History, Wonder Tales, Fairy Tales, Myths and Legends The Flemish | Page 181

agriculture in cake form as a food for hogs, dogs, &c., and the first reference in
English, in Markham's Cheape and Good Husbandry, is to this; ad. LG. greven, plur.
(also borrowed into Scand. as Sw. dial, grevar, Da. grever).
Cardel (1694), a hogshead containing, in the 17th century, 64 gallons; used in the
Dutch whaling trade; ad. Du. kardeel, properly quartel, fourth part.
Hovel (1694), the whalers' term for the bump on top of a whale's head; ad. Du. heuvel
(M.Du. hövel, in Kilian hovel), hill, bump, boss.
Specksioner (1820), a harpooner, usually the chief harpooner who directs the
operation of flensing a whale; ad. Du. speksnijer, colloquial form of speksnijder (with
dropping of intervocalic d), from spek, speck, blubber, and snijden, to cut.
Crang (1821), a carcass of a whale after the blubber has been removed; ad. Du.
kreng (M.Du. crenge), carrion. The word is also found in the form Kreng (1835); ad.
Du. kreng.
Lull (1836), a tube to convey blubber into the hold; also as a compound, lull-bag; ad.
Du. lul, tube.
A curious word which is evidence of the intermingling and carousing together of the
crews of English and Dutch whalers is Mallemaroking (1867), the visiting and
carousing of seamen in the Greenland ships; from Du. mallemarok, a foolish woman,
tomboy, from mal, foolish, and meroc, marot, woman, from F. marotte, object of foolish
affection.
There are a few words which illustrate the conditions of navigation in northern waters.
Shoal (1648), a mass of floating ice, an iceberg or floe; ad. Du. schol, in the same
sense; O.E.D. points out that this is certainly a term of the northern voyages and not of
the Baltic, for we should expect MLG. scholle, a clod, to have developed the same
meaning of a mass of ice.
Iceberg (1774), an Arctic glacier, which comes close to the coast and is seen from the
sea as a hill or ‘hummock’; (1820), a detached portion of a glacier carried out to sea, a
huge floating mass of ice, often rising to a great height above the water; an adapted
form of the Du. (and M.Du.) ijsberg. The shortened form of iceberg is Berg (1823),
only used when ice is mentioned or understood in the context.

Chapter VII
Low Dutch Influence through Agriculture
7. 1.
THERE is practically no direct evidence for the Middle English period of Low Dutch
influence on the vocabulary of agriculture. Many terms of agriculture were

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