168 The New Forest: its History and its Scenery. 



for effets, voam for foam, as written by Chaucer, vail for fall, 

 and fitches for vetches, as we find it in Ezekiel, ch. iv. v. 9. 



To go further into these distinctions is here impossible. As 

 are the people so is the language. By an analysis of the 

 published glossaries of Dorsetshire, Wiltshire, and Sussex, I find 

 that the New Forest possesses above two-thirds of the two 

 former, differing here and there only in pronunciation, whilst of 

 the latter it scarcely possesses one-tenth, proving plainly that the 

 people are West- Saxons rather than South, descendants of 

 Cerdic more than of Ella.* 



Turning from these minor characteristics, and looking at 

 the people themselves as they once were, and as they now stand, 

 much might be added as to the unequal race which the West- 

 Saxon has run with the Anglian and the Northman, and its 

 effect on his character. The most casual observer even, in going 

 over so small a space as the New Forest, must have noticed how 

 Nature has favoured the Northern and Midland counties in their 

 sources of wealth and industry. The great home-trade of 

 the Middle Ages has entirely deserted the South. Once, too, 

 all our men-of-war sailed from what are now small ports on 

 the south coast. Our fleets were manned by crews from the 

 Isle of Wight, and Lymington, and Lyme, and the neighbouring 

 harbours. The seamanship of the West-Country was England's 



* See what Mr. Cooper says with regard to the affinity of the western 

 dialect of Sussex, as distinguished from the eastern, to that of Hampshire, in 

 the preface (p. i.) to his Glossary of Provincialisms in the County of 

 Sussex. For instance, such Romance words as appleterre, gratten, ampery, 

 bonker, common in Sussex, are not to be heard in the Forest ; whilst many 

 of the West-Country words, as they are called, used daily in the Forest, as 

 charm (a noise see next chapter, p 191), moot, stool, vinney, twiddle 

 (to chirp), are, if Mr. Cooper's Glossary is correct, quite unknown in 

 Sussex. 



