Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 5.djvu/162

 120 ON CERTAIN OBSCURE WORDS word cockshut should be applied indifferently either to the net or to the place where it was used. Those who will turn to their commented editions of Shakspere, Richard III., act v. sc. 3, will find, under the expression " cockshut time," a co- pious collection of authorities, and a warm controversy on its original meaning. All agree that the time referred to by Shakspere is the twilight; and it is evident from the older records which I have already cited that the cockshot itself was a subject of tenure ; that it, in fact, implied, as the modern cockrode does, an incorporeal privilege and profit be- longing to the grantee, of the nature of real property. The etymological attempt of the author of the Salopia Antiqua does not encourage me to enter on this dangerous field of conjecture, but I may perhaps venture to say that the prefix of the word can admit of no doubt, and that the second syllable has not yet been satisfactorily explained. The learned editor of the report of Rowe v. Brenton, Serjeant Manning, (who was the first to suggest a satisfactory expla- nation of the word in the inquisition of Earl Edmund,) con- siders that it owes its last syllable to the birds' habit of lying " concealed or shut during the day," or of taking " their flight or sUool at twilighf^." Charles Knight, in his recent edition of Sliakspere, " inclines to think it equivalent to cock-roost time, the hour at which the cock goes to rest." Unfortu- nately for this last conjecture, the cock referred to is a bird of crepuscular habits, that sleeps by day and flies by night. My friend the learned serjeant is more correct in his natural history of the bird, but I doubt whether he can shew any warrant for the use of the words "shut" or "shoot" in the sense he assigns to them, and I suspect the woodcock is a fowl more shot at, than shooting. It may be worth notice that the terminal syllable shot or s1iut, whether occurring alone (as at Shute, near Axminster, or Shutta, at Looe) o]* in composition, (as at Bagshot,) is usually spelt shete, scliefe, or sefe, in records of the thirteenth ccntnry or earlier. Thus Bramshot in Hants is Bremresete in Domesday, and the cluster of shots which are scattered over the old forestal district lying between Bagshot and Empshot arc, so far as I have been able to verify them, the shetes of an earlier period. The same termination in the Netherlands, as Aerschot, &c., is explained by Elemish antiquaries to signify an "^ 3 Manning and Ryhuurs reports, p. 'i.'Jl. (n.)