Happy Birthday, berin!

[the_gneech]

For your present, here's today's Forgotten English!

avails
Profits and proceeds. It is used in New England for the proceeds of goods sold, or for rents, issues, or profits.

--Rev. John Boag's Imperial Lexicon, c. 1850

Bell Ringer Sought
Henry Edwards's Old English Customs: Curious Bequests and Charities (1842) reported on a quaint endowment: "John Beddoes, by indenture dated 20th April, 1565, conveyed premises to feoffees [estates] in trust, that they should, amongst other matters, out of the rents keep and find an able person to ring a bell in the parish church of Presteign [Radnorshire] every morning forever, between the feasts of All Saints and the Purificiation of Our Lady, by the space of one half hour, which should be called the day bell; and also nightly forever ring one other peal with the same bell at eight o'clock in the [evening], as well in summer as wintertime, by the space of one half hour, which should be called Curfew; and that, if the ringing of the said bell should be discontinued for one year (unless the plague was in the said town of Presteign, or other reasonable cause) then the said premises to revert to his heirs."

-The Gneech

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Bell rringer

[jugularjaguar.livejournal.com]

Now there is a job for me!!