Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 12.djvu/358

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [9* s. xn. GOT. 31, 1903.

St. Albans, Sutherland ; also to learn where some account of her can be found. She was the mother of Sarah (Jennings) Churchill, the first Duchess of Marlborough.

EDWARD DENHAM. New Bedford, Mass., U.S.

WILLIAM WARE, BELLFOUNDER. Can you give me any information about William Ware, a bellfounder in 1613 ? He cast one of the bells at Yateley, Hants.

F. H, STILWELL.

"C'EST QUE L'ENFANT." Can any of your readers tell me who is the author of these lines ?

C'est que 1'enfant toujours est homme, C'est que 1'homme est toujours enfant.

Johnson quotes them in his life of Pope (' Lives of the Poets/ ed. 1783, iv. 142) ; and also in a letter to Mrs. Thrale written in 1780. The letter is to be found in vol. ii. p. 183 of the late Dr. Birkbeck Hill's edition of * Johnson's Letters,' but the reference is not given in his notes. H. S. S.

FOUR MARKS. Can any reader of ' N. & Q. J give me information respecting the deriva- tion of the name Four Marks, a spot at the top of Windmill Hill, near Medstead, and on the road to Winchester 1 J. W. DODGE.

THOMAS YOUNG, SECRETARY TO LORD MEL- BOURNE. I have four franked letters written from the Home Office, Whitehall, 1832 and 1833, in the handwriting of this Mr. Young, soliciting information for Lord Melbourne touching upon Crown ecclesiastic patronage in Scotland, and naming certain Berwickshire individuals who had disgruntled that noble- man. These letters are marked "confidential, and were addressed to my grandfather, then minister of the parish of Legerwood, in Berwickshire. What is known of Mr. Young

J. G. CUPPLES. Longwood, Boston, Mass.

S A LOP. (9 th S. xii. 108, 237, 313.)

THE reply on p. 313, intended to "mak, matters clear," is quite beside the mark and darkens matters very much. We are tolc that "in many Anglo-Saxon words c wa< pronounced as ch"; then that " Scrob wa: pronounced Schrob," and, lastly, that "th< redundant c" was then dropped from the sch

Nothing can be more misleading; and i cannot possibly apply in the present case because the A,-S. c, when occurring before

ro, retained the ~k sound, and retains, it still, ?or example, the A.-S. cropp is the modern English crop.

It is much to be desired that those who

write upon the very difficult subject of Eng-

ish pronunciation would be at the pains of

earning the elements of A.-S. pronunciation

as given in Sweet's * A.-S. Primer'), of Early

English pronunciation (as given in Sweet's

Middle-English Primer'), and other useful

acts. And I strongly deprecate the system

of substituting impossible hypotheses for

own results. No one would discuss botany y guesswork.

After this attempt to " make matters clear," t becomes necessary to explain the whole affair. We are not here dealing with the A.-S. c, but with the compound symbol sc, This, in the earliest times, denoted sk in all positions, and still denotes sk in such words as are of Norse origin, as scrape, scratch, scream. But in later A.-S. every sk passed into the sound of modern English sh, even in such a word as scur, a shower, where the c alone would have remained a &, as in cu, a cow. This shows very plainly that the de- velopment of sc was different from that of c when standing alone.

But when our language was respelt by Norman scribes what was to be done with this sk ? The Norman had no such sound in his vocabulary, because his ch (though sh in modern French) was the ch in Charles, as it is to this day. And he had much ado to sound this sh. At first he did not try to do it, but turned sh into s, saying and writing such queer things as sur for shur, a shower, same for shame, &c. ; I have given plenty of examples elsewhere. He even said Srop for Shrop ; and it is not a little remarkable that the Shropshire- man speaks of Shropshire, not Shropshire, to the present day ; see Miss Jackson's ' Shropshire Glossary.' Not finding sr a very pleasant or happy collocation of sounds, he also said Slob- or Slop- ; and that is why we find the spelling Slobschire in * An Old English Miscellany,' ed. Morris, p. 146, 1. 55. Some even disliked this SI, and actually inserted a short vowel, giving the form Sal' op, whence the Latin Salopia ; after which the accent in Salop was thrown back. So much for Salop.

But even when the Normans had acquired the sound sh (which they all did in course of time, for we have it now, and none of us knows to what extent we are Norman), they did not clearly know how to write it down. Many wrote sh; but many preferred the symbol sch. Both were long in use, but the former at last prevailed. The sch and sh