Note 73 — Chapter II
Reading edition
Bauseant, or Bausant, was, in old French, a piebald horse, or a horse marked white and black. Ducange, Roquefort. The word is still preserved with its original meaning in the Scotch dialect, in the form Bawsent:
"His honest, sonsie, baws'nt face Aye gat him friends in ilka place,"
says Burns, describing the "ploughman's collie," in his tale of the "Twa Dogs;" and in the Glossary, Dr. Currie explains Baws'nt as meaning "having a white stripe down the face." As, however, some notion of handsomeness or attractiveness of appearance seems to be involved in the epithet, Bauseant, or Beauséant, may possibly be merely an older form of the present French word, Bienséant.