And now for a few of the Forest words and expressions, many of which are very peculiar. Take, for instance, the term “shade,” which here has nothing in common with the shadows of the woods, but means either a pool or an open piece of ground, generally on a hill top, where the cattle in the warm weather collect, or, as the phrase is, “come to shade,” for the sake of the water in the one and the breeze in the other. Thus “Ober Shade” means nothing more than Ober pond; whilst “Stony Cross Shade” is a mere turfy plot. At times as many as a hundred cows or horses are collected together in one of these places, where the owners, or “Forest marksmen,” always first go to look after a strayed animal. Nearly every “Walk” in the Forest has its own “Shade,” called after its own name, and we find the term used as far back as a perambulation of the Forest in the twenty-second year of Charles II., where is mentioned “the Green Shade of Biericombe or Bircombe.” It affords a good illustration of how words grow in their meaning, and imperceptibly pass from one stage to another. It originally signified nothing but a shadow, and then the place where the shadow rests. In this second meaning it more particularly became associated with the idea of coolness, but gradually, whilst acquiring that idea, quite contrary to Milton’s “unpierced shade” (_Paradise Lost_, B. iv. 245), lost the notion of that coolness being caused by the interception of light and heat. In this sense it was transferred to any place which was cool, and so at last applied, as in the New Forest, to bare spots without a tree, deriving their coolness either from the breeze or the water. Another instance of the gradual change in the meaning of words amongst provincialisms may be found in “scale,” or “squoyle.” In the New Forest it properly signifies a short stick loaded at one end with lead, answering to the “libbet” of Sussex, and is distinguished from a “snog,” which is only weighted with wood. With it also is employed the verb “to squoyle,” better known in reference to the old sport of “cock-squoyling.” From throwing at the squirrel the word was used in reference to persons, so that “Don’t squoyle at me” at length meant, “Do not slander me.” Lastly, the phrase, now still common, “Don’t throw squoyles at me,” comes by that forced interpretation of obtaining a sense, which nearly always reverses the original meaning, to signify, “Do not throw glances at me.” And so in the New Forest at this day “squoyles” not unfrequently mean glances.