280 



Glossary of Provincialisms. 



[app. 



The use of the personal pronoun " he," as, throughout the West 

 of England, applied to things alike animate and inanimate, and the 

 suhstitution of "thee" for you, when the speaker is angry, or wishes 

 to be emphatic, may be here noticed. In the Forest, too, as in parts 

 of Berkshire, a woman when employed upon out-door work is some- 

 times spoken of in the masculine gender, as the Hungarians are 

 falsely said to have done of their queen on a certain memorable occa- 

 sion. The confusion of cases which has been noticed by philologists 

 is here, as in other parts of England, rather the result of ignorance 

 than a peculiar character of the dialect. 



Adder's-Fern. The common poly- 

 pody (Poll/podium vulgare), so called 

 from its rows of bright spores. The 

 hard-fern (Blec/mum boreale') is known 

 as the " snake-fern." 



Allow, To. To think, suppose, con- 

 sider. This word exactly corresponds to 

 the American " guess " (which, by the 

 way, is no Americanism, but used by 

 Wiclif in his Bible : see Luke, ch. vii. 

 V. 43), and is employed as often and 

 as indefinitely in the New Forest. If 

 you ask a peasant how far it is to any 

 place, his answer nearly invariably is, 

 " I allow it to be so far." " Sup- 

 pose," in Sussex, is used in much the 

 same way. 

 Bell-heath. See Red-heath. 

 Bed-furze. The dwarf furze {Ulex 

 nanus), wliich is very common through- 

 out the Forest. 



Black-heath. See Red-heath. 

 Black-heart, The. The bilberry 

 ( Vaccinium Myrtillus), the " whim- 

 berry" of the northern counties, which 

 grows very plentifully throughout the 

 Forest. It is so called, by a singular 

 corruption, the original word being 

 hartberry, the Old-English heorot-berg, 

 to which the qualifying adjective has 

 been added, whilst tlie terminal sub- 

 stantive has been lost, and the first 

 totally misapprehended. To go " heart- 

 ing " is a very common phrase. (See 

 Proceedings of the Philological Society, 

 vol. iii. pp. 154, 1.5.5.) 



Brize. To press. " Brize it down," 



means, press it down. Is this only 

 another form of the old word prize, 

 preese, to press, crowd ? 



Boughy. a tree, which instead of 

 running up straight is full of boughs, 

 is said to be " boughy." It is also 

 used generally of thick woods. Akin 

 to it is the old word buhsomenesse, 

 boughsomeness, written, as Mr. Wedg- 

 wood notices {Dictionary of English 

 Etymology, p. 285), buxomeness by 

 Chaucer. 



Bower-Stone, A. A boundary-stone. 

 Called a " mere-stone " in some of the 

 Midland Counties. Perhaps from the 

 Keltic bwr, an inclosure, intrench- 

 ment ; just as manor is said to be 

 from rnaenawr, a district with a stone 

 bound. 



Bound-Oak. See Oak, Mai-k-. 



Brownies, The. The bees. See 

 chap, xvi., p. 185. 



Brow. Mr. Halliwell and Mr. "Wright 

 give this as a Wiltshire word, in the 

 sense of brittle. In the New Forest it 

 is applied only to short, snappy, splinter- 

 ing timber of bad quality. 



Buck, The. The stag-beetle, so called 

 from its strong horn-like antenncB. The 

 childi'cn, when catching it, sing this 

 snatch — 



" High buck. 

 Low buck, 

 Buck, come down." 

 It is also called pinch-buck. The female 

 is known as the doe. Sec " Bryanston 

 Buck," in Mr. Barnes's Glossary of the 



