Page:The New Forest - its history and its scenery.djvu/200

Rh 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, and was thus 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 182