86 The New Forest : its History and its Scenery. 



into distant woods. Most beautiful is this road in the spring. 

 Stand on the top of Clay Hill, about the beginning or end of 

 May, and you shall see wood after wood, masses of colour, the 

 birches hung with the softest green, and the oak boughs break- 

 ing into amber and olive, made doubly bright by the dark gloom 

 of firs, the blackthorn giving place to the sweeter may, and the 

 marigold on the stream to the brighter lily. 



On our left lies New Park, now turned into a farm, 

 where in 1670 Charles II. kept a herd of red deer, brought 

 from France, but previously used as a pound for stray cattle. 

 Passing on by a roadside inn with the strange sign of the 

 " Crown and Stirrup," referring to a pseudo-relic of Kufus's, 

 preserved at the King's House, but which is nothing more than 

 a stirrup-iron of the sixteenth century, we reach Lyndhurst 

 the lime wood,* the capital of the Forest, the Linhest of 

 Domesday. 



William the Conqueror at one time held the manor, in his 

 own hands, dependent on that of Amesbury. Here, after the 



* An objection, that the lime-tree was not known so early in England, 

 has been taken to this derivation. This is certainly a mistake. In that fine 

 song of the Battle of Brunanburh, we find 

 " Bordweal clufan 

 Heowan heajjolinde* 

 Hamora lafan." 

 (The Chronicle. Ed. Thorpe, Vol. i. p. 200.) 



The " geolwe lind " was sung of in many a battle-piece. Again, as Kemble 

 notices (The Saxons in England, vol. i., Appendix A, p. 480), we read in 

 the Cod. Dip., No. 1317, of a marked linden-tree. (See, also, same volume, 

 book i., chap, ii., p. 53, foot-note.) Then, too, we have the Old-English 

 word lindecole, the tree being noted for making good charcoal, as both it 

 and the dog- wood are to this day. Any "Anglo-Saxon" dictionary will 

 correct this notion, and names of places, similarly compounded, are common 

 throughout England. 



