Pist. Moy shall not serve, I will have forty moys.
Fr. Sol. O pardonnez moy!
Pist. Say'st thou me so? is that a ton of moys?
Dr. Johnson says that "moy is a piece of money, whence moi-d'or, or moi of gold." But where had the doctor made this discovery? His etymology of moidor is certainly incorrect. Moidore is an English corruption of the Portuguese moeda d'ouro, i. e. money of gold; but there were no moidores in the time of Shakspeare.
We are therefore still to seek for Pistol's moy. Now a moyos or moy was a measure of corn; in French muy or muid, Lat. modius, a bushel. It appears that 27 moys were equal to a last or two tons. To understand this more fully, the curious reader may consult Malyne's Lex mercatoria, 1622, p. 45, and Roberts's Marchant's Mapp of commerce, 1638, chap. 272.
Scene 4. Page 442.
Fr. Sol. Est il impossible d'eschapper la force de ton bras?
Pist. Brass, cur.
Thou damned and luxurious mountain goat,
Offer'st me brass.
A question having arisen concerning the pronunciation of the French word bras in the time of Shakspeare, it was observed in a former note that some remarks by the Rev. Mr. Bowle, in another place, had contributed at least to leave the matter open to discussion. That gentleman has certainly offered some evidence from Pasquier, that in the middle of words the s was pronounced where now it is silent; but on the other hand there is positive proof that the contrary practice prevailed in 1572, when De la Ramée published his French grammar. At page 19, he says, "Premierement nous sommes prodigues en lescripture de s, sans la prononcer comme en maistre, mesler, oster, soustenir." This writer has expatiated on the difficulty which foreigners have in pronouncing the French language on account of its orthography, and offered a new mode by which it may be avoided. In the course of this specimen, he has, fortunately for the present occasion, printed the word bras without the s, (see p. [61],) and thereby supplied the means of deciding the present question, which, after all, was scarcely worth a controversy. Whoever wrote this dialogue was unacquainted with the true pronunciation of the French language, as Mr. Malone has already remarked, and framed Pistol's reply accordingly. In Eliot's Orthoepia Gallica, 1593, 4to, mentioned in Dr. Farmer's note, there is a passage which seems to have escaped the doctor's notice. In page [61], the author directs the sentence "vous avez un bras de fer," to be pronounced "voo-za-ve-zewn bra de fer."