Wizard Baruffio and the Wingardium Leviosa Charm Revisited

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 160049

Secca wrote: 
<snip> What is needed is:
> 
> 1) The intended word, with 'f' in it. 
>    (something a wizard might want to say)
> 2) Now change the 'f' to an 's'.
> 3) Now the word means (or conjures) a buffalo!
> 
> I, and others all over the web have looked for a meaning 
> for 'bussalo'. But 'bussalo' doesn't work! As I researched, I kept 
> doing this, looking for words that meant buffalo with an 's' in it. 
<snip>
> Anyway -- 
> Here's *one* word that works by the rules. I *very, very* much doubt 
> this is what Jo meant... but, here it is regardless...
> 
> The Wizard Baruffio, who lived circa 777, was reading a scroll. He 
> mistook his own scribed 'f' to be an 's'. He was meant to say "Accio 
> bifon" -- but instead came out with "Accio Bison" -- and found 
> himself on the floor with a North American Buffalo on his chest.
> 
> /Bifon/ is an Anglo-Saxon word that can be used as a noun 
> meaning 'case' (though the main meaning is as a verb meaning 'to 
> grasp'.)
>
Carol responds:
I think you're alomost right--"s" mistaken for "f" because of the
elongated "s" in ancient manuscripts and "bison" for "bifon," which
according to my research is Anglo-Saxon for "surround" or "encircle" 

http://www2.kenyon.edu/AngloSaxonRiddles/willedition/GloB.htm

and could be a command spell in itself, just as some spells in HP are
in English rather than pseudo-Latin. The word "bison" (or "bisont")
was already in existence and referred, not to an American buffalo
(probably European wizards knew no more than European Muggles of the
existence of the Americas at this point) but to a European buffalo
also called a wisent. Click here for an illustration:

http://www.m-w.com/mw/art/wisent.htm 

Carol, whose first reaction to the wizard Baruffio's blunder was what
JKR surely intended it to be, a hearty roar of laughter