GREEN WOODPECKER. 143 



Hew-hole is sufficiently explained by the well-known 

 habit of the bird. 



Yaffle, or Yaffil. The Green Woodpecker is so called in 

 Surrey and Sussex. This name has reference to the repeat- 

 ed notes of the bird, which have been compared to the 

 sound of a laugh. White of Selborne says, " the Wood- 

 pecker laughs ; " and in the popular poem of the Peacock 

 " At home," the following couplet occurs : 



" The Sky-lark in ecstacy sang from a cloud, 

 And Chanticleer crow'd, and the Yaffil laugh'd loud."' 



In some parts of Hertfordshire, and of the adjoining 

 county of Essex, the Green Woodpecker is called a Whet- 

 ile. The word Whittle, is a term at present in use in some 

 northern counties. Brockett, in his Glossary of North- 

 country words, considers it derived from the Saxon " Why- 

 tel," a knife. In Yorkshire, and in North America, a 

 whittle is a clasp-knife, and, to whittle,* is to cut or hack 

 wood ; the origin and the meaning of this name for the 

 Woodpecker is, therefore, sufficiently obvious : whytel, 

 whittle, whet-ile, woodhacker. 



The terms Woodwele, Woodwale, Woodwall, and Wit- 

 wall, which are only modifications of the same word, are 

 generally considered to refer to one of the species of our 

 English Woodpeckers, but to which, or, I may add, if to 

 either, there is some doubt. Willughby and Ray apply 

 the name of Witwall to the Greater Black and White, or 

 Greater Spotted Woodpecker ; and in the New Forest, 

 Hampshire, at the present day, this same bird is called 

 Woodwall, Woodwale, Woodnacker, and Woodpie. The 

 word occurs occasionally in old ballads : 



* See Webster's Dictionary, and both Series of the Sayings and Doings of Sum 

 Slick the Clockmaker. 



