I.] 



Glossary of Provincialisms. 



283 



Gale), mentioned in j\Ir. Kingsley's 



New Forest ballad, — 



" They wrestled up, they wrestled down, 



They wrestled still and sore; 



Beneath their feet, the myrtle sweet, 



Was stamped in mud and gore." 



It grows in all the wet places in the 

 Forest, and is excessively sweet, the 

 fruit being furnished Avith resinous 

 glands. It is said to be extensively used 

 in drugging the beer in the district. 

 Gr.vff, or gramphcr. See AVosset. 

 Gross. Often used m a good sense 

 for luxuriant, and applied to the young 

 green crops, just as " proud," and 

 " rank," or rather " ronk," as it is pro- 

 nounced, are in the Midland Counties. 



GuxNEY, To look " gunney " means, 

 to look archly or cunning. There is also 

 the verb " to gunney." " He gunneyed 

 at me," signifies, he looked straight at 

 me. From the French <j>iignei: 



Hacker, furze-, The. The whinchat, 

 so called from its note, which it utters on 

 the sprays of the furze. 



Hame. There is a curious phrase, 

 "all to hame," signifymg, broken to 

 pieces, used both here and in Wiltshire. 

 Thus the glass, M'hen broken, is said to 

 be "all to hame," that is, " all to bits." 

 The metaphor has been taken from 

 "spindly" wheat on bad ground run- 

 ning to halm, from the Old-English 

 healm, now the West-Saxon peasant's 

 " hame." " All to," I may add, is used 

 adverbially in its old sense of entirely, 

 quite, as we find it in Judges ix. 53. 

 Harl, The. The hock of a sheep. 

 Harvest-Lice. The seeds of the 

 common agrimony(/l(/r(>)ioniae(//5a/or(a) 

 and " heriff " (^Galium Aparive). See 

 Clivers, chap. xv. p. 1 66. 



Hell. A dark place in the woods. 

 See chap. x. p. 11 0. 



Herder. A sieve. See chap. xvi. 

 p. 185, foot-note. 



HiLL-TROT, The. The wild carrot 

 (Dauciis Carola), used also in Wilt- 

 shire. Most probably a corruption of 



O 



cltrot, oldrot, oldroot, and so from the 

 Old-English. These last forms are 

 given in Mr. Barnes' Glossary of the 

 Dorset dialect, p. 336. 



Hoar-vvithey. The whitcbcam 

 {Soibus Aria), which, with its white 

 leaves, is veiy conspicuous in the Forest. 

 We find the Avord used in the perambu- 

 lation of the Forest in the twenty-second 

 year of Charles I., — " by the road called 

 Holloway, and from thence to Hore- 

 withey, in the place whereof (decayed) 

 a post standed in the ground." It is 

 exactly the same as the " bar witSig " 

 of the Old-English. It is called also, 

 but more rarely, the " white rice." See 

 chap. xvi. p. 183. 



Hoo, To. To simmer, boil; evidently 

 formed, like so many other words, by an 

 onomatopootic process {See chap. xvi. 

 p. 186). There is also the phrase, "the 

 kettle is on the hoo," that is, to use a 

 vulgarism, on the simmer, or boil. 



Hoop, To go a. To go where you 

 like. " He is going a hoop," means, he 

 is going to the bad. 



Hum- WATER. A cordial which is 

 made from the conmion horse-mint 

 {Mentha aquatica). Does " hum " here 

 mean strong, as it is used in some 

 counties with reference to beer ? See 

 chap. XV. p. 166. 



Joseph's Walking-stick. The Jo- 

 seph 's-laddcr of the Midland Counties, 

 common in all the cottage gardens round 

 the Forest. It is curious to notice, 

 amongst our peasantry, the religious 

 element in the names of both the Mild 

 and cultivated flowers derived from 

 Catholic times. Thus we have ladies' 

 cushions, and ladies' tresses, and St. 

 I'eter's-wort, and St. John's wort, be- 

 sides the more common plants, such as 

 marygolds and ladysmocks, which every 

 one can remember. 



Kittering. Weak. The more North- 

 country word " tuly " is also heard in 

 the same sense. 



Lance, To. To jump, leap, or bound. 

 Used especially of the Forest deer, which 

 283 



