We find him, however, in "Not a Pin to choose between them," p. 173, where his sagacity fails to detect his mistress; and, as "the foe of his own house," the half-bred foxy hound, who chases away the cunning Fox in "Well Done and Ill Paid," p. 266. Still he, too, in popular superstition, is gifted with a sense of the supernatural; he howls when death impends, and in "Buttercup," p. 124, it is Goldtooth, their dog, who warns Buttercup and his mother of the approach of the old hag. In "Bushy Bride," p. 322, he appears only as the lassie's lap-dog, is thrown away as one of her sacrifices, and at last goes to the wedding in her coach; yet in that tale he has something weird about him, and he is sent out by his mistress three times to see if the dawn is coming.
clear. Michel says it comes from Vizigothus, Bizigothus. Diez says this is too far-fetched, especially as "Bigot," "Bigod," was a term applied to the Normans, and not to the population of the South of France. There is, besides, another derivation given by Ducange from a Latin chronicle of the twelfth century. In speaking of the homage done by Rollo, the first Duke of Normandy, to the King of France, he says—
"Hic non dignatus pedem Caroli osculari nisi ad os suum levaret, cumque sui comites ilium admonerent ut pedem Regis in acceptione tanti muncris, Neustriaa provinciæ, oscularetur, Anglicâ linguâ respondit 'ne se bi got,' quod interpretatur 'ne per deum.' Rex vero et sui ilium deridentes, et sermonem ejus corruptè referentes, ilium vocaverunt Bigottum; unde Normanni adhuc Bigothi vocantur."
Wace, too, says, in the Roman de Rou, that the French had abused the Normans in many ways, calling them Bigos. It is also termed, in a French record of the year 1425, "un mot tres injurieux." Diez says it was not used in its present sense before the sixteenth century.
