Burdash again: "bardace" - attn Yann

[Mike Cleven]

In reading through the glorious verbal and imagistic thicket of Philip
Mansel's "Constantinople: City of the World's Desire" I came across a
reference in Ch. 7, p.177 (ppbk) cited by Mansel from Carlier de Pinon, a
French traveller of the 18th Century, who wrote that Turks "are also very
subject to the vice of Sodom, the grandees more than the ordinary people,
there being hardly a captain without one or more 'bardace'".  The book isn't
about that, of course; the chapter in question is titled "Cushions of
Pleasure" and discusses the hedonist nature of the Ottoman capital; recipes,
sexuality, decor, household furniture, architecture, custom, etc.  People
wanting unusual recipe ideas are encouraged to seek out this book, if only
for inspiration; alas, Ottoman cuisine is no more, only poorly echoed by the
cuisines of Turkey, Persia, Greece and the Balkans....

Anyway, a while back Shaw's (or Gibbs' or whomever's) attribution of
"burdash" to a supposed French word "berdache" was disavowed by Yann, one of
our group's native (or at least adept) French speakers; it's not a modern
French word, according to him.  Noting that the above citation is from the
mid-1700s, this would put it in an era where it could have come to the West
of North America and survived in Metis/HBC French despite disappearing on
the Continent and even, perhaps, in Quebec and Acadie.  I'm not certain from
the source if the italicization of this word indicates French or Turkish,
however; if it's Turkish the 'c' is like a 'j' and the final 'e' would be
pronounced as a syllable.  Yann - where would we look for resources on Old
French?  Could this be a Turkish loan-word into French, and thence into
Chinook?

MC
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