These words, however, belong more especially to the next chapter. To descend from generals to particulars, let us notice some of the verbal characteristics by which a West-Saxon population may be distinguished. As a rule it may be laid down that the West-Saxons give a soft, and the Anglians and Northmen a hard sound to all their words. Thus in the New Forest we find the West-Saxons saying burrow for barrow; haish for harsh; pleu for plough; heth for heath, instead of the “hawth” of the Eastern rapes of Sussex; mash for marsh; Gerge for George; slue for sloe, and again, for slough, the “slow” of the north; bin for been, and also being; justle for jostle, as in Nahum, ch. ii. v. 4; athert for athwart; wool for hole; ballat for ballad, or, as it is pronounced in the more northern counties, ballard; ell for eel; clot and clit for clod; stiffle for stifle; ruff for roof, and so on. Thus, too, we meet here not with Deepdene, but Dibden, spelt in Boazio’s map of 1591, Debden. No Chawton, but only Chewton occurs, no Farnham, but only Fernham and Fernhill.

The West-Saxons, too, have a peculiar drawl. So in the New Forest we may hear them saying pearts for parts; stwoane for stone; twereable for terrible; measter (mæster), instead of the Anglian “muster;” and yees instead of the Sussex “yus.” As others have also remarked, the West-Saxon substitutes a for o. So here we get lard for lord; nat for not; amang for among; knap for knop; shart for short; starm for storm; and Narmanton for Normanton. Not only this, but the West-Saxon in the New Forest substitutes a for e, as in agg for egg, and lag for leg. He not only retains the hard g, but gives a k when he can, as in kiver for cover, and aker for acorn, the “aitchorn” of the Anglian districts. Let us notice, too, that he always changes the f into a v, as vern for fern, vire for fire, evvets for effets, voam for foam, as written by Chaucer, vall for fall, and fitches for vetches, as we find it in Ezekiel, ch. iv. v. 9.

To go further into these distinctions is here impossible. As are the people so is the language. By an analysis of the published glossaries of Dorsetshire, Wiltshire, and Sussex, I find that the New Forest possesses above two-thirds of the two former, differing here and there only in pronunciation, whilst of the latter it scarcely possesses one-tenth, proving plainly that the people are West-Saxons rather than South, descendants of Cerdic more than of Ella.[208]

Turning from these minor characteristics, and looking at the people themselves as they once were, and as they now stand, much might be added as to the unequal race which the West-Saxon has run with the Anglian and the Northman, and its effect on his character. The most casual observer even, in going over so small a space as the New Forest, must have noticed how Nature has favoured the Northern and Midland counties in their sources of wealth and industry. The great home-trade of the Middle Ages has entirely deserted the South. Once, too, all our men-of-war sailed from what are now small ports on the south coast. Our fleets were manned by crews from the Isle of Wight, and Lymington, and Lyme, and the neighbouring harbours. The seamanship of the West-Country was England’s right arm.[209] But now the iron fields of Staffordshire have put out the furnaces. The coal mines of Durham have destroyed the charcoal trade, and taken away the seamanship. The brine-pits of Cheshire have dried up the salterns which covered the south-western shores. Of course, this loss of material prosperity has told on the intelligence and morals of the district.

In the New Forest itself, till within the last thirty years, smuggling was a recognized calling. Lawlessness was the rule during the last century. Warner says that he had then seen twenty or thirty waggons laden with kegs, guarded by two or three hundred horsemen, each bearing two or three “tubs,” coming over Hengistbury Head, making their way, in the open day, past Christchurch to the Forest. At Lymington, a troop of bandits took possession of the well-known Ambrose Cave, on the borders of the Forest, and carried on, not only smuggling, but wholesale burglary. The whole country was plundered. The soldiers were at last called out, the men tracked, and the cave entered. Booty to an enormous extent was found. The captain turned King’s evidence, and confessed that he had murdered upwards of thirty people, whose bodies had been thrown down a well, where they were found.[210]

Such was the state of the New Forest in the last century. But as recently as thirty or forty years ago every labourer was either a poacher or a smuggler, very often a combination of the two. Boats were built from the Forest timber in many a barn; and to this day various fields far inland are still called “the dock-yard mead.” Crews of Foresters, armed with “swingels,” such as the West-Saxons of Somerset fought with in the battle of Sedgemoor, defied the coastguard. The principal “runs” were made at Beckton and Chewton Bunnies, and the Gangway. Often as many as a hundred “tubs,” each containing four gallons, and worth two or three guineas, or even more, would be run in a night. Each man would carry two or three of these kegs, one slung in front and two behind; or if the cliff was very steep, a chain of men was formed, and the tubs passed from hand to hand.

All this has been done within the memory of people not so very old. Men were killed at Milton. Old Becton Bunny House was burnt to the ground. A keg was carelessly broached, and the spirit caught fire from the spark of a pipe. Every person was in fact engaged in smuggling:—some for profit, many merely from a love of adventure. Everywhere was understood the smuggler’s local proverb, “Keystone under the hearth, keystone under the horse’s belly.”[211]

Now nothing either in smuggling or poaching is to any extent attempted. In the one case the crime is unprofitable, in the other the temptation is withdrawn. Labour, too, is more plentiful, and the Government works of draining and planting in the Forest employ most of the Foresters.

Many a man, however, can still tell how he has baited a hook, tied to a bough, with apples to snare the deer; how he has pared the faun’s hoof to keep the doe in one place, till he wanted to kill her. But now the deer are all gone, except a few, only seen now and then, wandering about in the wildest and loneliest parts. As to re-stocking the Forest, we can only say, with good Bishop Hoadley, respecting Waltham Chace,—“the deer have already done enough mischief.”

CHAPTER XVI.
THE FOLK-LORE AND PROVINCIALISMS.

Intimately bound up with the race are of course the folk-lore of a district, and what we are now pleased to call provincialisms, but which are more properly nationalisms, showing us the real texture of our language; and in every way preferable to the Latin and Greek hybridisms, which are daily coined to suit the exigencies of commerce or science.

Provincialisms are, in fact, when properly looked at, not so much portions of the original foundations of a language, as the very quarry out of which it is hewn. And as if to compensate for much of the harm she has done, America has wrought one great good in preserving many a pregnant Old-English word, which we have been foolish enough to disown.[212] Provincialisms should be far more studied than they are; for they will help us to settle many a difficult point,—where was the boundary of the Anglian and the Frisian? how far on the national character was the influence of the Dane felt? how much, and in what way, did the Norman affect the daily business of life?

Still more important is a country’s folk-lore, as showing the higher mental faculties of the race, in those legends and snatches of song, and fragments of popular poetry, which speak the popular feeling, and which not only contain its past history, but foreshadow the future literature of a country; in those proverbs, too, which tell the life and employment of a nation; and those superstitions which give us such an insight into its moral state.

Throughout the West of England still linger some few stray waifs and legends of the past. In the New Forest Sir Bevis of Southampton is no mythical personage, and the peasant will tell how the Knight used to take his afternoon’s walk, across the Solent, from Leap to the Island.

Here in the Forest still dwell fairies. The mischievous sprite, Laurence, still holds men by his spell and makes them idle. If a peasant is lazy, it is proverbially said, “Laurence has got upon him,” or, “He has got a touch of Laurence.” He is still regarded with awe, and barrows are called after him. Here, too, in the Forest still lives Shakspeare’s Puck, a veritable being, who causes the Forest colts to stray, carrying out word for word Shakspeare’s description,—

This tricksy fairy, so the Forest peasant to this hour firmly believes, inhabits the bogs, and draws people into them, making merry, and laughing at their misfortunes, fulfilling his own roundelay—

Only those who are eldest born are exempt from his spell. The proverb of “as ragged as a colt Pixey” is everywhere to be heard, and at which Drayton seems to hint in his Court of Faerie:—

He does not, however, in the Forest, so much skim the milk, or play pranks with the chairs, but, as might be expected from the nature of the country, misleads people on the moors, turning himself into all sorts of shapes, as Shakspeare, Spenser, and Jonson, have sung. There is scarcely a village or hamlet in the Forest district which has not its “Pixey Field,” and “Pixey Mead,” or its “Picksmoor,” and “Cold Pixey,” and “Puck Piece.” At Prior’s Acre we find Puck’s Hill, and not far from it lies the great wood of Puckpits; whilst a large barrow on Beaulieu Common is known as the Pixey’s Cave.[213]

Then, too, on the south-west borders of the Forest remains the legend, its inner meaning now perhaps forgotten, that the Priory Church of Christchurch was originally to have been built on the lonely St. Catherine’s Hill, instead of in the valley where the people lived and needed religion. The stones, however, which were taken up the hill in the day were brought down in the night by unseen hands. The beams, too, which were found too short on the heights, were more than long enough in the town. The legend further runs, beautiful in its right interpretation, that when the building was going on, there was always one more workman—namely, Christ—than came on the pay-night.

So, too, the poetry of the district has its own characteristics, which it shares with that of the neighbouring western counties. The homeliness of the songs in the West of England strangely contrasts with the wild spirit of those of the North, founded as the latter so often are on the border forays and raids of former times. None which I have collected are direct enough in their bearing on the New Forest to warrant quotation, and I must content myself with this general expression.[214]

To pass on to other matters, let us notice some of the superstitions of the New Forest. No one is now so superstitious, because no one is so ignorant as the West-Saxon. One of the commonest remedies for consumption in the Forest is the “lungs of oak,” a lichen (Sticta pulmonaria) which grows rather plentifully on the oak trees; and it is no unfrequent occurrence for a poor person to ask at a chemist’s shop for a “pennyworth of lungs of oak.” So, too, for weak eyes, “brighten,” another lichen, is recommended. I do not know, however, that we must find so much fault in this matter, as the lichens were not very long ago favourite prescriptions with even medical men.

Again, another remedy for various diseases used to be the scrapings from Sir John Chydioke’s alabaster figure, in the Priory Church of Christchurch, which has, in consequence, been sadly injured. A specific, however, for consumption is still to kill a jay and place it in the embers till calcined, when it is then drunk at stated times in water. Hares’ brains are recommended for infants prematurely born. Children suffering from fits are, or rather were, passed through cloven ash-trees. Bread baked on Good Friday will not only keep seven years, but is a remedy for certain complaints. The seventh son of a seventh son can perform cures. In fact, a pharmacopœia of such superstitions might be compiled.

The New Forest peasant puts absolute faith in all traditions, believing as firmly in St. Swithin as his forefathers did when the saint was Bishop of Winchester; turns his money, if he has any, when he sees the new moon; fancies that a burn is a charm against leaving the house; that witches cannot cross over a brook; that the death’s-head moth was only first seen after the execution of Charles I.; that the man in the moon was sent there for stealing wood from the Forest—a superstition, by the way, mentioned in a slightly different form by Reginald Pecock, Bishop of Chichester, in the fifteenth century.[215] And the “stolen bush,” referred to by Caliban in the Tempest (Act ii. sc. 2), and Bottom in the Midsummer Night’s Dream (Act vi. sc. 1), is still here called the “nitch,” or bundle of faggots.[216]

Not only this, but the barrows on the plains are named after the fairies, and the peasant imagines, like the treasure-seekers of the Middle-Ages, that they contain untold wealth, and that the Forest wells are full of gold.[217]

I do not mean, however, to say that these beliefs are openly avowed, or will even be acknowledged by the first labourer who may be seen. The English peasant is at all times excessively chary—no one perhaps more so—of expressing his full mind; and a long time is required before a stranger can, if ever, gain his confidence. But I do say that these superstitions are all, with more or less credit, held in different parts of the Forest, although even many who believe them the firmest would shrink, from fear of ridicule, to confess the fact. Education has done something to remove them; but they have too firm a hold to be easily uprooted. They may not be openly expressed, but they are, for all that, to my certain knowledge, still latent.

Old customs and ceremonies still linger. Mummers still perform at Christmas. Old women “go gooding,” as in other parts of England, on St. Thomas’s Day. Boys and girls “go shroving” on Ash Wednesday; that is, begging for meat and drink at the farm-houses, singing this rude snatch:—

When, if nothing is given, they throw stones and shards at the door.[219]

Plenty, too, of old love superstitions remain—about ash boughs with an even number of leaves, and “four-leaved” clover, concerning which runs a Forest rhyme:—

Then, too, we must not forget the Forest proverbs. “Wood Fidley rain,” “Hampshire and Wiltshire moon-rakers,” and “Keystone under the hearth,” have already been noticed. But there are others such as “As yellow as a kite’s claw,” “An iron windfall,” for anything unfairly taken, “All in a copse,” that is, indistinct, “A good bark-year makes a good wheat-year,” and “Like a swarm of bees all in a charm,” explained further on, which show the nature of the country. Again, “A poor dry thing, let it go,” a sort of poacher’s euphemism, like, “The grapes are sour,” is said of the Forest hares when the dogs cannot catch them, and so applied to things which are coveted but out of reach. “As bad as Jeffreys” preserves, as throughout the West of England, the memory of one who, instead of being the judge, should have been the hangman. Again, too, “Eat your own side, speckle-back,” is a common Forest expression, and is used in reference to greedy people. It is said to have taken its origin from a girl who shared her breakfast with a snake, and thus reproved her favourite when he took too much. Again, “To rattle like a boar in a holme bush,” is a thorough proverb of the Forest district, where a “holme” bush means an old holly. Passing, however, from particulars to generals, let me add for the last, “There is but one good mother-in-law, and she is dead.” I have never heard it elsewhere in England, but doubtless it is common enough. It exactly corresponds with the German saying, “There is no good mother-in-law but she that wears a green gown,” that is, who lies in the churchyard. The shrewdness and humour of a people are never better seen than in their proverbs.

Further, there are plenty of local sayings, such as “The cuckoo goes to Beaulieu Fair to buy him a greatcoat,” referring to the arrival of the cuckoo about the 15th of April, whilst the day on which the fair is held is known as the “cuckoo day.” A similar proverb is to be found in nearly every county. So, also, the saying with regard to Burley and its crop of mast and acorns may be met in the Midland districts concerning Pershore and its cherries. Like all other parts of England, the Forest is full, too, of those sayings and adages, which are constantly in the mouths of the lower classes, so remarkable for their combination of both terseness and metaphor. To give an instance, “He won’t climb up May Hill,” that is, he will not live through the cold spring. Again, “A dog is made fat in two meals,” is applied to upstart or purse-proud people. But it is dangerous to assign them to any particular district, as by their applicability they have spread far and wide.

One or two historical traditions, too, still linger in the Forest, but their value we have seen with regard to the death of the Red King. Thus, the peasant will tell of the French fleet, which, in June, 1690, lay off the Needles, and of the Battle of Beachy Head—its cannonading heard even in the Forest—but who fought, or why, he is equally ignorant. One tradition, however, ought to be told concerning the terrible winter of 1787, still known in the Forest as “the hard year.” My informant, an old man, derived his knowledge from his father, who lived in the Forest in a small lonely farm-house. The storm began in the night; and when his father rose in the morning he could not, on account of the snow-drift, open the door. Luckily, a back room had been converted into a fuel-house, and his wife had laid in a stock of provisions. The storm still increased. The straggling hedges were soon covered; and by-and-by the woods themselves disappeared. After a week’s snow, a heavy frost followed. The snow hardened. People went out shooting, and wherever a breathing-hole in the snow appeared, fired, and nearly always killed a hare.[220] The snow continued on the ground for seven weeks; and when it melted, the stiffened bodies of horses and deer covered the plains.[221]

And now for a few of the Forest words and expressions, many of which are very peculiar. Take, for instance, the term “shade,” which here has nothing in common with the shadows of the woods, but means either a pool or an open piece of ground, generally on a hill top, where the cattle in the warm weather collect, or, as the phrase is, “come to shade,” for the sake of the water in the one and the breeze in the other. Thus “Ober Shade” means nothing more than Ober pond; whilst “Stony Cross Shade” is a mere turfy plot. At times as many as a hundred cows or horses are collected together in one of these places, where the owners, or “Forest marksmen,” always first go to look after a strayed animal. Nearly every “Walk” in the Forest has its own “Shade,” called after its own name, and we find the term used as far back as a perambulation of the Forest in the twenty-second year of Charles II., where is mentioned “the Green Shade of Biericombe or Bircombe.”

It affords a good illustration of how words grow in their meaning, and imperceptibly pass from one stage to another. It originally signified nothing but a shadow, and then the place where the shadow rests. In this second meaning it more particularly became associated with the idea of coolness, but gradually, whilst acquiring that idea, quite contrary to Milton’s “unpierced shade” (Paradise Lost, B. iv. 245), lost the notion of that coolness being caused by the interception of light and heat. In this sense it was transferred to any place which was cool, and so at last applied, as in the New Forest, to bare spots without a tree, deriving their coolness either from the breeze or the water.

Another instance of the gradual change in the meaning of words amongst provincialisms may be found in “scale,” or “squoyle.” In the New Forest it properly signifies a short stick loaded at one end with lead, answering to the “libbet” of Sussex, and is distinguished from a “snog,” which is only weighted with wood. With it also is employed the verb “to squoyle,” better known in reference to the old sport of “cock-squoyling.” From throwing at the squirrel the word was used in reference to persons, so that “Don’t squoyle at me” at length meant, “Do not slander me.” Lastly, the phrase, now still common, “Don’t throw squoyles at me,” comes by that forced interpretation of obtaining a sense, which nearly always reverses the original meaning, to signify, “Do not throw glances at me.” And so in the New Forest at this day “squoyles” not unfrequently mean glances.

There is, too, the word “hat,” which in the Forest takes the place of “clump,” and is nearly equivalent to the Sussex expression, “a toll of trees.” I have no doubt whatever that the word had its origin in the high-crowned hats of the Puritans, the “long crown” of the proverb; and in the first place referred only to tall isolated clumps of trees. Now, however, it does not merely mean a clump or ring, as the “seven firs” between Burley and Ringwood, and Birchen, and Dark Hats, near Lyndhurst, but any small irregular mass of trees, as the Withy Bed Hat in the valley near Boldrewood.

Then of course, in connection with the Forest trees, many peculiar words occur. The flower of the oak is called “the trail,” and the oak-apple the “sheets axe,”—children carrying it on the twenty-ninth of May, and calling out the word in derision to those who are not so provided. The mast and acorns are collectively known as “the turn out,” or “ovest;”[222] whilst the badly-grown or stunted trees are called “bustle-headed,” equivalent to the “oak-barrens” of America.

Other words there are, too, all proclaiming the woody nature of the country. The tops of the oaks are termed, when lopped, the “flitterings,” corresponding to the “batlins” of Suffolk. The brush-wood is still occasionally Chaucer’s “rise,” or “rice,” connected with the German reis; and the beam tree, on account of its silvery leaves, the “white rice.”[223] Frith, too, still means copse-wood. The stem of the ivy is the “ivy-drum.” Stumps of trees are known as “stools,” and a “stooled stick” is used in opposition to “maiden timber,” which has never been touched with the axe; whilst the roots are called “mocks,” “mootes,” “motes,” and “mores.” But about these last, which are all used with nice shades of difference, we shall have, further on, something to say.

Nor must we forget the bees which are largely kept throughout the Forest, feeding on the heather, leading Fuller to remark that Hampshire produced the best and worst honey in England. The bee-season, as it is called, generally lasts, on account of the heath, a month longer than on the Wiltshire downs. A great quantity of the Old-English mead—medu—is still made, and it is sold at much the same value as with the Old-English, being three or four times the price of common beer, with which it is often drunk. The bees, in fact, still maintain an important place in the popular local bye-laws. Even in Domesday the woods round Eling are mentioned as yearly yielding twelve pounds’ weight of honey. As may therefore be expected, when we remember that the whole of England was once called the Honey Island, here, as elsewhere, plenty of provincialisms occur concerning the bees.[224]

The drones are here named “the big bees,” the former word being in some parts seldom used. The young are never said to swarm, but “to play,” the word taking its origin from their peculiar flight at the time: as Patmore writes,—

The caps of straw which are placed over the “bee-pots,” to protect them from wet, are known as the “bee-hackles,” or “bee-hakes.” This is one of those expressive words which is now only found in this form, and that, in the Midland Counties, of “wheat hackling,” that is, covering the sheaves with others in a peculiar way, to shelter them from the rain. About the honeycombs, or, as they are more commonly called, “workings,” the following rhyme exists:—

The entrance for the bees into the hive is here, as in Cambridgeshire and some other counties, named the “tee-hole,” evidently an onomatopoieia, from the buzzing or “teeing” noise, as it is locally called, which the bees make. The piece of wood placed under the “bee-pots,” to give the bees more room, is known as “the rear,” still also, I believe, in use in America. The old superstition, I may notice, is here more or less believed, that the bees must be told if any death happens in a family, or they will desert their hives. It is held, too, rather, perhaps, as a tradition than a law, that if a swarm of bees flies away the owner cannot claim them, unless, at the time, he has made a noise with a kettle or tongs to give his neighbours notice. It is on such occasions that the phrase “Low brown” may be heard, meaning that the bees, or the “brownies,” as they are called, are to settle low.

So also of the cattle, which are turned out in the Forest, we find some curious expressions. A “shadow cow” is here what would in other places be called “sheeted,” or “saddle-backed,” that is, a cow whose body is a different colour to its hind and fore parts.[226] A “huff” of cattle means a drove or herd, whilst the cattle, which are entered in the marksman’s books, are said to be “wood-roughed.” A cow without horns is still called a “not cow” (hnot), exactly corresponding to the American “humble” or “bumble cow,” that is, shorn, illustrating, as Mr. Akerman notices,[227] Chaucer’s line,—

In the Forest, too, as in all other districts, a noticeable point is the number of words formed by the process of onomatopoieia. Thus, to take a few examples, we have the expressive verb to “scroop,” meaning to creak, or grate, as a door does on rusty hinges; and again the word “hooi,” applied to the wind whistling round a corner, or through the key-hole, making the sound correspond to the sense. It exactly represents the harsh creaking, as the Latin susurrus and the ψιθύρισμα of Theocritus reflect the whisperings of the wind in the pines and poplars, resembling, as Tennyson says, “a noise of falling showers.” Again, such words as “clocking,” “gloxing,” applied to falling, gurgling water; “grizing,” and “snaggling,” said of a dog snarling; “whittering,” or “whickering”—exactly equivalent to the German wiehern—of a young colt’s neighing; “belloking,” of a cow’s lowing—are all here commonly used, and are similarly formed. Names of animals take their origin in the same way. The wry-neck, called the “barley-bird” in Wiltshire, and the “cuckoo’s mate” and “messenger” elsewhere, is in the Forest known as the “weet-bird,” from its peculiar cry of “weet;” which it will repeat at short intervals for an hour together. So, too, the common green woodpecker is here, as is in some other parts of England, called, from its loud shrill laugh, the “yaffingale.” The goat-sucker, too, is the “jar-bird,” so known from its jarring noise, which has made the Welsh peasant name it the “wheel-bird” (aderyn y droell), and the Warwickshire the “spinning-jenny.” In fact, a large number of birds in every language are thus called, and to this day in the cry of the peacock we may plainly hear its Greek name, ταῶς.

Of course, we must be on our guard against adopting the onomatopoëtic theory as altogether explaining the origin of language. Within, however, certain limits, especially with a peculiar class of provincialisms, it gives us, as here, true aid.[228]

Again, as an example of phrases used by our Elizabethan poets, preserved only by our peasantry, though in good use in America, take the word “bottom,” so common throughout the Forest, meaning a valley, glen, or glade. Beaumont and Fletcher and Shakspeare frequently employ it. Even Milton, in Paradise Regained, says—

In his Comus, too, we find him using the compound “bottom-glade,” just as the Americans speak to this day of the “bottom-lands” of the Ohio, and our own peasants of Slufter Bottom, and Longslade Bottom, in the New Forest.

“Heft,” too, is another similar instance of an Old-English word in good use in America and to be found in the best American authors, but here in England only employed by our rustics. To “heft” (from hebban, with the inflexions, hefest, “hefð,” still used), signifies to lift, with the implied meaning of weighing. So, “to heft the bee-pots,” is to lift them in order to feel how much honey they contain. The substantive “heft” is used for weight, as, “the heft of the branches.”

Again, also, the good Old-English word “loute” (lutan), to bend, bow, and so to touch the hat, to be heard every day in the Forest, though nearly forgotten elsewhere in England, may be found in Longfellow’s Children of the Lord’s Supper:—

In fact, one-half of the words which are considered Americanisms are good Old-English words, which we have been foolish enough to discard.

Let us now take another class of words, which will help to explain difficult or corrupt passages in our poets. There is, for instance, the word “bugle” (buculus), meaning an ox (used, as Mr. Wedgwood[229] notices, in Deut. xiv. in the Bible, 1551), which is forgotten even by the peasantry, and only to be seen, as at Lymington and elsewhere, on a few inn-signs, with a picture sometimes of a cow, by way of explanation. I have more than once thought, that when Rosalind, in As You Like It (Act iii., sc. 5), speaks of Phœbe’s “bugle eyeballs,” she means not merely her sparkling eyes, as the notes say, but rather her large, expressive eyes, in the sense in which Homer calls Herê βοῶπις.

To give another illustration of the value of provincialisms in such cases, let us take the word “bumble,” which not only in the New Forest means, in its onomatopoëtic sense, to buzz, hum, or boom, as in the common proverb, “to bumble like a bee in a tar-tub,” and as Chaucer says, in The Wife of Bath’s Tale—

but is also used of people stumbling or halting. Probably, in The Merry Wives of Windsor (Act iii., sc. 3), in the passage which has been of such difficulty to the commentators, where Mrs. Ford says to the servants, who are carrying Falstaffe in the buck-basket—“Look, how you drumble,” which has no meaning at all, we should, instead, read this word. It, at all events, not only conveys good sense, but is the exact kind of word which the passage seems to expect.

Again, the compound “thiller-horse,” from the Old-English “þill,” a beam or shaft, and so, literally, the shaft-horse, which we find in Shakspeare under the form of “thill-horse” (Merchant of Venice, Act ii., sc. 2), is here commonly used.

Then there are other forms among provincialisms which give such an insight into the formation of language, and show the common mind of the human race. Thus, take the word “three-cunning,”[230] to be heard every day in the Forest, where three has the signification of intensity, just as the Greek τρίς in composition in the compounds τρίσμακαρ, τρισάθλιος, and other forms. So, too, the missel-thrush is called the “bull-thrush,” with the meaning of size attached to the word, as it is more commonly to our own “horse,” and the Greek ἵππος, and the Old-English hrefen, raven, in composition.

As might be expected, from what we have seen of the population of the Forest, the Romance element in its provincialisms is very small. Some few words, such as “merry,” for a cherry; “fogey,” for passionate; “futy,” for foolish; “rue,” for a hedge; “glutch,” to stifle a sob—have crept in, besides such Forest terms as verderer, regarder, agister, agistment, &c., but the majority are Teutonic. Old-English inflexions, too, still remain. Such plurals as placen, housen, peasen, gripen, fuzzen, ashen, and hosen, as we find in Daniel, ch. iii. v. 21; such perfects as crope, from creep; lod, from lead; fotch, from fetch; and such phrases as “thissum” (“þissum”), and “thic” for that, are daily to be heard.

Let us, for instance, take the adjective vinney, evidently from the Old-English finie, signifying, in the first place, mouldy; and, since mould is generally blue or purplish, having gradually attached to it the signification of colour. Thus we find the mouldy cheese not only named “vinney,” but a roan heifer called a “vinney heifer.” The most singular part, however, as exemplifying the changes of words, remains to be told. Since cheese, from its colour, was called “vinney,” the word was applied to some particular cheese, which was mouldier and bluer than others, and the adjective was thus changed into a substantive. And we now have “vinney,” and the tautology, “blue vinney,” as the names of a particular kind of cheese as distinguished from the other local cheeses, known as “ommary” and “rammel.”[231]

So also with the word “charm,” or rather “churm,” signifying, in the first place, noise or disturbance, from the Old-English cyrm. We meet it every day in the common Forest proverb, “Like a swarm of bees all in a churm,” whilst the fowlers on the coast talk also of the wild ducks “being in a churm,” when they are in confusion, flapping their wings before they settle or rise. We find it, too, in the old Wiltshire song of the “Owl’s Mishap,” to be sometimes heard on the northern borders of the Forest:—

The word was doubtless in the first place an onomatopoieia, denoting the humming, buzzing sound of wings. Since, however, it was particularly connected with birds, it seems to have been used in the sense of music and song by our Elizabethan poets, and by Milton. Thus:—

And again:—

Here, however, in the New Forest, we find the original signification of the word preserved.

Let us further notice one or two more words, which are used by Milton and his contemporaries, and even much later, but which are now found in the Forest, and doubtless elsewhere, as mere provincialisms. Thus, though we do not meet his “tale,” in the sense of number, as in L’Allegro,—

—that is, number of sheep: we find its allied word “toll,” to count. “I toll ten cows,” is no very uncommon expression. Then, too, we have the word “tole,” used, as I believe it still is in America, of enticing animals, and thus metaphorically applied to other matters. So, in this last sense, Milton speaks of the title of a book, “Hung out like a toling sign-post to call passengers.”[232]

Again, too, the bat is here called “rere-mouse” (from the Old-English hrere-mus, from hreran to flutter, literally the fluttering mouse, the exact equivalent of the German Flitter-maus[233]), with its varieties rennie-mouse and reiny-mouse,[234] whilst the adjective “rere” is sometimes used, as in Wiltshire, for raw. On the other hand, the word fliddermouse, or, as in the eastern division of Sussex, flindermouse (from the High-German fledermaus), does not, to my knowledge, occur. In the Midland counties it is often known as “leathern wings” (compare ledermus); and thus, Shakspeare, with his large vocabulary, using up every phrase and metaphor which he ever met, makes Titania say of her fairies:—

To take a few words common, not only to the New Forest, but to various parts of the West of England, we shall see how strong is the Old-English element here in the common speech. The housewife still baits (betan, literally to repair, and so, when joined with fyr, to light) the fire, and on cold days makes it blissy (connected with blysa, a torch). The crow-boy in the spring sets up a gally-bagger (gælan, in its last meaning to terrify), instead of the “maukin” of the north, to frighten away the birds from the seed; and the shepherd still tends his chilver-lamb (cilferlamb) in the barton (bere tun, literally the barley enclosure). The labourer still sits under the lew (hleow, or “hleowð,” shelter, warmth) of the hedge, which he has been ethering (“eðer,” a hedge); and drives the stout (stut, a gadfly) away from his horses; and feels himself lear (lærnes, emptiness), before he eats his nammit (nón-mete), or his dew-bit (deaw-bite).

If we will only open our Bible we shall there find many an old word which could be better explained by the Forest peasants than any one else. Here the ploughman still talks of his “dredge,” or rather “drudge,” that is, oats mixed with barley, just as we find the word used in the marginal reading of Job xxiv. v. 6. Here, too, as in Amos (chap. iv., v. 9), and other places, the caterpillar is called the “palmer-worm.” Here, also, as in other parts of England, the word “lease,” from the Old-English lesan, is far commoner than glean, and is used just as we find it in Wycliffe’s Bible, Lev. xix., 10:—“In thi vyneyeerd the reysonus and cornes fallynge down thou shalt not gedere, but to pore men and pilgrimes to ben lesid thou shalt leeve.” The goatsucker is known, as we have seen, not only as the “jar-bird,” but as the “night-hawk,” as in Leviticus (chap. xi., v. 16) and Deuteronomy (chap. xiv., v. 15); and also the “night-crow,” as we find it called in Barker’s Bible (1616) in the same passages. So also the word “mote,” in the well-known passage in St. Matthew (chap. viii., v. 3), is not here obsolete. The peasant in the Forest speaks of the “motes,” that is, the stumps and roots of trees, in opposition to the smaller “mores,” applied also to the fibres of ferns and furze, whilst the sailor on the coast calls the former “mootes,” when he dredges them up in the Channel.[235]

With this I must stop. I will only add that the study of the West Saxon dialect in the counties of Hants, Wilts, and Dorset, is all-important. As we go westward we shall find it less pure, and more mixed with Keltic. As is well known, the Britons lived with the Old-English in perfect harmony in Exeter. Their traces remain there to this day. In these three counties, therefore, are the most perfect specimens of the West-Saxon dialect to be found. Mr. Thorpe has noticed in the Old-English text of Orosius, which is now generally ascribed to Alfred, the change of a into o and o into a, and also the same peculiarity in Alfred’s Boethius.[236] This we have already, in the last chapter, seen to be purely West-Saxon. I have no doubt whatever that at even the present day it is not too late to find other points of similarity, and make still clearer the West-Saxon origin of the Corpus Christi manuscript of the Chronicle,[237] and how far even Alfred and St. Swithin contributed to its pages. These are difficult questions; but I feel sure that much additional light can even yet be obtained. Sound criticism would show as much difference between our local dialects, whether even Anglian, or South, or West-Saxon, as between the Doric and Attic of Greece. I have dealt only with the broader features of the Old-English tongue, as it is still spoken in the Forest. Enough, however, I trust, has been shown of the value of provincialisms, even when collected over so limited a space. Everywhere in England we shall find Teutonic words, which are not so much the mould into which all other forms have been cast, as the living germ of our language. Mixed and imbedded with these, as we have also seen, we shall meet Keltic and Romance, by both of which our language has been so influenced and modified. Let us not be ashamed to collect them; for by them we may explain not only obscure passages in our old authors, but doubtful points in our very history.