John R. Wise

“ Then, when the summer comes, and the woods are green and dark, the honey-buzzard skims round the tops of the trees; and the snipe, whose young have not yet left the swamps, goes circling high up in the air, “bleating,” as the common people here call the noise of its wings, each time it descends in its waving, wandering flight; whilst out on the open spaces the whinchat, known throughout the Forest, from its cry, as the “furze hacker,” jerks itself from one furze branch to another; and flitting along with it fly a pair of Dartford warblers. ”

“ Here, as he wanders across some moor, flocks of fieldfares and missel-thrushes start out of the hollies, and the ring-ousel skulks off from the yew. A bittern, its neck encircled with a brown frill of feathers, is, perhaps, wading by the stream; and hark! from out of the sky comes the clanging of a wedge-shaped flock of grey-lag geese.
Instead of a chapter a volume might be written upon the ornithology of the New Forest, especially about the winter visitants—the flocks of pochards, and teal, and tufted-ducks, which darken the Avon, and the swans and geese which whiten the Solent. ”

“ The truth is, we are so swayed by our feelings that the most dispassionate writer is involuntarily biassed. We in fact pervert truth without knowing we do so. Language, by its very nature, betrays us. No historian, with the least vividness of style, can copy from another without exaggeration. The misplacement of a single word, the insertion of a single epithet, gives a different colour and tone. And, in this very matter of the New Forest, we need only take the various accounts, as they have come down, to find in them the evidences of their own untruth. ”

“ From every hill-top gleam the blue waters of the English Channel, broken in the foreground by the long line of the Isle of Wight downs and the white chalk walls of the Needles. Nowhere, in extent at least, spread such stretches of heath and moor, golden in the spring with the blaze of furze, and in the autumn purple with 5 heather, and bronzed with the fading fern. Nowhere in England rise such oak-woods, their boughs rimed with the frostwork of lichens, and dark beech-groves with their floor of red brown leaves, on which the branches weave their own warp and woof of light and shade. ”

“ But what gives the Forest so much of its character is the number of herons who have lately established themselves in various parts. You can scarcely go along a stream-side without surprising some one or two, which, as you approach, flap their large slate-coloured wings, and fly off with a rolling, heavy motion, circling in the air as they go. Down at Exbury, at the mouth of the Beaulieu river, they may be seen in companies of threes and fours, wading in the shallows, probing their long bills into the mud and sand ”

“ The world is another place to the man who knows, and to the man who is ignorant of Natural History. To the one the earth is full of a thousand significations, to the other meaningless.
First of all, then, for a few words on the geology of the Forest; for upon this everything depends—not only the scenery, but its Flora and Fauna, the growth of its trees and the course of its streams. Throughout it is composed of the Middle-Eocene, the Osborne and Headon Beds capping the central portion, with their fluvio-marine formation. ”

“ Nameless barrows, ruined castles, battlefields now reaped by the sickle instead of the sword, all proclaim the changes our country has undergone. Each invasion which we have suffered, each revolution through which we have passed, are written down for us in unmistakeable characters. The phases of our Religion, the rise or fall of our Art, are alike told us by the grey mouldings and arches of the humblest parish Church as by our Abbeys and Cathedrals. The faces, too, and gait, and dialect, and accent, of our peasantry declare to us our common ancestry from Kelt, and Old-English, and Norseman. ”

“ The real plan to enjoy the Forest is to wander on, careless whether you lose yourself or not. In fact, I believe the real method is to try and lose yourself, finding your greatest pleasure in the unexpected scenes of beauty into which you are led.
There are plenty of other Forest rambles round Brockenhurst which must not be forgotten. Just at the western edge of Beaulieu Heath, about three miles off, stands Boldre Church, with its solitary churchyard surrounded by trees. On one side, it looks out upon the bare Forest; and on the other, down into the cultivated valley. ”

“ Government, by keeping here some few old trees, will do more to foster true Art than all the grants of Parliament. The old thorns of Bratley, the beeches of Mark Ash, and the yews of Sloden, will teach more than all the schools and galleries in the world. As we have laws to preserve our partridges and pheasants, surely we might have some to protect our trees and our landscapes.
Lastly, from its very nature, the New Forest is ever beautiful, at every season of the year, even in the depth of winter. The colouring of summer is not more rich. ”

“ We do not see the Forest of our forefathers. Go back eight centuries, and look at the sights which the Normans must have beheld,—dense underwoods of hollies on which the red 13 deer browsed; masses of beech and chestnut, the haunts of the wolf and the boar; plains over which flocks of bustards half-ran, half-flew; swamps where the crane in the sedge laid its buff and crimson-streaked eggs; whilst above grey-headed kites swam in circles; and round the coast the sea-eagle slowly flapped its heavy bulk. ”

“ An uninterrupted path runs, for some three or four miles, along the top of the cliff—the scene constantly changing in its beauty. Below hangs a broken under-cliff, shelving down to the sea, strewed here and there with blocks of gravel, the grass and furze growing on them just as they fell. On the shore stretch long reaches of yellow sand, separated by narrow strips of pebbles, and patches of dark green Barton clay, embossed with shells, and studded with sharks’ teeth. ”

“ Let no one, however, think they know anything of the Forest by simply keeping to the high road and the beaten tracks. They must go into it, across the fern and the heather, and, if necessary, over the swamps, into such old woods as Barrow’s Moor, Mark Ash, Bushey Bratley, and Oakley, wandering at their own will among the trees. The best advice which I can give to see the Forest is to follow the course of one of its streams, to make it your friend and companion, and go wherever it goes. ”

“ It is only by seeing some such grey ruins as these, still breathing of a long past religion, placed amongst the solitude of their own green meadows and woods, by the silent lapse of some stream flowing and ebbing with every tide, that we can at all understand the meaning of a life of contemplation, and its true value. Along these cloisters 73 paced the brethren, their eyes bent on the earth, their thoughts on heaven. Here tolled the great abbey-bell, its sound, full of solemn sweetness, borne not only over the lonely Forest, but down the river seaward to the tossing sailor. ”

“ The haunt of the flowers, 9 I say, for in the early spring, before the grass is yet green in the meadows, here they all flock—white wood-anemones, sweet primroses, sweeter violets, and hyacinths encircling each stem with their blue wreaths. The home of the birds; for when the leaves at last have come, each tree is filled with song, and the underwood with the first faint chirping of the nestlings learning their earliest notes. As a temple for man, have they not been so since the world began? ”

“ As was before said, in the wild commons and woods themselves I have myself taken the greatest interest, and wished to impress their beauty on the reader, feeling that a love for Nature is the mainspring of all that is noble in life, and all that is precious in Art. I do not know either that I have anywhere exaggerated. On the contrary, no words can paint, much more exaggerate, the loveliness of the woods. And of all walks in the district, this over the Hordle and Barton Cliffs is by no means the least beautiful, though no longer in the Forest. ”

“ Consider, too, Nature’s own love and tenderness for her trees,—how, when they have grown old and are going to decay, she clothes them with fresh beauty, hides their deformities with a soft green veil of moss and the grey dyes of lichens, and, not even content with this, makes them the support for still greater loveliness—drapes them with masses of ivy, and hangs upon them the tresses of the woodbine, loading them to the end of their days with sweetness and beauty. ”

“ But much else is the same. The sites and the names of the Forest manors and villages, with slight alterations, remain unchanged. The same barrows still uplift their rounded forms on the plains; the same banks, the same entrenchments, near which, in turn, lived Kelt, and Roman and Old-English, still run across the hills and valleys. 12 The same churches rear their towers, and the mills still stand by the same streams.
The peasants, too, still value the woods, as they did in the Conqueror’s time, for the crop of mast and acorns,—still peel off the Forest turf, and cure their bacon by its smoke. ”

“ It grows in Chewton Glen, in all the lanes in the neighbourhood, on Ashley Common, close to the Osmanby Ford River, and rears its golden-brown pannicles in the boggy thickets near Rufus’s Stone. But before it, in beauty, stands the lady-fern, with its delicate fronds and its tender green, growing in the open spaces of the beech woods, as at Stonehard and Puckpits, and bending over the Forest streams in large leafy clumps. Then, too, in all the large woods grows the sweet-scented mountain fern (Lastrea Oreopteris) ”

“ In the New Forest Sir Bevis of Southampton is no mythical personage, and the peasant will tell how the Knight used to take his afternoon’s walk, across the Solent, from Leap to the Island.
Here in the Forest still dwell fairies. The mischievous sprite, Laurence, still holds men by his spell and makes them idle. If a peasant is lazy, it is proverbially said, “Laurence has got upon him,” or, “He has got a touch of Laurence.” He is still regarded with awe, and barrows are called after him. ”

“ Especially to its scenery I would call attention. This, above all, I wish to impress on the reader, seeing that beauty is one of the chief ends and aims of nature: and that the ground beneath our feet is decked with flowers, and the sky above our heads is painted, with a thousand colours, to cheer man as he goes to his work in the morning, and to fill his heart with thankfulness as he returns at evening. ”

“ In the latter part of the summer, the mudbanks of the Beaulieu river are perfectly purple with the sea-aster, whilst the sea-lavender waves its bright blue crest among the reed-beds washed over by every tide.
The valley of the Avon is characterized, as may be expected, by the commoner species, which are to be found in such situations. Here, and in the adjoining cultivated parts, which once were more or less a part of the Forest, we find the soap-wort (Saponaria officinalis) and the thorn-apple (Datura Stramonium) , and those colonists which always harbour close to the dwellings of man. ”

“ For this reason the avenue between Brockenhurst and Lyndhurst—the village of Minestead, nestling half amongst the Forest oaks and half in its own orchards—the view from Stoney Cross, stretching over wood and vale to the Wiltshire downs, have been omitted. Every one who comes to the Forest must viii see these, and every one with the least love for Nature must feel their beauty. ”

“ The tutsan (Androsæmum) is so common round Wootton that it is known to all the children as “touchen 255 leaves,” evidently only a corruption of its name; and its berries are believed throughout the Forest to be stained with the blood of the Danes. The rarer large-flowered (calycinum) grows, though not, I am afraid, truly wild, in some of the thickets round Sway. In all the ponds, the marsh (elodes) springs up, whilst the creeping (humifusum) trails its blossoms over the turf of the Forest lanes, and the small (pulchrum) shows its orange-tipped flowers amongst the brambles and bushes. ”

“ In the one case, he simply hurries or stops, at the discretion of some ignorant driver, who regards him of less importance than his horses; in the other, he can pause to sketch many a scene before invisible, can at his leisure search each heath or quarry for flowers or fossils, can turn aside across the field-paths to any village church, or wander through any wood which may invite him to its solitude, and, above all, know the pleasure of being tired, and the sweetness of rest in the noontide shade. ”

“ And a little later the maples are dyed, yellow and russet, by the autumn rains, and the beeches are scorched to a fiery red with the first frost, and the oaks renew, but deeper and more gloriously, the golden lights of spring, till the great woods of Prior’s Acre and Daneshill burn with colour; every gleam of sunshine, and every passing shadow, touching them with fresher and stranger beauty. ”

“ Consider, further, how she beguiles us when we are in them, leading us forward, each little rise appearing a hill, because we cannot see its full extent; how, too, the paths close behind us, shutting us out with their silent doorways from all noise and turmoil, whilst the soft green light fills every dim recess, and deepens each pillared aisle, the floor paved with the golden mosaic of the sunlight. ”

“ Sound criticism would show as much difference between our local dialects, whether even Anglian, or South, or West-Saxon, as between the Doric and Attic of Greece. I have dealt only with the broader features of the Old-English tongue, as it is still spoken in the Forest. Enough, however, I trust, has been shown of the value of provincialisms, even when collected over so limited a space. Everywhere in England we shall find Teutonic words, which are not so much the mould into which all other forms have been cast, as the living germ of our language. ”