Capital and lowercase letter eth.  May Þey rest in peace. In Old English and Middle English there were two letters that we don’t use today: Þ and Ð (called thorn and eth —written in lowercase as Þ and ð).  Thorn was the hard th sound, like you hear in the word then ; eth could be used for the soft th sound, as in thin , but could also be used for the hard th .  Eth slowly disappeared from English writing, falling out of use by the year 1300.  Thorn lasted a while longer, maybe another century, but its demise was hastened by the popularity of printing.  Signs and handbills were printed on paper with sets of wooden blocks.  The best blocks came from Germany and Italy, where the languages don’t have the th sound at all, so these sets included no thorn or eth blocks.  To fill the need of the missing thorn, printers would just use the letter Y instead.  This is why you would often see medieval signs like “Ye Olde Bakery”.  This is j...

The words of the first parody of the song, which remains best known to French children even today. Perhaps the best-known French melody in the English-speaking world, if not the whole world, is a French pastoral song, the melody of which dates to 1740.  The tune became popular, and was first published with suggested lyrics in 1761, linked to a love poem called “La confidence” (“The Confidence”, in English).  The first verse went like this: Ah!  Vous dirai-je Maman Ce qui cause mon tourment? Depuis que j’ai vu Clitandre, Me regarder d’un air tendre ; Mon cœur dit à chaque instant, «Peut-on vivre sans amant?» In English, it reads like this: Ah!  Shall I tell you, Mama, What just drives me crazy? Since I saw Clitandre Look at me in that tender way, My heart said at that instant, “Can you live without loving?” In case that doesn’t ring any bells, don’t sweat it.  “La confidence” is not especially well remembered to...