"puss" in Icelandic ? Swedish ?

[Laurence Horn]

>>>But we have no record that they did. (The word's absence from
>>>Burns's uncensored _Merry Muses_ is especially significant.)
>>
>>as just noted (I'm going through my "fud" files), it is present--at
>>least once--in Burns's "Jolly Beggars", with the 'pubic hair' sense
>
>Is the "pubic hair" sense here? F&H apparently thought so, but they ignored
>the "arse" sense entirely.
>
>The SND has this same citation under the "arse" sense. [SND does have the
>"pubic hair" sense also (female).]
>
>Offhand I find the "arse" interpretation more natural myself: I would think
>"He scarcely has enough clothing to cover his arse" would be more natural
>than "... to cover his pubic hair". Of course Burns may have had a
>different opinion ... are there other examples from back then of comparable
>figures of speech involving [male] pubic hair?
>
Right--I don't know what evidence F&H had for taking this to involve
'pubic hair' (or, metonymically, the adjacent region) rather than
'arse'.  Is there any possibility of "fud" in the latter sense being
influenced by (if not derived from) "fundament"?

Larry