White. — The Horse: a Study in Philology. 217 



i.e., the cover; Latin, cutis; Greek, kutos and skutos, skin, 

 hide; Sanscrit, sku, to cover; Latin, scutum; Greek, skutos, 

 a shield). Then, in Italian we find scu-do, a shield, a buckler, 

 an es-cut-cheon — i.e., a shield having a painted device or 

 bearing tbe coat of arms of the user (German, ■wappen-schild) . 

 Tbis is of a later date, at which time the knight carried his 

 shield himself, and his esquire was not required to join the 

 fray unless it was a general encounter of numbers, when he 

 would fight for his own party with " sword and buckler." 



The Italian scu-da-jo was a maker of bucklers or shields, 

 sender ia a stable, an equerry (French, ecurie), and scudiere 

 an esquire, gentleman of the horse (French, ecuyer). Here 

 we see a proof that the shield was shelter for the man and 

 the stable was the shield or shelter for the horse. The horse 

 therein was "shielded" from the weather. We probably 

 have the same in Irish shielin(T), a hut or humble residence : 

 Icelandic, skjol, a shelter, cover ; skyli, a shed : Danish and 

 Swedish, skjul, a shed : Anglo-Saxon, scild, a shield. Then 

 we have the Italian scudo and French ecu connected to- 

 gether as a so-called crown-piece — a piece of money, possibly 

 made from stamped or embossed leather — which must go 

 back to a very early date in the use of money — or promise to 

 pay on receipt of a symbol (French, ecuagc, scutage, land- 

 tax). " Scutage," likely, is payment levied on the use of a 

 coat of arms and family crest as shown upon the escutcheon 

 or shield and panel of a carriage. 



The word " equerry," according to Skeat, is so spelt owing 

 to a supposed derivation from Latin equ-us, a horse ; it 

 denotes " an officer who has charge of horses and stables." 

 " Properly, equerry means a stable, and modern English 

 equerry stands for equerry-man, from French ecurie ; old 

 French, escurie, a stable ; low Latin, scuria, a stable ; old 

 High German, skitra, skiura (German, schauer), a shelter, a 

 stable." 



In German stall-meister is given as an equerry, master of 

 the horse, riding-master ; stall-junge, an ostler, groom (stall, 

 a stable ; junge, lad or boy). This latter will remind us of 

 the old custom of naming the postillion, or he who rode the 

 near-side horse of the pair drawing a hired post-chaise or 

 carriage, the " post-boy," although he might be a man grown 

 old and wrinkled in the service. Postillion : Italian, post- 

 iglione — post-a, a place, a post-house , also post-o, the same ; 

 and postiere, a postmaster, all from Latin poii-erc, to place. 

 The original meaning is " certain distances along a road at 

 convenient length" — Latin, ponere, to place or fix a station 

 or standing-place ; sta-re, for sta-are, to stand ; sta-bulum, 

 a stable (for post-horses) where the traveller could change 

 his tired team for fresh horses ; sometimes also named a 



