A rope for the neck or halse, as a horse’s halter. (Anglo-Saxon, hals, the neck; but there is also the word hœlfter, a halter.)
“A thievisher knave is not on live, more filching, no more false;
Many a truer man than he has hanged up by the halse [neck].”
Gammer Gurton.
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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.
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