Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 7.djvu/290

 282

NOTES AND QUERIES,

vn. AFWL 13, iwi.

as a quarter-acre having acquired the sense of a quarter, this term latinized would also be applied to the quarter of the hide.

"In the Dutchy of Lancaster every plough- land or carue is foure yard land, which m latme is called quatrona terra, every yard land thirty acres." Norden, op. cit.

With quatrona terrce cf. quarterons de terra (Littre).

I now come to less solid ground than when treating of land measures, and therefore speak with all due reserve.

5. Fer<7er=orchard. Here yard as a direct equivalent of verge disappears, yet as ort- yard it is the equivalent of verger ; in Dutch the equivalent is boomgaard (pronounced bomehdrd with a guttural A), and in Scottish the "yard " remains visible :

" That every Lord and Laird make Parks, with Deer, Stanks, Cunningairs, Dowcats, Orchyards, and Hedges, and plant at the least an Aiker of Wood." Stat. James IV. c. 1494, in Stewart's 'Index,' 1707.

I will put aside the possibility of this word verger being derived from verge as a measure, and accept provisionally the derivation from viridarium or veridarium (Littre). Yet I cannot forget the relationship of virga and viridis, analogous to that of grow and green. Enclosures were commonly made with green stakes and withes, these taking root and forming a green fenced yard ; and it is pos- sible that verge may have become verger as roche became rocher.

6. Fer#e=yard=court. Prof. Skeat (Supp. 'Etym. Diet.') considers that verge, in a statute of 1300, means "a limit." The statute is " De 1'estat du seneschals et des marchals," dealing with felonies committed within the verge.

" E nul plai de trespas ne pledront autre qe ne soit attache par eus avant ceo qe le Roi isse hors de

la verge ou le trepas serra fait hors des bundes

de cele verge ou le trepas fut fait."

The last part of this sentence shows clearly that it is bundes and not verge that has the sense of " limits." It seems that verge from yard -land came to mean a palace-yard or a court, and became equivalent to the French cour and to the Dutch hof. The Binnenhof and Buitenhof at The Hague are the inner and outer palace-yards ; Ao/also means a garden, and in the form hoef or hoeve a farm, possibly the Netherlands equivalent of the old English boor's yard-land. The word passed to Scot- land as how/, and is probably the root of hope and hoppet in English. (See * H.E.D.')

7. Fm/e=circumference. Here the com- pany of yard seems entirely lost ; yet if the idea of circumference arose from the ring

formed by a flexible rod, virga is sbill directly there. Cf. bague, ring, with baguette, switch rod. Littre has the following :

"Verge. 18. Anneau, bague sans chaton (ac- ception vieillie). La souplesse de la baguette ou verge, la facilite de la nouer en forme d'anneau a developp une autre acception, c'est le cercle de la bague distinct du chaton, c'est aussi 1'anneau qui reunit les bagues.

" XIV. C. Un annel ou il y a un ruby a jour et a en la verge un k et un y [quoted from De Laborde's ' Emaux '1

"XV. C. II m'euvoya une verge qu'il portoit au doigt pour enseigne (de Comines).

Thus verge, circumference, edge, is a rod bent

into a circle, a ring. The indirect derivation

from verge, a wand of office, thus falls. In

the passage from ' Richard II.,' II. i., quoted

by Prof. Skeat as exemplifying this sense of

verge, the word means the ring of the crown :

A thousand flatterers sit within thy crown,

Whose compass is no bigger than thy head ;

And yet, incaged in so small a verge,

The waste is no whit lesser than thy land.

It is noteworthy that the space within the verge of the king's crown is compared with the space of the kingdom. Was the word verge chosen because of its other sense as a land measure, as in the passage from the first act ? EDWARD NICHOLSON.

1, Huskisson Street, Liverpool.

EXECUTIONS AT TYBURN AND

ELSEWHERE. (Concluded from p. 244.)

STOW, as already quoted, gives us the pro- bably traditional description of the Elms at the west part of Smithfield, which, nearly two hundred years before he wrote, had been the common place of execution. We picture to ourselves the melancholy spot over- shadowed by the elms, betwixt the River of the Wells (or Fleet) and the large pool, visited only by men who came to water their horses. But we could wish that he had named the place which succeeded the Elms, Smithfield. I think it is the general impression that St. Giles's was the place, but for that I have found no evidence. The impression seems to have been created by Maitland, who, writing his 'History of London' in 1739, has (ed. 1756, ii. 1363) :

"On the removal of the gallows from the Elms in Smithfield, about the year 1413, it was erected at the north end of the garden wall belonging to the Hospital opposite the Pound, where at present the Crown Tavern is situate, between the ends of St. Giles's High Street and Hog Lane ; in which

Elace it continued till removed to the neighbour- ood of Tyburn."

This is closely followed by Parton (1822) and