62  The  Origin  of  some  Old  Agricultural  Words. 
“ Olland  ” is  simply  a contraction  of  “ old  land,”  and  merely 
refers  to  the  fact  that  hay  has  already  been  got  from  it.  “Land 
is  sometimes  sown  with  corn,  grass,  and  clover  together  ; after 
the  corn  and  grass  have  been  gathered,  the  clover  which 
remains  is  fed  off,  and  such  land  is  called  olland,”  and  again, 
“land  is  called  ollunt  after  the  hay  is  taken  off”;  English 
Dialect  Dictionary,  s.v.  Old-land.  Young,  in  his  Annals  of 
Agriculture , ix.  429,  speaks  of  “ ollond,  or  lay  of  two  years.” 
“ Stover”  is  not  a native  word  at  all,  but  of  Norman  origin. 
The  old  French  estover  was  nothing  but  a verb  in  the  infinitive 
mood,  and  meant  originally  “to  be  necessary.”  Then  it  came 
to  be  used  as  a substantive,  with  the  sense  of  “that  which  is 
necessary,”  or  “a  necessary  supply,”  or,  with  regard  to  cattle, 
“ fodder.”  It  is  specially  interesting  from  its  use  in  Shake- 
speare’s Tempest , Act  iv.,  1.  63  : — 
“ Thv  turfy  meadows,  where  live  nibbling  sheep, 
And  flat  meads  thatch’d  with  stover,  them  to  keep.” 
With  respect  to  cutting  corn,  the  word  “fag”  did  not 
originally  mean  quite  the  same  as  “ reap.”  The  New  English 
Dictionary  and  the  English  Dialect  Dictionary  both  explain 
“ fag  ” as  signifying  to  cut  corn  by  means  of  a sickle  and  a 
hooked  stick  ; though  the  hooked  stick  is  sometimes  lost  sight 
of.  We  read  in  the  latter  that  in  the  West  Midland  district, 
the  reaper,  in  fagging,  works  to  and  fro  across  the  strip  of  corn 
he  has  undertaken  to  cut,  pushing  against  the  standing  crop 
with  his  left  arm,  and  severing  portions  of  it  by  dealing  sharp 
blows  with  the  hook  held  in  the  right  hand.  True  reaping 
should  be  done  with  the  hand  instead  of  the  crooked  stick. 
The  reason  why  a reaping-hook  is  frequently  called  a sickle  is 
simply  because  sicula  is  the  Latin  name  for  it,  from  the  verb 
secure , to  cut.  Our  ancestors  borrowed  the  Latin  word  long 
before  the  Norman  Conquest,  cutting  off  the  final  a,  and 
spelling  it  sicol.  The  old  Anglo-Saxon  version  of  the  Gospels 
actually  uses  sicol  in  Mark  iv.  29  ; and  there  is  no  wonder 
that  we  should  be  familiar  with  a word  that  has  been  in  use 
for  more  than  a thousand  years  without  any  appreciable 
variation  in  pronunciation.  Many  of  our  words  vary  greatly 
in  sound  now  from  the  forms  heard  in  the  tenth  century. 
A grip  is  a term  used  in  many  dialects  to  signify  a small 
trench  or  channel,  drain,  or  small  water-course,  a narrow  ditch, 
or  even  a rut.  It  is  therefore  not  quite  the  same  thing  as  a 
furrow,  which  refers  rather  to  ploughed  lands.  This  is  not  the 
right  place  for  explaining  Grimm’s  Law  (as  it  is  called),  which 
tells  us,  among  other  things,  that  a Latin  p corresponds  to  an 
English  /,  and  a Latin  c to  an  Anglo-Saxon  h.  It  must  suffice 
to  say,  dogmatically,  that  the  Latin  word  porca  corresponds, 
letter  for  letter,  to  the  Anglo-Saxon  furh,  now  spelt  “ furrow.” 
