Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 1.djvu/222

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NOTES ANC QUERIES'.

I should like to point out an extraordinary mistake into which the writer of the article ' Shakespeare ' in the ' Dictionary of National Biography ' has fallen. At p. 31 of my book I have written that the name of Anna Whately, adopted by Anne Hathaway on her marriage, was no doubt used to deceive the Shakspere family. This writer decides judicially that this was another William Shakspere ; out he forgets that the bond actually proves that the lady was Anne Hathaway.

PYM YEATMAN.

Thorpe Cottage, Teddington.

"RANDOM OF A SHOT" (9 th S. i. 142). The Teutonic rand, which appears in Gothic as randus, A.-S. as rond, an edge, passed into Romance ; cf. the Italian a randa, nearly ; O.Fr. randir, to press upon ; O.Fr. randon, violence; the French then apparently gave us the O.E. randoun, haste ; and at ratidom, left to its own guidance. Vide Miiller, s.v. H. A. STRONG.

University College, Liverpool.

SHORT A v. ITALIAN A (9 th S. i. 127). I should have preferred to call this "a narrow and a broad," or even "long (English) a, and full or continental a" (ah). If your correspondent will consider, he will find that he is face to face with the question whether he will adhere to the peculiar a of his English alphabet, or will follow the mul- titude and be fashionable. If he elects to do the latter he will say grahnt (as to sound), and if he does not, he will say grannt. There is, and has been (says Dr. Delaunay), a continual tendency to the lowering of the sound in the vowels; but our alphabet still records for us the peculiar (English) sound of the first letter and vowel, as in safe, take, rate, &c. A few years ago the late Lord Tennyson and Prof. Skeat were interrogated as to the proper sound of the Christian name Ralph. Briefly I may say that those authori- ties gave it as Raff. That evidently was their opinion, from what they had learned, heard, and been accustomed to. But the alphabetical sound (or " name-sound ") given to the a of Ralph gives us Rafe in sound in English and thus have I all my life con- stantly heard it sounded in Westmoreland, Cumberland, and other Northern counties by old-fashioned but educated people. A recently issued book, by R. Murray Gilchrist, called ' A Peakland Faggot,' has for hero one " Rafe Paramour." I can hardly imagine that any one will contend that this name does not = Ralph. And I can hardly conceive that any Italiaii-o. lover will think that in Eng- lish Rafe is to be sounded Raff (pace Prof.

Skeat and the late Lord Tennyson); and as a clincher to my argument, I will add that even Webster's ' Dictionary ' records the fact that Ralph is "in Eng. often pronounced Raf? In this connexion I should like to mention a curious matter. In Cumberland, parish of Greystoke, and also in Westmoreland, are one or two places that anciently belonged to the Hoton (Hutton) family, at present, and for a long time, known as Hutton Roof. Now, in Jefferson's 'Hist, and Antiq. of Cumberland,' vol. i. p. 350, Sandford's MS. account of Cumberland is quoted from, and we learn that the Hutton Roof even of his, as well as of our own day, in the parish of Greystoke, " was anciently called Hoton Half." The latter word, I conjecture, can mean nothing else but Ralph, a Christian name, and may thus be compared with Hoton- John, in the same county, and Hoton- Henry in an adjacent one : places also named after early owners, members of the Hoton family. We see, then, that the old North- Country sound of Ralf and Ralph (viz., Raiph, Raife, or Rafe ; see Raines's * Ancient Wills,' &c.) has become lowered, by ignorance and fashion, till "roof" is the sound and the accepted signification i.e., a high place, an elevated situation. Compare A.-S. hlaf- weard, lard (temp. Hen. VIII.), and lord. There is always the tendency, it seems, for vowel sounds to alter, as from eard to ard and ord, but not as from ord to ard and eard i.e., the tendency is to broaden, not to narrow. W. H N B Y.

PAINTING OP HEAD OF NAPOLEON (9 th S. i, 88). The whereabouts of this death-portrait in 1855 is shown by the lettering on a print now before me :

"Napoleon the First at St. Helena, from the original painting taken immediately after death by Captain Ibbetson, R.E. : now in the possession of the Rev. J. P. Pitcairn, M.A., Rector of Longsight. Copied from the original by John Gibbs. Day & Son, ^ Lithors. to the Queen. Published Sepr. 6, 1855.

The head, nearly life size, being drawn in profile, shows very distinctly the peculiar swelling in the neck. ANDREW IREDALE.

Torquay.

" SYBRIT " (9 th S. i. 144). I explained this in a letter to the Church Times, 11 February, p. 159. It has been explained so often that it is a weariness to do it again ; so I merely give the references.

1. It is the A.-S. sibrceden, affinity (after- wards a proclamation of proposed affinity) ; see Bosworth and Toller, ' A.-S. Diet.,' p. 869 ; Sweet, 'A.-S. Diet.'