Today’s study involved familiarising ourselves in using the OED as an online reference source (student access to it opens up more than you get by going to the site without student/teacher access).
We were asked to look up certain words that had been used in poems we’ve been studying this week. One of the poems was ‘The Captiv’d Bee: or, The Little Filcher’ by Robert Herrick. Herrick used several archaic and obsolete words, including the word ‘scrip’. His use of it was as its first definition (a small pouch or bag carried by a pilgrim) which he used in metaphor.
The word has/had other meanings, including this one (primarily a Scottish term, as you can see from the screengrab I took of the OED definition).
It struck a chord…
‘Oh, Jim
Am I destined to
Forever sufferance thy scrip?’