Spelman informs us, that in Norfolk there were in his time thirteen villages with names ending in by: this By being a Danish word, signifying "villa." That a bye-law, Dan. by-lage, is a law peculiar to a villa. And thus we have the general application of bye to any thing; peculiar, private, indirect, as distinguished from the direct or main: as, bye-ways, bye-talk, &c. &c. In the trial of Sir Walter Raleigh, State Trials, James I., 1603, are these words:—
"You are fools; you are on the bye, Raleigh and I are on the main. We mean to take away the king and his cubs."
Here the contradistinction is manifest. Lord Bacon and B. Jonson write, on the by; as if, on the way, in passing, indirectly:—
"'There is, upon the by, to be noted.'—'Those who have seluted poetry on the by'—such being a collateral, and not the main object of pursuit."
This I think is clear and satisfactory.
By and by is quite a different matter. Mr. Tyrwhitt, upon the line in Chaucer,—
"These were his words by and by."—R. R. 4581.
interprets "separately, distinctly;" and there are various other instances in Chaucer admitting the same interpretation:—
"Two yonge knightes ligging, by and by."—Kn. T., v. 1016.
"His doughter had a bed all by hireselve,