192 The New Forest : its History and its Scenery. 



that is, number of sheep : we find its allied word " toll," to 

 count. " I toll ten cows," is no very uncommon expression. 

 Then, too, we have the word " tole," used, as I believe it 

 still is in America, of enticing animals, and thus metaphorically 

 applied to other matters. So, in this last sense, Milton speaks 

 of the title of a book, " Hung out like a toling sign-post to 

 call passengers."* 



Again, too, the bat is here called " rere-mouse," rennie- 

 mouse, and reiny-mouse,*f- the Old-English hrere-mus, from 

 hreran, " to flutter," literally, the fluttering mouse, the exact 

 equivalent of the German fledermaus. On the other hand, the 

 word fliddermouse, or, as in the eastern division of Sussex, 

 flindermouse, and elsewhere flittermouse, does not, to my 

 knowledge, occur. In the Midland counties it is often known 

 as " leathern wings " (compare ledermaus) ; and thus, Shak- 

 speare, with his large vocabulary, using up every phrase 

 and metaphor which he ever met, makes Titania say of her 

 fairies : 



" Some war with rear-mice for their leathern wings." 



(Midsummer Night's Dream, Act ii., sc. 3.) 



To take a few words common, not only to the New Forest, 

 but to various parts of the West of England, we shall see how 

 strong is the Old-English element here in the common speech,. 

 The housewife still baits (betan, literally to repair, and so, when 



* Apology for Smectymnus, quoted by Richardson. The word is even 

 used by Locke. 



f Miss Gurney, in her Glossary of Norfolk Words, gives "ranny " as a 

 shrew-mouse. Transactions of the Philological Society, 1855, p. 35. The 

 change of e into a is worth noticing, as illustrative of what was said in the 

 previous chapter, p. 167, of the pronunciation of the West- Saxon. 



