"The documents contained in this volume have not been selected in the view of reviving or illustrating the ancient National Controversy as to the feudal dependence of Scotland on the English Crown. It has been long known that in these Records may be found the largest and most authentic enumerations now extant of the Nobility, Barons, Landholders and Burgesses, as well as of the Clergy of Scotland, prior to the fourteenth century. No part of the public Records of Scotland prior to that era has been preserved, and whatever may have been their fate, certain it is, that to these English Records of our temporary national degradation, are we now indebted for the only genuine Statistical Notices of the Kingdom towards the close of the thirteenth century."
*** "This singular document, so often quoted and referred to, was never printed in extenso."
T. G. S.
Edinburgh.
Dole-bank (Vol. iv., p. 162.).
—In processions on Holy Thursday, it was usual to deal cakes and bread to the children and the poor of the parish at boundary-banks, that they might be duly remembered. Hence the name.
R. S. H.
Morwenstow.
The Letter "V" (Vol. iv., p. 164.).
—If S. S. will turn again to my remarks on this letter, he will see that I did not state that Tiverton was ever pronounced Terton. I accede to what he has said of Twiverton; Devonshire was inadvertently written for Somersetshire. With regard to the observations of A. N. (p. 162.), he will find those remarks were confined to the v between two vowels, i.e. without any other consonant intervening; and, therefore, other forms of contraction did not fall within the scope of them. I refrained from adverting to any such words as Elvedon and Kelvedon (pronounced respectively Eldon and Keldon), because the abbreviation of these may be referable to another cause. In passing I would mention that I think there can be no reasonable doubt that the word dool, about which he inquires, is no other than the Ang.-Sax. dāl, a division, from daelan, to divide; and whence our words deal and dole. But to return to the letter v, if MR. SINGER be correct as to devenisch in the MS. of the Hermit of Hampole being written for Danish (p. 159.), it seems an example of the peculiar use of this letter to which I have invited attention, for the writer hardly intended it to be pronounced as three syllables if he meant Danish. However, if that MS. be a transcript, may not the supposed v have been originally an n, which was first mis-read u, and then copied as a v?