The New Forest : its History and its Scenery. 



As might be expected, from what we have seen of the popu- 

 lation of the Forest, the Romance element in its provincialisms 

 is very small. Some few words, such as " merry," for a cherry ; 

 " fogey," for passionate ; " futy," for foolish ; " rue," for a 

 hedge ; " glutch," to stifle a sob have crept in, besides such 

 Forest terms as verderer, regarder, agister, agistment, &c., but 

 the majority are Teutonic. Old-English inflexions, too, still 

 remain. Such plurals as placen, housen, peasen, gripen, fuzzen, 

 ashen, hosen, as we find the word in Daniel, ch. iii. v. 21 ; 

 such perfects as crope, from creep ; lod, from lead ; fotch, from 

 fetch ; and such phrases as " thissum " (" fissum "), and " thic " 

 for that, are daily to be heard. 



Let us, for instance, take the adjective vinney, evidently 

 from the Old-English finie, signifying, in the first place, 

 mouldy ; and since mould is generally blue or purplish, it had 

 gradually attached to it the signification of colour. Thus we 

 find the mouldy cheese not only named "vinney," but a roan 

 heifer called a "vinney heifer." The most singular part, how- 

 ever, as exemplifying the changes of words, remains to be told. 

 Since cheese, from its colour, was called "vinney," the word 

 was applied to some particular cheese, which was mouldier 

 and bluer than others, and the adjective was thus changed into 

 a substantive. And we now have " vinney," and the tautology, 

 "blue vinney," as the names of a particular kind of cheese as 

 distinguished from the other local cheeses, known as " ommary " 

 and " rammel."* 



So also with the word "charm," or rather "churm," signi- 

 fying, in the first place, noise or disturbance, from the Old- 

 English cyrm. "We meet it every day in the common Forest 



* See ch. xvi. p. 178. 



roo 



