mr McGrath,

re:'ye'

in british english, 'ye' can be used more than one way.

there's 'ye' as in 'you' as you mentioned; and also as 'the'.

i seem to recall reading somewhere about fonts in old printing.

there used to be an alphabet letter 'thorn' which had the sound of 'th'. the letter was shaped somewhat like a 'y'.

in old printed documents, the 'thorn' was easily confused with 'y'.

d'ye suppose readers & other people of that period could have been using 'thorn' to read/say 'the' & 'y' to read/say 'ye'?