462 PiciD^. 



which renders the conjecture very unlikely. On the other 

 hand " Woodwale" or " Woodwall" maybe traced from "Wit- 

 wall," as found in Hollyband's ' Dictionarie ', before quoted 

 {sub voce Lorion) — cognate with the Low-Dutch Weede- 

 wael, and the Old-German Wittevaal, as given by Kilian 

 (Etymol. Teuton. Ling. 1772, p. 792)— of which "Whetile" 

 is but an easy corruption ; and it is certain that, whatever 

 the second syllable may mean, the first is only ivood — in old 

 Anglo-Saxon widii — and has nothing to do with woad as has 

 been thought. In some form or other the word occurs not 

 unfrequently in old poems. Thus in the ' Romaunt of the 

 Rose ', so long erroneously attributed to Chaucer, we have — 



" In many places were nyghtyngales, 

 Alpes*, fynches and wodewales." — Ed. 1878, iv. p. 34. 



Again in ' Thomas of Erceldoune ', one of the copies reads : 



" I herde the iay, and the throstell, 

 The raavys menydf in hir song, 

 The wodewale fardej as a bell, 

 That the wode aboute me rong." — Ed. Murray, Fytle i. 11. 29-32. 



And in the ballad of ' Guy of Gisborne ', first published with 

 many alterations by Bishop Percy,§ but since printed literally 

 by Messrs. Hayes and Furnivall, there is (ii. p. 228) 



" The woodweete sang and wold not cease 

 Amongst the leaues a lyne." 



where " Woodweete " is doubtless the mistake of a copyist 

 for " Woodweele," and this name, whatever form it takes, is 

 in England nowadays only applied to Woodpeckers, though, 

 as before remarked (vol. i. page 235) in Germany, it invari- 

 ably means the Golden Oriole, as it once did here. Re- 



* Bullfinches. f Bemoaned herself. 



Z Another MS. has heryde, made a noise. 



§ When Percy published this ballad he " took the liberty," as he subsequently 

 said, to alter this passage and fill up "from conjecture " an obvious gap between 

 the lines above quoted and those that follow in the MS. thus : 

 " The woodweele sang, and wold not cease, 

 Sitting upon the spraye, 

 Soe lowde, he wakened Robin Hood, 

 In the greenwood where he lay." 

 and so Ritson reprinted them in his collection of Robin-Hood ballads (i. p. 115). 



