APPENDIX. 723 



De Candolle, I. c, p. 689, on the authority of Davics (Welsh 

 Botany, p. 90), that clans le pays de Galles ¥fa-wydden [toydden etant 

 line desinence cotmnune aux arhres et Ffa le now, jiroprement dif) was 

 the name for this tree ; or with the special exemplification of this 

 with which the Welsh name for Hereford, a city with beech-trees 

 near it, ' Tre fawydd^ furnishes us (see Camden's Britannia, p. 476, 

 c'lf. Professor Pearson, /. c). As there is however no question that 

 the beech fails to form any very larg-e proportion of our South 

 Britain peat-mosses, it may be sug-g-ested that this transference to 

 the beech by the Welsh of a name w^hich orig-inally belonged to the 

 oak (see Max Mliller, Science of Language, ser. ii. p. 236) must 

 have taken place in a country where a preponderance had been 

 g-ained by the former over the latter tree. If therefore Denmark 

 was the country, see svpra, p. 631, whence the bronze-importing" 

 invaders of this island came, the beech mvist have been a pro- 

 minent tree there at an earlier period than is usually supposed ^. 

 Or it may have abounded here at that time and yet left, as in 

 Denmark, no remains in the uncongenial peat, 



^ As ao^ainst the prominence, thougli not against tlie existence, of tbe beech in onr 

 own country at a much later period might be urged the fact that it is not mentioned 

 by Chaucer in three places, ' The Assembly of Foules ' (ed. Bell, 1855, vol. iv. p. 195), 

 'The Romaunt of the Rose' (vol. vii. p. 59), and 'The Complaint of a Lover's Life' 

 (vol. viii. p. 8), where be does mention nearly all the other trees which in the 

 fourteenth century entered largely into the composition of tbe English landscape; 

 to wit, the ' oke,' the ' asshe,' the ' elme,' the ' boxe,' tbe ' firre,' tbe ' ewe,' tbe ' aspe,' 

 ' notes,' s. ' philbert ' (hazel), the ' bolas,' tbe ' pyn,' tbe ' maples,' tbe ' popler,' tbe 

 ' lyndes,' the ' hautborne.' And it might be said that in a Welsh poem ascribed to 

 Taliessin, but referred by Professor Pearson (I. c. p. 48), to tbe fourteenth century, 

 tbe beech and lime are both left unmentioned in describing a battle of the trees; 

 and that the beech is omitted from a umcb earlier Welsh poem ascribed to Llywarcb 

 Hen in the sixth century. See Skene, ' Four Ancient Books of Wales,' i. pp. 279 and 

 576, cit. Pearson, I. c. As against the evidence furnished by a fourth passage from 

 Chaucer, ' The Knigbtes Tale,' vol. i. ed. cit. p. 182, in which, as in Spenser's ' Faery 

 Queen,' i. 7, 8, 9, the beech and also the birch and tbe willow are added to tbe tree 

 above enumerated, it might be objected that 'the whole description of tbe funeral 

 and games is taken from the sixth book of the Thebais ; ' and as a matter of fact we 

 have the words 'gli alti f aggi ' standing in tbe parallel passage, ' Teseide,' xi. 22, 

 col. 237, ed. Ven. 1838. But Professor Earle wites to me upon this matter to tbe fol- 

 lowing effect : ' In the Knigbtes Tale, tbe marshaUing of tbe trees in a catalogue is in 

 manner Chaucer's own; and tbe majority of the trees, also, are his, and not Boccaccio's. 

 . . . But as far as philological and liter;iry evidence goes, it is all in favour of tbe trees 

 being at Chaucer's time familiarly English. Tbe word beecJi. was ready to hand, and 

 in its final form which has nob since been modiiled. Yet that word was a considerable 

 remove from tbe Anglo-Saxon Loc, and such modification postulates warm and con- 

 stant usage. Tbe word is ancestral, older, I mean, than our distinct national 

 existence; it is so like in Anglo-Saxon to what it is in Icelandic and in German 

 as to prove that there was no breach of continuity in its use from the earliest 

 time.' 



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