French way, on the last French syllable; the usage held its ground for four hundred years.[1] Indeed, it still rules us when we pronounce urbane and divine. A new vowel sound now first made itself heard in England; we find in the Ancren Riwle words like joie, noise, and despoil. This French invader was in process of time to drive the old English pronunciation of home-born words out of polite society; our lower classes indeed may sound bŷle (pustula) as our forefathers did, but our upper classes must call it boil,[2] A well-known French name is seen as ‘Willam’ (p. 340), and it is still often pronounced ‘Willum.’ We find alas for the first time: this is said to be a compound of the English eala and the French helás; alack was to come later. The author of the Ancren Riwle foreshadows the inroad that French was to make even into the English Paternoster; in page 26 he translates, ‘dimitte nobis debita nostra,’ by ‘forʓif us ure dettes, al so ase we vorʓiveð to ure detturs.’ He uses the word mesire, where we should say Sir; Salimbene, who was born in Italy about the time that the Ancren Riwle was compiled, tells us that the Pope was always addressed by the Romans as, ‘Tu, Messer;’ and that the Emperor Frederick II. received the same title from his Southern Italians. When we find the word cruelte, we see at once that England has often preserved French words in a more uncorrupt shape than France herself has done.[3]
- ↑ One of these words, accented in the French way, is preserved in the old rimes, ‘Mistress Mary, quite contrāry.’
- ↑ Schoolboys may call irritare ‘to ryle;’ the grave Lord Keeper Guildford and his brother Roger North pronounced it roil.
- ↑ We have kept the good old French empress; the French lost the word and had to go straight to the Latin for imperatrice.
