Gang-y-gate swinger, a fighting man, who goes swaggering in the road (or gate); a roisterer who takes the wall of every one. Swing is an old word for a stroke or blow.
Durdam is an old word meaning an uproar, and akin to the Welsh word dowrd. Urdam may be a corruption of whoredom, but is more probably prefixed to the genuine word as a co-sounding expletive.
Brabblement seems to be a derivative from the Scotch verb "bra," to make a loud and disagreeable noise (see Jamieson); and squabblement explains itself.
Lugs, ears; tacked, nailed; trone, an old word, properly signifying the public weighing-machine, and sometimes used for the pillory.
A nail o' twal-a-penny is, of course, a nail of that size and sort of which twelve are bought for a penny.
Until he down of his hobshanks, and up with his muckle doubs, evidently means, until he goes down on his knees and raises his hands. Hobshanks is, I think, still in common use. Of doubs I can give no explanation.
W. T. M.
Edinburgh, Jan. 29th.
Burying in Church Walls (Vol. iii., p. 37.).—To
the examples mentioned by N. of tombs in church walls, may be added the remarkable ones at Bottisham, Cambridgeshire. There are several of these in the south aisle, with arches internally and externally: the wall between resting on the coffin lid. They are, of course, coeval with the church, which is fine early Decorated. They are considered, I believe, to be memorials of the priors of Anglesey, a neighbouring religious house. They will, no doubt, be fully elucidated in the memoir of Bottisham and Anglesey, which is understood to be in preparation by members of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society. At Trumpington, in the same county, is a recessed tomb of Decorated date, in the south wall of the chancel, externally.