A quantity, a load; later, a load of drink. The word is provincial in England, and occurs in the accounts of certain churchwardens in Essex for the year 1695. See Notes and Queries, 8 S. ii. 407, 476.
1834. As there was a very little rale mony in the country, the Bank went and bo’t a good jag on’t in Europe.—C. A. Davis, ‘Letters of Jack Downing, Major,’ p. 167 (Bartlett).
1891. A “saccharine jag” appears to be the latest thing in the way of Yankee intoxication.—Pall Mall Gaz., Sept. 15. (N.E.D.)
*** Mr. Forrest Morgan of Hartford, Conn., writes that about the middle of the nineteenth century farmers spoke of “taking a little jag of wood to market”; adding that the word was always used of a rather small load. (Notes and Queries, 10 S. viii. 294.)
