When, however, the wild boar had been brought down, and salted, and put aside for winter use, how natural that to the housewife it should engross this general sense. It is to the importance this unsavoury-looking animal held in the eyes of early rustics we must attribute the fact of so many names coming down to us connected with its keep. As I have just hinted, such sobriquets as ‘John le Swineherd’ or ‘Nicholas le Hogherd’ were common enough in the country parts, our ‘Swinnarts’ and ‘Hoggarts’ being witnesses. The sowherd remains in our ‘Sowards,’ and is as Saxon as the others. The same tongue is strong again in our ‘Pigmans’ ‘Sowmans,’ ‘Hogmans,’ and still more secluded ‘Denyers’ and ‘Denmans.’ The Norman, however, is to be accredited with our many ‘Gilbert le Porchers’ and ‘Thomas le Porkeres,’ by which we may see that when daintily served up under the name of ‘pork’ it was not disdained on the baron’s table. Lastly, we may mention our early ‘Philip le Lardiners’ and ‘Hugh le Lardiners,’ names that in themselves suggest to us the one purpose of the herdsman, the fattening of his charge. They would be found generally, therefore, neath the fastnesses of the forest, where the Oak with his nuts larded many a swine, and where the mast and beech-nuts abounded, the chief pannage, it would seem, of that day.[261] Higher up, as far indeed as the bleak and barren wolds, the shepherd cared for and tended his flock. His was a common occupation, too, as our nomenclature shows. Evidently he was as prone in those days to the oaten reed as the poets of all ages have loved to depict him, for it is to his Norman-introduced name of ‘Berger’ we owe the ‘bergeret,’ or pastoral ode. The song indeed, so called, has died away from our ears, but ‘Berger,’ or ‘Bercher,’ as it was often written, still lives, and may carry us back for a moment to these wholesomer times. Nor, if we approach more closely to the farmyard enclosure, are we without memorials. The _farm_ of old, as applied to the soil, was of course that piece of land which was rented for agricultural purposes, and I doubt not the chief of the old ‘Robert le Fermers’ and ‘Matilda le Fermeres’ represent this more confined sense. ‘Farmer,’ whether colloquially or in our registers, is the modern form. Udal, however, maintains the more antique dress, when he says, ‘And that the thyng should so be, Chryst Hymself had signyfied to fore by the parable of the husbandmen or fermers.’