Note 10 — Scene III.—Alonso sitting.
Edward FitzGerald translation
‘A hoop of whalebone, used to spread out the petticoat to a wide circumference;’—Johnson; who one almost wonders did not spread out into a wider circumference of definition about the ‘poore verdingales,’ that (according to Heywood)
——‘must lie in the streete, To have them no doore in the citye made meete.’
The Spanish name is ‘guarda infanta,’ which puzzles Don Torribio, as to what his cousin had to do with infants. Our word was first (as Heywood writes) verdingale: which, as Johnson tells us, ‘much exercised the etymology of Skinner, who at last seems to determine that it is derived from vertu garde.’ This, however, Johnson thinks does not at all get to the bottom of the etymology, which may, he says, be found in Dutch. Perhaps the old French petenlair was of the same kindred.