Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 5.djvu/210

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NOTES AND QUERIES. ins. V. MAR. 2, 1912.

down to a generation or so ago at a place in the neighbourhood of Hull, and that it possibly still exists there. Can any one verify this, or say whether Nottingham as a surname is extant elsewhere in England ?

A. STAPLETON. Nottingham.

RUDDOCK FAMILY. I shall be glad to receive, and very pleased to exchange, genealogical memoranda relating to any branches of this family.

GEORGE RUDDOCK.

Red Hill, Denbigh Gardens, Richmond, Surrey.

GRISE : GREY : BADGER.

(11 S. v. 27, 95.)

IT is so delightful to find lady antiquaries as correspondents of ' N. & Q.' that I trust that, if I make a few remarks on their treatment of the above words, it will not cause those rarce aves to fly away from its hospitable columns. But Miss ETHEL LEGA-WEEKES and LADY RUSSELL seem to require a little help to straighten out their views on ' Grise : Grey : Badger,' and my excuse for this must be that for some years past I have been collecting mediaeval " fur- words," and have now something like 1,000 variants, in spelling and otherwise, of words connected with fur.

Commencing with Miss LEGA-WEEKES' s query: it is perfect'y true that the ' N.E.D.' does not help in the matter. The definition under ' Grey,' " f2, spec. Grey-fur ; usually understood to be of badger skin," is in- accurate, and of the quotations given in illustration, not one, as a matter of fact, means the skin of a badger. Miss LEGA- WEEKES mistakenly interprets the word gris as being the Norman-French rendering of the word gray as applied to a badger, and subsequently asks whether " the fur of the badger in mediaeval times would have been accounted a worthy garniture for a ' riche robe.' ' In answer to which, let me state that the skin of a badger was not usually referred to as, or considered to be, "fur" As to its value, Turberville. in his ' Booke of Hunting,' ed. 1611, p. 189, says :

''The skinne of a Badgerd is not so good as ye *oxes, for it serueth for no use, vnlesse it be to make mittens, or to dresie horsecollers with- all.

So that the question as to badger's skin being suitable as a trimming for a fine dre** is answered.

LADY RUSSELL, in her reply, collocates "gray," and " grice " for the young, but these two words have no connexion. " Grice " was used to designate the young of the badger, because the male and female were known as the boar pig and the sow. Hear what Turberville says (1611, p. 183):

" As you haue two kinds or more of euery other chace by diuersitie of names : so of these vermine there are Foxes and their Cubbes, and Badgerdes and their Pigges : the female of a Foxe is called a Bitche, and he himselfe a Dogge foxe : the Female of a Badgerd is called a Sowe, and the male a Badgerde or a Borepygge of a Badgerd."

Halliwell (3rd ed., 1855, p. 417) gives

" Grice (2) A young cub, generally applied to the young of swine ....' Gris, pored,' ' Reliq. Antiq.,' ii. 79."

And in Mayhew and Skeat's ' Concise Diet, of Middle-English ' (1888) we find

" Gris, sb., a young Pig, PP ; grri.se, Cath. ; gryse, Von. ; gryce, Prompt. ; grys, pi., MD, S2, PP. Icel. grins."

So that from this it is perfectly clear that the word "grice" or " grise," when used in connexion with badgers' young, simply means the little badger pigs, and has nothing whatever to do with gris = grey.

LADY RUSSELL says that "'gris' was certainly expensive, and seems most pro- bably to have been a species of foreign marten." As a matter of fact, " gris " was a comparatively inexpensive fur, and the skins were imported in very large quantities ; absolutely no evidence or reason is offered as to the probability of its being "a species of foreign marten " : this is apparently pure conjecture. A few lines lower down we find : " Vair or vaire was undoubtedly minever, the name continuing in heraldry."

I now give the real facts concerning gris, and incidentally rair. At the Guildhall of the City of London is a MS. known as ' Liber Horn,' and in a marginal note on fo. 249, dorso, occurs the following most valuable note, which I give in its extended form :

" Memorandum quo Gris et bis est le dos en yuer desquirel et sa xientre en yuer est meneuer. Popel, est de squirel en contre este. Roskyn est desquirel en este. Polane, est esquireux "neirs. Strandling est Squirel contre le festeSeint Michel."

The date of this MS. is, I believe, about A.D. 1314, so that we have, thanks to the care of the writer, an absolutely authoritative statement that gris is the back of the squirrel in winter. The fur was then at its prime,