1. = SWADDLING-BAND. Usually pl.
c. 1435. Torr. Portugal, 2017. Vp they toke the child ying,… And vndid the swathing band.
1632. J. Hayward, trans. Biondi’s Eromena, 192. They scorned to serve a babe in his swathing bands.
a. 1668. Lassels, Voy. Italy (1698), II. 211. An angel of silver … presenting to our Lady a child of gold in swathing-bands.
1700. Tate & Brady, Hymn, ‘While shepherds,’ 13, in Suppl. Psalms, 18.
| The heav’nly Babe you there shall find | |
| to humane view display’d, | |
| All meanly wrapt in swathing Bands, | |
| and in a Manger laid. |
1875. Encycl. Brit., III. 189/1. Among neither people, however, did art altogether escape from the swathing-bands of its nursery.
† 2. A bandage, a band of stuff for winding round a body. Also transf. Obs.
1615. Crooke, Body of Man, 143. Fascia renum, that is, the Kidneyes swathing band.
1625. K. Long, trans. Barclay’s Argenis, V. i. 328. Hee takes off the swathing-band from the most dangerous wound.
1683. Lorrain, Muret’s Rites Funeral, 3. Afterwards they anointed it [sc. the corpse] outwardly all over with a certain gum; wrapt it in swathing-bands of very fine linnen.
1684. T. Burnet, Th. Earth, I. 268. As so many girdles or swathing-bands about the body of the earth.
