Blisse of the briddes
Broughte me aslepe,
And under a lynde
Upon a launde
Leaned I.
Were the Malvern dreamer describing poetically the birth and the origin of the future Swedish nightingale who four hundred years afterwards was to entrance the world with her song, he could not have been more happy in his expression. Our ‘Ashes’ and ‘Birches,’ once ‘de la Byrche,’ need little remark, but ‘Birks,’ the harder form of the latter, is not so familiar, though it is still preserved in such names as ‘Birkenhead,’ or ‘Birkenshaw,’ or ‘Berkeley.’ A small group of trees would be equally perspicuous. Thus have arisen our ‘Twelvetrees,’ and ‘Fiveashes,’ and ‘Snooks,’ a mere corruption of the Kentish ‘Sevenoaks.’ Mr. Lower mentions ‘Quatrefages,’ that is, ‘four beeches,’ as a corresponding instance in French nomenclature.[[123]]
A common object in the country lane or by-path would be the gate or hatch that ran across the road to confine the deer. The old provincialism for this was ‘yate.’ We are told of Griselda in the ‘Clerkes Tale’ that—
With glad chere to the yate
she is gone
To grete the markisesse;