As early as 1612 Captain John Smith gives _aroughcune_ as the aboriginal Virginia word, and more than one New England writer used _rackoon_ a few years later.] [Footnote 8: This prefixed _y_ is a mark of a very illiterate or antique form of the dialect.

I have known _piece yarthen_ used for "a piece of earthen" [ware], the preposition getting lost in the sound of the _y_.

I leave it to etymologists to determine its relation to that ancient prefix that differentiates _earn_ in one sense from _yearn_.

But the article before a vowel may account for it if we consider it a corruption.

"The earth" pronounced in a drawling way will produce _the yearth_.