Sc. and north. dial. Also α. 7 Jock the Leg, 8– jocte-, jactaleg, 9 jockta-, joktaleg, jock-to-, jock-tae-leg. β. 8–9 jacklag, jack-o-legs, 9 jacka-, jacki-, jackylegs, jocka-, jocke-, jockylegs. [The α forms are Sc., and the original; the β forms are Engl. dial. See Note below.] A (large) clasp knife.
α. 1672. Acc. Bk. Sir J. Foulis (1894), 6. For a Jock the Leg Knife 00l. 08s. 0d. Scots.
1722. Ramsay, Twa Cutpurses. Sma’ gimcracks that pleas’d their nodles Sic as a joctaleg, or sheers.
1785. Burns, Halloween, v. An’ gif the custock’s sweet or sour, Wi’ joctelegs they taste them. Ibid. (1789), Peregrin. Capt. Grose, viii. It was a faulding jocteleg, or lang-kail gullie.
1818. Scott, Rob Roy, xxxii. After John Highlandman’s sneckit this ane wi’ his joctaleg.
1833. Fraser’s Mag., Oct., 398. In a hole he had … jock-to-legs, keelavine-pens … or whatever else he could purloin.
1885. Jas. Grant, Royal Highlanders (Rtldg.), 229. A large knife—like the genuine jockteleg of the days of old.
β. 1777. Horæ Subsecivæ, 227 (E. D. D.). Jack-lag-knife.
1787. Grose, Prov. Gloss … Jack-o-legs, a clasp knife. (North.)
1822. Bewick, Mem., 26. I involuntarily got my ‘Jackleg knife.’
1825. Brockett, Jackalegs, Jockelegs, a large clasped knife.
1847–78. Halliwell, Jack-lag-knife, a clasped knife. Glouc.
[Note. Lord Hailes, Spec. Sc. Gloss. (c. 1776) 18, says ‘The etymology of this word remained unknown till not many years ago an old knife was found having this inscription Jacques de Liege, the name of the cutler.’ A similar statement is made by Smiles, Industr. Biog. (1864), 133, and Jevons, Coal Question (1866), 91. The former says ‘Jacques de Liege, a famous foreign cutler whose knives were as well known throughout Europe, as those of Rodgers or Mappin are now.’ On the face of it this account is plausible: it was not uncommon in Sc. for de to be corrupted to the, e.g., the Bruce; the change of d to t after k is also phonetically simple. But, for the present, Scottish antiquaries have failed to find any confirmation, in knife or document, of Hailes’s statement; and inquiries made for us at Liege have been equally unsuccessful in finding any trace of Jacques the cutler.]
