The name familiarly given in the British Army to the old flint-lock musket. (Brown Musket was in earlier use: both names existed long before the process of ‘browning’ the barrel (introduced in 1808), and apparently referred to the brown walnut stock.)
[1708. Mrs. Centlivre, Busie Body, I. i. 13. My last Refuge, a brown Musquet.
1754. Connoisseur, No. 31. The ceremony is performed by a brown musket.]
1785. Grose, Dict. Vulgar T., s.v., To hug brown Bess: to carry a firelock, to serve as a private soldier.
1797. Gent. Mag., LXVII. 1022/2. [‘Etymologus’ asks] Can you trace the application of the term Brown Bess to any thing loading or fatiguing, such as a musket to soldiers tired on a long march, or to a wooden pump in a brewhouse? Or is it confined to wooden burdens only, and derived from the colour of the material? Why is Bess the more favourite term than Nan or Moll? A brown musket is not an uncommon phrase, taking the part for the whole, the stock for the steel. But why is Bess brought in?
1809. R. Porter, Trav. Sk. Russ. & Swed. (1813), I. xxiv. 273. A good soldier … sleeping with his hand on his musquet, his wedded wife and dear brown Bess.
1820. Combe (Dr. Syntax), Consol., ii. (1868), 149/2 (D.).
| Religion Jack did ne’er profess, | |
| Till he had shoulder’d old Brown Bess. |
1860. Gen. P. Thompson, Audi Alt., III. cxix. 61. Without more danger from Enfield or Whitworth than from Brown Bess.
c. 1880. Grant, Hist. India, I. v. 26/1. Britons with their old ‘brown Besses.’
