CHAPTER IV
WORDS AND PLACES
A very large number of wares are named from the places from which they come. This is especially common in the case of woven fabrics, and the origin is often obvious, e.g., arras, cashmere (by folk-etymology, kerseymere), damask, holland. The following are perhaps not all so evident—frieze from Friesland[36]; fustian, Old Fr. fustaine (futaine), from Fustat, a suburb of Cairo; muslin, Fr. mousseline, from Mosul in Kurdistan; shalloon from Châlons-sur-Marne; lawn from Laon; jean, formerly jane, from Genoa (French Gênes[37]); cambric from Kamerijk, the Dutch name of Cambrai (cf. the obsolete dornick, from the Dutch name of Tournay); tartan from the Tartars (properly Tatars), used vaguely for Orientals; sarcenet from the Saracens; sendal, ultimately from India (cf. Greco-Lat. sindon, Indian cloth); tabby, Old Fr. atabis, from the name of a suburb of Bagdad, formerly used of a kind of silk, but now of a cat marked something like the material in question.
Brittany used to be famous for hempen fabrics, and the villages of Locrenan and Daoulas gave their names to lockram (see quotation from Coriolanus, p. [42]) and dowlas—
Hostess. You owe me money, Sir John; and now you pick a quarrel to beguile me of it: I bought you a dozen of shirts to your back.
Falstaff. Dowlas, filthy dowlas; I have given them away to bakers' wives, and they have made bolters of them.
(1 Henry IV., iii. 3.)
Duffel is a place near Antwerp—
"And let it be of duffil gray,
As warm a cloak as man can sell."