284 Customs of Wishford and Barford in Gravely Forest. 



were tried, and the tenants of the surrounding hamlets acted as 

 the jury, and did suit to that court when sunnnoned by the 

 verderers. In return, they had rights of wood and pannage. Each 

 tenant who liad wood, besides serving the court, paid the ranger 

 a woodhen at Christmas. They had also to repair deer hedges, 

 and to haul timber for the lord's use. ( Wilts Arch. Mag., xxxii., 

 297-8). 



What the old custom of " Grovely and all Grovely," has grown 

 into in modern times has been sufficiently celebrated by Mr. 

 Edward Slow (now, in 1906, Mayor of Wilton), in his Wiltshire 

 Ehymes, new edition, part i., pp. 149-51. 



In an instructive 1)ook on llic Manor and Manorial Records, 

 Mr. Nathaniel J. Hone perhaps hardly does justice to Wiltshire : 

 for he does not mention the thirteenth century Custom Bx)ok of 

 Ogbourne Manor in the British Museum, and his index omits the 

 references due to Alvediston, l)erwick St. John, Fasterne,Nettleton, 

 South Newnton, and Wishford, wiiicli occur in the body of his 

 volume in the list of rolls, &c., on pp. 283-4. There he tells us 

 that there are four Court Rolls of Great Wishford, ranging from 

 1391 to 1457. I hope some local antiquary will edit them for us. 



In Wilts Arch. Mag., xxxiv., 273-4, Mr. J. U. Powell, in an 

 important paper on " South Wilts in Romano-British Times, ap- 

 proaches our present sul^ject from the point of view of the folk- 

 lorist and student of primitive religion. He mentions that at 

 Wishford " an oak bough is cut annually, formerly at Whitsuntide, 

 but since the Restoration on May 29th, and hauled down into the 

 village. It is there decked with ribbons and hung from the Church 

 tower, and the day is kept as a revel." If I rightly understand 

 his drift, he supposes that this symbol of the villagers' rights to 

 gather wood, and (hi olden times) also to pasture cattle and feed 

 swine in Grovely Forest, was associated with — or found its ex- 

 pression in — a ceremony of prehistoric cult or nature-worship. 

 The similarity of practice, such as it is, may or may not be due to 

 a mere coincidence; it may be a natural survival of what Aubrey 

 called "gentilisme " ; its preservation may be the result of deliberate 

 action on the part of the Christian missionary, according to the 



