Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 6.djvu/66

 NOTES AND QUERIES. [9» s. VL JULY 21,1900. in which instances of indiscreet language "in the tyme of th' insurrection" are the most common; as an example, " Henry Salley, monk, said that no seculer knave shuld be hod of the church "; but no word there ap- pears of accusations of immoral living. The words in the passage quoted in the above reference in ' N. <fc Q.,' " vicious and carnal living," are found in the beginning of the preamble to the Act for the suppression of monasteries, and may have been cited by the author as if they applied to Furness as well as to some other religious houses. It is . true that in West's book, Appendix x. (6), is quoted "the abbot's proposal, in his own writing, for the surrender of his monastery to the king," which begins, "That I lloger, Abbot of the Monasterie of Fumes, knowyng the mysorder and evyll liffs, both unto God and our prynce, of the bredern of the said monasterie,' but this might refer to no more than the rebellious spirit which they had shown ; and then follow the terms of the formal surrender, in Latin, dated "xj die Aprilis," 1537 (but in the English translation, p. 111. it is given as "the ninth day of April"), signed by Roger, the abbot; Briand Garner, the prior, and twenty-eight monks, among whom John Groyn and Thomas Hornby appear; but in this deed no word is said of any accusation of evil living. From documents quoted by West it is clear that the abbot and monks of Furness treated their tenants with great liberality, and in this respect at least they were better than some religious houses at that time ; and until some explicit proof is brought forward to substantiate the charges made against men who actually lived in the posi- tions assigned to them in the pages of' A Cistercian Laybrother,' we may well sus- pend our judgment as to the immorality. Within two years of the suppression of Fur- ness Koger Pyle, the abbot, was appointed by the king to the rectory of Dalton (West, 112-13). ERNEST B. SAVAGE. St. Thomas, Douglas. "INUNDATE" (9th S. v. 395, 497).—I have once or twice called attention in these columns to lamentable illustrations of the tendency to throw back the accent in English, a tendency which is not, perhaps, any stronger now than it has been for centuries,and against which it seems hopeless to strive. The very worst instances I can adduce are, perhaps, these: sdnorous and decorous, both of which I have heard from men who ought to have known better. Inundate I, like MR. INOLEBY'S friend, have never heard accented on the penult. In Nares's 'Elements of Orthoepy' (1784) there is an interesting list of "trissyllablesfwej accented on the Penultima," among which are several which would now sound strangely if so pronounced, as, e.g., misanthrope, or- cMstra, sinister, balcdny, recusant, retinue, revenue (this is so accented in the ' Ingoldsby Legends '), and many others which are now accented indifferently upon the first or second syllable. Among these latter are content!'plate, illustrate, compensate, demon- strate, enervate, recon'dite, confiscate. Of two or three of these Nares says in a note that already in his time the accent was placed in- differently upon the first or second syllable, and he gives instances of cdnftscate and c6n- template from Shakespeare, adding, very truly, that the accenting of the.se verbs upon the antepenult "makes their participles, and some of Cheir inflections, very harsh." He gives a whole paragraph to the discussion of the word orisons, which, he says, is accented by Shakespeare on the penult as well as on the antepenult. As an instance of the former accentuation he quotes :— Soft you now— The fair Ophelia ! Nymph, in thy orisons Be all my sins remember'd. I must confess that I have never given the word this accentuation here, and I do not think the line requires it. What is the general opinion? There is one word, utensil, which Nares would have accented on the ante- penult, in which the accent has been thrown forward. I suppose nobody now says utensil. C. C. B. The Editor refers to the pronunciation of illustrate having changed. I remember that when the Illustrated London News first came out a butler who brought it in as a novelty called it the "Illustrious" London News. This shows where the accent would be then, i.e.. about 1843. It would certainly now be called illustrated. Demonstrate was certainly then pronounced with the accent on the fi;-st and third syllables: demonstration cannot well be pronounced with the accent on the secoJnd syllable ; so also " Quod erat dcmf>nstr<fm- dum." I have never heard anybody inundate—always mundate. E. F. D. ( Does not the pronunciation inun'date i from a confusion—consequent upon tl misplacement—of the orthoepic markfi common in the earlier attempts at " nouncing" dictionaries? But probably ( inquiry, "Who sets the standard of j nunciation?" will become one of s<J urgency to readers of ' N. <fe Q.' Might not rather put it thus : " What is the