Читать книгу Notes and Queries, Number 185, May 14, 1853 - Various - Страница 3
Notes
"AKE" AND ACHE
ОглавлениеJohn Kemble, it is well known, maintained that the latter was the mode of pronouncing this word in Shakspeare's days. He was right, and he was wrong; for, as I shall show, both modes prevailed, at least in poetry, till the end of the seventeenth century. So it was with some other words, show and shew, for instance. It is, perhaps, hardly necessary to observe that the sounds k, ch, sh, kh (guttural) are commutable. Thus the letter h is named in Italian, acca; in French, ache, in English, aitch, perhaps originally atch: our church is the Scottish kirk, &c. Accordingly, we meet in Shakspeare reckless and rechless, reeky and reechy; "As I could pike (pitch) my lance." (Coriol., Act I. Sc. 1.) Hall has (Sat. vi. 1.) "Lucan streaked (stretched) on his marble bed." So also there were like and liche, and the vulgar cham for I am (Ic eom, A.-S.)
Having now to show that both ake and ache were in use, I commence with the former:
"Like a milch-doe, whose swelling dugs do ake,
Hasting to find her fawn hid in some brake."
Shakspeare's Venus and Adonis
"By turns now half asleep, now half awake,
My wounds began to smart, my hurt to ake."
Fairfax, Godf. of Bull., viii, 26.
"Yet, ere she went, her vex'd heart, which did ake,
Somewhat to ease, thus to the king she spake."
Drayton, Barons' Wars, iii. 75.
"And cramm'd them till their guts did ake
With caudle, custard, and plumcake."
Hudibras, ii. 2.
The following is rather dubious:
"If chance once in the spring his head should ach,
It was foretold: thus says my almanack."
Hall, Sat. ii. 7., ed. Singer.
The aitch, or rather, as I think, the atch sound, occurs in the following places:
"B. Heigh ho!
M. For a hawk, a horse, or a husband?
B. For the letter that begins them all, H."
Much Ado about Nothing, Act III. Sc. 4.
"Their fears of hostile strokes, their aches, losses."
Timon of Athens, Act V. Sc. 2.
"Yea, fright all aches from your bones."
Jonson, Fox, ii. 2.
"Wherefore with mine thou dow thy musick match,
Or hath the crampe thy ionts benom'd with ache."
Spenser, Shep. Cal., viii. 4.
"Or Gellia wore a velvet mastic-patch
Upon her temples, when no tooth did ach."
Hall, Sat. vi. 1.
"As no man of his own self catches
The itch, or amorous French aches."
Hudibras, ii, 2.
"The natural effect of love,
As other flames and aches prove."
Ib., iii. 1.
"Can by their pangs and aches find
All turns and changes of the wind."
Ib., iii. 2.
These, in Butler, are, I believe, the latest instances of this form of the word.
Thomas Keightley.
