Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 2.djvu/79

 II. JULY 23, '98.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

71

hr, e.g., hreigir (cf. O.E. hrdgra), the only form which has maintained itself in German and Dutch, as reiher and reiger respectively. These rh forms have nothing to do with the etymology of heron, but may be appealed to in evidence of onomatopoetic origin ; cf. Welsh cregyr, a screamer, a heron, from creg, cryg, hoarse. Let it be observed, moreover, that a South American species of heron has been named era-era from its cry when on wing, and that the Russians call the night heron TcwaJca, from its cry, which resembles that word uncouthly expressed.

As to heronshaw or hernshaw, I am now dis- posed to discredit its alleged use as signify- ing heronry. If we may trust Leland's ' Col- lectanea,' the word existed in Middle English for the bird with the two spellings heronshawe (vol. vi. p. 2) and herenshew* (p. 5), occurring in a programme of "the great feast at the intronization of George Nevell, Arch- bishop of York," in 1465, the latter form being intermediate between heronsewe and heron- shawe. We find herneshaw in Spenser's ' Faerie Queene ' (VI. vii. 9), hearnshaw in Hakluy t's ' Voyages ' (iii. 520), and heronshaw in Bishop Hall's 'Quo vadis?' (p. 59) each with the meaning of heron. The assertion in Chambers's Etymological Dictionary' that heronsewe " was confounded with the old form hernshaiv, a heronry," and therefore that hernshaw for heron is a blunder, is, on present evidence, untenable. Where is there an instance of heronshaw for heronry earlier than 1465, earlier than the 'Faerie Queene' (1590), or, in a literary composition as dis- tinguished from a dictionary, earlier than the ' Quo vadis ? ' (1617) ? If hernshaw = heronry is a legitimate word, we might expect to find compounds of other bird-names with -shaw, but, so far as I know, none such exist. It is not improbable, therefore, that hernshaw has been taken by lexicographers to mean heronry through ignorance of the true import of the latter half of the word.

And there really is no phonological objec- tion to heronshaw as the doublet of heronsewe. The French diphthongs eau in beaute", and au in cause, pause, sauce, are identical in sound with the o in chose, being represented by 6 in orthoepic lexicons. Beaute" comes into English with the pronunciation " bewty," as MR. JAS. PLATT, Jun., notes at the third reference, and peautre becomes pewter, while cause takes the sound of " cawse," and chose becomes -shaws in our kickshaws. These instances of our duplex rendering of

" A kind of Hearneshewe " is the rendering of "pellos vQlpellus" in Holyoke's 'Diet.' (1640).

the French d-sound amply suffice to account for heronsewe and heronshawe as different English pronunciations of heronceau, and the early example of heronshawe cited in the pre- vious paragraph makes it almost certain that they were.

I would remark in conclusion that the East Anglian harnsey, referred to in my former communication, is an extreme instance of attenuation, but is outdone by harnsa, noted by Prof. Skefrt in vol. ii. of his Chaucer series (1874. p. 249). From such worn forms it would be impossible to determine the original spelling in full. F. ADAMS.

106A, Albany Road, Camberwell.

DR. JOHNSON'S RESIDENCE IN BOLT COURT, FLEET STREET (9 th S. i. 506). My attention has been called to MR. JOHN T. PAGE'S com- munication respecting Dr. Johnson's house in Bolt Court (No. 8), whether it was burnt down in 1819, as is generally supposed, or, as Lieut.-Col. F. Grant asserts in nis ' Life of Johnson ' (" Great Writers " series), it "still exists" (1887) and "remains in the same condition as when lived in by John- son."

As one who has occupied offices in another house in Bolt Court (No. 3) for nearly forty years, I have naturally taken a deep interest in the houses in the court (about ten in number) and the changes that have taken place in them, and in 1893 I contributed the illustrations to an exhaustive article in the Leisure Hour, entitled ' The Doctors in Bolt Court,' by Mr. W. J. Gordon, who is well known for his thoroughness and exactness in all matters of antiquarian and topographical research. In that article Mr. Gordon states that Mr. Thomas Bensley, the well-known printer of his day, twenty years after John- son's death in 1784, bought the freehold of two houses in Bolt Court, and began to use one of them (No. 8) as part of his printing- premises. Bensley's presses soon came to be worked by steam, and so, on 26 June, 1819, a fire broke out, and Dr. Johnson's house (No. 8) was burnt to the ground. Bensley's son Benjamin was born in that house, and in 1820 the son rebuilt the house, nearly, if not quite, on the site of that occupied by John- son. This is the house now standing in Bolt Court, which till recently was occupied by the Stationers' Company's school for boys.

In Pennant's 'Account of London,' 1805 (to be seen in the Soane Museum), which is copiously illustrated with original drawings, there is a drawing of Dr. Johnson's house in Bolt Court as it appeared in 1808 the house which was burnt down in 1819; and those