a-furst (A.S.) [176], [283], a-thirst, thirsty. The two forms, a-fyngred and a-furst, appear to be characteristic of the dialect of the counties which lay on the Welsh border. They occur once or twice in MS. Harl. 2253, which, in my Specimens of Lyric Poetry, I have shown to have been written in Herefordshire. They also occur in several other manuscripts which may probably be traced to that part of England. In the Romance of Horn, in the MS. just mentioned, we have the lines:—
Horn set at grounde,
Him thohte he wes y-bounde,
He seide, Quene, so hende,
To me hydeward thou wende.
Thou shench us with the vurste,
The beggares bueth a-furste.
i. e. the beggars are thirsty. Whitaker gives a very remarkable translation of a-furst and a-fyngred, i. e. frost-bitten, and with aching fingers. Ritson has no less inaccurately explained a-furste in the Romance of Horn, by at first: the Cambridge MS. of this Romance, earlier and better than the MS. Harl., reads:—
Thu gef us with the furste,
The beggeres beoth of thurste.