{143} I cannot doubt that this form which our country people in Hampshire, as in many other parts, always employ, either retains the original pronunciation, our received one being a modern corruption; or else, as is more probable, that _we_ have made a confusion between two originally different words, from which they have kept clear. Thus in Howell’s _Vocabulary_, 1659, and in Cotgrave’s _French and English Dictionary_ both words occur: “nuncion or nuncheon, the afternoon’s repast”, (cf. _Hudibras_, i. 1, 346: “They took their breakfasts or their _nuncheons_”), and “lunchion, a big piece” i.e. of bread; for both give the old French ‘caribot’, which has this meaning, as the equivalent of ‘luncheon’. It is clear that in this sense of lump or ‘big piece’ Gay uses ‘luncheon’: “When hungry thou stood’st staring like an oaf, I sliced the _luncheon_ from the barley loaf”; and Miss Baker in her _Northamptonshire Glossary_ explains ‘lunch’ as “a large lump of bread, or other edible; ‘He helped himself to a good _lunch_ of cake’”. We may note further that this ‘nuntion’ may possibly put us on the right track for arriving at the etymology of the word. Richardson has called attention to the fact that it is spelt “noon-shun” in Browne’s _Pastorals_, which must at least suggest as possible and plausible that the ‘nuntion’ was originally applied to the labourer’s slight meal, to which he withdrew for the _shunning_ of the heat of the middle _noon_: especially when in Lancashire we find a word of similar formation, ‘noon-scape’, and in Norfolk ‘noon-miss’, for the time when labourers rest after dinner. [It really stands for the older English _none-schenche_, i.e. ‘noon-skink’ or noon-drink (see Skeat, _Etym. Dict._, _s.v._), correlative to ‘noon-meat’ or ‘nam-met’.] It is at any rate certain that the dignity to which ‘lunch’ or ‘luncheon’ has now arrived, as when we read in the newspapers of a “magnificent _luncheon_”, is altogether modern; the word belonged a century ago to rustic life, and in literature had not travelled beyond the “hobnailed pastorals” which professed to describe that life. {144} See it so written, Holland’s _Pliny_, vol. ii. p. 428, and often. {145} As a proof of the excellent service which an accurate acquaintance with provincial usages may render in the investigation of the innumerable perplexing phenomena of the English language, I would refer to the admirable article _On English Pronouns Personal_ in _Transactions of the Philological Society_, vol. i. p. 277.