[138] [Thus the Shakespearian word renege (Latin renegare), to deny (Lear ii, 2) still lives in the mouths of the Irish peasantry. I have heard a farmer’s wife denounce those who “renege [renaig] their religion”.]
[139] With all its severity, there is some truth in Ben Johnson’s observation: “Spenser, in affecting the ancients, writ no language”. In this matter, however, Ben Jonson was at one with him; for he does not hesitate to express his strong regret that this form has not been retained. “The persons plural” he says (English Grammar, c. 17), “keep the termination of the first person singular. In former times, till about the reign of King Henry VIII, they were wont to be formed by adding en; thus, loven, sayen, complainen. But now (whatsoever is the cause) it hath quite grown out of use, and that other so generally prevailed, that I dare not presume to set this afoot again; albeit (to tell you my opinion) I am persuaded that the lack hereof, well considered, will be found a great blemish to our tongue. For seeing time and person be as it were the right and left hand of a verb, what can the maiming bring else, but a lameness to the whole body”?
[140] [The two words are often popularly confounded. When a good woman said “I’m afeerd”, Mr. Pickwick exclaimed “Afraid”! (Pickwick Papers, ch. v.). Chaucer, instructively, uses both in the one sentence, “This wyf was not affered ne affrayed” (Shipman’s Tale, l. 400).]
[141] Génin (Récréations Philologiques, vol. i. p. 71) says to the same effect: “Il n’y a guères de faute de Français, je dis faute générale, accréditée, qui n’ait sa raison d’être, et ne pût au besoin produire ses lettres de noblesse; et souvent mieux en règle que celles des locutions qui ont usurpé leur place au soleil”.
[142] A single proof may in each case suffice:
“Our wills and fates do so contráry run”.—Shakespeare.
“Ne let mischiévous witches with their charms”.—Spenser.
“O argument blasphémous, false and proud”.—Milton.
[These archaisms are still current in Ireland.]
[143] I cannot doubt that this form which our country people in Hampshire, as in many other parts, always employ, either retains the original pronunciation, our received one being a modern corruption; or else, as is more probable, that we have made a confusion between two originally different words, from which they have kept clear. Thus in Howell’s Vocabulary, 1659, and in Cotgrave’s French and English Dictionary both words occur: “nuncion or nuncheon, the afternoon’s repast”, (cf. Hudibras, i. 1, 346: “They took their breakfasts or their nuncheons”), and “lunchion, a big piece” i.e. of bread; for both give the old French ‘caribot’, which has this meaning, as the equivalent of ‘luncheon’. It is clear that in this sense of lump or ‘big piece’ Gay uses ‘luncheon’: