GEESE: COLLECTIVE AND INDIVIDUAL 137 



festivals of long ago, whereat bean geese formed the 

 staple dish. But, again, I think a much more pro- 

 bable supposition is that the Normans Normanized 

 our harvest festival into bonne fete^ and that we in 

 turn Anglicised bonne fete into bean-feast. Let me 

 remark that there is little doubt that, centuries back, 

 the names bean goose (probably bane gas), wayzgoose 

 (probably wease gos Anglo-Saxon weaxan, to grow ; 

 hence growth, hence young crop ; the supposed deri- 

 vative of weaxan being applied to the bird by reason 

 of its depredations among young corn, as one assumes 

 bane to have been applied, and having no connec- 

 tion with its comparatively venial habit of feeding 

 on the stubbles in autumn ; wayz, a remote deriva- 

 tive of weaxan, we find to have meant literally a 

 truss of straw), and harvest goose (Anglo-Saxon : 

 hcerfest gos) were applied indifferently to all the grey 

 geese. 



In parts of Scotland, bean geese ' become a pest 

 to the farmers from the damage they do to the 

 young crops, marching like an army across a field, 

 clearing all before them.' l Four or five hundred may 

 be seen in a single gaggle. Farmers are sometimes 

 compelled to employ boys to scare geese as they 

 scare rooks. 



1 Sir Ralph Payne- Gallwey. 



