Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 5.djvu/515

 io- s. v. JUNK 2,

NOTES AND QUERIES.

423

barrel, a set of escharssons or douves, which, in the second sentence, is to be bent for testing the gauge of the hoops.

So the Reims regulations may be thus rendered :

" He who buys rough staves at the quay or river- side shall count them, on that day or the next, bung by bung [i.e., by the set which will make a barrel] : and the first buyer shall have the first hundred [sets?] and shall settle accounts at once."

himself bend [make up] the barrel, without mixing the hoops [of one set with those of other sets], and without cutting anything off them."
 * ' He who buys barrel-hoops to sell again must

These regulations for the trade in staves and hoops were apparently to ensure : 1, that the sets of staves should be duly counted, barrel by barrel, and paid for with- out delay ; 2, that the hoops should be gauged into sets on a pattern barrel, without any "faking" of hoops found to be larger than the gauge. I may mention that coopers bend the barrel (ploier la bunyne) by the heat of a fire lighted within tire set of staves.

That bom, the Dutch equivalent of buncjne and bonne, meant a barrel is confirmed by the word bomgelt (Godefroy), a tax on each barrel of beer sold in Flanders.

That bonne (rather French than Dutch) was a barrel, and not a bunghole or its stopper, may be inferred from bonissier, a cellarer, the equivalent of our Bung for a cooper or a beerseller ; also from bonasse a vat, sufficiently large for eels to be kept alive in it (1340), and from v the modern Pro vencal bounie, a small cask.

1 "think I am justified in saying that bom bonne, bung, were Dutch, French, and Englisl for a barrel. They are now fossil words in their original meanings, living only in thei derivatives, unless they survive in some country places. I hope that any instances o their survival will be brought to notice.

While writing on these onomatopoeic group

of words I would point out that just a

bombus gives rise, not only to the " bung

group, original and transfers, but also to th

" bound "-" bounce " group so to?iare, t

thunder, gives rise, not only to the "tun

group, original and transfers ("ton," " tunnel,

&c.), but also to the French tomber and t

our "tumble," and probably to the Nort

Country " toom," from the sound of an empt

tun. The transfer-meanings of "bom" anc

" tun " have developed on parallel lines, thus

Bondir, to resound, " les Escots com men

cerent a bondir leurs cornets " (Froissart

" Sur tuz les altres bundist li olifant

('Chanson de Roland.' 3119), to bound, t

bounce ; bondissement, the sound of a trumpe

Tombir, tomber, to resound, "la terre e

ombist," to bound, to tumble, to throw own, to fall down ; tombissement, the sound
 * a bombard (Froissart).

The views which I put forward in my reply lluded to above have incurred PROF. SKEAT'S bsolute condemnation. I am asked for vidence that" bung," "boung," and "bongue"" meant ** cask," and to what language they' )elong. It seems scarcel} 7 necessary to say bat they are all English forms of the same word, and I made it, I think, very clear that, while hypothetical in the original sense of cask," that sense would soon be forthcoming, 'he second of them is given in the 4 Oxford

English Dictionary,' and the third is to be een in Wingate's 4 Arithmetick,' 1670. The ,erm has also the forms "bum " and " bun." With the first I have already dealt ; I will only add that its diminutive " bumkin " is used by Dampier for a wooden vessel to carry water. But the form " bum^evidently a cask, acquired a derivative meaning in the vulgar tongue, starting a fresh group of words, amongst which was " bungy." I am accused of manipulating the sense of this word, and of inserting "round and shaped ike a cask " out of my own head ; the in- criminated sense was taken, not out of my lead, but rather from the opposite end of the bungy old fuller like, all ass an' pocket," of the 'E.'D.D.' quotation.

The equivocal senses of the vulgar form of "bung" are shown in the above-mentioned word "bumkin": 1, a small cask; 2, a bur- lesque word for the posteriors, 'O.E.D.';, 3, a bungy -built man, "a humorous ap- pellation for a Dutchman, a short stumpy fellow," 'E.D.D.' ; 4. a clownish man. There- is also the nautical term, probably meaning a little tree or boom, in Dutch boompje- (pronounced bdmpyer), but perhaps brought to the familiar form of "bumpkin " through its stumpy appearance. The French form of "bung" should not be strange to PROF. SKEAT, since, in his dictionary, he accepts the derivation of u bun" from bnr/ne, "a, name given at Lyons to a kind of fritter," but fails to perceive that this is a transfer- meaning from bunf/ne, a cask. The Lyonnese bayne was probably so called from its being blown out by the art of thefriturier, like the pommes de terre soufflees of the Paris restau- rantthe word being akin to boumb, a swelling ; boumbo, a bungy woman ; boumbouno, a carboy; bounie y a bumkin or small cask; bowjneto, a sausage, so large as to be like a small cask. PROF. SKEAT is apparently not familiar with the lencjo d'O, or there would have been no need of his going as far as Ice- land for the source of the Lyonnese bugne.