474 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 85. 



Youred in other respects, and she concludes her 

 apostrojjhe in these words, — 



" Than, semcth it, ye had a gret chertee 

 Toward mankind ; hut how then may it be 

 That ye such menen make, it to destroy en. 

 Which menes don no good but ever anoyen ? " 



Undoubtedly, in the third of these lines, "menes" 

 seems to have a perfectly good meaning in the 

 sense of instrument, or means to destroy. But, in 

 the last line, the same sense is not so obvious — 

 "means to destroy" must necessai-ily be destructive, 

 and Chaucer would never be guilty of the un- 

 meaning truism of repeating — -"means which do 

 no good but ever annoy." 



Moreover, I am not aware that the accent is 

 ever thrown upon the silent e where the signi- 

 fication of " mene " is an instrument — 



" She may be Goddes mene and Goddes whippe " — 



but in the lines under discussion the last syllable 

 in both cases is accented, agreeing in that respect 

 with the Armorican sound — " menez." 



Let us now examine whether the Armorican 

 sense is capable of giving a perfect meaning to both 

 lines? That sense is, a rocky ridge or emerging 

 summit. Let us substitute the word rockes for 

 menez, and then try what meaning the passage 

 receives: 



" If, quoth Dorigene, ye love manhiud so well 



how then may it be 



That ye such rocltts make, it to destroyen, 

 Which rockes don no good but ever anoyen ? " 



Here the sense is perfect in both lines — a sense, 

 too, that is in exact keeping with Dorigene's pre- 

 vious complaint of the usexessness of these 

 rocks — 



" That semen rather a foule confusion 

 Of werk, than any faire creation 

 Of swiche a pariit wise God and stable ; 

 Why have ye wrought tliis werk unreasonable? 

 For by this werk, north, soutli, ne west, ne est, 

 There n'ls yfostred man, ne brid, ne best ; 

 It doth no good, to my wit, hut anoyeth." 



I therefore propose the following as the true 

 reading of the passage in cpiestion: viz., 



" Ye had a great chertee 



Toward mankind ; but how then may it be 

 That ye swiche menez make, it to destroyen, 

 Which menez don no good, but ever anoyen?" 



And if I have succeeded in making good this 

 position, we no longer stand in need of a pre- 

 cedent for the same reading in the case of — " In 

 menez libra." A. E. B. 



Leeds, May 31. 1851. 



P.S. I have been favoured, through the publisher 

 of " Notes and Queries," with an obliging note 

 from S.S.S. (2), communicating some authorities, 

 of which the most germane to this subject are — 



1. From Arch(2ologia Britannica (Edward 

 Lhuyd. Oxford, 1707) : "Armoric, Men, a stone ; 

 menez, a mountain." 



2. From Walter's Welsh Dictionary: "Welsh 

 Maen, a stone ; maen terfyUy a boundary stone ■ 

 maen mawr, a large stone." 



FOLK TALK 



• EYSELL, 



' CAPTIOUS. 



If folk lore be worthy of a place in your 

 columns, folk talk should not be shut out, and 

 that the etymological solutions, gathered from 

 this source, which I have previously forwarded, 

 have not appeared, is doubtless attributable to 

 some other cause than indifferentism to the au- 

 thority. I have found many inexplicable words 

 and phrases, occurring in the older writers, ren- 

 dered plain and highly expressive by folk talk 

 definitions ; and a glance at the relative positions 

 of the common people of this day, and the writers 

 of the past, to the educated and scholarly world of 

 the nineteenth century, will suffice to show good 

 reasons for a discriminative reference to the lan- 

 guage of the one, for the elucidation of the other's 

 expression. In common with the majority of 

 your readers, as I should think, I found the notes 

 and replies on " eysell " and " captious " to be 

 highly interesting, and of course applied to the 

 folk talk for its definition. In the first case I ob- 

 tained from my own experience, what I think will 

 be a satisfactory clue to its meaning, and some- 

 thing more in addition. There is a herb of an 

 acid taste, the common name for which — the only 

 one with which I am acquainted — is green-sauce ; 

 and this herb is, or rather was, much sought after 

 by children in my boyish days. At a public 

 school not a dozen miles from Stratford-on-Avon, 

 it was a common practice for we lads to spend our 

 holidays in roaming about the fields ; and among 

 objects of search, this green-sauce was a prominent 

 one, and it was a point of honour with each of us 

 to notify to the others the discovery of a root of 

 green-sauce. In doing this, the discoverer, after 

 satisfying himself by his taste that the true herb 

 was found, followed an accepted course, and sig- 

 nified his success to his companions by raising his 

 voice and shouting, '.vhat I have always been ac- 

 customed to write, " Hey-sall." I have no know- 

 ledge of the origin of this word ; it was with us as 

 a school-rule so to use it ; and I have no doubt 

 but that " ey-sell " was in Shakspeare's time the 

 popular name for the herb to which I allude. 



Mixing much with the rural population of 

 Warwickshire, I have, on many occasions, seen 

 the word "captious" used in the sense of carping, 

 irritable, unthankfulness, and self-willed ; and, in 

 my humble opinion, such a rendering would be 

 more in accordance with the character of the 

 fiction, and the poet's early teaching, than any 

 definition I have yet seen in your pages. Emun. 



