IV. 



WILD HYACINTHS. 



THE path through the Fore Acre leads right across 

 Yenlake by tortuous windings to the tangled covert and 

 bosky marshland of Sedge wood Copse. There is some- 

 thing to my mind very sweet and melodious about these 

 dear old-world English names. Most of them go back 

 even beyond the Norman conquest. The Fore Acre, for 

 example, is so called, not because it once contained four 

 acres, as the laborers will tell you, but because it is the 

 acre or field lying just in front of the old immemorial 

 homestead. In early English acre simply means field ; 

 its later use as a definite measure of area, instead of the 

 hide, is a mere modern innovation. As a matter of fact, 

 the size of any particular Fore Acre depends usually 

 upon the purest chance our own here is a very small 

 croft indeed -and the Six Acres or Ten Acres of latter- 

 day farms are simply the results of false analogy on the 

 part of countrymen who have ministerpreted the good 

 old English phraseology of their forefathers. For ten 

 centuries, in all probability, the farmhouse and barton of 

 Shapwick Farm, for the time being, have stood on the 

 selfsame site that the modern stone buildings now oc- 

 cupy ; and the ancient name of the Fore Acre suffi- 

 ciently vouches for the fact. 



So, too, in the word Yenlake we have another curious 

 old verbal relic ; for lake in our country dialect here- 

 abouts means brook or river. As to Sedge wood Copse, 

 that clearly derives its name from its marshy nature ; for 



