With besauntus ful bryghth,
All of ruel-bon,' &c.
Quite near the beginning of the Vie de Seint Auban, ed. Atkinson, we have—
'mes ne ert d'or adubbee, ne d'autre metal,
de peres preciuses, de ivoire ne roal';
i. e. but it was not adorned with gold nor other metal, nor with precious stones, nor ivory, nor rewel. Du Cange gives a Low Lat. form rohanlum, and an O. Fr. rochal, but tells us that the MS. readings are rohallum and rohal. The passage occurs in the Laws of Normandy about wreckage, and should run—'dux sibi retinet ... ebur, rohallum, lapides pretiosas'; or, in the French version, 'l'ivoire, et le rohal, et les pierres precieuses.' Ducange explains the word by 'rock-crystal,' but this is a pure guess, suggested by F. roche, a rock. It is clear that, when the word is spelt rochal, the ch denotes the same sound as the Ger. ch, a guttural resembling h, and not the F. ch at all. Collecting all the spellings, we find them to be, in French, rohal, rochal, roal; and, in English, ruwal, rewel, ruel, (reuylle, ruelle). The h and w might arise from a Teutonic hw, so that the latter part of the word was originally -hwal, i. e. whale; hence, perhaps, Godefroy explains F. rochal as 'ivoire de morse,' ivory of the walrus (A. S. hors-hwæl). The
true origin seems rather to be some Norse form akin to Norweg. röyrkval (E. rorqual). Some whales, as the cachalot, have teeth that afford a kind of ivory; and this is what seems to be alluded to. The expression 'white as whale-bone,' i. e. white as whale-ivory, was once common; see Weber's Met. Romances, iii. 350; and whales-bone in Nares. Most of this ivory was derived, however, from the tusk of the walrus or the narwhal. Sir Thopas's saddle was ornamented with ivory.
2071. cipress, cypress-wood. In the Assembly of Foules, l. 179, we have—
'The sailing firr, the cipres, deth to pleyne'—
i. e. the cypress suitable for lamenting a death. Vergil calls the cypress 'atra,' Æn. iii. 64, and 'feralis,' vi. 216; and as it is so frequently a symbol of mourning, it may be said to bode war.