TY - JOUR
AU - Tinker, Emma
AB - June 2005 NOTES AND QUERIES 173 7 2 only’. Puffins, in contrast, would be a familiar precise philosophical position for Henryson’. sight. My reading of this fable hangs on a point of Breton poc’han ‘puffin’ thus allows deriva- ornithology. Swallows are migrating birds. tion of medieval poffin, poffones, and the like The swallow that preaches at the end of the from its unattested Middle Cornish cognate, fable, in the middle of a harsh Scottish winter to be linked with Middle Cornish bogh ‘cheek’ with ‘froistys’ and ‘sleit’ (lines 1834–5) has been (with diminutive suffix -an giving the sense left behind by its companions and probably ‘little cheek; little one with cheeks’). Derivation has only a few weeks to live. Naturally, this from English puff (never very convincing) renders the swallow’s status as a purveyor of can be ruled out on semantic, geographical, wisdom – a ‘halie preichour’ (line 1924) – and phonological grounds. So we may turn the somewhat ironic, and it is worth considering clock back to 1909, when OED’s final fascicule whether Henryson may have been aware of this for P was published; acknowledge the force problem. of Murray’s reasoning (neglected by later In the opening of 
TI - An Ornithological Note on Henryson's The Preaching of the Swallow
JF - Notes and Queries
DO - 10.1093/notesj/gji209
DA - 2005-06-01
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/an-ornithological-note-on-henryson-s-the-preaching-of-the-swallow-g5LkdPygsA
SP - 173
EP - 174
VL - 52
IS - 2
DP - DeepDyve
ER -