280 Selwood Forest. 
repeats it, and gives the speech of the old woman in Latin, which 
some wag has translated into the vulgar tongue of Wiltshire, and 
it runs thus :— 
“Cas’n thee mind theeck ceaks, and doossen thee see ’em burn; 
I’m bound thee’ll eat ’em fast enough, as zoon as ‘tis thy turn.” 
I will not pledge myself positively to the fact of this scene having 
taken place in that part of Wiltshire near us which we now know 
by the name of Selwood, because our neighbours in Somerset have 
a tradition that it belongs to the neighbourhood of Athelney: but 
whether here or there, it is a story of the district anciently called 
Selwoodshire. 
We now emerge from the Egyptian darkness of very early times, 
in which I have only been able to find one er two odds and ends of 
Selwood history, and we come to the time of the Norman and first 
Plantagenet Kings, where we get some light upon the subject of 
forests, from the laws and statutes of the realm, as well as from 
private records that have survived. These laws of the realm explain 
to us what was meant by a forest. It did not mean merely woody, 
park-like ground, but it meant a certain large district, within which 
the King’s game, the deer, were sacred, and no one but the King, 
his officer, or any one to whom he gave license, dared to touch them. 
It was therefore, a district under the forest law. Saving certain 
privileges claimed by the Crown, the land belonged, just as it does 
now, to any number of proprietors, great or small. There were 
within the district, farms, woods, &c., just as now, but the King’, 
exclusive right to the deer ran over all. More than this, the very 
trees on an estate, though they belonged to the landlords, still could 
not be cut down without license from the Crown, because trees were 
a shelter to the King’s deer. There is an old letter at Longleat 
from Sir Thomas Thynne’s bailiff in James the First’s reign, com- 
plaining that he had set some men to cut down timber in a copse. 
They had cut down two trees, when they were suddenly stopped by 
the Crown forester. The Longleat bailiff did not quite understand 
that, and was refractory, but he had to yield. The King’s forester 
hated large dogs, because they disturbed the deer, und there was 
