Upton.

It may easily be that the arms of the Marquess of Salisbury, as well as many others, are not to be found on record at the College of Arms. The College was not founded with the beginning of coat-armour, any more than the law courts began with the law ; and the College records, like those of the courts of law, have been subject to embezzlement, loss, and decay. It would