Beneath their feet, the myrtle sweet,
Was stamped in mud and gore.”
It grows in all the wet places in the Forest, and is excessively sweet, the fruit being furnished with resinous glands. It is said to be extensively used in drugging the beer in the district.
Graff, or grampher. See [Wosset].
Gross. Often used in a good sense for luxuriant, and applied to the young green crops, just as “proud,” and “rank,” or rather “ronk,” as it is pronounced, are in the Midland Counties.
Gunney. To look “gunney” means, to look archly or cunning. There is also the verb “to gunney.” “He gunneyed at me,” signifies, he looked straight at me. From the French guigner.
Hacker, furze-, The. The whinchat, so called from its note, which it utters on the sprays of the furze.
Hame. There is a curious phrase, “all to hame,” signifying, broken to pieces, used both here and in Wiltshire. Thus the glass, when broken, is said to be “all to hame,” that is, “all to bits.” The metaphor has been taken from “spindly” wheat on bad ground running to halm, from the Old-English healm, now the West-Saxon peasant’s “hame.” “All to,” I may add, is used adverbially in its old sense of entirely, quite, as we find it in Judges ix. 53.
Harl, The. The hock of a sheep.
Harvest-Lice. The seeds of the common agrimony (Agrimonia eupatoria) and “heriff” (Galium Aparine). See Clivers, chap. xv. [p. 166].