Rowley Powley (Vol. ii., p. 74.).—Andre Valladier, who died about the middle of the sixteenth century, was a popular preacher and the king's almoner. He gained great applause for his funeral oration on Henry IV. In his sermon for the second Sunday in Lent (Rouen, 1628), he says;—
"Le paon est gentil et miste, bien que par la parfaite beauté de sa houppe, par la rareté et noblesse de sa teste, par la gentilesse et netteté de son cou, par l'ornement de ses pennes et par la majesté de tout le reste de son corps, il ravit tous ceux qui le contemplent attentivement; toutefois au rencontre de sa femelle, pour l'attirer à son amour, il déploye sa pompe, fait montrer et parade de son plumage bizarré, et RIOLLÉ PIOLLÉ se presente à elle avec piafe, et luy donne la plus belle visée de sa roue. De mesme ce Dieu admirable, amoreux des hommes, pour nous ravir d'amour à soy, desploye le lustre de ses plus accomplies beautez, et comme un amant transporté de sa bienaimée se montre pour nous allecher à cetter transformation de nous en luy, de nostre misère en sa gloire."—Ap. Predicatoriuna p. 132-3: Dijon, 1841.
H.B.C.
Guy's Armour (Vol. ii., pp. 55. 187.).—With respect to the armour said to have belonged to Guy, Earl of Warwick, your correspondent NASO is referred to Grose's Military Antiquities, vol. ii. pl. 42., where he will find an engraving of a bascinet of the fourteenth century, much dilapidated, but having still a fragment of the moveable vizor adhering to the pivot on which it worked. Whether this interesting relic is still at Warwick Castle or not, I cannot pretend to say, as I was unfortunately prevented joining the British Archæological Association at the Warwick congress in 1847, and have never visited that part of the country; but the bascinet which was there in Grose's time was at least of the date of Guido de Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, the builder of Guy's Tower, who died in 1315, and who has always been confounded with the fabulous Guy: and if it has disappeared, we have to regret the loss of the only specimen of an English bascinet of that period that I am aware of in this country.
J.R. PLANCHÊ
Alarm (Vol. ii., pp. 151. 183.).—The origin of this word appears to be the Italian cry, all'arme; gridare all'arme is to give the alarm. Hence the French alarme, and from the French is borrowed the English word. Alarum for alarm, is merely a corruption produced by mispronunciation. The letters l and r before m are difficult to pronounce; and they are in general, according to the refined standard of our pronunciation, so far softened as only to lengthen the preceding vowel. In provincial pronunciation, however, the force of the former letter is often preserved, and the pronunciation is facilitated by the insertion of a vowel before the final m. The Irish, in particular, adopt this mode of pronouncing; even in public speaking they say callum, firrum, farrum, for calm, firm, farm. The old word chrisom for chrism, is an analogous change: the Italians have in like manner lengthened chrisma into cresima; the French have softened it into chrême.
L.
Alarm.—It is in favour of the derivation à l'arme that the Italian is allarme; some dictionaries even have dare all'arme, with the apostrophe, for to give alarm. It is against it that the German word Lärm is used precisely as the English alarm. Your correspondent CH. thinks the French derivation suspiciously ingenious: here I must differ; I think it suspiciously obvious. I will give him a suggestion which I think really suspiciously ingenious: in fact, had not the opportunity occurred for illustrating ingenuity, I should not have ventured it. May it not be that alarme and allarme is formed in the obvious way, as to arms; while alarum and Lärm wholly unconnected with them? May it not sometimes happen that, by coincidence, the same sounds and meanings go together in different languages without community of origin? Is it not possible that larum and Lärm are imitations of the stroke and subsequent resonance of a large bell? Denoting the continued sound of m by m-m-m, I think that lrm-m-m-lrm-m-m-lrm-m-m &c., is as good an imitation of a large bell at some distance as letters can make. And in the old English use of the word, the alarum refers more often to a bell than to any thing else.
The introduction of the military word into English can be traced, as to time, with a certain probability. In 1579, Thomas Digges published his Arithmeticall Militare Treatise named Stratioticos, which he informs us is mainly the writing of his father, Leonard Digges. At page 170. the father seems to finish with "and so I mean to finishe this treatise:" while the son, as we must suppose, adds p. 171. and what follows. In the father's part the word alarm is not mentioned, that I can find. If it occurred anywhere, it would be in describing the duties of the scout-master; but here we have nothing but warning and surprise, never alarm. But in the son's appendix, the word alarme does occur twice in one page (173.). It also occurs in the body of the second edition of the book, when of course it is the son who inserts it. We may say then, that, in all probability, the military technical term was introduced in the third quarter of the sixteenth century. This, I suspect, is too late to allow us to suppose that the vernacular force which Shakspeare takes it to have, could have been gained for it by the time he wrote.
The second edition was published in 1590; about this time the spelling of the English language made a very rapid approach to its present form. This is seen to a remarkable extent in the two editions of the Stratioticos; in the first, the commanding officer of a regiment is always corronel, in the second collonel. But the most striking instance I now remember, is the following. In the first edition of Robert Recorde's Castle of Knowledge (1556) occurs the following tetrastich:—