Burnley, Lancashire, Sept. 21. 1850.
Sirloin.-In Nichols's Progresses of King James the First, vol. iii. p. 401., is the following note:—
"There is a laughable tradition, still generally current in Lancashire, that our knight-making monarch, finding, it is presumed, no undubbed man worthy of the chivalric order, knighted at the banquet in Hoghton Tower, in the warmth of his honour-bestowing liberality, a loin of beef, the part ever since called the sirloin. Those who would credit this story have the authority of Dr. Johnson to support them, among whose explanations of the word sir in his dictionary, is that it is 'a title given to the loin of beef, which one of our kings knighted in a fit of good humour.' 'Surloin,' says Dr. Pegge (Gent. Mag., vol. liv. p. 485.), 'is, I conceive, if not knighted by King James as is reported, compounded of the French sur, upon, and the English loin, for the sake of euphony, our particles not easily submitting to composition. In proof of this, the piece of beef so called grows upon the loin, and behind the small ribs of the animal.' Dr. Pegge is probably right, and yet the king, if he did not give the sirloin its name, might, notwithstanding, have indulged in a pun on the already coined word, the etymology of which was then, as now, as little regarded as the thing signified is well approved."
JOHN J. DREDGE.
Sirloin.-Whence then comes the epigram—
"Our second Charles, of fame faeete,
On loin of beef did dine,
He held his sword pleased o'er the meat,
'Rise up thou famed sir-loin!'"
Was not a loin of pork part of James the First's proposed banquet for the devil?