392 Origines Zoologicce, 



After this time, bull-baiting and cock-fighting became such 

 general sports, and the feats and achievements of persons 

 engaged in them were so commonly exaggerated and made 

 the subject of discourse, that any tedious and bombast rela- 

 tion is still called a cock and a bull story. From the great 

 size of the bull, this last word, when formed into a com- 

 parative composition, means of larger bulk than usual; as, 

 bull-rush, bull-head, bull-trout, bull-finch, bull-frog, bull- 

 weed, bull-wark or bull-work, &c. : so, in Greek, boopis, from 

 its circular shape, a round central spot in the target of archers, 

 and a small aperture, covered with glass, in the deck of a 

 ship, for the admission of light below, are called the bulPs 

 eye. A bull, or blunder, is said to have originated in the 

 simplicity of an upland boor, who, when the village maidens 

 went forth to milk the cows, himself took a pail, that he might 

 milk the bull. 



It has been jocularly remarked that the clown in every 

 country is nicknamed from the favourite dish of the people; 

 as the Englishman, Jack Pudding and John Bull ; the French- 

 man, Jean Pottage ; the Italian, Macaroni ; the German, Hans 

 Sausage; and the Dutchman, Pickle Herring. The Welsh- 

 man, in his pride of genealogy and his love of cheese, traces 

 the cow to the line of Adam : — 



" Cheese was akin to Adam from hur birth ; 

 Ap curds, ap milk, ap cow, ap grass, ap earth.*' 



By the laws of the Cambro-British legislator, Howel-dha, 

 if a man betrayed a young woman, he was sentenced to place 

 a bull in a stall with his tail soaped ; and if the damsel could 

 draw him out by the tail^ she wiis to have tlie bull for her 

 pains. 



The arms of the city of Oxford are three oxen passing a 

 ford, with the motto, " Ox on," underneath. This was for- 

 merly finely represented in sculpture upon the ancient water- 

 conduit at Carfax ; but which is now removed. And here it 

 may not, perhaps, be impertinent to remark, that Carfax is a 

 simple corruption of quatre vaux: it being the centi'e of 

 four roads radiating in crossing directions. 



The bones of cattle slaughtered in London were formerly 

 of such huge accumulation that it became necessary to con- 

 sume them from time to time. This process was reserved for 

 some holiday or period of public rejoicing, when faggots and 

 combustible materials were collected from the neighbours for 

 the purpose of illumination ; whence our term bonfire may 

 mean either bone-fire, from the materials to be consumed, or 

 boon-fire, from the gratuitous collections made for the pur- 



