due to popular etymology, as will presently appear. Cotgrave has 'Pie engrouée, a Wariangle, or a small Woodpecker'; but a wariangle is really a Shrike; indeed Cotgrave also has: 'Arneat, the ravenous birde called a Shrike, Nynmurder, Wariangle'; which is correct. In the Wars of Alexander, ed. Skeat, l. 1706, the word wayryngle occurs as a term of abuse, signifying 'a little villain'; this is probably the same word, and answers to a dimin. form of A. S. wearg (Icel. vargr, O. H. G. warg, warc), a felon, with the suffix -incel, as seen in A. S. rāp-incel, a little rope, hūs-incel, a little house. Bradley cites, as parallel forms, the O. H. G. warchengil (see below), and the M. L. G. wargingel, which are probably formed in a similar way. The epithet 'little felon' or 'little murderer' agrees with other names for the shrike, viz. 'butcher-bird,' 'murdering-bird,' 'nine-murder,' nine-killer,' so called because it impales beetles and small birds on thorns, for the purpose of pulling them to pieces. This is why I take venim to mean 'spite' rather than 'poison' in this passage.
Schmeller, in his Bavarian Dict., ii. 999, says that the Lanius excubitor is called, in O. H. G. glosses, Warchengel (Graff, i. 349); also Wargengel, Würgengel, and Würger.
1413. north contree. This is a sly joke, because, in the old Teutonic mythology, hell was supposed to be in the north. Wright refers us, for this belief, to his St. Patrick's Purgatory. See my note to P. Plowman, C. ii. 111, about Lucifer's sitting in the north; cf. Isaiah, xiv. 13, 14; Milton, P. L. v. 755-760; Myrour of our Lady, ed. Blunt, p. 189. In the Icelandic Gylfaginning, we find—'niðr ok norðr liggr Helvegr,' i. e. downwards and northwards lies the way to hell. Cf. l. 1448.
1428. laborous is right; offyc-e is trisyllabic.
1436. A proverbial expression; still in use in Lancashire and elsewhere; see N. and Q., 7 S. x. 446, 498. Cf. 'a taker and a bribing [robbing] feloe, and one for whom nothing was to hotte nor to heauie.' Udall, tr. of Erasmus' Apophthegmes; Cicero, § 50.
'Their loues they on the tenter-hookes did racke,
Rost, boyl'd, bak'd, too too much white, claret, sacke,
Nothing they thought too heavy nor too hot,
Canne followed Canne, and pot succeeded pot.'
John Taylor; Pennilesse Pilgrimage.