_Picalyly_ (Vol. viii., p. 8.).--In Barnaby Rich's _Honestie of this Age_,
p. 37. of the Percy Society reprint, we find this passage:
"But he that some fortie or fifty yeares sithens should haue asked
after a Pickadilly, I wonder who could haue understood him, or could
haue told what a Pickadilly had beene, either fish or flesh."
Little did the writer think that in future years the name would become a
"household word;" though his prophecy as to the meaning of the word has
been fulfilled by the appearance of the Query in the pages of "N. & Q."
The editor of the work, Mr. Peter Cunningham, has a long note on the above
passage; and I am indebted to him for the following.
"Ben Jonson (_Works_ by Gifford, viii. 370.) speaks of a _picardill_ as
a new cut of band much in fashion:
'Ready to cast at one whose band stands still,
And then leap mad on a neat _picardill_.'
"But Middleton, _The World tost at Tennis_, 1620, speaks of a
_pickadill_ in connexion with the shears, the needle, &c. of the
tailor; from which it appears to have been an instrument used for
plaiting the picked vandyke collar worn in those days.
"Mr. Gifford, in a note on another passage in Ben Jonson, says:
'_Picardil_ is simply a diminutive of _picca_ (Span. and Ital.), a
spear-head; and was given to this article of foppery from a fancied
resemblance of its stiffened plaits to the bristled points of these
weapons. Blount thinks, and apparently with justice, that _Picadilly_
took its name frown the sale of the 'small stiff collars so called,'
which was first set on foot in a house near the western [eastern]
extremity of the present street by one Higgins, a tailor.'"
The bands worn by the clergy and judges, &c., at the present day, are
lineal descendants of the old _picadils_, reduced to a more sober cut; and
the picked ornament alluded to by your correspondent no doubt derived its
name from its resemblance in shape to these tokens of ancient fashion.