"Blissing halles, chambres, kitchines and boures."
Somewhat later we find a poetical extension of the word to include not only the dwellings of human beings but also of animals and birds. Thus William Dunbar, a Scottish poet who lived about 1465–1530, speaking of birds hidden within thickets, used the phrase "within their bouris." This usage gave rise to the idea that the word was derived from "bough," a notion that seems to have first found expression in the anonymous "Letters of Junius," and shortly afterwards received the weighty sanction of Dr. Johnson. In Southey's "Curse of Kehama" the word in this sense is made to do duty as a verb:
"And through the leafy cope which bowered it o'er
Came gleams of chequered light."
The metaphorical use of the word in its original sense is seen in Moore's "Evenings in Greece":
"Fancy, who hath no present home,
But builds her bower in scenes to come."
The suggestion that Rosamond's Bower was of the nature of a hedge maze seems to be of rather late origin, probably arising in the seventeenth century, like the application of the term to the little hedge-box garden at Menteith (Queen Mary's Bower), to which we referred in Chapter XIII. In the earlier writers it is almost invariably spoken of as a building. Robert Fabyan, for instance, a historian of the late sixteenth century, speaks of it as a "house named Labyrinthus or Daedalus worke, or howse wroughte like unto a knot in a garden called a maze," and in some anonymous verses of the mid-fifteenth century it is stated:
"Att Wodestocke for hure he made a toure
That is called Rosemoundes boure."
It would appear that the Bower which is commemorated in the place-name of Havering-at-Bower, Essex, was also of the nature of a building, probably of large dimensions, for, according to an "Appendix on Bowers" annexed to an "Essay on Design in Gardening," by George Mason, 1795, there was a long-standing tradition to the effect that it was the site of a king's residence, and an old man of the locality could remember "many chimnies of the old bower standing." This may or may not be evidence, but it is at all events quite in keeping with the ancient use of the word. The royal residence in question would no doubt have been of the nature of a private retreat, not a court.
Writing in 1827, the Rev. H. J. Todd says, "In Cumberland, to this day, a back room or parlour is called a boor."
It will be seen from the remark of John Aubrey quoted on page [136] that he assumed "borough" to be identical in origin with "bower." The former is, however, derived from the Anglo-Saxon burg or burh, a city, allied to beorgan, to protect.