CHEAT—BELCHER
Beldam implies "hag" as early as Shakespeare, but he also uses it in its proper sense of "grandmother," e.g., Hotspur refers to "old beldam earth" and "our grandam earth" in the same speech (1 Henry IV., iii. 1), and Milton speaks of "beldam nature"—
"Then sing of secret things that came to pass
When Beldam Nature in her cradle was."
(Vacation Exercise, l. 46.)
It is of course from belle-dame, used in Mid. English for grandmother, as belsire was for grandfather. Hence it is a doublet of belladonna. The masculine belsire survives as a family name, Belcher[62]; and to Jim Belcher, most gentlemanly of prize-fighters, we owe the belcher handkerchief, which had large white spots with a dark blue dot in the centre of each on a medium blue ground. It was also known to the "fancy" as a "bird's-eye wipe."
FOOTNOTES:
[52] Archaic Eng. bannal already existed in the technical sense.
[53] This is the usual explanation. But Fr. herse also acquired the meaning "portcullis," the pointed bars of which were naturally likened to the blades of a harrow; and it seems possible that it is to this later sense that we owe the older English meaning of hearse (see p. [154]).
[54] "Numquid resina non est in Galaad?" (Vulgate.)
[55] A Spanish word, Lat. stipator, "one that stoppeth chinkes" (Cooper). It came to England in connection with the wool trade.