144 NOTES, CORRESPONDENCE, ETC. 
Some doubt exists as to the bird 
originally designated the Woodwall. 
With us it is undoubtedly the Green 
Woodpecker. In the glossaries 
commonly appended to Chaucer’s 
works, it is said to mean the Golden 
Oriole. The Greenfinch has also 
been set down asthe bird intended. 
*‘ The Woodwele sung, and would not cease 
Sitting upon the spraye 
So loud be waker’d Robin Hood 
In the greenwood where he lay.” 
Robin Hood. (Litson.) 
“In many places, Nightingales, 
And Alpes, and Finches, and Woodewales.” 
Romaunt of the Rose. 
The note of the Green Woodpecker 
is a hoarse laugh, rather than a 
song. The extreme rarity of the 
Golden Oriole is conclusive against 
its being the bird intended. The 
Greenfinch has been suggested, but 
its song is hardly loud enough to 
have stirred the slumbers of the 
freebooter. Though the voice of 
the former can scarcely by any 
poetic license be called song, I de- 
cline to think it the bird meant. 
Yarrell (vol. ii. p. 137,) gives some 
interesting information on the ety- 
mology of the word. Brockett, in 
his Glossary of North Country 
Words, considers it derived from 
the Saxon ‘whytel, a knife. In 
Yorkshire, and in North America, 
a whittle is a clasp knife, and to 
whittle is to cut or hack wood; the 
origin and the meaning of the 
Woodpecker’s name are therefore 
sufficiently obvious ; whytel, whit- 
tle, whetele, wood-pecker, &c.” 
Tur RepsHanx.—‘ A specimen 
of that extraordinarily rare and 
beautiful bird, the Redshank, in its 
summer plumage, has been shot 
lately, at Milton Keynes. The Red- 
shank is a native of Timor Sunda, 
and New Guinea. It has been sent 
to Mr. Mantell, Newport Pagnell, 
to be preserved.”’—Bucks Herald, 
May 15, 1869. 
CoucH-grass.—This most trouble- 
some weed, one of the farmers’ 
greatest enemies, known to botan- 
ists as Triticum repens, has a 
variety of English names. In 
Cumberland and Essex it is called 
Twitch ; in Yorkshire, Wickens; 
in Cheshire and Shropshire, Scutch; 
in our own neighbourhood, Cooch 
or Couch-grass; in North Bucks, 
Squitch : all evidently having the 
same derivation, but an obscure 
one. Inthe Norfolk name, Quicks, 
and the Warwickshire, Quicken- 
grass, we have a clue. No plant 
is more retentive of vitality than 
this Triticum repens; the smallest 
piece, left in the ground, will grow. 
All these names are but forms of 
the Anglo-Saxon word ewic, living’; 
a word with which we are familiar 
as occuring in the English Prayer- 
book version of the Apostles’ Creed, 
where “the quick” are referred to 
as opposed to “the dead.’ The 
words “quicks” and “ quickset” 
are applied to living hawthorn 
hedges as distinguished from dead- 
wood fences ; ewic-beam, the living- 
tree, was the Anglo-Saxon name 
for the Aspen (Populus tremula) 
in reference to its ever-moving 
leaves; and Quick-in-hand is an 
old name for the Touch-me-not 
Balsam (Impatiens noli-me-tangere) 
from the suddenness with which 
the seeds are dischargéd when the 
plant is handled. 
Tue First Evenine Merrine of the present (Fifth) Wrnter 
Session will be held at the house of the Prustpent, the Rev. T. A. 
Browne, on Tuesday, Nov. 9, at 6°30 p.m. 
Members desirous of reading papers at any of the Winter Meetings 
are requested to communicate with the Hon. Secretary, to whom all 
contributions for the Magazine should also be forwarded. Address :— 
James Brirren, Royal Herbarium, Kew, London, W. 
— sees 2 Se or Se 
ee Orage 
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