160 The New Forest : its History and its Scenery. 



and to gain a livelihood by weaving the heather into mats, and 

 brooms, and beehives. 



They are, however, mere wanderers, and have nothing to do 

 with the soil. It is with the West-Saxon that we are most 

 concerned. And in the New Forest he will be found just such 

 another man as his forefather in the days of William the Red, 

 putting the same faith in visions and omens which made the 

 King exclaim, on the morning of his death, upon the news of 

 the monk of Gloucester's dream, " Do you take me for an 

 Englishman ? " believing firmly in groaning ash-trees, and oaks 

 which bud on Christmas-eve, and witches who can turn them- 

 selves into hares, and that the marl which he digs is still red 

 with the blood of his ancient foes the Danes.* 



Here, as we have seen in Hampshire, at Calshot, on the 

 borders of the Forest, Cerdic landed. Here he defeated the 

 Britons, and established the kingdom of the West-Saxons. 

 Here the West -Saxon Alfred rallied his countrymen and 

 crowned defeat with victory. Here, too, stood the capital of 

 Wessex, Winchester, in whose cathedral lie the old West- 

 Saxon kings. Here, then, if anywhere, we should expect to 

 find West-Saxon characteristics and a West-Saxon population. 



As is well known, after the battle of Hastings, the West- 

 Saxons, with one or two exceptions, succumbed willingly enough 



* I may seem to exaggerate both here and in the next chapter. I wish 

 that I did. For similar cases in the neighbouring counties of Dorset and 

 Sussex let the reader turn to the words "hag-rod," "maiden-tree," and 

 " viary-rings," in Mr. Barnes's Glossai-y of the Dorset Dialect ; and vol ii. 

 pp. 266, 269, 270, 278, of Mr. Wartcr's Seaboard and the Down. I hesitate 

 not to say that superstition in some sort or another is universal throughout 

 England. It assumes different forms : in the higher classes, just at present, 

 of spirit-rapping and table-turning, more gross than even those of the 

 lower; and I am afraid really seems constitutional in our English nature. 

 160 



