Page:The New Forest - its history and its scenery.djvu/212

Rh 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.

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. 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, and how far even Alfred and St. Swithin contributed to its pages. These are difficult questions; but I feel sure that much additional light 194