188 TJie New Forest : its History and its Scenery. 



rustics. To " heft " (from lichhan, "with the inflexion!^, liefest, 

 "hef^," still used), signifies to lift, with the imijlied meaning of 

 weighing. So, " to heft the bee-pots," is to lift them in order 

 to feel how much honey they contain. The substantive " heft " 

 is used for weight, as, " the heft of the branches." 



Again, also, the good Old-English word " loute " {lutein), to 

 bend, bow, and so to touch the hat, to be heard every day in the 

 Forest, though nearly forgotten elsewhere in England, may be 

 found in Longfellow's Children of the Lord's Siqjper : — 



" as oft as they rwmed the Eedeemer, 

 Lowly louted the boys, and lowly the maidens all courtesied." 



In fact, one-half of the words which are considered Ameri- 

 canisms are good Old-English words, which we have been foolish 

 enough to discard. 



Let us now take another class of words, which will help to 

 explain difficult or corrupt passages in our poets. There is, for 

 instance, the word "bugle" (hiculus), meaning an ox (used, 

 as Mr. Wedgwood* notices, in Deut. xiv. in the Bible, 1551), 

 which is forgotten even by the peasantry, and only to be seen, 

 as at Lymington and elsewhere, on a few inn-signs, with a 

 picture sometimes of a cow, by way of explanation. I have 

 more than once thought, that when Rosalind, in As You Like it 

 (Act iii., sc. 5), speaks of Phoebe's " bugle eyeballs," she means 

 not merely her sparkling eyes, as the notes say, but rather her 

 large, expressive eyes, in the sense in which Homer calls Here 



To give another illustration of the value of provincialisms 



* Dictionary of English Etyniologi/, p. 260. Man wood uses "bugallcs" 

 as a translation of buculi. A Treatise of the Lawes of the Forest, f. iii., 

 sect, xxvii., 1615. 



188 



