Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 12.djvu/235

 n s. XIL SEPT. is, i9io.] NOTES AND Q CJEKEES.

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on which the personal arms, Or, a fesse, ohequy argent and gules, are placed en surtout. The quartered arms of the see are shown on the preceding page.

5. Corneille de Berghes, Bishop of Liege, 1538. Dr. Woodward (p. 276) gives the personal arms of William de Berghes, fourth Archbishop of Cambray, who died in 1609, as Per fesse, A. (in chief) Per pale, (a) Sable, & lion rampant or (Brabant) ; (b) Or, three pallets gules (Mechlin). B. (in base) Vert, three mascles or (Bautersem). The whole beneath a chief of the Empire, the eagle charged on the breast with a label gules. The only external ornaments were the archiepiscopal cross and hat.

It may well be that the Archbishop was of the same family as the Bishop of Liege asked for by your correspondent.

J. S. UDAL, F.S.A.

4. Inthe magnificent Flemish glass from the dissolved Abbey of Herckenrode, which has for the last hundred years adorned the Lady Chapel of Lichfield Cathedral, there is a portrait of the Cardinal Evrard or Erard de la Marck, with his arms ensigned by a pastoral cross in pale and a Cardinal's hat : Or, from a fesse cheque arg. and gu. a demi- lion rampant issuant of the third, armed and langued of the second.

S. A. GRUNDY-NEWMAN.

Walsall.

WAR AND THE POETS (11 S. xii. 158). I rejoice to find that I am not in a minority of one with regard to the sound of final r. Evidently ST. SWITHIN would not have it entirely suppressed, and it seems that our poets shrink from such rimes as require its suppression. Yet I read in the latest treatise on the English language that I have seen (' A Guide to the English Lan- guage,' London, Jack, 1915, p. 34) : " Final r has also ceased to be pronounced as a consonant, and has either been lost or survives as the vowel " ; and among the examples given are nor and war, the pronunciation being represented by the symbol for the sound of aw in saw. I do not question this statement so far as Southern English is concerned. My London friends tell me that they cannot dis- tinguish between law and lor, and they call the capital of Poland Wawsaw, when (as I am sorry to say sometimes happens) they do not say Wawsor. Even in this latter case they appear to be unconscious of the intrusive r sound in the second syllable. This sound is not so common

where it is not wanted as its suppres- sion where formerly it was always heard ; but it is not uncommon here in North London, among people who cannot be regarded as uneducated. What is the explanation ? Is it that " Nemesis will have her dues " ? Whatever the explana- tion, the fact remains, and it makes the general suppression of final r the more puzzling.

Far, star, car, and words with the same vowel - sound being the commonest rimes to war, it did not require much courage in Mr. Kipling to rime it with are. Indeed, Ebenezer Elliott and George Meredith (to name nobody else) had done it before him.

C. C. B.

Surely there are more good rimes for war than ST. SWITHIN mentions. What of gore, roar, soar, sore, and tore ? It is also possible to make use of floor, hoar, lore, more, oar, pour, and even the place-name the Nore with certain contexts.

That this does not exhaust the list is shown by some unpublished verses of my own which I venture to quote, with the explanation that " core of my heart " is an endearment of tener heard in Ireland than in Great Britain :

He was her heart's own core,

He was her hope and joy ; And war, grim, ravenous war,

Has taken the boy.

His was the laugh that was light,

His were the eyes that were glad ; And now she dreams in the night

Of gas and a tortured lad- Dreams of red, ruinous war,

And, waking dank with sweat, Cries, "Son, son that I bore !

When shall I forget?"

The above contains two rimes for the word under discussion. Here is a third :

At midnight on the Eve of May

It came, a sobbing breath, Across the sea, across the land.

From the fearsome fields of death.

At midnight on the Eve of May

It shook a bolted door : " O, do you wake, or do you dream

A heavy dream of war ? "

M. P.

Your old and valued contributor ST. SWITHIN remarks in effect that war as an end-word is nearly unmanageable. Or and for are incapable of such use also, though emperor might be dragged in, and conqueror. Without advancing far into the Alsatia of versifiers, hymnology to wit, I may note that