[105]The following measurements may have some interest, and can be compared with those of the oaks and beeches in the Forest, given in chap. ii. p. 16, foot-note:—Circumference of the oak, twenty-two feet eight inches. Yew, seventeen feet. An enormous yew, completely hollow, however, stands in Breamore churchyard, measuring twenty-three feet four inches. There are certainly no yews in the Forest so large as these; and their evidence would further show that at all events the Conqueror did not destroy the churchyards. As here, too, there remains some Norman work in the doorway of Breamore church. [106]For some account of these barrows, see chapter xvii. [107]The word is from the French _merise_. At Wood Green, in the northern part of the Forest, a “merry fair” of these half-wild cherries is held once a week during the season, probably similar to that of which Gower sung. [108]An objection, that the lime-tree was not known so early in England, has been taken to this derivation. This is certainly a mistake. In that fine song of the Battle of Brunanburh, we find— “Bordweal clufan Heowan heaþolinde Hamora lafan.” (_The Chronicle._ Ed. Thorpe. Vol. i. p. 200.) The “geolwe lind” was sung of in many a battle-piece. Again, as Kemble notices (_The Saxons in England_, vol. i., Appendix A, p. 480), we read in the _Cod. Dip._, No. 1317, of a marked linden-tree. (See, also, same volume, book i., chap. ii., p. 53, foot-note.) Then, too, we have the Old-English word _lindecole_, the tree being noted for making good charcoal, as both it and the dog-wood are to this day. Any “Anglo-Saxon” dictionary will correct this notion, and names of places, similarly compounded, are common throughout England. [109]The entry in _Domesday_ (facsimile of the part relating to Hampshire, photo-zincographed at the Ordnance Survey, 1861, p. iv. a) is as follows:—“In Bovere Hundredo. Ipse Rex tenet Linhest. Jacuit in Ambresberie de firmâ Regis. Tunc, se defendebat pro ij hidis. Modo, Herbertus forestarius ex his ij hidis unam virgatam (tenet), et pro tanto geldat; aliæ sunt in forestâ. Ibi modo nichil, nisi ij bordarii. Valet x solidos. Tempore Regis Edwardi valuit vi. libras.” It is worth noticing that Lyndhurst is here put by itself, and not with Brockenhurst and Minestead, and other neighbouring places under “In Novâ Forestâ et circa eam;” a clear proof, which might be gathered from other entries, that the survey was not completed. [110]Blount’s _Fragmenta Antiquitatis_. Ed. Beckwith, p. 183. 1815. Here the place is called Lindeshull.