90
NOTES AND QUERIES.
s. n. JULY ao, 190*.
Arcadia." It may, of course, be suggested
that the piece is not Sidney's an inquiry
upon which I cannot enter here. But, in any
case, the lines prove that fifty-seven years
before Pope the pronunciation was Pamela.
DR. KRUEGER'S first question has been answered by MR. HORTON SMITH, and it is only necessary to add that Aaron Hill's letter is not included in the Richardson Correspond- ence at South Kensington. DR. KRUEGER may be interested to hear that my first hint of the above-mentioned poem was derived from the excellent ' Pamela, ihre Quellen,' <fec., of his compatriot, Herr G. M. Gass- meyer (Leipzig-Reudnitz, 1890), who appa- rently got it from Grosart.
AUSTIN DOBSON.
At the last reference MR. SMITH seems to suggest that the current pronunciation of the word k ' tea" is the correct one, and that the sound tay, given to it by eighteenth-century poets, is a Gallicism. This is not the case. It cannot be too often repeated that tay, like the River Tay, is the sound which our ancestors learned from the Chinese of the port of Ampy, and that the modern English pronunciation is corrupt. In Tonkin the word for " tea " is che, pronounced chay, with the same vowel as in the Amoy form. In most other Oriental dialects the vowel-sound is that of a in the name Charles. In Mandarin Chinese the word is cha. The same holds good for Korean, and for spoken Japanese, but the written form in Japanese is tiya (monosyllable). In Annamite, which has an extraordinary predilection for initial tr, the term becomes tra. JAMES PLATT, Jun.
I can recall very many years ago a prim old lady, living on the border of Somerset, showing me with pride some old Worcester and Crouch tay cups. In Devonshire, on the borders of Dartmoor, the rustics, in their simplicity, invite you occasionally to " have a dish or shard of tay " ; e g., a cottager has asked my wife to "fetch a bit and have a shard of tea " = Won't you sit down and take a cup of tea 1 G. SYMES SAUNDERS, M.D.
Eastbourne.
MR. HORTON SMITH'S contribution is very interesting. But why should I not ask my question about the quality of the second vowel of the name under discussion ? There is, as far as I can see, no reason to suppose that the pronunciation of tea (which wore I had only chosen as an example, as riming with aivay and obey) was " a piece of the foppish Gallicism of the day," but it was in fact only a reproduction of 'the Chinese, anc the sound has then progressed to the modern
one, just as sea was formerly pronounced
'say"; see Prof. Skeat's ' Etym. Dictionary.'
Che old pronunciation has been preserved in
Ireland, where they say "mate" for meat,
'plaise" for please. What I wanted, and
still want, to know is this : Was Pamela, at
the beginning of the eighteenth century,
^renounced, by those who stressed the second
syllable, as Italians and Germans would do
n that case, and as the Romans pronounced
- andela ? or was it already Pameela ?
The form Pamella, with short accented e as in umbrella, is easily explainable from e in its Old English value), but hardly from I in modern spelling ee or ed). The change in Denunciation from e to ea is very regular ; compare O.E. leaf, M.E. lef, N.E. leaf; sceaf, shef, sheaf; stream, slrem, stream; mcel,wiM, neal ; etan, cten, eat ; cneo, cne, knee ; treo, tre, tree. It is trying to discuss phonetic matters on the basis of modern English spelling. G. KRUEGER.
Berlin.
RICHARD PINCERNA (10 th S. i. 469).-Should not the " manor of Conestone " read the manor of Conarton ? And should not "Robert, son of Robert, Earl of Gloucester," read Robert, son of William, Earl of Gloucester ?
The whole history of the Pincerna (so- called) family is very obscure, and though the name appears fairly frequently in old Cornish records, it is difficult to identify many of its bearers.
There appear to have been at least two owners of the name of Richard Pincerna. One, a grantee of Robert, son of the Earl of Gloucester, is said to have been the younger brother of Roger de Courcel. The other Richard Pincerna (c. 1160, t ante 9 Richard I.) was Lord of Conarton, and probably a cousin.
Richard Pincerna, Lord of Conarton, was possibly the younger son of William Albini L, Earl of Arundel, Pincerna Regis (of Wymond- ham), and his wife Queen Adeliza (widow of Henry I. of England), but this has not been proved beyond all question.
The grandson of Richard of Conarton was Sir John de la Hurne or de Lanherne, who, marrying another descendant of Richard of Conarton, had a daughter, Alice de la Hurne. This daughter married in her turn another cousin, Renfred de Arundel, a probable descendant of William Albini II., Earl of Arundel (and I. of Sussex), the elder brother of Richard Pincerna of Conarton. From Renfred de Arundel (or otherwise Albini) and his wife Alice de la Hurne descended the Arundels of Lanherne,
