London, 1839.)

Boucher and Jamieson have collected much regarding the obsolete use of the
verb _to birle_, to carouse, to pour out liquor. See also Mr. Dyce's notes
on _Elynour Rummyng_, v. 269. (_Skelton's Works_, vol. ii. p. 167.). It is
a good old Anglo-Saxon word--byrlian, _propinare_, _haurire_. In the
Wycliffite versions it occurs repeatedly, signifying to give to drink. See
the Glossary to the valuable edition lately completed by Sir F. Madden and
Mr. Forshall.

In the _Promptorium Parvulorum_, vol i. p. 51., we find--

"Bryllare of drynke, or schenkare: Bryllyn, or schenk drynke,
_propino_: Bryllynge of drynke," &c.

Whilst on the subject of dialectical expressions, I would mention an
obsolete term which has by some singular chance recently been revived, and
is actually in daily use throughout England in the railway vocabulary--I
mean the verb "to shunt." Nothing is more common than to see announced,
that at a certain station the parliamentary "shunts" to let the Express
pass; or to hear the order--"shunt that truck," push it aside, off the main
line. In the curious ballad put forth in 1550, called "John Nobody"
(Strype's _Life of Cranmer_, App. p. 138.), in derision of the Reformed
church, the writer describes how, hearing the sound of a "synagogue,"
namely, a congregation of the new faith, he hid himself in alarm:

"The I drew me down into a dale, wheras the dumb deer
Did shiver for a shower, but I shunted from a freyke,
For I would no wight in this world wist who I were."

{205}

In the Townley Mysteries, _Ascensio Domini_, p. 303., the Virgin Mary calls
upon St. John to protect her against the Jews,--

"Mi fleshe it qwakes, as lefe on lynde,
To shontt the shrowres sharper than thorne,"--

explained in the Glossary, "sconce or ward off." Sewel, in his _English and
Dutch Dictionary_, 1766, gives--"to shunt (a country word for to shove),
_schuiven_." I do not find "shunt," however, in the Provincial Glossaries:
in some parts of the south, "to shun" is used in this sense. Thus, in an
assault case at Reigate, I heard the complainant say of a man who had
hustled him, "He kept shunning me along: sometimes he shunt me on the
road," that is, pushed me off the footpath on to the highway.

I hope that the Philological Society has not abandoned their project of
compiling a complete Provincial Glossary: the difficulties of such an
undertaking might be materially aided through the medium of "N