Note 246 — GAMMER GURTON'S NEEDLE.

Curtal is a small horse; properly one who hath his tail docked or curtailed. So, in Dekker's "Villanies discovered by Lanthorne and Candlelight," &c., 1620, sig. H.: "He could shewe more crafty foxes in this wild goose chase, then there are white foxes in Russia; and more strange horse-trickes plaide by such riders, then Bankes his curtal did ever practise (whose gambals of the two were the honester)."