The later Anglo-Norman treatment of the terminations _-é_ and _-ée_ in past participles and in verbal substantives would seem to demand notice chiefly in connexion with rhyme and metre, but it is really a question of phonology. The two terminations, as is well known, became identified before the beginning of the fourteenth century, and it is needless to quote examples to show that in Gower’s metre and rhymes _-ée_ was equivalent to _-é_. The result of this phonetic change, consisting in the absorption of the atonic vowel by the similar tonic which immediately preceded it, was that _-é_ and _-ée_ were written indiscriminately in almost all words with this ending, and that the distinction between the masculine and feminine forms was lost completely in pronunciation and to a very great extent also in writing. For example in _Mir._ 865 ff. we have rhyming together _degré_, _monté_ (fem.), _mué_, _descolouré_ (fem.), _enbroudé_, _poudré_ (fem. plur.); in 1705 ff. there is a series of rhymes in _-ée_, _bealpinée_, _engalopée_, _assemblée_, _ascoultée_ (pl.), _malsenée_, _doublée_, all masculine except the substantive _assemblée_; and in other stanzas the endings are mixed up anyhow, so that we have _aisnée_, _maluré_, 244 f., both feminine, _mené_, _héritée_, 922 f., the first feminine and the second masculine, _ymaginée_, _adrescée_, _Bal._ vi, both masculine. In all Gower’s French verse I can recall only three or four instances where an atonic final _e_ of this kind is counted in the metre: these are _a lée chiere_, _ove lée_ (_liée_) _chiere_, _du lée port_[C], _Mir._ 5179, 15518, 17122, 28337, and _Et ta pensée celestine_ 29390. In the last the author perhaps wrote _penseie_, as in 14404, since the condition under which the sound of this _-e_ survived in Anglo-Norman was usually through the introduction of a parasitic _i_-sound, which acted as a barrier to prevent the absorption of the final vowel[D]. So _Mir._ 10117 we have a word _pareies_, in rhyme with the substantives _pareies_ (walls), _veies_, &c., which I take to be for _parées_, fem. plur. of the participle, and in the same stanza _journeies_, a modification of _journées_: cp. _valeie_, _journeie_, in Middle English. I proceed to note such further points of the Phonology as seem to be of interest. i. French _e_, _ie_, from Lat. _a_, _ĕ_, in tonic syllables.