Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw.
Lycidas, ll. 123, 124.
Sackless (Sc. Nhb. Dur. Cum. Wm. Yks. Lan.) is a word which has fallen from its high estate, just like the standard English word silly, which originally meant blessed, happy (cp. Germ. selig). O.E. saclēas signified free from accusation, innocent, but in the modern English dialects the usual meaning is lacking common sense, foolish, stupid, or weak in body or mind, feeble, helpless, e.g. She leuk’d sackless and deead-heeaded, an we put her intiv a gain-hand garth te tent her, i.e. she [the cow] looked helpless and hung her head, and we put her into an adjoining enclosure to look after her. Span-new (gen. dial. and colloquial use in Sc. and Eng.), quite new, M.E. spannewe, occurs in The Lay of Havelok the Dane, c. 1280:
Þe cok bigan of him to rewe,
And bouthe him cloþes, al spannewe.
ll. 967, 968.
It is originally a Norse form, O.N. spān-nȳr, literally, new as a chip of wood, the vowel of spān having become short in M.E., and the O.N. nȳr replaced by the native equivalent newe. Spān is the O.N. cognate of our word spoon, O.E. spōn, an article made out of wood when it first took shape. Tickle (gen. dial. use in Sc. Irel. and Eng.), insecure, unstable, &c., is used by Chaucer in the Milleres Tale:
This world is now ful tikel, sikerly.
l. 240.
‘Tickle’, ‘Nesh’, and ‘Lear’