ON THE MAZE, OR MIZMAZE, AT LEIGH, DORSET. 155 



maze of winding paths, which any one who would try his skill 

 was to thread so as to find his way out again in the shortest 

 time, and the mirth of it was, I suppose, that of the outsiders 

 who might see a bewildered wayfarer misgoing into passages that 

 led to nothing but others of the same kind, and the glory of a 

 walker who, knowing the clue, came out with a laugh against 

 the others. 



There was formerly at Pimperne a cleverly-shapen maze, 

 which is figured in Shipp's Hutchings' History of Dorset. The 

 maze paths were sundered by banks, and overspread nearly an 

 acre of ground ; but it was entirely destroyed by the plough 

 about 1780, and it speaks of one at Hilton, Hunts, of which the 

 path is steined with pebbles, and gives Aubray as saying that 

 there were many mazes in England ere the civil wars, which let 

 in the Puritans as lawgivers, who gave little freedom to games 

 and gambols, and whose laws once punished a boy at Dorchester 

 for riding on a gate on a Sabbath.''' A fine sample of a maze 

 still kept up, and I believe often threaded by sightseers, is the 

 one at Hampton Court, of which the maze path is edged by a 

 hedge [of shrubs, as, I believe, were the paths of most of- the 

 broad mazes of the olden time, with fences of some thick shrubs, 

 whether box, privet, yew, or hornbeam, or other such-like ones. 

 Another maze, of which Londoners seek a merry use, is in the 

 Eosherville Grardens, near Grravesend, and one has, I believe, 

 been made in the grounds of the Crystal Palace. The Athe- 

 nceum, July 2, 1881, speaks of "■ The St. Anne's maze," near 

 Nottingham, as one of the most elaborate examples of which we 

 have any account, though in 1797 it was ploughed up. 



The History of Pimperne quotes Stukely, who writes of such 

 mazes in Wales, under the name of "Caertroi." "Winding 

 Castle," the mazes of which are trodden by walking on the banks. 



This old British name for a maze, " caertroi," has, from want 

 of a knowledge of Welsh, led to a mistake that the word " troi" 

 meant Homer's Troy, and that caertroi, a maze, meant " Troy- 

 town," whereas "troi" means simply a turning or winding. 



* Borough Records. 



