236 
, NOTES AND QUERIES. 
[2nd 8, No 12,, Mar, 22. ’56. 
the same iron, swords of a quality equal to those 
forged in the original factory. 
I should be glad if any correspondent would 
throw further light on this subject, and also add 
any information on the distinguishing character- 
istics, forgemarks, &c. of the old Toledo blades. 
CiERIcus. 
FAGOT : FICATUM!: FEGATO: Uzas: oukétt. 
(2" S. i. 147.) 
Though 7 and e are often interchanged, I know 
no instance of z and a being confounded in ety- 
mology. I therefore doubt the possibility of de- 
ducing fagot from ficus. 
In the first place, it is not stated with certainty, 
but only as the belief of your correspondent, that 
the “baked balls” of which he speaks have any 
liver in their composition. Still less does it ap- 
pear that they have any mixture of figs, which 
would give these balls a resemblance to “the 
supposed dish of the later Roman empire.” In 
the second place, I cannot discover that jficatum, 
the Latin medieval word for liver, ever meant “a 
dish consisting of figs mixed up with liver,” It 
appears that the fig had the effect of producing an 
enlargement of the liver. Hence the ficis pastum 
jecur anseris, the foye gras of the catia 
French paté, 
By degrees ficutum jecur was called simply jica- 
tum, and the word, which was first only applied to 
the swollen liver of the goose, became the generic 
term for any liver of any animal. Hence the 
Spanish higato, the Italian fegato, the French 
Joye. The old Spanish was jigato, which suffered 
the usual change of f into h, 
In the third place, the only Greek word which 
I know for liver in ancient authors is not das 
(where can your correspondent find this word ?), 
but jrap. There is a medieval word for liver, 
cukwtdy, Whence ovxdriwv or cuxdtiov, and thence 
ovxdri, are easily derived. This word seems to 
have followed the same process as ficatum, having 
been originally an epithet to the foye gras, and 
then applied to the liver in general. 
Jecur ficatum and fap cviwtdy were expressions 
equally familiar in ancient cockery, 
Lastly, the word fagot, an importation from the 
French, is evidently the same with ¢dkeAos and 
fasciculus, and, in its original sense, means a 
bundle of sticks (or any thing else) tied together. 
In this sense Dryden turns it into a verb in a 
passage cited by Johnson ; 
“He fagoted his notions, as they fell, 
And, if they rhymed and rattled, all was well.” 
I should therefore conjecture that fagot, as ap- 
plied to “ balls of offal wrapped up in caul fat” 
merely means, pieces of meat fagoted together. 
E. C. H. 
COCKER, 
(1* S. xi. 57,; xii. 66.) 
Perhaps the following extracts, from that won- 
derful book, Pepys’s Diary, may interest some other 
of your readers as well as Prorrsson Dg Morgan 
and Meron: 
“1664, August 10‘, Abroad to find out one to en- 
grave my tables upon my new sliding rule with silver 
plates, it being so small, that Brown, that made it, can- 
not get one to doit. So I got Cocker* the famous writing- 
master to do it; and I sat an hour by him, to see him 
design it all; and strange it is to see him with his natural 
eyes, to cut so small at his first designing it, and read 
it all over, without any missing, when for my life I 
could not, with my best skill, read one word or letter of it; 
but itis use. He says, that the best light for his life to 
do a very small thing by, contrary to Chaucer’s words to 
the Sun,—‘ that he should lend his light to them that 
small seals grave,’ —it should be by an artificial light of 
a candle, set to advantage, as he could doit, I find the 
fellow, by his discourse, very ingenious ; and among other 
things, a great admirer of, and well read in, the English 
Poets, and undertakes to judge of them all, and that not 
impertinently. 
“11th, Comes Cocker with my rule, which he hath 
engraved to admiration for goodness and smallness of 
work: it cost me 14s. the doing. 
“1664, Oct. 5th, Comes Mr. Cocker to see me, and I 
discoursed with him about his writing and ability of 
sight, and how I shall get some glass or other to help my 
eyes by candle-light; and he tells me he will bring me 
the helps he hath, within a day or too, and shew me 
what to do. 
“7th, Comes Mr. Cocker, and brought me a globe of 
glasse, and a frame of oyled paper as I desired, to shew 
me the manner of his gaining light to grave by, and to 
lessen the glaringness of it at pleasure by an oyled paper. 
This I bought of him, giving him a crowne for it; and so, 
well satisfied, he went away.” 
In the villages of Eyam and Stony Middleton, 
Derbyshire, I have seen, as late as last summer, 
public-houses kept by persons of the name of 
Cocker. I have never seen it elsewhere in my 
rambles, Epwin Rorre. 
BLACK MAIL. 
(1 §, xii. 224. 275. 394.) 
In seeking an etymon for mail, your corre- 
spondents have quoted every language except that 
of the country in which the term originated, viz. 
the Gailic. Turning to the Gaélic Dictionary 
they would find “ Mai, -ail, s.m. rent or tribute.” 
Also in the Irish, or Erse, mal signifies rent or 
tax. 
In Scottish law (no doubt originating from the 
above) the rents of an estate were called mails or 
maills. And in England silver halfpence were 
anciently called mailes. (See Brande’s Dictionary 
of Science, §c., art. “ Mails.”) Now, allowing 
* Edward Cocker, the well-known arithmetician. Ob. 
circ. 1679, — Note tn edition 1854, , 
