Scene 4. Page 114.
Kent. They summon'd up their meiny.
Meiny, signifying a family, household, or retinue of servants, is certainly from the French meinie, or, as it was anciently and more properly written, mesnie; which word has been regarded, with great probability, by a celebrated French glossarist and antiquary, as equivalent with mesonie or maisonie, from maison: in modern French ménage. See glossary to Villehardouin, edit. 1657, folio.
Mr. Holt White has cited Dryden's line,
"The many rend the skies with loud applause,"
as supplying the use of many in Kent's sense of train or retinue. With great deference, the word is quite unconnected with meiny, and simply denotes any multitude or collection of people. It is not only used at present in its common adjective form for several, divers, multi, but even substantively: for in the Northern parts of England they still say a many, and a many people, i. e. of people. In this sense it is never found in the French language; but we have received it directly, as an adjective, from the Saxon manɩ manɩᵹ, and as a substantive from menɩu, mænɩᵹeo, menɩᵹo, &c. &c.; for in that language the word is found written not less than twenty different ways. It is the same as the Latin manus. Horace uses manus poetarum; and Quintilian oratorum ingens manus. It does not appear that the Saxons used many for a family or household.
Scene 4. Page 121.
Fool. Cry to it nuncle, as the cockney did to the eels.
The difficulties that have attended all inquiries concerning this term, have been not a little augmented by an expectation of finding an uniformity which it does not possess, and by not reflecting that it is in reality susceptible of very different explanations.