Balica.
323. Cabal.
—I should like to know the earliest use of this word as signifying "a secret council," and, as a verb, "to plot or intrigue." Pepys applies it to the king's confidential advisers several years before the date (1672) when Burnet remarks that the word was composed of the initials of the five chief ministers; and Dryden uses the verb in the sense I have mentioned. Can any of your correspondents trace either verb or noun to an earlier period, or explain this application of it? The Hebrew verb kibbal signifies "to receive;" and the Cabbala was so called from its being "traditionary," not from its being "secret." A popular error on this point may, however, have given rise to the above-mentioned application of the word.
E. H. D. D.
324. "Thus said the Ravens black."
—In what modern poem or ballad do the following or similar lines occur?
—— "thus said the ravens black,
We have been to Cordova, and we're just come back."
D. B. J.