Words in connection with the Forest. 181 



room had been converted into a fuel-house, and his wife had 

 laid in a stock of provisions. The storm still increased. The 

 straggling hedges were soon covered ; and by-and-by the woods 

 themselves disappeared. After a week's snow, a heavy frost 

 followed. The snow hardened. People went out shooting, and 

 wherever a breathing-hole in the snow appeared, fired, and nearly 

 always killed a hare.* The snow continued on the ground for 

 seven weeks ; and when it melted, the stiffened bodies of horses 

 and deer covered the plains.f 



And now for a few of the Forest words and expressions, many 

 of which are very peculiar. Take, for instance, the term 

 " shade," which here has nothing in common with the shadows 

 of the woods, but means either a pool or an open piece of ground, 

 generally on a hill top, where the cattle in the warm weather 

 collect, or, as the phrase is, "come to shade," for the sake of 

 the water in the one and the breeze in the other. Thus " Ober 

 Shade " means nothing more than Ober pond ; whilst " Stony 

 Cross Shade " is a mere turfy plot. At times as many as a 

 hundred cows or horses are collected together in one of these 

 places, where the owners, or " Forest marksmen," always first 

 go to look after a strayed animal. Nearly every " Walk " in 

 the Forest has its own " Shade," called after its own name, and 

 we find the term used as far back as a perambulation of the 

 Forest in the twenty-second year of Charles II., where is men- 

 tioned " the Green Shade of Biericombe or Bircombe." 



It affords a good illustration of how words grow in their 



* Against tracking hares on the snow and killing them with " dogge or 

 beche bow," was one of the statutes of Henry VIII., made 1523 (Statutes of 

 the Realm, vol.iii., p. 217). 



t In that winter 300 deer were starved to death in Boldrewood Walk, 

 Journals of the House of Commons, vol. xliv., pp.561, 594. 



