Page:Essays ethnological and linguistic.djvu/170

158 is applied only to copulation of deer, when in the same manner it should be said, and of some other animals. Of instances of the former sort I mention two words Pourprise or Purprise and Gambrel. — The former word though of very frequent use in our older writers, is not given by Richardson, and in Todd's Johnson it is explained as a close or inclosure, a very restricted meaning when in fact the word is of a very large and comprehensive signification. It is true he also adds "the whole compass of a manour", but there again it seems restricted to a manour, when the real sense of the word is the whole compass of any building as well as any larger locality. Such is the evident meaning in the quotation given by Todd from Bacon's Essays. "The place of justice is hallowed, and therefore not only the Bench, but the foot pace and precincts and purprise ought to be preserved without corruption." Holland in his translation of Pliny spealdng of an artificial mound says "it carrieth a pourprise or precinct of 3 miles compasse" (p. 139,) and in another part he speaks of the pourprise of the heavens, by which words he translates the Latin circumflexus. Du Cange has, Pourprisia Locus sepibus, muris aut vallis conclusus, and this our Lexicographers seem to translate a Close or Inclosure — but that this is not the meaning is not only clear from the above but also from Du Gauge's definition of the verb pourprendre pro entourer, environner, ambire, cingere. The word Gambrel is explained by Todd as the leg of a horse, deriving it from the Italian Gamba, gambarella, which is also a Spanish word, and no doubt the same as the French Jambe. Todd quotes from Grew "the weight which the tendon lying on a horse's gambrel, doth then command when he rears up with a man upon his back." This does not support Todd's explanation and in fact the Gambrel is not the leg, but only part of the leg, and is not to be restricted to horses only. Holland in his translation of Pliny applies it to the Ox. Thus in B. 8. c. 45 p. 225, "In chusing of calves to sacrifice with, those are allowed for good and sufficient whose taile commeth downe to the joint of the haugh or gambrel." Richardson explains Gambrill as the hind leg of a horse and this, if the preceding remarks are just, is equally incorrect. Though our Lexicographers ignore too often the Spanish in favor of Italian words for their derivations, I believe it may be found in general that words common to both those languages have been introduced here from Spain; and referring to the Spanish, the word Gamba is seldom used by writers, and in common parlance only as Guarda la Gamba, as