Chapter LXXXVI: Act V: Page 470

CHOR. ... Like a mighty _whiffler_, 'fore the king
Seems to prepare his way.

Some errors have crept into the remarks on this word which require correction. It is by no means, as Hanmer had conceived, a corruption from the French _huissier_. He was apparently misled by the resemblance which the office of a whiffler bore in modern times to that of an usher. The term is undoubtedly borrowed from _whiffle_, another name for a _fife_ or small flute; for whifflers were originally those who preceded armies or processions as fifers or pipers. Representations of them occur among the prints of the magnificent triumph of Maximilian I. In a note on _Othello_, Act III. Scene 2, Mr. Warton had supposed that _whiffler_ came from what he calls "_the old_ French _viffleur_;" but it is presumed that that language does not supply any such word, and that the use of it in the quotation from Rymer's _fœdera_ is nothing more than a vitiated orthography. In process of time the term _whiffler_, which had always been used in the sense of a _fifer_, came to signify any person who went before in a procession. Minsheu, in his _Dictionary_, 1617, defines him to be a club or staff-bearer. Sometimes the whifflers carried white staves, as in the annual feast of the printers, founders, and ink-makers, so curiously described in Randle Holme's _Academy of armory_, book iii. ch. 3, where one of them is stated to have carried in his right hand a great bowl of white wine and sugar. Another mistake occurs in Mr. Warton's note, when he says, that "by degrees the word _whiffler_ hence acquired the metaphorical meaning which it at present obtains in common speech, and became an appellation of contempt." This is by no means the case, for _whiffler_, in its sense of a _babbler_, _trifler_, or _versatile person_, is pure Saxon, ƿæꝼleꞃe, _blatero_.

KING HENRY VI.