[323] I have since discovered that budge is the same with “shanks,” one of the many kinds of fur enumerated in the statute of the 24th Hen. VIII.; that is, a very delicate white skin stripped from the legs of a fine haired kid, and almost equal in value, as well as in appearance, to ermine. It is not impossible that the name may have been derived from the verb “budge,” as the legs are the instruments of locomotion. See Minshew, in voce Furre. Note to second edit. Whitaker’s Craven.
[324] In the dialect of Craven, cornfactors or millers are called badgers. Why is this?—the derivation in Mr. Carr’s work, “Horæ Momenta Cravenæ,” Teut. Ratsen discurrere, seems to me very far-fetched. I am inclined to think that millers obtained the name from the colour of their clothes. T. Q. M.
[325] Mittons are gloves with no fingers, having only a place for the thumb. They are much worn in Craven, and the Scotch shepherds, many of whom are constantly there, earn a little money by the sale of them: they knit them with common wood skewers. T. Q. M.
BUDGE BACHELORS.—BUDGE-ROW.
In the old lord mayors’ processions of London, there were, in the first division, the “budge bachelors marching in measured order.”[326] These budge-bachelors go in the “Lord Mayor’s Show” to the present day, dressed in blue gowns trimmed with budge coloured fur, white. Bishop Corbet, in his “Iter Boreale,” speaks of
————— a most officious drudge,
His face and gown drawn out with the same budge;
implying, that his beard and habit were of like colour. Budge-row, Cannon-street, according to Stow, was “so called of budge-fur, and of skinners dwelling there.”
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