Origin of the word "Muggle"

[cunning_spirit]

No: HPFGUIDX 114269

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "pippin_999" <foxmoth at q...>
wrote:
> My husband found this in "The Borders" a history of that region of 
> Scotland by Alistair Moffat.
> ---
> Abbot Walter Bower, the author of the Scotichronicon, repeats a 
> widely held belief that the English had tails and were blighted 
> with them for showing disrespect to St Augustine and, later, to St 
> Thomas a Becket. The tails were called 'muggles'.
> ---
> (The Scotichronicon is a 14th century work in Latin.)
> 
> My husband thought instantly of Dudley's tail.
> 

cunning spirit:

Cool!  I sort of remember reading in a book of Scottish folklore too many years ago that 
the English were cursed with tails after offending some saint or other, but I never learned 
that the offending appendages actually had a name!  ;-)

BTW: is the Scotichronicon like the older Anglo-Saxon Chronicles (ie. a running record of 
the current events of its time kept by monks or similar learned folk)?  I'm more familiar 
with that work from my ill spent youth in Dark Ages historical reenactment.....

In "Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable", (which George Beahm's "Muggles and Magic" 
notes as a reference JKR often turns to when looking for ideas for names) lists the word 
'mug' or 'muggin' as gypsy terms roughly meaning a fool or dupe.  I think I read 
somewhere recently that JKR derived the term 'muggle' from a word meaning a fool.