236
NOTES AND QUERIES.
[2< S. N 12., MAE. 22. '56.
the same iron, swords of a quality equal to those
forged in the original factory.
I should be glad if any correspondent would throw further light on this subject, and also add any information on the distinguishing character- istics, forgemarks, &c. of the old Toledo blades.
CLERICBS.
FAGOT : FICATUM t FEGATO : t/Vas I
(2 nd S. i. 147.)
Though i and e are often interchanged, I know no instance of i and a being confounded in ety- mology. I therefore doubt the possibility of de- ducing fagot from ficus.
In the first place, it is not stated with certainty, but only as the belief of your correspondent, that the " baked balls " of which he speaks have any liver in their composition. Still lees does it ap- pear that they have any mixture of figs, which would give these balls a resemblance to " the supposed dish of the later Roman empire." In the second place, I cannot discover that ficatum, the Latin mediaeval word for liver, ever meant " a dish consisting of figs mixed up with liver." It appears that the fig had the effect of producing an enlargement of the liver. Hence the fais pastum jecur anseris, the foye gras of the well-known French pate.
By degrees ficatum jecur was called simply fica- tum, and the word, which was first only applied to the swollen liver of the goose, became the generic term for any liver of any animal. Hence the Spanish higato, the Italian fegato, the French foye. The old Spanish was figato, which suffered the usual change off into h.
In the third place, the only Greek word which I know for liver in ancient authors is not viras (where can your correspondent find this word ?), but-^Trap. There is a mediaeval word for liver, ffvuwrbv, whence CTVK&TIOV or <TVK&TIOV, and thence ffvKo-ri, are easily derived. This word seems to have followed the same process as ficatum, having been originally an epithet to the foye gras, and then applied to the liver in general.
Jecur ficatum and rJ7rap O-UKCOTOP were expressions equally familiar in ancient cookery.
Lastly, the word fagot, an importation from the French, is evidently the same with <p6.Ke\os and fasciculus, and, in its original sense, means a bundle of sticks (or any thing else) tied together. In this sense Dryden turns it into a verb in a passage cited by Johnson :
"'He fagoted his notions, as they fell, And, if they rhymed and rattled, all was well."
I should therefore conjecture that fagot, as ap- plied to " balls of offal wrapped up in caul fat " merely means, pieces of meat fagoted together.
E, C. H.
COCKER.
(1 st S. xi. 57. ; xii. 66.)
Perhaps the following extracts, from that won- derful book, Pepys's Diary, may interest some other of your readers as well as PBOFESSOR DE MORGAN and METON :
" 1664, August 10 th . Abroad to find out one to en- grave my tables upon my new sliding rule with silver plates, it being so small, that Brown, that made it, can- not get one to do it. So I got Cocker* the famous writing- master to do it ; and I sat an hour by him, to see him design it all ; and strange it is to see him with his natural eves, to cut so small at his first designing it, and read it all over, without any missing, when for my life I could not, with my best skill, read one word or letter of it; but it is use. He says, that the best light for his life to do a very small thing by, contrary to Chaucer's words to the Sun, 'that he should lend his light to them that small seals grave,' it should be by an artificial light of a candle, set to advantage, as he could do it. I find the fellow, by his discourse, very ingenious ; and among other things, a great admirer of, and well read in, the English Poets, and undertakes to judge of them all, and that not impertinently.
" II th . Comes Cocker with my rule, which he hath engraved to admiration for goodness and smallness of work : it cost me 14s. the doing.
" 1664, Oct. 5 th . Comes Mr. Cocker to see me, and I discoursed with him about his writing and ability of sight, and how I shall get some glass or other to help my eyes by candle-light; and he tells me he will bring me the helps he hath, within a day or too, and shew me what to do.
" 7 th . Comes Mr. Cocker, and brought me a globe of glasse, and a frame of oyled paper as I desired, to shew me the manner of his gaining light to grave by, and to lessen the glaringness of it at pleasure by an oyled paper. This I bought of him, giving .him a crowne for it ; and so, well satisfied, he went aw%y."
In the villages of Eyam and Stony Middleton, Derbyshire, I have seen, as late as last summer, public-houses kept by persons of the name of Cocker. I have never seen it elsewhere in my rambles. EDWIN ROFFE.
BLACK MAIL.
(1 st S. xii. 224. 275. 394.)
In seeking an etymon for mail, your corre-
spondents have quoted every language except that
of the country in which the term originated, viz.
the Gaelic. Turning to the Gaelic Dictionary
they would find " Mai, -ail, s.m. rent or tribute."
Also in the Irish, or Erse, mal signifies rent or
tax.
In Scottish law (no doubt originating from the above) the rents of an estate were called mails or maills. And in England silver halfpence were anciently called mailes, (See Brande's Dictionary of Science, frc., art. " Mails.") Now, allowing
- Edward Cocker, the well-known arithmetician. Ob.
circ. 1G79. Note in edition 18o4,
