From: utzoo!henry
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Title: Re: Ye == The 
Article-I.D.: utzoo.2326
Posted: Sun Aug  1 02:32:15 1982
Received: Sun Aug  1 02:32:15 1982

According to Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, the use of "ye" for
"the" was a consequence of printers using a "y" as the closest
approximation to the obsolete "thorn" character (roughly, a vertical
stroke with a semicircular loop on the right side), whose sound was
that of modern unvoiced "th".