To do brown, verbal phr. (common).—To do well; also ‘to take in’;
deceive; to exceed bounds. Cf., Brown, verb, sense 1. French
equivalents for ‘to allow oneself to be done brown’ are godancer and
être flouè.—See second quotation for variation in usage.
a. 1600. John Bon, 162 in Hazl. E. P. P., iv., 16. Ha! browne done.
[M.]
1828. Jon. Bee, Picture of London, p. 5. ‘Those who consider
themselves brown to every move upon the board’ of actual life.
1837. Barham, I. L. (The Execution). ‘Why, they’d laugh at and quiz
us all over the town, We are all of us done so uncommonly brown!’
1854. Harper’s Monthly, January.
‘And some of the greenhorns
Resolved upon flight,
And vamosed the ranch
In a desperate plight;
While those who succeeded
In reaching the town,
Confessed they were done,
Most exceedingly brown.’
1861. Times (on American affairs).
John Bull, slyly winkin’, then said unto he:
‘My dear Times, my old covey, go pitch into he;
Let us wallop great Doodle now when he is down;
If we wallops him well, we will do him up brown.’
1876. Hindley, Life and Adventures of a Cheap Jack, p. 267. I was
once done myself with some pigs—I! and done brown too, and at a
time when I ought to have known better.
Brown Bess, subs. (rhyming slang).—1. Yes.
2. (military.)—The old regulation musket. Considerable discussion has
taken place over the origin of this term. It first appears in Grose
[1785], but the term ‘brown musquet’ occurs at the beginning of the
eighteenth century [1708]. The following suggested derivation appeared
in N. and Q. [2 S., v., p. 259]. Brown Bess, in its primary meaning, is
equivalent to brown barrel. Bus, in Dutch is the barrel of a gun; in
Low Germ. büsse, in Swed. byssa. Hence our English Bess as applied to a
gun-barrel. (Conf. in Med. Latin—bus-bas fragor scloporum et
certaminis.) The Dutch bus appears often in composition. Hand-bus, a
pistol; literally a hand-barrel. Bus-schieter, a gunner; literally a
barrel-shooter. We have the Dutch bus (a barrel) in three English names
of fire-arms: namely arquebuse, obus, blunderbuss. At the first of
these three, arquebuse, we must look a little more closely would we
trace the term brown Bess to its primæval source. The most formidable
of cross-bows before fire-arms came into general use, was one which
shot a ball or pellet from a barrel. Specimens may yet be seen. Now
this was the original arquebuse (i.e., arc-bus, or arc-et-bus, bow and
barrel). In process of time as gunpowder came into use, the arc
disappeared, and the buss or barrel remained. Hence arquebuse, though
it properly implies a bow fitted with a tube or barrel, came into use
as the old appellation of a soldier’s firelock. And hence the name of
Bess (bus, büsse or byssa), which the musket has borne more recently.
Bess or bus is the last syllable of the old arquebuse or harquebus cut
off for separate use, just as in the more recent instance of bus from
omnibus. The barrels of firelocks were sometimes browned. Sometimes,
however, they were required to be kept bright. Could we ascertain who
first in mercy ordained the browning of the barrel, we might have some
prospect of ascertaining the first introduction of the term brown Bess.
Doubtless it was some hero of the fight, not of the field-day. For a
further illustration of the term brown Bess, it may be proper to remark
that in Northumberland, according to Halliwell, a gun is known by the
not very elegant title of black-bitch. Now like bus in Dutch, büchse is
in German a gun-barrel. (‘Büchse, 2, ein eisernes Rohr zum schiessen,’
an iron tube for shooting.) May we not infer, therefore, that
black-bitch was originally ‘black büchse,’ i.e., black barrel, in
conformity with brown barrel or brown Bess? ‘Formerly,’ says Zedler,
‘and before the invention of gunpowder, arquebuse signified a bow with
a barrel’ (Bogen Büchse), which is the literal meaning of the word.
Hotten, however, says it is much more likely that the phrase is derived
from the fact that ‘the soldier is wedded to his weapon,’ and some
colour is given to this alternative derivation by the fact that the
Dutch soldier, mindful of all the care he has to bestow upon his gun,
calls it his wife—mijn geweer is mijn vrouw. French soldiers call their
weapon la clarinette de cinq pieds.
1785. Grose, Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue. Brown Bess, a
soldier’s firelock.
1820. Coombe, Dr. Syntax, Tour II., ch. ii.
Religion Jack did never profess,
Till he had shoulder’d old Brown Bess.
1854. Whyte Melville, General Bounce, ch. xi. The British soldier,
with his clothing and accoutrements, ...—not to mention brown Bess,
his mainstay and dependence—nothing punishes him so much as wet.
1877. Chambers’ Journal, No. 720. Such may have been the case in
the days of brown Bess, but a spinning conical ball from the
Martini-Henry will pierce the largest crocodile.