"He that sets up his rest to do more exploits with his mace than a morris pike."
(Comedy of Errors, iv. 3.)
In morris dance, Fr. danse mauresque, the same adjective is used with something of the vagueness to be noticed in connection with India and Turkey (p. [52]). Shakespeare uses the Spanish form—
"I have seen him
Caper upright, like to a wild morisco,
Shaking the bloody darts as he his bells."
(2 Henry VI., iii. 1.)
Other "local" dances are the polka, which means Polish woman, mazurka, woman of Mazuria, and the obsolete polonaise, lit. Polish, cracovienne, from Cracow, and varsovienne, from Warsaw. The tarantella, like the tarantula spider, takes its name from Taranto, in Italy. The tune of the dance is said to have been originally employed as a cure for the lethargy caused by the bite of the spider. Florio has tarantola, "a serpent called an eft or an evet. Some take it to be a flye whose sting is perillous and deadly, and nothing but divers sounds of musicke can cure the patient."
The town of Troyes has given its name to troy weight. The armourers of Bilbao, in Spain, made swords of such perfect temper that they could be bent point to hilt. Hence Falstaff describes himself in the buck-basket as—
"Compassed, like a good bilbo, in the circumference of a peck, hilt to point, heel to head."
(Merry Wives, iii. 5.)
The Andrea Ferrara, or Scottish broadsword, carried by Fergus M'Ivor, bears, according to some authorities, the name of an armourer of Ferrara, in Italy. According to others, Andrea dei Ferrari was a sword-maker at Belluno. I have heard it affirmed by a Scottish drill-sergeant that the real name of this genius was Andrew Ferrars,[38] and that he belonged to the same nationality as other great men.