The New Forest: Its History and Its SceneryWise, John R. (John Richard)
History
The New Forest: Its History and Its Scenery
Wise, John R. (John Richard)
New Forest (England : Forest)
Then there are other forms among provincialisms which give such an
insight into the formation of language, and show the common mind of the
human race. Thus, take the word “three-cunning,”[230] to be heard every
day in the Forest, where three has the signification of intensity, just
as the Greek τρίς in composition in the compounds τρίσµακαρ, τρισάθλιος,
and other forms. So, too, the missel-thrush is called the “bull-thrush,”
with the meaning of size attached to the word, as it is more commonly to
our own “horse,” and the Greek ἵππος, and the Old-English _hrefen_,
raven, in composition.
As might be expected, from what we have seen of the population of the
Forest, the Romance element in its provincialisms is very small. Some
few words, such as “merry,” for a cherry; “fogey,” for passionate;
“futy,” for foolish; “rue,” for a hedge; “glutch,” to stifle a sob—have
crept in, besides such Forest terms as verderer, regarder, agister,
agistment, &c., but the majority are Teutonic. Old-English inflexions,
too, still remain. Such plurals as placen, housen, peasen, gripen,
fuzzen, ashen, and hosen, as we find in Daniel, ch. iii. v. 21; such
perfects as crope, from creep; lod, from lead; fotch, from fetch; and
such phrases as “thissum” (“þissum”), and “thic” for that, are daily to
be heard.
Let us, for instance, take the adjective vinney, evidently from the
Old-English _finie_, signifying, in the first place, mouldy; and, since
mould is generally blue or purplish, having gradually attached to it the
signification of colour. Thus we find the mouldy cheese not only named
“vinney,” but a roan heifer called a “vinney heifer.” The most singular
part, however, as exemplifying the changes of words, remains to be told.
Since cheese, from its colour, was called “vinney,” the word was applied
to some particular cheese, which was mouldier and bluer than others, and
the adjective was thus changed into a substantive. And we now have
“vinney,” and the tautology, “blue vinney,” as the names of a particular
kind of cheese as distinguished from the other local cheeses, known as
“ommary” and “rammel.”[231]
So also with the word “charm,” or rather “churm,” signifying, in the
first place, noise or disturbance, from the Old-English _cyrm_. We meet
it every day in the common Forest proverb, “Like a swarm of bees all in
a churm,” whilst the fowlers on the coast talk also of the wild ducks
“being in a churm,” when they are in confusion, flapping their wings
before they settle or rise. We find it, too, in the old Wiltshire song
of the “Owl’s Mishap,” to be sometimes heard on the northern borders of
the Forest:—
“At last a hunted zo ver away,
That the zun kum peping auver the hills,
And the burds wakin up they did un espy,
And wur arl in a churm az un whetted their bills.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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