and to gain a livelihood by weaving the heather into mats, and brooms, and beehives.
They are, however, mere wanderers, and have nothing to do with the soil. It is with the West-Saxons that we are most concerned. And in the New Forest he will be found just such another man as his forefather in the days of William the Red, putting the same faith in visions and omens which made the King exclaim, on the morning of his death, upon the news of the monk of Gloucester's dream, "Do you take me for an Englishman?" believing firmly in groaning ash-trees, and oaks which bud on Christmas-eve, and witches who can turn themselves into hares, deeming that the marl which he digs is still red with the blood of his ancient foes the Danes.[1]
Here, as we have seen in Hampshire, at Calshot, on the borders of the Forest, Cerdic landed. Here he defeated the Britons, and established the kingdom of the West-Saxons. Here the West-Saxon Alfred rallied his countrymen and crowned defeat with victory. Here, too, stood the capital of Wessex, Winchester, in whose cathedral lie the old West-Saxon kings. Here, then, if anywhere, we should expect to find West-Saxon characteristics and a West-Saxon population.
As is well known, after the battle of Hastings, the West-Saxons, with one or two exceptions, succumbed willingly enough
- ↑ I may seem to exaggerate both here and in the next chapter. I wish that I did. For similar cases in the neighbouring counties of Dorset and Sussex let the reader turn to the words "hag-rod," "maiden-tree," and "viary-rings," in Mr. Barnes's Glossary of the Dorset Dialect; and vol. ii. pp. 266, 269, 270, 278, of Mr. Warter's Seaboard and the Down. I hesitate not to say that superstition in some sort or another is universal throughout England. It assumes different forms: in the higher classes, just at present, of spirit-rapping and table-turning, more gross than even those of the lower; and I am afraid really seems constitutional in our English nature.
