by Henry Plantagenet, as a priory for the
reception of unmarried ladies of noble blood, who were destined for a
religious life, and had the misfortune to be afflicted with leprosy. One
of their appellations was _filles meselles_, in which latter word, you
will immediately recognize the origin of our term for the disease still
prevalent among us, the _measles_. Johnson strangely derives this word
from _morbilli_; but the true northern roots have been given by Mr.
Todd, in his most valuable republication of our national dictionary; a
work which now deserves to be named after the editor, rather than the
original compiler. It may also be added, that the word was in common use
in the old Norman French, and was plainly intended to designate a slight
degree of scurvy.

To pursue this subject a few steps farther, Jamieson, who is as
excellent in points of etymology as Johnson is deficient, quotes, in his
Scottish Dictionary, an instance where the identical expression,
_meselle-houses_, is used in old English;

"...to _meselle-houses_ of that same rond,
Thre thousand mark unto ther spense he fond."
R. BRUNNE, p. 136.

The Norfolk farmers and dairy-maids tell us to this day of _measly
pork_: in Scotch, a leper is called a _mesel_; and, among the Swedes,
the word for measles is one nearly similar in sound, _maess-ling_. The
French academy, however, have refused to admit _meselle_ to the honor of
a place in their language, because it was obsolete or vulgar in the time
of Louis XIIIth. The word is expressive, and no better one has supplied
its place; and we may suppose that it was introduced by the Norman
conquerors, and that it properly belongs to the Gothic tongues, in the
whole of which the root is to be found more or less modified. Instances
of this kind, and they are many, serve as additional proofs, if proofs
indeed were needed, of the common origin of the Neustrian Normans, of
the Lowland Scots, and of the Saxon and Belgian tribes, who peopled our
eastern shores of England.

The priory continued to be appropriated to its original purpose till
1366, when Charles Vth united it to the hospital, called the Magdalen,
at Rouen, upon condition that a mass should be celebrated there daily
for the repose of his soul. In the year 1600, on the destruction of the
abbey upon Mont Ste. Catherine, the monks of that establishment were
allowed to fix themselves at St. Julien; but they resigned it, af