Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 3.djvu/197

 g* s. in. MAR. n,

NOTES AND QUERIES.

191

i npossible that " pease " can represent Anglo- ^ 'rench peis. For A.F. peis would have given ? n English form rhyming with " plaice." For ( xample, compare A.F. fei and " fay," A.F 'jreie and "prey," A.F. veile and "veil." I < an find no instance of A.F. ei being repre- sented by ea in modern English. Again, .L.F. peis could not become pease in English en account of the z sound. French final s i etains the s sound in English ; compare Fr. tas and "case," Fr. pas and " pace."

A. L. MAYHEW. Oxford.

RIME TO "MONTH" (9 th S. iii. 104). All three instances have been given in ' N. & Q.' many years ago, in a set of communications (begun by myself) which will be found in 3 rd S. viii., ix., under the head of ' Rhymes, uncommon.' W. C. B.

LENDING MONEY BY MEASURE IN DEVON- SHIRE (9 th S. ii. 367, 492 ; iii. 32). Anent the above, the Exeter Evening Post (17 February) records the following recent instance of giving money by measure in Gloucester- shire :

"A novel offertory towards the restoratkni of the parish church of Bishops Cleeve, near Cheltenham, has been handed to the vicar by Mr. Griffiths, one of the churchwardens. It consisted of a soda-water bottle filled with threepenny-bits, which had been collected by a Chepstow lady. There were alto- gether 638 pieces of silver or 11. 10s. Qd. in the bottle."

Probably few readers have seen so many threepenny-bits as these together at one time. But when in the Transvaal last summer, where threepence (" a tickey ") is the smallest current coin, I handled more three- penny pieces in an ordinary day's experience than it has fallen to my lot to see in a year at home. HARRY HEMS.

Fair Park, Exeter.

Perhaps this idea may have originated from the 'Arabian Nights.' We read in the well-known story of ' Ali Baba ; or, the Forty Thieves,' how Ali Baba measured the gold looted from the robbers' den in a peck measure lent by his brother Cassim.

JOHN PICKFORD, M.A.

Newbourne Rectory, Woodbridge.

CLOUGH, CLEUGH, OR CLIFFE (9 th S. iii. 90). -The pronunciation of ough, as Mr. Pickwick said of the word politic, comprises in itself a study of no inconsiderable magnitude. I know several families named Clough, and they all pronounce the name Cluff. Planche's verses on the name Houghton are well known. Houghton - on - the - Hill is known locally as ZToton ; the Houghton from which

Lord Houghton took his title is Howton ; and I know two families named Houghton, in a small town in Derbyshire, who call them- selves respectively Hooion and Huff ton. The word enough, again, usually pronounced enuff, becomes in our dialects enew and eniff, the latter being, I think, peculiar to the North. C. C. B.

Epworth.

On the north side of Manchester are two valleys which, in spite of the smoky foliage of the trees and the inky blackness of the mal- odorous streams, bear some traces of the time when they were beautiful. They are known around, among the well-to-do classes at any rate, as Prestwich and Mere Kluff to spell the last name as it is pronounced.

T. P. ARMSTRONG.

EPITAPHS (9 th S. ii. 306, 536; iii. 53). In 'A Collection of Epitaphs,' &c. (1806, ii. 225), the following is given as from the "parish of White Ladies, near Southampton, and at Stoke, near Guildford " :

This world is full of crooked streets ; Death is a place where all men meets : If life were sold, that men could buy, The rich would live, the poor must die.

Mr. E. R. Suffling, at p. 95 of his 'History and Legends of the Broad District,' prints similar verses on Sarah Bayfield, who died in 1719, from St. Peter's Mancroft Church, Norwich, "remarkably like some," says he, " in John Gay's ' Beggar's Opera.' As, how- ever, the monumental lines were written before Gay was born, they could not have been cribbed from him, but he may have appropriated them" But I find nothing resembling them in the ' Beggar's Opera,' and the writer is wofully ignorant about Gay, who was thirty-four years old in 1719.

The above-cited collection (ii. 186) contains m epitaph " composed by a gentleman for limself," almost literally identical with that quoted by J. T. F. at the first reference, and laving the following addition (which itself is Stacey Churchyard. Hants, on Mr. John Collince"):-
 * iven, i. 83, as the entire epitaph, " in Barton-

Where'er I liv'd or dy'd, it matters not, To whom related, or by whom begot : I was, now am not ; ask no more of me, 'Tis all I am, and all that you shall be.

A curious variant, dated 1755, of this valedic- tory epitaph, Mr. Suffling tells us (I.e. p. 94) is 'n Cromer Churchyard :

Farewell, vain world,

I 've seen enough of thee, And careless I am what you

Can say or do to me.