400 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 182. 



in the text of Alfred ; for under no form of 

 declension, acknowledged in grammar, will tynce 

 ever give tyncenum. We have no need, then, to 

 spend time in calculating the chance of success, 

 ■when we have not the means of making the ex- 

 periment. 



As either tync or tynce would give tyncum, not 

 tyncenum, the latter must come out of tyncen 

 (query, tynkin or tunkin, a little tun, a barrel, or 

 a cask ?). Such was the form in which the ques- 

 tion presented itself to my mind, upon my first 

 examination of the passage three or four years 

 ago, but which was given up without sufficient 

 investigation, owing to an impression that if such 

 had been the meaning, it was so simple and ob- 

 vious that nobody could have missed it. 



An emergency, which I need not explain here, 

 has within these few days recalled my attention to 

 the subject ; and I have no reason to be ashamed, 

 or to make a secret, of the result. 



Tyncen, the diminutive of tunne, is not only a 

 genuine Anglo-Saxon word, but the type of a 

 class, of whose existence in that language no 

 Saxonist, I may say no Teutonist, not even the 

 perspicacious and indefatigable Jacob Grimm him- 

 self, seems to be aware. The word is exactly ana- 

 logous to Ger. tonnchen, from tonne, and proves 

 three things : — 1. That our ancestors formed di- 

 minutives in cen, as well as their neighbours in 

 Tien, kin, cTien; 2. That the radical vowel was mo- 

 dified : for y is the umlaut of u ; 3. That these 

 properties of the dialect were known to Alfred the 

 Great when he added this curious statement to the 

 narrative of Orosius. E. Thomson. 



KOTES ON SEVEBAL MISUNDERSTOOD WOBDS. 



(^Continued from p. 376.) 



Lnperseverant, undiscerning. This word I have 

 never met with but twice, — in Shakspeare's 

 Cymbeline, with the sense above given ; and in 

 Bishop Andrewes' Sermon preached before Queen 

 Elizabeth at Hampton Court, a.d. 1594, in the 

 sense of unenduring : 



" For the Sodomites are an example of impenitent 

 wilful sinners ; and Lot's wife of imperseverant and 

 relapsing righteous persons." — Library of Ang.-Cath. 

 Theology, vol. ii. p. 62. 



Perseverant, discerning, and persevers, discerns, 

 occur respectively at pp. 43. and 92. of Hawes's 

 Pastime of Pleasure (Percy Society's edition). 

 The noun substantive joersewerawce^ discernment 

 is as common a word as any of the like length in 

 the English language. To omit the examples that 

 might be cited out of Hawes's Pastime of Pleaswe, 

 I will adduce a dozen other instances ; and if 

 those should not be enough to justify my assertion, 

 I will undertake to heap together two dozen more. 

 Mr. Dyce, in his Critique of Knight and Collier's 



Shakspeare, rightly explains the meaning of the 

 word in Cymbeline ; and quotes an example of 

 perseverance from The Widow, to which the reader 

 IS referred. Mr. Dyce had, however, previously 

 corrupted a passage in his edition of Rob. Greene's 

 Dramatic Works, by substituting " perceivance'* 

 for perseverance, the word in the original quarto 

 of the Pinner of Wakefield, vol. ii. p. 184. : 



" Why this is wondrous, being blind of sight. 

 His deep perseuerance should be such to know us."" 



I subjoin the promised dozen : 



" For his dyet he was verie temperate, and a great 

 enemie of excesse and surfeiting ; and so carelesse of 

 delicates, as though he had had no perseuerance in the- 

 tast of meates," &c. — " The Life of Ariosto," Sir 

 John Harington's Translation oiOrlandoFurioso, p. 41 8» 



" In regarde whereof they are tyed vnto these- 

 duties: First by a prudent, diligent, and faithfull care- 

 to obserue by what things the state may be most bene* 

 fited ; and to haue perseuerance where such marchan- 

 dize that the st;ite most vseth and desireth may be had 

 with greatest ease," &c. — The Trauailer, by Thomas. 

 Palmer: London, 1606. 



" There are certain kinds of frogs in Egypt, about 

 the floud of Nilus, that have this percewerance, that 

 when by chance they happen to come where a fish 

 called Varus is, which is great a murtherer and spoiler 

 of frogs, they use to bear in their mouths overthwart 

 a long reed, which groweth about the banks of Nile; 

 and as this fish doth gape, thinking to feed upon 

 the frog, the reed is so long that by no means he can 

 swallow the frog ; and so they save their lives." — " The 

 Pilgrimage of Kings and Princes," chap, xliii. p. 294. 

 of Lloyd's Marrow of History, corrected and revised by 

 II. C, Master of Arts : London, 1653. 



" This fashion of countinge the monthe endured to 

 the ccccl yere of the citic, and was kepte secrete 

 among the byshops of theyr religion tyl the time that 

 C. Flauius, P. Sulpitius Auarrio, and P. Sempronius 

 Sophuilongus, then beinge Consuls, against the mynde 

 of the Senatours disclosed all their solemne feates, 

 published the in a table that cuery man might haue- 

 perseuerauee of them." — An Ahridgemente of the NotahTe 

 Worke of Polidore Vergile, §-c., by Thomas Langley,. 

 fol. xlii. 



" And some there be that thinke men toke occasion 

 of God to make ymages, whiche wylling to shewe to 

 the grosse wyttes of men some perceiueraunce of hym- 

 selfe, toke on him the shape of man, as Abraham sawe 

 him and Jacob also." — Id., fol. Ixi. 



In this passage, as in others presently to be allegecJ, 

 " notification" seems to be the drift of the word. 



" Of this vnreuerent religio, Mahomete, a noble 

 maiie, borne in Arable, or, as some report, in Persiev 

 was authour : and his father was an heathen idolater, 

 and his mother an Ismaelite ; wherfore she had more 

 perceuerance of the Hebrues law." — Id., fol. cxlii. 



" Where all feelyng and perseiierdce of euill is awale, 

 nothyng there is euill or found a misse. As if a manne 



