Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 8.djvu/341

 iis.vii.APRiL26,i9i3.j NOTES AND QUERIES.

337

"FURDALL" (11 S. vii. 228, 297). The ' N.E.D.' shows that fur is a seventeenth- century spelling for fir, and that fir-deal, meaning " a deal or plank of fir," was in regular use from the fifteenth to the seven- teenth century. See the quotations, chiefly from account books, under ' Deal,' sb. 3, 1, 1 b, where the spellings are : fir re deales (before 1450), ffyrdells and firdells (I558),firre dales (1604), firdeal (before 1618). More- over, the ' English Dialect Dictionary ' records fir-dale from Rutlandshire, and fir-deal-tree from Northamptonshire, both in the sense of " a fir-tree." After this there cannot be much doubt as to the meaning of the word in the accounts of the parish of Martin. L. R, M. STRACHAN.

Heidelberg.

I regret to have to say that the suggestion I made in my query at the former reference as to the probable meaning of furdall is wrong. I have learnt from an antiquarian friend that the word in modern speech is vardle, which is the piece of iron spike with an eye in it, driven into the hind post of the gate, enabling it to hang on the crook. Vartiwell or vartivell is another term for euch eye of a gate in which the crook works. See Peacock's * Glossary of Manley and Corringham ' and Halliwell. I consulted a local wheelwright and blacksmith, and he at once confirmed this meaning. Hence one can now understand that a new bottom vardle was wanted for the church pulpit door, and for the door of the town house at Martin. J. CLABE HUDSON.

Thornton, Horncastle.

" To BANYAN " (11 S. vii. 290). I know of no example of the term as a verb : it must have been a whim of the lady so to use it. The term Banian or Banyan days is derived from the Banians, a sect of Hindu merchants who abstained from meat, and so has come in our days to mean any kind of fasting. WM. E. BROWNING.

The ' N.E.D.' gives the adjective "Banian' in reference to the Hindoo traders' or Banians' abstinence from flesh and sacrec estimation of animal life :

1748. Smollett, 'Rod. Rand.,' xxv. (D) : "On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays the ship'

company had no allowance of meat, and these

meagre days were called banyan days."

1823. Lamb, 'Ella,' Ser. I. iii. (1865), 19: "We had three banyan to four meat days in the week."

1813. J.Forbes, 'Orient Mem.,' iii. 129: "^

banian-hospital where he saw a number of sic!

oxen, camels, and horses."

A. R. BAYLEY.

The verbal form in the quotation must >e a nonce use of the term. In the sixties

was familiar with its colloquial use, as ,n adjective, by an old gentleman in the ense of ' N.E.D.,' " Banian, 4 " ; ' E.D.D.,' Banian-day.' To a guest whose unex- >ected arrival at dinner-time coincided with he absence of a fresh joint and the rechauffe f the previous day's fare it was said apolo- getically, " You see, you've come on banyan lay." " To banyan " could only have been ised as a pleasantry.

R. OLIVES HESLOF.

Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

[MB. W. W. GLENNY, MR. W. H. PEET, Ma. F. A. RUSSELL, and MB. F. C. WHITE also thanked or replies. 1

"BETHLEM GABOR" (11 S. vii. 290). Like the querist, I should be glad to know
 * he history of this expression. I have
 * ound it in the second ' Epistle ' of Henry

Tubbe (Harleian MS. 4126, fo. 40), which s itself a free paraphrase of Suckling's lines To Master John Hales.' Tubbe writes : Come, come to Town, and leave your musty Gown ; There are Things here, as brave, yet may be known And understood with halfe the Cost & Labour, That 's spent on such a Word as Bethlem -Gabor. He died in 1655.

The word is also used in ' Musarum Delicise ' (1656), p. 31, 'The Lowses Pere- grination ? :

An Eunuch they hate like Bethlem Gabor.

G. C. MOORE SMITH. Sheffield.

Bethlem, or, more properly, Bethlen, Gabor was Prince of Transylvania, whose independ- ence he secured by repeated victories over Ferdinand II. of Austria. He died in 1629, after a glorious and even enlightened reign. He is introduced by William Godwin into his weird novel ' St. Leon,' and. as the Wedgwoods were friends of Godwin's, it is doubtless to this that the allusion refers. HOWARD S. PEARSON.

The only Bethlen Gabor (which is the correct spelling of the name) famous in history was King-elect of Hungary and Prince of Transylvania, who sent mounted troops to help his ally, the " Winter King," in 1620. Sir Thomas Roe's published corre- spondence is full of references to him. In Vienna he was naturally looked upon as a rebel and a friend of rebels. What the writer of the letter meant was, no doubt, that the brutal treatment made his blood boil, and made him feel inclined to rebel against the authorities. L. L, K,