![]() The name is a borrowing of Old Norse karl, of similar meaning. In Old English, a carl was a man of the common people-he was the baseborn laborer, farmer, or craftsman of the village. … it will steal and carry away any thing it finds about the house, that is not too heavy, tho' not fit for its food … sometimes they say it has stolen bits of firebrands, or lighted candles, and lodged them in the stacks of corn, and the thatch of barns and houses, and set them on fire but this I only had by oral tradition. In his book on his travels through Great Britain, English author Daniel Defoe wrote of the bird: (The red and black coloring of the bird has obvious symbolism in death.) The bird is also often associated with thievery, mischievousness, and misfortune. According to one Cornish legend, King Arthur's soul migrated into the body of a red-billed, red-footed chough. Chough is also the name of a bird related to the crow that appears in Cornish folklore (and Scott did specify "Cornish chough"). ![]() The use of the two spellings may have been intentional. … if Anthony be so wealthy a chuff as report speaks him, he may prove the philosopher's stone to me, and convert my groats into fair rose- nobles again. In the same novel, Scott uses the spelling chuff in reference to a miserly character. There must be some order taken with him, for he thinks he hath wrong, and is not the mean hind that will sit down with it." "Why, villain, it was the very Cornish chough to whom old Sir Hugh Robsart destined his pretty Amy and hither the hot-brained fool has come to look after his fair runaway. "Tressilian!" answered Foster, "what know I of Tressilian?-I never heard his name." Early spellings include chuffe, chuffe, and sometimes chough. ![]() Although we don't know where it came from, we do know that chuff has been a name for anyone boorish, churlish, miserly, or just generally disliked since the 15th century. ![]()
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