only to tall isolated clumps of trees. Now, however, it does not merely mean a clump or ring, as the "seven firs" between Burley and Ringwood, and Birchen, and Dark Hats, near Lyndhurst, but any small irregular mass of trees, as the Withy Bed Hat in the valley near Boldrewood.
Then of course, in connection with the Forest trees, many peculiar words occur. The flower of the oak is called "the trail," and the oak-apple the "sheets axe,"—children carrying it on the twenty-ninth of May, and calling out the word in derision to those who are not so provided. The mast and acorns are collectively known as "the turn out," or "ovest;"[1] whilst the badly-grown or stunted trees are called "bustle-headed," equivalent to the "oak-barrens" of America.
Other words there are, too, all proclaiming the woody nature of the country. The tops of the oaks are termed, when lopped, the "flitterings," corresponding to the "batlins" of Suffolk. The brush-wood is still occasionally Chaucer's "rise," or "rice," connected with the German reis; and the beam tree, on account of its silvery leaves, the "white rice."[2] Frith, too, still means copse-wood. The stem of the ivy is the "ivy-drum." Stumps of trees are known as "stools," and a "stooled stick" is used in opposition to "maiden timber," which has never been touched with the axe; whilst the roots are called "mocks," "mootes," "motes," and "mores." But about these last, which are all used with nice shades of difference, we shall have, further on, something to say.
- ↑ I have never in the Forest met the old phrase of "shaketime," or rather "shack-time," as it should be written, and still used of the pigs going in companies after grain or acorns, according to Miss Gurney, in Norfolk. Transactions of the Philological Society, 1855, p. 35.
- ↑ On this word, see Appendix I.
