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Says tinman: I thought I had read in The Mother Tongue, by Bill Bryson, that carriage and marriage were originally carryage and marryage and the "y", later changed to "i", was pronounced. But I can't find it now, and the Word of the Day usage note seems to imply the "i" was never pronounced. Can anybody help me here?

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I googled and found links to antique documents using "marryage" and "carryage", but no clue as to pronunciation.

A more general question: How do lexicographers ever ascertain a word's old pronunciation, unless they are so fortunate as to find a poem that happens to rhyme to that word?