the cocoa-nut is said to be derived from the
Portuguese word coco, a mask, because the
shell, with the three holes at one end of it, is
like a mask.

Sarcenet was the silk fabric got from the
Saracens; gauze was made at Gaza; fustian in
Fustat, which is the Arabic name of Memphis,
in Egypt, where cotton abounds; dimity, at
Damietta. Carpet is probably named from
Cairo and tapet, Cairo having been a famous
place of manufacture of Turkey carpets, and
carpets with hair or shag on one side only
having been called by the ancients tapetes.
Taffety and tabby were Atabi, the fabrics of
Atab, the street of the silk-workers in Bagdad.
Moire and mohair were fabrics of the Moors, in
Spain. The Morris Dance, by the way, which
is the fandango said to have been brought by
John of Gaunt from Spain, was so called in the
belief that it was taken to Spain by the Moors.
But to dance back to the dancing of the shuttle,
after the Arabs, there rose into fame as leading
manufacturers the Flemings, who made cambric
at Cambrai; diaper, or cloth d'Ypres, at Ypres;
tapestry at Arras, and gloves at Ghent, whence
the French gant and English gauntlet. From
a settlement of cloth-workers upon the river
Toucques, in Normandy, the Germans are said
to have got their word tuch for a cloth, and we
our duck, our ticking, and best bib and tucker.
But bib is from the Latin bibere, to drink, the
woven tucker being used to save the child's
clothes from whatever may be spilt when it is
bibbing. As we happen to be mixing food and
clothes together in our heads, let it be
remembered here that the dress called a Spencer,
and the victual called a Sandwich, are named
after the two noble earls, their inventors, of
whom it is said that

The one invented half a coat,
The other half a dinner.

Blankets are, like mackintoshes, named from
their first makers. These were three brothers of
Bristol, Edward, Edmund, and Thomas Blanket,
who in the fourteenth century established a large
trade in this fabric. They made coarse woollen
cloths, and it is Thomas, the youngest, who is
supposed to have hit on the idea of weaving
the thick stuff, which sportsmen at once took
to for protection against wet or cold weather.
Edward the First found the new fabric of the
Blankets valuable to his army when it was
encamped against the Welsh or Scots.
Before the Blankets made at a cheap rate this
thick and comfortable woollen clothing, the
English peasantry could afford only coarse
garments of hemp. When in the reign of Edward
the Third stump bedsteads came into fashion,
and men ceased to sleep on rushes, straw, or
fern laid on the floor, blankets became a necessary
part of the bed-furniture, and they are duly
and repeatedly accounted for in the " Expenses
of the Great Wardrobe" of King Edward the
Third. In a later time cravats, which came
into use in sixteen 'thirty-six, were named from
the Croats, called in French Cravates, who had
a peculiar scarf tied about their necks. A fabric
of silk and mohair, called in French gros-grain,
meaning coarse of texture, was Englished in
grogram. Admiral Vernon was so often seen
by his men in a grogram cloak, that they spoke
of him as Old Grog; and when he introduced
on board ship the use of rum-and-water as a
regulation drink, they called it grog. That by-
the-by. Scotch tartan is a word recalling the
old friendship between Scots and French.
Tiretaine was a fine woollen cloth much used for
robes, and generally of a scarlet colour. More
than five hundred years ago Jean de Meung, in
the Romance of the Rose, spoke of robes of
silk and wool " de scarlate de tiretaine," which
indicates that the word had been tire-teint, Tyre-
tint, and meant scarlet of the Tyrian colour,
which is purple; the old use of the word scarlet
extending to all tints of blue and red, from
indigo to crimson. As to Nature's own fine
weaving in the webs of gossamer, for which
the Germans have also a name of Mary-
threads, and which is variously associated
with suggestions of the Virgin, the prettiest
of half a dozen ways of accounting for the
name is that which tells us gossamer is Gauze
o' Mary.

Less ethereal is Sally Lunn, to whom ten
thousand of little monuments are daily renewed
in our bakehouses, and set up by our hearths.
The illustrious author of this tea-cake lived at
the close of the last century. Her home was in
Bath, where she cried her bun-cakes morning
and evening about the streets, carrying them in
a basket with a white cloth over it. A musical
baker, named Dalmer, wrote and set to music a
song in her praise, and bought her trade. The
song was an advertisement. In many barrows
he sent Sally Lunns morning and evening about
the streets, and succeeded so well that he could
retire from business to eat his cake in peace at
his own home as a private gentleman. It is
not told us that Dalmer married Sally Lunn,
and that they lived happy together upon tea-
cakes ever after.

"A cockney, simper-de-cockit, nice thing,"
is part of an old French dictionary-maker's
English for coquine, and it is probable that a
too close relation to the cakes and pasties of
the coquina, or kitchen, gave to the effeminate
man of the capital his name of cockney. It is
allied to the old fable of what Hobbes, the
philosopher, called " the land of Cockany, where
fowls ready roasted cry, ' Come and eat me!'
for, among the delicacies of this happy country,
ready roasted geese fly into the house exclaiming,
' All hot! all hot!' " But our old English
poet took that popular kitchen myth of France
and other lands for special use in satire on the
luxury of cloistered men. Their house in the
land of Cockayne was an abbey:

The gees irostid on the spitte
Fleey to that abbai, God hit wot,
And gredith: " Gees al hote, al hot!"

Some Greek scholar has found another reason
why a Londoner should be called a cockney.