(now Marten); the _mole_ ‘Walter le Want’ (now Want); the nimble haunter of our forest boughs ‘Thomas le Squyrelle’ (now Squirrell), and the _otter_ ‘Alan Otere,’ or ‘Edward Oter’ (now Otter). Nor must we forget the farmyard and its accessories, which, as we might readily presume, are well represented. ‘Alice le Buie,’ or ‘William le Buie’ (now Bull), is a sobriquet which has now such a firm place as symbolic of our national character that we need not show to what peculiarities of temperament they owed their name. ‘Simon le Steer,’ ‘Peter le Vache,’ with its Saxon ‘Thomas le Cu’ or ‘Ralph le Cou,’ ‘Richard le Calf’[574] ‘Godwin le Bulloc,’ ‘Peter le Stot,’ ‘Roger le Colt,’ are all of common occurrence, and still abide with us. ‘Roger le Mule,’ as representative of obstinacy, we might have suspected, would have become early obsolete, but it still survives.[575] ‘Robert le Veyle,’ or ‘William le Veel,’ now written ‘Veale,’ ‘Philip le Mutton,’ and ‘John le Bœuf,’ or ‘Robert le Bef,’[576] carry us back to the day when these several terms denoted the living animal. Thus, with respect to the last, Burton in his ‘Anatomy,’ translating Plautus, says— Like other cooks I do not supper dress, That put whole meadows into a platter, And make no better of their guests than beeves, With herbs and grass to feed them fatter.—p. 69. Alongside our ‘Muttons’ we may place our ‘William le Lambs’ and ‘Richard le Lombs,’[577] and if they were remarkable for their meek disposition, playfulness, I doubt not, was equally characteristic of our ‘Reginald Kidds’ and ‘Cheevers,’ relics of the old ‘Henry le Chivre’ or goat. I am afraid the connexion of ideas that gave rise to such sobriquets as were represented by ‘Alice le Hog,’ ‘John le Bacun,’[578] ‘William le Gryse,’ ‘Gilbert Galt,’ ‘Walter Pigge,’[579] ‘Roger Sugge,’ ‘Richard le Bor’ (Boar), ‘Richard Wildbore,’ ‘John Pork,’ and ‘John Purcell’ (little porker, that is), is not of the pleasantest—terms, too, as they are, all familiar to our directories to this present day. Several of these words are now colloquially obsolete. ‘Grice,’ I fancy, is one such. We still speak of the ‘griskin.’ Locally it comes in such names as ‘Grisdale’ and ‘Griswood.’ As a sobriquet of the animal, it was quite familiar in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Piers Plowman says— Cokes and their knaves Cryden, ‘Hote pies, hote! Goode gees and grys!’ ‘Sug’ was provincial for ‘sow,’ and comes in the local ‘Sugden’ mentioned in my first chapter. Richard III. was sometimes styled the ‘Boar’ or ‘Hog.’ It was in allusion to this that the rhyme got abroad— The Rat, the Cat, and Lovel the Dog, Rule all England under the Hog.