"Huslyn" and "German jack": what do they

[Tibbie Croser]

In Strickland and Hardy's The Great Warbow, an excerpt from a 16th-century work mentioned a "German jack" among body armor. Would anyone know how this would differ from a Scottish jack, Welsh jack, or the standard early-16th-century jack?

Another excerpt in the book, from a mid-1500s Tudor military treatise, recommended that archers wear a "burgonet or huslyn." Was "huslyn" another term for burgonet, or was it a different sort of helmet?

(Side note: how useful is the Oxford English Dictionary for trying to nail down obscure and archaic terms for armor, clothing, and weapons? I think my library may have the OED online.)

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The OED and MED (Middle English Dictionary) can be an amazing asset because they contain tons of usage quotes, so the definition might be useless but one of the quotes might give hints to you that the compiler didn't see the connection in. MED is online free.
So yes use them, I very much miss ready access to the OED and I use the MED all the time.

[Karen Larsdatter]

Found a relevant bit (probably from the same source material you read in <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0750931671?ie=UTF8&tag=suggestion-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0750931671">The Great Warbow</a>) in <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=cR6YU_uwo2UC">Renaissance Armor Studies</a>:

... their strings whipped or trenched in the nock and myddes, waxed on the glew, a braser and shooting glove, a sheafe of arrowes in noumber xxiv whearof I wishe viii of them more flighter then the reste to gall and annoy the enimyes farder of then the usuall custom of the sheafe arrowes, whose sharpe hallshot may not be indured, neither may thenimyes putt up hande or face to incounter the same - so that the archers draw their arrowes to the hedd and delyver the same accordinge to that arte which ys onely by God his provydence geven to Englishe men, who geve us grace to mayntayne the same as our elders have donn before us. Such weareth light armures or else none, a burganet or huslyn, a maule of leade with a pyke of five inches longe, well stieled, sett in a staffe of fyve foote of lengthe with a hooke at his gyrdell to take of and mayntayne the fighte as oure elders have donn, by handye stroaks.

A footnote by the word huslyn says: "Synonyms for a helmet which protected the neck."

[Vermin]

"A footnote by the word huslyn says: "Synonyms for a helmet which protected the neck."

So, could that be a kettlehat with a bevor?

[chef de chambre]

Regardiung the German jacks, they may well be jacks specifically constructed to work with fussknechtbrust (infantry breastplates without backplates). The two extant Lubek jacks were constructed in the 144o's, and were made with less layers in the area covered by the breastplate, but like a normal jack otherwise - the rust from the breastplates still marks the fronts of the jacks.

[Niall]

Chef -

Where would one find more information (images, books, museums) regarding these breastplates and jacks?

Thanks!

Niall

[Tibbie Croser]

Google and the Middle English Dictionary online were no help with "huslyn." I'm wondering if the word somehow came from "hussar" and therefore might refer to a Central European Renaissance helmet such as the zischagge worn by hussars. The zischagge would fit the suggestion from Karen's link of a light helmet that protects the neck. Is that an utterly ridiculous guess?

Chef, thanks for the suggestion about the German jack. That makes a lot of sense. I think the quotation in The Great Warbow was from an early-16th-century source, which makes the suggestion even more likely.

[audax]

The rpoblem your going to run into is the lack of standardized spellings, meanings and usage.

I would suspect huslyn has no relationship to hussar.

[Tibbie Croser]

Yes, when I thought "hussar" I was on the wrong track. I checked my copy of Stone's Glossary, which gives "hufken, huskin" as "a light, open, close-fitting headpiece worn by archers in the 16th century." Stone's source is John Hewitt, Ancient Armor and Weapons in Europe, published 1855-1860. Ffoulkes' The Armourer and His Craft gives "hufken" as "a light head-piece worn by archers, XVI century."

Searching the Middle English Dictionary online still gave me no hits for "huskin," "husken," "hufkin," or "hufken." Looks like I'll need to check the OED online at my library. I don't know what period source Stone, Hewitt, and Ffoulkes used for their definition. Maybe "huskin" or "huslyn" was just another term for a steel cap, along with "scull" or "secrete."

[audax]

Yes, when I thought "hussar" I was on the wrong track. I checked my copy of Stone's Glossary, which gives "hufken, huskin" as "a light, open, close-fitting headpiece worn by archers in the 16th century." Stone's source is John Hewitt, Ancient Armor and Weapons in Europe, published 1855-1860. Ffoulkes' The Armourer and His Craft gives "hufken" as "a light head-piece worn by archers, XVI century."

Searching the Middle English Dictionary online still gave me no hits for "huskin," "husken," "hufkin," or "hufken." Looks like I'll need to check the OED online at my library. I don't know what period source Stone, Hewitt, and Ffoulkes used for their definition. Maybe "huskin" or "huslyn" was just another term for a steel cap, along with "scull" or "secrete."

You might take a look at the celata, a sort of light infantry version of the sallet.

[Karen Larsdatter]

Searching the Middle English Dictionary online still gave me no hits for "huskin," "husken," "hufkin," or "hufken."

One of the things that comes up (especially with given names) is the suffix -kin as a sort of diminutive -- i.e., Hopkin deriving from 'Hobb' + '-kin' (and Hobb in turn being a nickname for Robert) or Adkin from 'Adam' (or rather 'Ade') + '-kin.'

So I wonder if we should really be looking more at huske rather than huskin here? At least etymologically speaking, it makes sense; one of the meanings for huske is "The outside covering of nuts, and certain fruits; (b) the cup of an acorn; (c) husk or chaff of grain; (d) the cocoon of a silkworm." (Obviously the Middle English ancestor of the modern word husk, but when I was pondering this derivation, I remembered the Spanish casco 'helmet' vs. cáscara 'shell' and thought it was an interesting parallel derivation.)

This concept, however, moves it outside of a definitive style of helmet, and more into a generic word for helmet, and is all theoretical anyway.

[chef de chambre]

Chef -

Where would one find more information (images, books, museums) regarding these breastplates and jacks?

Thanks!

Niall

Bildeindex.de has them up, but I can't remember the German word for jack.

[Tibbie Croser]

The reason that I don't think "huslyn" means a sallet or celata is that the quotation from The Great Warbow including the word "huslyn" is from about 1560, and I'm not sure celatas, let alone sallets, were still in use by then. On the other hand, the word "sallet" turns up in several quotations in that book from mid- to late-16th-century sources, which makes me wonder if "sallet" had become a generic term for certain helmets rather than referring to the specific sallets of the 15th and early 16th centuries. Unless I could find artistic evidence for sallets in the mid-1500s, I'd be inclined to think that "huslyn" does not mean a sallet. (I'd be pleased by evidence of sallets used in the mid-1500s, but I suspect they were replaced by other kinds of helmets by then.)

[chef de chambre]

I think you see them as late as the 1530's in German sources. Drurer's St. George is an example, you find images of Imperial cavalry wearing them, etc.