THE FOLK-LORE AND PROVINCIALISMS.
[Illustration: Anderwood Corner.]
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,—
“I am that merry wanderer of the night,
When I a fat and bean-fed horse beguile
Neighing in likeness of a filly foal.”
(_Midsummer Night’s Dream_, Act ii., Sc. 1.)
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—
“Up and down, up and down,
I will lead them up and down;
I am feared in field and town,
Goblin, lead them up and down.”
(_Midsummer Night’s Dream_, Act iv., Sc. 2.)
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_:—
“This Puck seems but a dreaming dolt,
Still walking like a ragged colt.”
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:—
“I come a shroving, a shroving,
For a piece of pancake,
For a piece of truffle-cheese[218]
Of your own making.”
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:—
“Even ash and four-leaved clover,
You are sure your love to see
Before the day is over.”
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,—
“Under the chestnuts new bees are swarming,
Falling and rising like magical smoke.”
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:—
“Sieve upon herder,[225]
One upon the other;
Holes upon both sides,
Not all the way, though,
What may it be? See if you know.”
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,—
“A not hed had he, with a brown visage.”
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—
“But cottage, herd, or sheepcote, none he saw,
Only in a bottom saw a pleasant grove.”
(Book ii. 289.)
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_:—
“as oft as they named the Redeemer,
Lowly louted the boys, and lowly the maidens all courtesied.”
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_—
“A bytoure bumbleth in the myre,”
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:—
“At last a hunted zo ver away,
That the zun kum peping auver the hills,
And the burds wakin up they did un espy,
And wur arl in a churm az un whetted their bills.”
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:—
“Sweet is the breath of morn, her rising sweet
With charm of earliest birds.”
(_Paradise Lost_, Book iv. 642.)
And again:—
“Morn when she ascends
With charm of earliest birds.”
(_Paradise Lost_, Book iv. 651.)
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_,—
“And every shepherd tells his tale,
Under the hawthorn in the dale;”
—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:—
“Some war with rear-mice for their leathern wings.”
(_Midsummer Night’s Dream_, Act ii., sc. 3.)
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.
[Illustration: Bushey Bratley (Another View).]