THE BRITISH OR LIGHT-TAILED SQUIRREL 689 
Saxon wer=“wary,” or wergenga, which means “one who retires to 
lonely places, such as a wild beast,” then the compound acwern might 
signify literally “the animal which takes refuge in trees.” 
Local names :—(Non-Celtic)—Scopperzl of Yorkshire; thus “He 
went up the tree loike a scoperil” ( Yorks. Weekly Post, 12th June 1897). 
The original meaning of this word is given by Wright as a spinning- 
top or teetotum. It is a Skandinavian word and a diminutive formed 
from “ skop,’ the root sense of which was the “skipper” from skopa, to 
skip, of the Swedish (dialect), or “spinner” from the Icelandic skofpa, 
“to spin like a top.” The form scopferz/ was corrupted into scropel/, also 
a Yorkshire form given by Wright; eg., “I can hear th’ boggarts 
creeping, wick as scropels, fro’ roof to cellar” (Sutcliffe, Shameless 
Wayne, 1900, vii.). 
Scrug of Hampshire (Wright) with its corruptions scug, skug, or 
skugg, appears also to be of Skandinavian origin; this name, in one 
form or another, is in very general use throughout the greater part of 
England, and Benjamin Franklin has recorded the fact that in his day 
skugg was the common name for all squirrels in London. 
Swirrel, sweril, and swzrl of the northern dialects are, of course, 
merely variants or corruptions of squirrel. 
Con, or conn, is a name found in the northern dialects; the earliest 
reference cited in the Vew Engl. Dict. is to Burel’s Pz/gremer (in Watson, 
Coll, Poems, ii., 20), dating from 1600, in which are the lines :—“ There 
wes the pikit porcupie, The cunning & the con all thrie”” Harvie-Brown 
states that the word is, or was, used in north Lancashire, southern 
Cumberland, Westmoreland, and through the south of Scotland; he 
says that the word is unknown in the north of Cumberland, and cites 
Ferguson, who gives (Dial. of Cumberland) “con, a squirrel’s nest; in 
Lonsdale, the squirrel,” and who refers it to the Welsh comz¢, a tail. 
Harvie-Brown further states that the word is now quite extinct in 
southern Scotland, although it was known to Alastair M‘Donald, who, 
in 1771 translated the Gaelic feocrag as “a squirrel or con.” Accord- 
ing to Harvie-Brown, Gaelic scholars are of opinion that the word is a 
contraction of the Gaelic cozwezn, a rabbit, which they think is a dimin- 
utive of cv,a dog. But, as the quotation from Burel given above shows, 
early writers distinguished the cow from the cunzng. 
The nest of the squirrel is called a dray, drey, or drug in many of 
the southern and midland counties of England (see White’s Se/borne, 
Bennett’s ed., 1837, 4601). This word is of uncertain origin, but may 
have been derived from the Anglo-Saxon dragan, to draw. Accord- 
1 In footnote 2 to the page cited, Mitford states that the nest is called a day in 
Suffolk. 
2 We would suggest a possible derivation from the Anglo-Saxon drig, dreg, drug, 
or dryg=dry ; the dray being the place where the squirrel keeps high and dry, 
