Skins having bristly hair like that of goats. (Hircipilus—i.e. “goat’s hair.” (Festus.) A fell is Anglo-Saxon for “skin,” like the Latin pell-is, English peel. Thus we say still a “wool-fell.” Shakespeare speaks of “a fell of hair” (Macbeth, v. 5). Fellmonger, a dealer in skins.
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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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