Tired of Pain Court yet?

[Koontz John E]

On Fri, 2 Apr 2004, Michael Mccafferty wrote:
> Yes, the pin court or pins courts was the suggestion that  i made
> to the Siouan discussion list. No one seemed to like it, but it was the
> only thing that made sense. I'll restate that position to that list.

Well, I thought it was quite interesting lexically, though I gather from
previous comments that pain and pin are not always homophonous in Canadian
French and that there are, as Michael had observed, and I had also
discovered, precedents for Paincourt as a placename.  I am not clear
whether there are any precedents for Pin Court.

It does seem clear that pain court does not mean 'short(age) of bread' per
se, but rather 'short loaf' in one dimension or another - length or
height.  Apparently it could also mean 'shortbread' in the more technical
sense.  I am not at all convinced that in any of these forms it is not
perceived as a metaphor for poverty or hard or primitive living.
Suggestions along these lines appear in both English and French.

The question has been raised as to whether there is any evidence of pains
courts in the neighboorhood of St. Louis.

By chance I noticed a while ago a description of the trees of St. Louis in
the colonial period.  Houck's The Spanish Regime in Missouri, Vol. 1, p
49, contains a document dealing with the "Delivery of the Fort of El
Principe de Asturias [near St. Louis], ..." March 19, 1769, whicbindicates
that "The woods of which the stockade is composed are liar, ash, and
yncomis."  Footnotes explain liar as a variant of French liard 'poplar',
here referring to cottonwood, and indicate that yncomis may be ynconis,
'the name of a wood not in the dictionaries'.  Personally, I suspect that
yncomis is a misreading and/or mangling of inconnus 'unknown(s)'.
Liar(d) wood appears to figure prominently in the construction of the
fort.

There are references to pines and cedars on the Upper Missouri.