Note E474 — 99.
Reading edition
"Fisging." The Rev. W. Skeat, in his note to Piers Plowman, C. Text, Passus x. l. 153, "And what frek of þys folde fiskeþ þus a-boute," remarks: "Fisketh, wanders, roams. As this word is scarce, I give all the instances of it that I can find. In Sir Gawayne and the Grene Knight, ed. Morris, l. 1704, there is a description of a foxhunt, where the fox and the hounds are thus mentioned:—
'& he fyskez hem by-fore · þay founden hym sone'—
i.e. and he (the fox) runs on before them (the hounds); but they soon found him. 'Fyscare abowte ydylly; Discursor, discursatrix, vagulus vel vagator, vagatrix.'—Prompt. Parv. p. 162. 'Fiskin abowte yn ydilnesse; Vago, giro, girovago.'—Ibid.
'Such serviture also deserveth a check, That runneth out fisking, with meat in his beck [mouth].' —Tusser, Five Hundred Points, etc., ed. Mavor, p. 286.
'Then had every flock his shepherd, or else shepherds; now they do not only run fisking about from place to place, ... but covetously join living to living.'—Whitgift's Works, i. 528. 'I fyske, ie fretille. I praye you se howe she fysketh about.'—Palsgrave. 'Trotière, a raumpe, fisgig, fisking huswife, raunging damsell.'—Cotgrave.
'Then in cave, then in a field of corn, Creeps to and fro, and fisketh in and out.' —Dubartas (in Nares).
'His roving eyes rolde to and fro, He fiskyng fine, did mincyng go.' —Kendalls's Flower of Epigrammes, 1577 (Nares).
'Tom Tankard's cow.... Flinging about his halfe aker, fisking with her tail.' —Gammer Gurton's Needle, i. 2.
'Fieska, to fisk the tail about; to fisk up and down.'—Swedish Dictionary, by J. Serenius. 'Fjeska, v.n. to fidge, to fidget, to fisk.'—Swed. Dict. (Tauchnitz)."