Kluge's and Weigand's Etymological Dictionaries 377 and was gradually superseded by the Norse intruder, is a fact I drew Prof. Brights' attention to some three years ago and submit now to the general public: In the collection of glosses preserved in MS Cleopatra A III (Brit. Mus.) there occurs, according to Wright- Wiilcker I. 427, 27, imens. cinn = hymen scinn (Servius Verg. Aen. IV. 99), with which compare the gloss in Cod. Voss. lat. fol. 24 If. 87 recto 3 47 ymen membranum (Ley- den University Library). From this native scinn sprang early modern English schyn, shyne which is spelt in the French fashion chyn in the English glosses on the Norman French of Walter de Biblesworth treatise in Wright Voc. I. 149 15 : Homme et femme unt ^ d ^ ckyn . That already in the first quarter of the 14th century 3 the native shyn had a competitor in the Norse skyn, skine is proved by the reading skine for chyn in the Chambridge MS. The same competition is witnessed to in the 15th century by what we read in the Catholicon Anglicum p. 177a as English explanation of Latin nembris = nebris : an Hart-skyn (MS A: a Hartshyne). The native word is used in a 15th century rendering of Latin matrix, WW. 752 3 . Hec munda 1 a schyn that a schyld Hec matrix j is consevyd in, while the Catholicon Anglicum, p. 342a, prefers for the same purpose the Norse loan-word: skyn y* y e chylde is lapped in y e moder wame, himen, matrix. Also the modern skinner appears still in his native garb as shinnere in a vocabulary of c!425, preserved in the Brit. Museum MS Reg. 17, C. XVII, fol. 21, according to WW. 650 36 , Hie pelliparius A e schynnere. In Middle English I have, so far, not been able to find a trace of the native OE. scinn, unless the shindle of Ancr. R. 186 is connected with it. The NED s.v. states that its origin and precise meaning is unknown. I here give the whole passage: Nis pet child fulitowen pet schreped agean. 6 s bit upon pe jerde (MS Cleopatra CVI Cotton). For schreped MS Titus DXVIII Cott. offers the variant schindled which I suggest would go back to an OE. derivative from scinn 'cutis,' *scin(d)lian 'decorticare.' OTTO B. SCHLUTTER. Daytona Beach, Fla., March 1919. 'Provided the NED's date, c!325, for W. de Biblesworth's treatise is
correct.
