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Is that of a
mere voiceless aspirate:
So He, who o'er
the Dictionary reigns,
Will find his
life full of "Aiches and pains."
[Shropshire Notes & Queries, vol. 5, page 12, and
vol. 6, page 16.]
The subject was
too good to be allowed to remain with these learned gentlemen, so other wits
took a hand in the game with the following among other results :
Remonstrance of
the letter H to the inhabitants of Shropshire.
Whereas by you
we have been driven
From hearth and
home, from hope and heaven,
And placed by
your most learned society
In exile,
anguish and anxiety.
We thereby claim
full restitution,
And beg you'll
mind your elocution.
And this is the
Answer of the Inhabitants of Shropshire.
Whereas we have
rescued you, ingrate,
From hell, from
honor and from hate,
From Hedge-bill,
horsepond, and from halter,
And consecrated
you in altar,
We think your
claim is an intrusion,
And will not
mind our elocution.
[Shropshire Notes & Queries, vol. 6, page 38.]
Here then in the
word Peshale we have a curious combination of
letters making a man's name. And sound it as you may in the local
dialect, you could not escape the sound of the r in the first element,
while try as hard as you like, in this Shropshire
dialect, the voiceless aspirate h refuses to register. But when the
cockney Englishman removed from Staffordshire to other parts of the British Isles, the spelling of his name in the way
that was peculiar to his old home locality received in the new place an
entirely different rendering of its sound value according to the letters
that formed the elements making his family name. Hence the appellation by
which he was known underwent a material change either in spelling or in
the pronouncing of this surname; in some instances it no doubt was not
only changed as to the letters making up the same but he thereby acquired
an almost entirely different surname. As a consequence, were it not for the records fixing this ancestry and
the arms they severally carry on their shield, it would not be possible
to trace their ancestry to the Staffordshire beginning in the old common
and original family name. Those who have given much study to the subject
of changes in our surname say that from time to time, before the
fifteenth century, branches of our family settled in Cheshire, Kent,
Sussex, Surrey, Hertford, Derby and elsewhere in England and that as a
consequence the family name in these localities was changed to Pashley, Purslow, Passelew, Passal, Pesenschale, Peschale, Purshale, Pascal, Porselly,
Pursley, Passaley, Pursel, Pexsall and other
like spellings. And unless one were accurately conversant with the
dialects then current in these several localities they could not be able
to say at all positively the exact values, if any change in the sound,
which was thereby brought about in the family name. But nevertheless at
the end of this same period of three centuries, since our surname was
assumed by our ancestor because of the name
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