280 



Glossary of Provincialisms. 



[APP. 



The use of the personal pronoun **he," as, throughout the West 

 of England, applied to things alike animate and inanimate, and the 

 substitution of " thee " for you, when the speaker is angry, or wishes 

 to be emphatic, may be here noticed. In the Forest, too, as in parts 

 of Berkshire, a woman when employed upon out-door work is some- 

 times spoken of in the masculine gender, as the Hungarians are 

 falsely said to have done of their queen on a certain memorable occa- 

 sion. The confusion of cases which has been noticed by philologists 

 is here, as in other parts of England, rather the result of ignorance 

 than a peculiar character of the dialect. 



Adder's-Fern. The common poly- 

 pody (^Polypodium vulgare), so called 

 from its rows of bright spores. The 

 hard-feni (^Blechnum boreale) is known 

 as the " snake-fern." 



Allow, To. To think, suppose, ccfti- 

 sider. This word exactly corresponds to 

 the American " guess " (which, by the 

 way, is no Americanism, but used by 

 Wiclif in his Bible : see Luke, ch. vii. 

 V. 43), and is employed as often and 

 as indefinitely in the New Forest. If 

 you ask a peasant how far it is to any 

 place, his answer nearly invariably is, 

 " I allow it to be so far." " Sup- 

 pose," in Sussex, is used in much the 

 same way. 



Bell-heath. See Eed-heath. 



Bed-furze. The dwarf furze {Ulex 

 nanvs'), which is very common through- 

 out the Forest. 



Black-heath. See Red-heath. 



Black-heart, The. The bilbeny 

 ( Vaccinium Myrtillus), the " whim- 

 ben-y" of the northern counties, which 

 grows very plentifully throughout the 

 Forest. It is so called, by a singular 

 corniption, the original word being 

 hartberry, the Old-English heorot-berg, 

 to which the qualifying adjective has 

 been added, whilst the terminal sub- 

 stantive has been lost, and the first 

 totally misapprehended. To go " heart- 

 ing " is a very common phrase. (See 

 Proceedings of the Philological Society, 

 vol. iii. pp. 154, 15.5.) 



Brize, To press. " Brize it down," 

 280 



means, press it down. Is this only 

 another form of the old word prize, 

 preese, to press, crowd ? 



Bought. A tree, which instead of 

 running up straight is full of boughs, 

 is said to be " boughy." It is also 

 used generally of thick woods. Akin 

 to it is the old word buhsomenesse, 

 boughsomeness, written, as Mr. Wedg- 

 wood notices (^Dictionary of English 

 Etymology, p. 285), buxomeness by 

 Chaucer. 



Bower-Stone, A. A boundaiy-stone. 

 Called a " mere-stone " in some of the 

 Midland Counties. Perhaps from the 

 Keltic bwr, an inelosure, intrench- 

 ment ; just as manor is said to be 

 from maenawr, a district with a stone 

 bound. 



Bound-Oak. See Oak, Mark-. 



Brownies, The. The bees. -S'ee 

 chap, xvi., p. 185. 



Broav. Mr. Halliwell and Mr. Wright 

 give this as a Wiltshire word, in the 

 sense of brittle. In the New Forest it 

 is applied only to short, snappy, splintei- 

 ing timber of bad quality. 



Buck, The. The stag-beetle, so called 

 from its strong hom-like antennce. The 

 children, when catching it, sing this 

 snatch — 



" High buck, 

 Low buck, 

 Buck, come down." 

 It is also called pinch-buck. The female 

 is known as the doe. See " Bryanston 

 Buck," in Mr. Barnes's Glossary of the 



