To coath, Skinner says, is a word common in Lincolnshire, and signifies, to faint. He derives it from the Anglo-Saxon coðe, a disease. In Dorsetshire it is in common use, but it is used of sheep only: a coathed sheep is a rotten sheep; to coath is to take the rot. Rechasing is also a term in that county appropriated to flocks: to chase and rechase is to drive sheep at certain times from one sort of ground to another, or from one parish to another.
The author having ventured to introduce some provincial and other terms, takes this occasion to say, that it is a liberty in which he has not indulged himself, but when he conceived them to be allowable for the sake of ornament or expression.
[Note 3, page 16, line 4.]
With piteous tears, so cruel was the loss.
The distressful condition of the Halswell here alluded to is thus circumstantially described in the narrative of her loss, p. 13.
“Thursday the 5th, at two in the morning, the wind came to the southward, blew fresh, and the weather was very thick; at noon Portland was seen, bearing N. by E. distance two or three leagues; at eight at night it blew a strong gale at S. and at this time the Portland lights were seen bearing N. W. distance four or five leagues, when they wore ship, and got her head to the westward; but finding they lost ground upon that tack, they wore again, and kept stretching on eastward, in hopes to have weathered Peverel-point, in which case they intended to have anchored in Studland Bay: at 11 at night it cleared, and they saw St. Alban’s-head a mile and a half to the leeward of them; upon which they took in sail immediately, and let go the small bower anchor, which brought up the ship at a whole cable, and she rode for about an hour, but then drove; they now let go the sheet anchor, and wore away a whole cable, and the ship rode for about two hours longer, when she drove again. They were then driving very fast on shore, and might expect every moment to strike!”
[Note 4, page 16, line 10.]
From Portland eastward to the Promontory.
“Not far from this (Encombe) stands St. Aldene’s Chapel; which took name from the dedication to St. Adeline, the first bishop of Sherbourne in this shire: but now it serves for a sea-mark.”—Coker’s Survey of Dorsetshire, p. 47.
“Near the sea is the high land of St. Aldhelm’s, commonly called St. Alban’s, a noted sea-mark. The cliff here is 147 yards perpendicular. On this promontory, about a mile south of Worth, stands a chapel of the same name.” Hutchins’s Dorsetsh. vol. i. p. 228. But this headland is not marked by name in Hutchins’s map. “The very utter part of St. Aldhelm’s point is five miles from Sandwich (Swanwich).”—Lel. Itin. vol. iii. p. 53.