Obs. Also 6 valson, 7 valsen, 9 dial. fazen. A kind of eel. Applied variously to a fresh or salt-water eel, and to a small or large eel (see quote). Also fausen-eel.
1547. Boorde, Brev. Health, lxxxvii. 35 b. Take the fatnes of a valson ele.
1602. Carew, Cornwall (1733), 31. Of Eeles there are two sorts: the one Valsen, of best taste, comming from the fresh riuers, when the great raine floods after September doe breake their beds, and carry them into the sea: the other, bred in the salt water, & called a Conger Eele, which afterwards, as his bignes increaseth, ventreth out into the maine Ocean.
c. 1611. Chapman, Iliad, XXI. 190.
| The wave-sprung entrails, about which fausens and other fish | |
| Did shoal, to nibble at the fat which his sweet kidneys hid. |
c. 1640. J. Smyth, Hundred of Berkeley (1885), 319. A fauson, or great fat eele.
1688. R. Holme, Armoury, II. 325/1. An Eel [is] first a Fausen, then a Grigg.
1708. Motteux, Rabelais, IV. lx. (1737), 247. Fausens, and Griggs.
1887. Kent Gloss., Fazen adj. The fazen eel is a large brown eel, and is so called at Sandwich in contradiction to the silver eel.
