Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 3, 1892.djvu/435

 CORRESPONDENCE.

THE BUCK'S LEAP.

To the Editor of.

,—Certain farms in the west of Shropshire stand on the site of an old deer-park, and are bounded in part by the old park fence. The ditch is inside the fence, yet the obligation of keeping the fence in repair rests with the owner of the land within it, that is to say, of the former deer-park; not, as usual, with the owner of the land next to which the fence is placed. It is locally believed that the ownership of the deer-park carries with it the right to cut timber for the repair of the fence for a space of five yards from the outside of the boundary, which is called the right of the buck's leap, and has, it is said, been exercised within the memory of man.

Further. Between Wrottesley Park in Staffordshire and the adjacent Manor of Pattingham lies a belt of grassy land, a sort of green lane, leading to nowhere in particular, and called the Deerleap. The park, in which red deer were kept till the reign of Charles II, was emparked by royal licence granted to Sir Hugh de Wrottesley during the siege of Calais by Edward III. But the name of the Deerleap is far older than this, as it occurs twice in a record of the boundaries of Wrottesley in the first year of William Rufus (1088), first as "Deerspring", then as "Deer length", thus: "Hæc terra Wroteslea habet duas hidas. Hiis terminis circumcincta est. Sprynewall in Smeleheth, of Smeleheth in Dersprynge, of dersprynth in Caldewell," etc. "Et notra ubi ista prepositio 'of' dicitur, nichill aliud significatur nisi 'fro',' as, fro' Spryne-wall to