Note E434 — 74.

"Lay your bucks," i.e. get ready the washing tubs. Compare: "Throw foul linen upon him as if it were going to bucking."—Shakspere, Merry Wives of Wind., Act iii. sc. 3. Buck-basket, the basket in which linen is carried to the wash. "Bouck-fatt, a washing tub."—Upton Inventories, p. 28. Cf. "And for I can so wele wasche and so wele bowke, Godde has made me his chaumberere."—The Pilgrimage of the Life of the Manhode, f. 21b., MS. in Libr. of St. John's Coll. Camb. 'I bucke lynen clothes to scoure of their fylthe and make them whyte, Ie bue. Bucke these shyrtes, for they be to foule to be wasshed by hande, buez ces chemises, car elles sont trop sallies de les lauer a sauon.'—Palsgrave. 'Buée, lie wherwith clothes are scowred; also a buck of clothes; Buer, to wash a buck, to scowre with lie; Buandiere f., a laundresse, or buck-washer.'—Cotgrave. To buck is to cleanse clothes by steeping them in lye: see Buck in Webster, Nares, Wedgwood, etc."—Rev. W. W. Skeat, note to P. Plowman, B. Text, xiv. 19.