Page:The New Forest - its history and its scenery.djvu/211

Rh 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 193