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 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.[235]
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.[236] 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,[237] and how far even Alfred and St. Swithin contributed to its pages. These are difficult questions; but I feel sure that much additional light can even yet be obtained. Sound criticism would show as much difference between our local dialects, whether even Anglian, or South, or West-Saxon, as between the Doric and Attic of Greece. I have dealt only with the broader features of the Old-English tongue, as it is still spoken in the Forest. Enough, however, I trust, has been shown of the value of provincialisms, even when collected over so limited a space. Everywhere in England we shall find Teutonic words, which are not so much the mould into which all other forms have been cast, as the living germ of our language. Mixed and imbedded with these, as we have also seen, we shall meet Keltic and Romance, by both of which our language has been so influenced and modified. Let us not be ashamed to collect them; for by them we may explain not only obscure passages in our old authors, but doubtful points in our very history.
Bushey Bratley (Another View).
CHAPTER XVII.
THE BARROWS.
The Urns in Bratley Barrow.
It is much to be regretted that Sir Walter Scott has left no account of his excavations of various barrows in the Forest. However little we may be able to determine by the evidence, or however conjectural the inferences which we may draw, there will, at least, be this value to this chapter, that it will put on record facts which otherwise could not be known.
The barrows lie scattered all over the Forest, and are known to the Foresters by the name of “butts,” some of the largest being distinguished by local appellations. As in other parts of England, and as in France, superstition connects them with the fairies; and so we find on Beaulieu Plain two mounds known as the Pixey’s Cave and Laurence’s Barrow.
My own excavations have been entirely confined to the Keltic barrows in the northern part of the Forest.[238] But we will first of all take those on Sway and Shirley Commons, opened by Warner.[239] The largest stands a little to the east of Shirley Holms, close to Fetmoor Pond, measuring about a hundred yards in circumference, and surrounded by three smaller mounds varying from thirty to fifty yards, and two more nearly indistinct. These two last are, I suspect, those opened by Warner, where, after piercing the mound, he found on the natural soil a layer of burnt earth mixed with charcoal, and below this, at the depth of two feet, a small coarse urn with “an inverted brim,”[240] containing ashes and calcined bones.