Note 187 — DISSERTATION III.
Reading edition
Bavon or bavette, is from bave, spittle. Hence the middle age Latin term for a fool, bavosus. See Ducange Gloss. This is a very plausible etymology, and might stand well enough by itself; but it must not be concealed that in some of the Northern languages Bavian signifies a monkey or baboon. Whether Fletcher, who seems the only writer that has made use of this word, applied it to the fool in question on account of the monkey tricks that he played, remains to be ascertained. If we could discover the names of the characters in a French, Dutch, or German morris of this time, some light might be thrown on the subject.