was consulted, it was found that the word
was there plainly written _nurse_.

The Saxon letter for _th_ () has long

been a sore puzzle to the uninitiated, and
it came to be represented by the letter y.
Most of those who think they are writing
in a specially archaic manner when they
spell ``ye'' for ``the'' are ignorant of this,
and pronounce the article as if it were the
pronoun. Dr. Skeat quotes a curious instance
of the misreading of the thorn ()
as _p_, by which a strange ghost word is
evolved. Whitaker, in his edition of Piers
Plowman, reads that Christ ``_polede_ for
man,'' which should be _tholede_, from
_tholien_, to suffer, as there is no such
verb as _polien_.

Dr. J. A. H. Murray, the learned editor
of the Philological Society's _New English
Dictionary_, quotes two amusing instances
of ghost words in a communication to
_Notes and Queries_ (7th S., vii. 305). He
says: ``Possessors of Jamieson's Scottish
Dictionary will do well to strike out the
fictitious entry _cietezour_, cited from Bellenden's
_Chronicle_ in the plural _cietezouris_,
which is merely a misreading of cietezanis
(_i.e_. with Scottish z = = y), _cieteyanis_ or