Can any of your readers throw any light upon this tradition?
W. T.
Saffron Walden.
Isping Geil.—In a charter of Joanna Fossart, making a grant of lands and other possessions to the priory of Grosmont in Yorkshire, is the following passage as given in Dugdale's Monasticon (I quote from Bohn's edition, 1846, vol. vi. p. 1025.):
"Dedi eis insuper domos meas in Eboraco; illas scilicet quæ sunt inter domos Laurentii clerici quæ fuerunt Benedicti Judæi et Isping Geil, cum tota curia et omnibus pertinentiis."
Can any of your readers, and in particular any of our York antiquaries, inform me whether the "Isping Geil" mentioned in this passage is the name of a person, or of some locality in that city now obsolete? In either case I should be glad of any information as to the etymology of so singular
a designation, which may possibly have undergone some change in copying.
Θ.
Humbug.—When was this word introduced into the English language? The earliest instance in which I have met with it is in one of Churchill's Poems, published about the year 1750.
Uneda.