[E470] "To purchase linne." To purchase Lynn, by petty savings, seems to have been a proverbial mode of expression, used in ridicule of stinginess.
[E471] "You are on the high way to Needham."—Ray.
[E472] The braggadocios and coxcombs of the day would use their daggers to carve with, which were perfectly harmless for any other purpose. Forks were yet strangers to an English dinner-table. Knives were first made in England, according to Anderson, in 1563. A meat-knife of Queen Elizabeth's, mentioned in Nichols's "Progresses," had "a handle of white bone and a conceyte in it." In the same work we read of "a dozen of horn spoons in a bunch," as the instruments "meetest to eat furmenty porage with all;" also of "a folding spoon of gold," and "a pair of small snuffers, silver-gilt."—Pictorial History of England, ii. 856.
[E473] "Go toie with his nodie." The edition of 1573 reads "go toy with his noddy, with ape in the street," and more recent editions read "go toy with his noddy-like ape in the street." This reading has been adopted by Dr. Mavor. Peacock's Gloss. gives "Noddipol a sillie person. 'Whorson nodipol that I am!'—Bernard's Terence, 43. 'A verye nodypoll nydyote myght be ashamed to say it.'—The Workes of Sir Thomas More, 1557, p. 209."
[E474] "Fisging." The Rev. W. Skeat, in his note to Piers Plowman, C. Text, Passus x. l. 153, "And what frek of þys folde fiskeþ þus a-boute," remarks: "Fisketh, wanders, roams. As this word is scarce, I give all the instances of it that I can find. In Sir Gawayne and the Grene Knight, ed. Morris, l. 1704, there is a description of a foxhunt, where the fox and the hounds are thus mentioned:—
'& he fyskez hem by-fore · þay founden hym sone'—
i.e. and he (the fox) runs on before them (the hounds); but they soon found him. 'Fyscare abowte ydylly; Discursor, discursatrix, vagulus vel vagator, vagatrix.'—Prompt. Parv. p. 162. 'Fiskin abowte yn ydilnesse; Vago, giro, girovago.'—Ibid.
'Such serviture also deserveth a check,
That runneth out fisking, with meat in his beck [mouth].'
—Tusser, Five Hundred Points, etc., ed. Mavor, p. 286.
'Then had every flock his shepherd, or else shepherds; now they do not only run fisking about from place to place, ... but covetously join living to living.'—Whitgift's Works, i. 528. 'I fyske, ie fretille. I praye you se howe she fysketh about.'—Palsgrave. 'Trotière, a raumpe, fisgig, fisking huswife, raunging damsell.'—Cotgrave.
'Then in cave, then in a field of corn,
Creeps to and fro, and fisketh in and out.'
—Dubartas (in Nares).