Unneath (Vol. vii., p. 631.).—It strikes me that your correspondents Mr. C. H. Cooper and E. G. R., in reply to Mr. Wright's inquiry respecting the use of the word "unneath," used in Parnell's Fairy Tale, have fallen into a slight mistake in supposing that the seemingly old words used in this poem are really so. I make no doubt that Mr. Halliwell is correct in noting the word "unneath" as signifying "beneath," in the patois of Somerset; but I gravely suspect that Parnell had picked up the word out of our older poets, and used it in the passage quoted without consideration.
The true meaning of "unneath" (which is of Saxon origin, and variously written "unnethe, unnethes") is scarcely, not easily.
Thus Chaucer says:
"The miller that for-dronken was all pale,
So that unnethes upon his hors he sat."
The Millers Prologue, v. 3123. [Tyrwhitt.]
And again:
"Yeve me than of thy gold to make our cloistre,
Quod he, for many a muscle and many an oistre,
When other men han ben ful wel at ese