CIV INTRODUCTION. 



they so stolid and insensible that they 

 could live without a name for that flower 

 by which in modern times, so far as written 

 experience reaches back, the veriest clowns 

 have been warmed to enthusiasm and have 

 had a generous admiration kindled in their 

 breasts ? Every one who has tasted the 

 quality of Saxon poetry, will almost postu- 

 late that the Saxon race must have had a 

 name for the rose, long before they colonised 

 this island home. 



And we are not without relics of such a 

 word. That word hip which now signifies 

 the bright fruit of the briar once signified 

 the plant and the flower. The A. Saxon 

 is heope, the 0. Saxon hiopa, 0. H.D. hiufa 

 and hiufo, German )iefe. In Cumber- 

 land the fruit is called Choops and the 

 briar is the Choop-tree 1 . And whereas 

 heop breniel is given for Rubus, it must be 

 remembered that Rubus then stood both 

 for Rosa and Rubus, and that ' bramble ' 

 was equally neutral, and that the heop in 

 heop bremel determines it to the meaning 



1 Dickinson, Dialect of Cumberland, pp. xxi and 1 7. 



