Also 5 gaill, gale, 6 jall, 7 yeale. [ad. L. ealē (Pliny, Nat. Hist.).] A fabulous beast with horns and tusks, perhaps the two-horned rhinoceros; used Her. (see quot. 1910).
c. 1425. Wyntoun, Cron., I. ix. 754. In to þat lande [sc. India] þai say sulde be Ane oþer best, callyt Eale [v.r. Ane oþir beist is callit Gaill Into þat land forouttin faill], Þat is lik al til a hors … And has a gret tusk as a bare … And in his hewide ar hornys twa.
1536. in Archaeologia (1910), LXII. 311. Paid to Ric. Rydge … for lyke cuttyng carvyng … and makyng of … and jall and Iunecorne a dragon, a lyan a greyhonde [etc.].
[1601. Holland, Pliny, VIII. xxi. I. 206.]
a. 1660. Contemp. Hist. Irel. (Ir. Archæol. Soc.), I. 264. The Ethiopian yeale hath two hornes of a cubit longe.
1910. Archaeologia, 313. The jall or yale … is a rare and strange animal partaking of the nature of the heraldic antelope, that is to say, wearing horns and a large pair of projecting tusks:… and he is silver bezanty, that is, white with yellow spots. He is one of the supporters of the Dukes of Somerset. Ibid., 314, note. The yale occurs as one of the supporters of the arms of the Lady Margaret Beaufort, mother of King Henry VII.
