the radical meaning was forgotten, as analogical with other words in oi.  In the same way after Norman-French influence had softened the l out of would (we already find woud for veut in N.F. poems), should followed the example, and then an l was foisted into could, where it does not belong, to satisfy the logic of the eye, which has affected the pronunciation and even the spelling of English more than is commonly supposed.  I meet with eyster for oyster as early as the fourteenth century.  I find viage in Bishop Hall and Middleton the dramatist, bile for boil in Donne and Chrononhotonthologos, line for loin in Hall, ryall and chyse (for choice) dystrye for destroy, in the Coventry Plays.  In Chapman’s ‘All Fools’ is the misprint of employ for imply, fairly inferring an identity of sound in the last syllable.  Indeed, this pronunciation was habitual till after Pope, and Rogers tells us that the elegant Gray said naise for noise just as our rustics still do.  Our cornish (which I find also in Herrick) remembers the French better than cornice does.  While clinging more closely to the Anglo-Saxon in dropping the g from the end of the present participle, the Yankee now and then pleases himself with an experiment in French nasality in words ending in n.  It is not, so far as my experience goes, very common, though it may formerly have been more so. Capting, for instance, I never heard save in jest, the habitual form being kepp’n.  But at any rate it is no invention of ours.  In that delightful old volume, ’Ane Compendious Buke of Godly and Spirituall Songs,’ in which I know not whether the piety itself or the simplicity of its expression be more charming, I find burding, garding, and cousing, and in the State Trials uncerting used by a gentleman.  I confess that I like the n better than ng.

Of Yankee preterites I find risse and rize for rose in Beaumont and Fletcher, Middleton and Dryden, clim in Spenser, chees (chose) in Sir John Mandevil, give (gave) in the Coventry Plays, shet (shut) in Golding’s Ovid, het in Chapman and in Weever’s Epitaphs, thriv and smit in Drayton, quit in Ben Jonson and Henry More, and pled in the Paston Letters, nay, even in the fastidious Landor. Rid for rode was anciently common.  So likewise was see for saw, but I find it in no writer of authority (except Golding), unless Chaucer’s seie and Gower’s sigh were, as I am inclined to think, so sounded. Shew is used by Hector Boece, Giles Fletcher, Drummond of Hawthornden, and in the Paston Letters.  Similar strong preterites, like snew, thew, and even mew, are not without example.