An Irish Etymology for Chaucer's Falding ("Coarse Woollen Cloth")

Falding ("coarse woollen cloth") occurs twice in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. The Shipman rides "In a gowne of faldyng to the knee" (A 391); the Oxford student Nicholas has "His presse [cupboard] ycovered with a faldyng reed [red]" (A 3212). ¹ Skeat, who referred to black falding in a North of England will of 1392 (and noted that the Ellesmere Manuscript illustrations show the Shipman in a black gown), described falding as a frieze probably "supplied from the North of Europe." Hussey (who reproduces the Ellesmere picture) says that faldyng was "a serviceable and not a cheap material." ²

However, Skeat and Hussey say nothing of the word's etymology. Nor does the OED. Manly gave its derivation as "obscure." ³ The most detailed account of falding is thus one by Löfvenberg, who explained it as perhaps a derivative of Old English fealdan, falden "to fold, cover, wrap up," which he related to Old Norse feldr "cloak, mantle." ⁴ His view is not supported by the standard account of feldr. ⁵ Despite this, the Middle English Dictionary and the main Chaucer glossary still relate falding to Norse feldr. ⁶

Yet there seems a far simpler explanation for the derivation of falding than any proposed by Löfvenberg. Although noting the existence of Irish fallaing, "mantle, cloak," he regarded the resemblance of falding and fallaing as "no doubt due to a strange coincidence." But such a dismissal will not do; and the case that English falding, "frieze; item made of frieze," derives from Irish fallaing, "mantle, cloak," is strengthened by what we know of falding as a medieval Irish export, and Welsh and Irish words for it. The attestations of falding in the Middle English Dictionary, which first records it in 1286, consistently associate the mantle and cloth with Ireland. Löfvenberg himself quotes a record of 1347 on a faldyng and other garments from persons drowned in the Water of Dee (the city of Chester on the upstream being a major port for Irish trade with England, including faldyng, that falding would almost certainly have been bought in Ireland or Cheshire). He also cites a record of 1378 on "200 faldyngs and 100 yards of faldyngclothe of Ireland," and a customs list of 1475 from the port of Malahide (nine miles north of Dublin) referring to every falinga of Irish cloth. OED and MED quote The Libel of English Policy of 1436, which lists Irish exports, including "Irish wollen and lynyn cloth, faldyng." ⁷ OED also cites a Lancashire will of 1526 on a faldyng or cloak left to Alice Legh. Lancashire, being close to Ireland, would be a natural market for Irish exports.

What we can gather from commercial and other documents is confirmed by Celtic literary texts. Addressing the river Dyfi of mid-Wales, which keeps him from his beloved, Dafydd ap Gwilym speaks of its ton ffalinglwyd ("grey-mantled wave")--a clue to one color of a ffaling. ⁸ Dafydd seems to have died before the middle of the fourteenth century; he may have perished in the Black Death of 1348-49. ⁹ In any case, he provides a use of the word predating those in the Canterbury Tales. Ffaling occurs in later Welsh poetry, as also the phrase (significant in this context) mal y gwyddyl am y ffaling: "like the Irishman concerning his mantle" in proverbs collected and published by Dr. John Davies of Mallwyd (d. 1644). ¹⁰

Although Parry-Williams thought ffaling might be from English, Lloyd-Jones derived it from Irish fallaing (comparing Medieval Latin phalingus), and this origin is accepted by Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru. To this day, when English falding has been obsolete for centuries, fallaing is still an Irish word for a mantle or cloak. ¹¹ The oldest evidence for it is in Topographia Hibernica, written in 1185 or soon after by Gerald of Wales, who says the Irish "wear mantles (falangis) instead of cloaks." ¹² Irish fallaing itself...