[20] "It was a wholly garbled version of what never took place" (Mr Birrell, in the House, 26th Oct. 1911). The bull appears to be a laudable concession to Irish national feeling.
[21] Formerly ferdekin, a derivative of Du. vierde, fourth; cf. farthing, a little fourth.
[22] Kafir (Arab.) means infidel.
[23] Eng. chawbuck is used in connection with the punishment we call the bastinado. This is a corruption of Span. bastonada, "a stroke with a club or staff" (Stevens, 1706). On the other hand, we extend the meaning of drub, the Arabic word for bastinado, to a beating of any kind.
CHAPTER III
WORDS OF POPULAR MANUFACTURE
In a sense, all nomenclature, apart from purely scientific language, is popular. But real meanings are often so rapidly obscured that words become mere labels, and cease to call up the image or the poetic idea with which they were first associated. To take a simple instance, how many people realise that the daisy is the "day's eye"?—
"Wele by reson men it calle may
The dayeseye or ellis the 'eye of day.'"