252 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 46. 



montre pour nous allecher a cette transfoimntion tie 

 nous en luy, de iiostre misere en sa gloire."— Ap. Prc- 

 dkatorianii, p. 132-3: Dijon, 1841. 



H. B. C. 



Guys Armonr (Vol. ii., pp. 55. 187.). — With 

 respect to the armonr said to have belonged to 

 Guy, Earl of Warwick, your correspondent Naso 

 is referred to Grose's Military Antiquities, vol. ii. 

 pi. 42., where he will find an engraving ot'a bascinet 

 of the fourteenth century, much dilai)i(lated, but 

 having still a fragment of the moveable vizor ad- 

 hering to the pivot on which it worked. Whether 

 this interesting relic is still at Warwick Castle or 

 not, I cannot pretend to sav, as I was unfortunately 

 prevented joining the British Archa?ol(igical Asso- 

 ciation at the Warwick congress in 1847, and have 

 never visited that i)art of the country; but the 

 bascinet which was tliere in Grose's time was at 

 least of the date of Guido de Beauchamp, Earl of 

 Warwick, the builder of Guy's Tower, who died in 

 1315, and who has always been confounded with 

 the fabulous Guy : and if it has disappeared, we 

 have to regret the loss of the only specimen of an 

 English bascinet of that period that I am aware of 

 in this country. J- K- Pi^anchk. 



Alarm (Vol. ii., pp. 151. 183.). — The origin 

 of this word appears to be the Italian cry, alTurme ; 

 gridare aWarme is to give the alarm. Hence the 

 French alarme, and from the French is borrowed 

 the English word. Alarum for ala7-m, is merely a 

 corruption produced by mispronunciation. Tlie 

 letters I and r before m are difficult to pronounce ; 

 and they are in general, according to the refined 

 standard of our pronunciation, so far softened as 

 only to lengthen the preceding vowel. In pro- 

 vincial pron'unciation, however, the force of the 

 former letter is often preserved, and tlie pronun- 

 ciation is facilitated by the insertion of a vowel 

 befi)re the final m. Tlie Irish, in particular, adopt 

 this mode of pronouncing ; even in public speaking 

 they say cnllum, Jirrum, farrum, for calm, firm, 

 farm. The old word chrisom for chrism, is an 

 analogous change : the Italians have in like manner 

 lengthened chrisma into cresima ; the French have 

 softened it into chreme. L. 



Alarm. — It is in favour of the derivation a 

 rarme that the Italian is allnrme ; some dictionaries 

 even have dare all'arme, with the apostrophe, for 

 to wive alarm. It is against it that the German 

 word Ldim is used precisely as the English ala?-m. 

 Your correspondent CM. thinks the French deri- 

 vation suspiciously ingenious : here I must differ ; 

 I think it suspiciously obvious. I will give him a 

 suirgestion which I think really susjiiciously in- 

 genious ; in fact, had not the opportunity occurred 

 for illustrating ingenuity, I shouhl not have ven- 

 tured it. May it not be that alarme and aVarme 

 is formed in the obvious way, as to arms; while 

 alarum and Ldrm are wholly unconnected witli 



them ? May it not sometimes happen that, by 

 coincidence, the same sounds and meanings go 

 together in different languages without community 

 of origin ? Is it not possible that larnin and Liirm 

 are imitations of the stroke and subsequent re- 

 sonance of a large bell ? Denoting the continued 

 sound of m by m-m-m, I think that b-m-m-m-lrm- 

 m-m-lrm-m-m &c., is as good an imitation of a 

 large bell at some distance as letters can make. 

 And in the old English use of the word, the 

 alarum refers more often to a bell than to any 

 thing else. 



The introduction of the mililary word into 

 English can be traced, as to time, with a certain 

 probability. In 1579, Thomas Digges published 

 his Aritluneticall Militare Treatise named Stratio- 

 ticos, which he informs us is mainly the v.'riting of 

 his father, Leonard IJigges. At page 170. the 

 father seems to finish with "and so I mean to 

 finishe this treatise : " while the son, as we must 

 suppose, adds p. 171. and what follows. In the 

 father's part the word alarm is not mentioned, that 

 I can find. If it occurred anywhere, it would be 

 in describing the duties of the scout-master; but 

 here we have nothing but vmindng and surprise, 

 never alarm. But in the son's appendix, the word 

 alarme does occur twice in one page (173.). It 

 also occurs in tlie body of the .second edition of 

 the book, when of course it is the son who inserts 

 it. We may say tlieu, that, in all probability, the 

 military technical term was introduced in the third 

 quarter of tlie si.\teenth century. This, I suspect, 

 is too late to allow us to suppose that the ver- 

 nacidar force which Shakspeare takes it to have, 

 could have been gained for it by the time he 

 wrote. 



The second edition was published in 1590 ; 

 about this time the spelling of the English lan- 

 guage made a very rapid approach to its present 

 form. This is seen to a remarkable extent in the 

 two editions of the Stratioticos ; in the first, the 

 commanding officer of a regiment is always cor- 

 ronel, in the second collonel. But the most striking 

 instance I now remember, is the following. In 

 the first edition of Robert Recorde's Castle of 

 Knowledge (1556) occurs the following tetra- 

 stich : — 



" If reasons reaclie transcendi; the skye, 

 Why shoukle it then to eavtlie be bounde? 

 The witte is wronged and leadde awrye, 

 If mynde be maried to the gvounde." 



In the second edition (1596) the above is spelt 

 as we should now do it, except in having skie and 

 aivrie. JNI. 



Prelates of France (Vol. ii., p. 182.).- — In answer 

 to a Minor Queiy of F. C. S. S., I can inform him 

 that I have in my possession, if it be of any use to 

 him, a manuscri])t entitled Tableau de V Ordre re- 

 ligieux en France, avant et dcpuis VEdit de 1768, 



