Hidden Natur Expressions of the Natural World from Thomas Hardy and William Barnes Thomas Hardy (June 1840 – January 1928)

homas Hardy was born in Bockhampton in rural West Dorset and died at Max Gate just outside Dorchester. In the intervening eighty-eight years, he wrote and published Tfourteen novels, over fifty short stories, an epic verse-drama and nearly 1,000 poems. First and foremost, Hardy was a landscape novelist, a landscape poet, who painted enduring pictures of a natural world – a real outdoor world – which forms the stage upon which his dream characters live out their tragic lives. Hardy’s understanding of that natural world arose from the juxtaposition of a childhood spent in the Egdon wilderness – at one with nature, but wholly aware of the harsh realities of agricultural life - and the deeply-penetrating vision of the poet: ‘the man who used to notice such things.’ These are the landscapes of Darwin – the voice of Wordsworth, which echoed through his earliest writings, long since suppressed.

Dr Tony Fincham Chairman, Thomas Hardy Society

Hardys’ Cottage

2 Thomas Hardy Spring A Backwards Spring I watched a Blackbird The trees are afraid to put forth buds, I watched a blackbird on a budding sycamore And there is timidity in the grass; One Easter Day, when sap was stirring twigs to the core; The plots lie gray where gouged by spuds, I saw his tongue, and crocus-coloured bill And whether next week will pass Parting and closing as he turned his trill; Free of sly sour winds is the fret of each bush Then he flew down, seized on a stem of hay, Of barberry waiting to bloom. And upped to where his building scheme was under way, Yet the snowdrop’s face betrays no gloom, As if so sure a nest were never shaped on spray. And the primrose pants in its heedless push, Though the myrtle asks if it’s worth the fight This year with frost and rime To venture one more time On delicate leaves and buttons of white Tess of the d’Urbervilles From the selfsame bough as at last year’s prime, And never to ruminate on or remember Either the change in the quality of the air from heavy to light, or the sense of being amid What happened to it in mid-December. new scenes where there were no invidious eyes upon her, sent up her spirits wonderfully. Her hopes mingled with the sunshine in an ideal photosphere which surrounded her as she bounded along against the soft south wind. She heard a pleasant voice in every breeze, and in every bird’s note seemed to lurk a joy. (Phase the Third: The Rally, Chapter XVI)

3 Thomas Hardy Summer Domicilium

It faces west, and round the back and sides In days bygone – High beeches, bending, hang a veil of boughs, Long gone – my father’s mother, who is now And sweep against the roof. Wild honeysucks Blest with the blest, would take me out to walk. Climb on the walls, and seem to sprout a wish At such a time I once inquired of her (If we may fancy wish of trees and plants) How looked the spot when first she settled here. To overtop the apple-trees hard by. The answer I remember. ‘Fifty years Have passed since then, my child, and change has marked Red roses, lilacs, variegated box The face of all things. Yonder garden-plots Are there in plenty, and such hardy flowers And orchards were uncultivated slopes As flourish best untrained. Adjoining these O’ergrown with bramble bushes, furze and thorn: Are herbs and esculents; and farther still That road a narrow path shut in by ferns, A field; then cottages with trees, and last Which, almost trees, obscured the passer-by. The distant hills and sky. Behind, the scene is wilder. Heath and furze Our house stood quite alone, and those tall firs Are everything that seems to grow and thrive And beeches were not planted. Snakes and efts Upon the uneven ground. A stunted thorn Swarmed in the summer days, and nightly bats Stands here and there, indeed; and from a pit Would fly about our bedrooms. Heathcroppers An oak uprises, springing from a seed Lived on the hills, and were our only friends; Dropped by some bird a hundred years ago. So wild it was when first we settled here.’

4 Thomas Hardy Summer The Return of the Native The July sun shone over Egdon and fired its crimson heather to apple tree, of the sort called Rathe-ripe, grew just inside the gate, the scarlet. It was the one season of the year, and the one weather of only one which thrived in the garden by reason of the lightness of the the season, in which the heath was gorgeous. This flowering period soil; and among the fallen apples on the ground beneath were wasps represented the second or noontide division in the cycle of those rolling drunk with the juice, or creeping about the little caves in each superficial changes which alone were possible here: it followed the fruit which they had eaten out before stupefied by its sweetness. green or young-fern period representing the morn, and preceded the (Book Fourth, Chapter V) brown period, when the heath-bells and ferns would wear the russet tinges of evening; to be in turn displaced by the dark hue of the winter While she looked a heron arose on that side of the sky and flew on period, representing night. (Book Fourth, Chapter I) with his face toward the sun. He had come dripping wet from some pool in the valleys, and as he flew the edges and lining of his wings, his There lay the cat asleep on the bare gravel of the path, as if beds, thighs, and his breast, were so caught by the bright sunbeams that he rugs, and carpets were unendurable. The leaves of the hollyhocks hung appeared as if formed of burnished silver. Up in the zenith where he like half-closed umbrellas, the sap almost simmered in the stems, and was seemed a free and happy place. (Book Fourth, Chapter VI) foliage with a smooth surface glared like metallic mirrors. A small

Under the Greenwood Tree It was a morning of the latter summer-time – a morning of lingering dews, when the grass is never dry in the shade. Fuchsias and dahlias were laden till eleven o’clock with small drops and dashes of water, changing the colour of their sparkle at every movement of the air; and elsewhere hanging on twigs like small silver fruit. The threads of garden-spiders appeared thick and polished. In the dry and sunny places dozens of long-legged crane-flies whizzed off the grass at every step the passer took. (Part 3, Chapter III)

5 Thomas Hardy Autumn

The Woodlanders

The outskirts of the town were just now abounding with apple-gatherings. They stood in the yards in carts, baskets, and loose heaps; and the blue stagnant air of autumn which hung over everything was heavy with a sweet cidery smell. Cakes of pomace lay against the walls in the yellow sun, where they were drying to be used as fuel. Yet it was not the great make of the year as yet; before the standard crop came in, there accumulated in abundant times like this a large superfluity of early apples, and windfalls from trees of the later harvest, which would not keep long. Thus, in the baskets, and quivering in the hopper of the mill, she saw specimens of mixed dates, including the mellow countenances of streaked-jacks, codlins, costards, stubbards, rathe-ripes, and other well-known friends of her ravenous youth. (Chapter XXV)

He looked and smelt like Autumn’s very brother, his face being Autumn drew shiveringly to its end: one day something seemed to be sunburnt to wheat-colour, his eyes blue as corn-flowers, his boots gone from the gardens; the tenderer leaves of vegetables had shrunk and leggings dyed with fruit-stains, his hands clammy with the sweet under the first smart frost, and hung like faded linen rags; the forest juice of apples, his hat sprinkled with pips, and everywhere about leaves which had been descending at leisure descended in haste and him that atmosphere of cider which at its first return each season has in multitudes, and all the golden colours that had hung overhead were such an indescribable fascination for those who have been born and now crowded together in a degraded mass underfoot, where the fallen bred among the orchards. ... Nature was bountiful, she thought. No myriads got redder, and hornier, and curled themselves up to rot. sooner had she been starved off by Edred Fitzpiers than another being, (Chapter XXX) impersonating bare and undiluted manliness, had arisen out of the earth, ready to hand. (Chapter XXVIII)

6 Thomas Hardy Winter Snow in the Suburbs

Every branch big with it, Bent every twig with it; Every fork like a white web-foot; Every street and pavement mute: The Return Some flakes have lost their way, and grope back upward, when Meeting those meandering down they turn and descend again. of the Native The palings are glued together like a wall, And there is no waft of wind with the fleecy fall. The wet young beeches were undergoing amputations, bruises, cripplings, and harsh lacerations from which the wasting sap would A sparrow enters the tree, bleed for many a day to come, and which would leave scars visible Whereon immediately till the day of their burning. Each stem was wrenched at the root, A snow-lump thrice his own slight size where it moved like a bone in its socket, and at every onset of the gale Descends on him and showers his head and eyes, convulsive sounds came from the branches, as if pain were felt. In a And overturns him, neighbouring brake a finch was trying to sing; but the wind blew under And near inurns him, his feathers till they stood on end, twisted round his little tail, and And lights on a nether twig, when its brush made him give up his song. Starts off a volley of other lodging lumps with a rush. Yet a few yards to Yeobright’s left, on the open heath, how ineffectively The steps are a blanched slope, gnashed the storm! Those gusts which tore the trees merely waved the Up which, with feeble hope, furze and heather in a light caress. Egdon was made for such times as A black cat comes, wide-eyed and thin; these. And we take him in. (Book Third, Chapter VI)

7 Thomas Hardy Winter

The Darkling Thrush I leant upon a coppice gate At once a voice arose among Under the When Frost was spectre-grey, The bleak twigs overhead And Winter’s dregs made desolate In a full-hearted evensong The weakening eye of day. Of joy illimited; Greenwood The tangled bine-stems scored the sky An aged thrush, frail, gaunt and small, Like strings of broken lyres, In blast-beruffled plume, And all mankind that haunted nigh Had chosen thus to fling his soul Tree Had sought their household fires. Upon the growing gloom. To dwellers in a wood, almost every species of tree has its voice as well as its feature. At The land’s sharp features seemed to be So little cause for carolings the passing of the breeze the fir-trees sob and The Century’s corpse outleant, Of such ecstatic sound moan no less distinctly than they rock: the His crypt the cloudy canopy, Was written on terrestrial things holly whistles as it battles with itself: the ash The wind his death-lament. Afar or nigh around, hisses amid its quivering: the beech rustles The ancient pulse of germ and birth That I could think there trembled through while its flat boughs rise and fall. And winter, Was shrunken hard and dry, His happy good-night air which modifies the note of such trees as shed And every spirit upon earth Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew their leaves, does not destroy its individuality. Seemed fervourless as I. And I was unaware. (Part 1, Chapter I)

8 Thomas Hardy Landscape

Tess of the d’Urbervilles

This fertile and sheltered tract of country, seems to be constructed upon a smaller and as dazzling as that of cultivated flowers. She in which the fields are never brown and the more delicate scale. went stealthily as a cat through this profusion springs never dry, is bounded on the south (Phase the First: The Maiden, Chapter II) of growth, gathering cuckoo-spittle on her by the bold chalk ridge that embraces the skirts, cracking snails that were underfoot, prominences of Hambledon Hill, Bulbarrow, The outskirt of the garden in which Tess staining her hands with thistle-milk and slug- Nettlecombe-Tout, Dogbury, High Stoy, and found herself had been left uncultivated for slime, and rubbing off upon her naked arms Bubb Down. The traveller from the coast, some years, and was now damp and rank with sticky blights which, though snow-white on who, after plodding northward for a score of juicy grass which sent up mists of pollen at a the appletree-trunks, made madder stains on miles over calcareous downs and corn-lands, touch, and with tall blooming weeds emitting her skin. suddenly reaches the verge of one of these offensive smells – weeds whose red and (Phase the Third: Chapter XIX) escarpments, is surprised and delighted to yellow and purple hues formed a polychrome behold, extended like a map beneath him, a country differing absolutely from that which he has passed through. Behind him the hills are open, the sun blazes down upon fields so large as to give an unenclosed character to the landscape, the lanes are white, the hedges low and plashed, the atmosphere Blackmore Vale colourless. Here, in the valley, the world

9 Thomas Hardy Landscape

Tess of the d’Urbervilles

It was two hours, owing to sundry wrong the far west outnumbered any she had ever renowned dairies, flowed not like the streams turnings, ere she found herself on a summit seen at one glance before. in Blackmoor. Those were slow, silent, often commanding the long-sought-for vale, the turbid; flowing over beds of mud into which Valley of the Great Dairies, the valley in which The bird’s-eye perspective before her the incautious wader might sink and vanish milk and butter grew to rankness, and were was not so luxuriantly beautiful, perhaps, unawares. The Froom waters were clear as produced more profusely, if less delicately, as that other one which she knew so well; the pure River of Life shown to the Evangelist, than at her home - the verdant plain so well- yet it was more cheering. It lacked the rapid as the shadow of a cloud, with pebbly watered by the river Var or Froom. intensely blue atmosphere of the rival vale, shallows that prattled to the sky all day long. and its heavy soils and scents; the new air There the water-flower was the lily; the crow- It was intrinsically different from the Vale of was clear, bracing, ethereal. The river itself, foot here. Little Dairies, Blackmoor Vale, which, save which nourished the grass and cows of these (Phase the Third: The Rally, Chapter XVI) during her disastrous sojourn at Trantridge, she had exclusively known till now. The world was drawn to a larger pattern here. The enclosures numbered fifty acres instead of ten, the farmsteads were more extended, the groups of cattle formed tribes hereabout; there only families. These myriads of cows Valley of the Great Dairies stretching under her eyes from the far east to

10 Thomas Hardy Landscape The Return of the Native

He was in a nest of vivid green. The ferny reddleman came from the brambled nook vegetation round him, though so abundant, which he had adopted as his quarters, and was quite uniform: it was a grove of machine- ascended the slopes of Mistover Knap. made foliage, a world of green triangles with Egdon Heath saw edges and not a single flower. The air Though these shaggy hills were apparently was warm with a vaporous warmth, and so solitary, several keen round eyes were The scene before the reddleman’s eyes was the stillness was unbroken. Lizards, grass- always ready on such a wintry morning as a gradual series of ascents from the level of hoppers, and ants were the only living things this to converge on a passer-by. Feathered the road backward into the heart of the heath. to be beheld. The scene seemed to belong to species sojourned here in hiding which It embraced hillocks, pits, ridges, acclivities, the ancient world of the carboniferous period, would have created wonder if found one behind the other till all was finished by a when the forms of plants were few, and of the elsewhere. A bustard haunted the spot; and high hill cutting against the still light sky. The fern kind; when there was neither bud nor not many years before, five-and-twenty traveller’s eye hovered about these things for a blossom, nothing but a monotonous extent of might have been seen in Egdon at one time. time, and finally settled upon one noteworthy leafage amid which no bird sang. Marsh Harriers looked up from the valley object up there. It was a barrow. This bossy (Book Third, Chapter 5) by Wildeve’s. A cream-coloured courser had projection of earth above its natural level used to visit this hill – a bird so rare that not occupied the loftiest ground of the loneliest The next morning, at a time when the more than a dozen had ever been seen in height that the heath contained. Although height of the sun appeared very insignificant England; but a barbarian rested neither night from the vale it appeared but as a wart on from any part of the heath, as compared nor day till he had shot the African truant so an Atlantean brow, its actual bulk was great. with the altitude of Rainbarrow, and when cream-coloured coursers thought fit to enter It formed the pole and axis of this heathery all the little hills in the lower levels were like Egdon no more. world. (Book First, Chapter II) an archipelago in a fog-formed Aegean, the (Part 1, Chapter X)

11 Thomas Hardy Landscape

Under the Greenwood Tree

The point in Yalbury Wood which abutted on the end of Geoffrey Day’s premises was closed with an ancient tree, horizontally of enormous extent, though having no great pretensions to height. Many hundreds of birds had been born amidst the bough of this single tree, tribes of rabbits and hares had nibbled at its bark from year to year, quaint tufts of fungi had sprung Keeper Day’s Cottage from the cavities of its forks, and countless families of moles and earthworms had crept about its roots. Beneath and beyond its shade spread a carefully-tended grass-plot, its purpose being to supply a healthy exercise-ground for young chickens and pheasants, the hens their mothers being enclosed in coops placed upon the same green flooring. (Part 5, Chapter II)

The Trumpet-Major Anne Garland followed along the central track over the huge lump of freestone which forms the peninsula, the wide sea prospect extending as she went on. She approached the extreme southerly peak of rock, and gazed from the cliff at Portland Bill, or Beal, as it was in those days more correctly called. The wild, herbless, weather-worn promontory was quite a solitude, and, saving the one old lighthouse about fifty yards up the slope, scarce a mark was visible to show that humanity had ever been near the spot. Anne found herself a seat on a stone, and swept with her eyes the tremulous expanse of water around her that seemed to utter a ceaseless unintelligible incantation.

Ultimately, she watched Nelson’s Victory disappear over the horizon ‘no more than dead fly’s wing on a sheet of spider’s web’. (Chapter XXXIV)

12 William Barnes (22 February 1801 – 7 October 1886)

Dorset, writer, poet, polymath philologist, priest, mathematician, engraving and artist. AHe wrote over 800 poems, some in Dorset dialect, and much other work, including a comprehensive English grammar quoting from more than 70 different languages.

For more information about William Barnes his life and works visit: www.williambarnessociety.org.uk

But now I hope his kindly feace Is gone to vind a better pleace. But still, wi’ vo’k a-left behind He’ll always be a-kept in mind.

The inscription on William Barnes statue outside St Peter’s Church, taken from his poem `Culver Dell and the Squire’.

13 William Barnes

The Blackbird

Ov all the birds upon the wing Vor we do hear the blackbird zing Vor when my work is all a-done Between the zunny showers o’ spring,- His sweetest ditties in the spring, Avore the zetten o’ the zun, Vor all the lark, a-swingen high, When nippen win’s noo mwore do blow Then blushen Jeane do walk along Mid zing below a cloudless sky, Vrom northern skies, wi’ sleet or snow, The hedge to meet me in the drong, An’ sparrows, clust’ren roun’ the bough, But dreve light doust along between An’ stay till all is dim an’ dark Mid chatter to the men at plough, - The leane-zide hedges, thick an’ green; Bezides the ashen tree’s white bark; The blackbird, whisslen in among An’ zoo the blackbird in among An’ all bezides the blackbird’s shrill The boughs, do zing the gayest zong. The boughs do zing the gayest zong. An’ runnen evenen-whissle’s still.

Tis blithe, wi’ newly-opened eyes, An’ there in bwoyhood I did rove To zee the mornen’s ruddy skies; Wi’ pryen eyes along the drove Or, out a-haulen frith or lops To vind the nest the blackbird meade Vrom new-pleshed hedge or new-velled copse, O’ grass-stalks in the high bough’s sheade; To rest at noon in primrwose beds Or climb aloft, wi’ clingen knees, Below the white-barked woak-trees’ heads; Vor crows’ aggs up in swayen trees, But there’s noo time, the whole day long, While frightened blackbirds down below Lik’ evenen wi’ the blackbird’s zong. Did chatter o’ their little foe. An’ zoo there’s noo pleace lik’ the drong, Where I do hear the blackbird’s zong.

14 William Barnes The girt woak tree that’s in the dell! The girt woak tree that’s in the dell! An’ there, in leäter years, I roved An’ oh! mid never ax nor hook There’s noo tree I do love so well; Wi’ thik poor maïd I fondly lov’d,— Be brought to spweil his steätely look; Vor times an’ times when I wer young, The maïd too feäir to die so soon,— Nor ever roun’ his ribby zides I there’ve a-climb’d, an’ there’ve a-zwung, When evenèn twilight, or the moon, Mid cattle rub ther heäiry hides; An’ pick’d the eäcorns green, a-shed Cast light enough ‘ithin the pleäce Nor pigs rout up his turf, but keep In wrestlèn storms vrom his broad head. To show the smiles upon her feäce, His lwonesome sheäde vor harmless sheep; An’ down below’s the cloty brook Wi’ eyes so clear ‘s the glassy pool. An’ let en grow, an’ let en spread, Where I did vish with line an’ hook. An’ lips an’ cheäks so soft as wool. An’ let en live when I be dead. An’ beät, in plaÿsome dips and zwims, There han’ in han’, wi’ bosoms warm, But oh! if men should come an’ vell The foamy stream, wi’ white-skinn’d lim’s. Wi’ love that burn’d but thought noo harm, The girt woak tree that’s in the dell, An’ there my mother nimbly shot Below the wide-bough’d tree we past An’ build his planks ‘ithin the zide Her knittèn-needles, as she zot The happy hours that went too vast; At evenèn down below the wide An’ though she’ll never be my wife. O’ zome girt ship to plough the tide, Woak’s head, wi’ father at her zide. She’s still my leäden star o’ life. Then, life or death! I’d goo to sea, An’ I’ve a-plaÿed wi’ many a bwoy, She’s gone: an’ she ‘ve a-left to me A saïlèn wi’ the girt woak tree: That’s now a man an’ gone awoy; Her mem’ry in the girt woak tree; An’ I upon his planks would stand. Zoo I do like noo tree so well Zoo I do love noo tree so well An’ die a-fightèn vor the land,— ‘S the girt woak tree that’s in the dell. ‘S the girt woak tree that’s in the dell. The land so dear,—the land so free,— The land that bore the girt woak tree; Vor I do love noo tree so well ‘S the girt woak tree that’s in the dell.

15 William Barnes

The Spring

When wintry weather’s all a-done, Vor then the cowslip’s hangèn flow’r An’ brooks do sparkle in the zun, A-wetted in the zunny showr, An’ nâisy-buildèn rooks do vlee Do grow wi’ vi’lets, sweet o’ smell, Wi’ sticks toward their elem tree; Bezide the wood-screen’d grægle’s bell; When birds do zing, an’ we can zee Where drushes’ aggs, wi’ sky-blue shell. Upon the boughs the buds o’ spring,— Do lie in mossy nest among Then I’m as happy as a king, The thorns, while they do zing their zong A-vield wi’ health an’ zunsheen. At evenèn in the zunsheen.

An’ God do meäke his win’ to blow An’ many times when I do vind An’ raïn to vail vor high an’ low, Things all goo wrong, an’ vo’k unkind, An’ bid his mornèn zun to rise To zee the happy veedèn herds, Vor all alike, an’ groun’ an’ skies An’ hear the zingèn o’ the birds, Ha’ colors vor the poor man’s eyes: Do soothe my sorrow mwore than words; An’ in our trials He is near, Vor I do zee that ’tis our sin To hear our mwoan an’ zee our tear. Do meäke woone’s soul so dark ‘ithin. An’ turn our clouds to zunsheen. When God would gi’e woone zunsheen.

16 Hidden Natur Dorset dialect words associated flora and fauna Animals Flitter wings Asker – newt God almighty’s cow – ladybird Biddle – beetle Gookoo – cuckoo Blackie – blackbird Heare – hare Black bob – cockroach Homble – duck Dumbledore – bumblebee Hoop / mope / mwope – bullfinch Chattermag / maggie – magpie Hoot owl – tawny owl Cheese-eater – bluetit Hoss-stinger – dragonfly Cuddy / jenny – wren Jacker – jackdaw Quiddle Dishwasher / polly-wash-dish – wagtail Kitty-coot – water-rail Divy-duck – dabchick Mouel – field mouse Drasher – thresher shark Pewit – lapwing Drush – song thrush Quiddle – squid Dumbledore Duncow – dog fish Quest / quist – wood pigeon Dunnick – hedge sparrow. Reddick / reddock / ruddock – robin Evet / effets – newts Reremouse – bat Emmets Emmets – ants Screech owl – little owl Flitter wings – butterfly or moth Shepherdess – yellow wagtail Foresters / forestylees – horseflies Shrocrop – shrew

17 Hidden Natur Dorset dialect words associated flora and fauna

Animals cont. Slooworm

Slooworm – slow worm Snorter – wheatear Spadger – house sparrow Stare – starling Stout – gadfly Twoad / tooad – toad Twink – chaffinch Undergroun’jobbler / yeat-smasher – wheatear Vlesh-vlee – blowfly Snorter Vrog – frog Wonts / wants – mole Wopsy / wopse – wasp Yis – earthworm Wopsy

18 Hidden Natur Greagle Dorset dialect words associated flora and fauna Daffydowndilly Trees & Plants

Aish – ash tree Eacor – acorn Aller – alder tree Eltrot / eltroot / eldrott – cow parsley Beacon weed – goosefoot, fat hen Ellem – elm Bedwine – traveller’s joy Giddygander – early purple orchid Birds eye – common speedwell Gillyflowers / gillflower– stocks Bloodywarriors – wallflower Gil’cup – buttercup Botherems – corn marigolds Goocoo’d / flower– ladies’ smock Bremble / brimble – bramble or blackberry bush Greagle – bluebell Bedwine Butter an’ eggs – yellow toadflax Hardheads / horse knobs – common knapweed Butter deasy / hoss daisy – ox-eye daisy Hart-berries – whortleberry Crewel / holrod – cowslip Haves / heps – fruit of the wild rose Charlick – field mustard He’th – heather Clote – yellow water lily Holm / ho’n – holly Cockles – burdock Honeyzuck – honeysuckle Cows an’ ca’ves – cuckoo pint Jack-in-the green – polyanthus Daffydowndilly – daffodil John-go-to-bed / weather flower / red- Deaisy – daisy weed / shepard’s joy – scarlet pimpernel Dunchnettle – red and white dead nettle Jessamy – white jasmine Honeyzuck

19 Hidden Natur Dorset dialect words associated flora and fauna Snag bush

Trees & Plants cont. Robinhood

Leady’s vingers – kidney vetch Snag bush – blackthorn Leavers / kingcup / bull’s eyes / bachelor’s but- Snakeflower – anemone tons – marsh marigold Snags / sloo / slooe – sloe, fruit of blackthorn Madders / mathers – stinking chamomile Spike / spik – lavender Meaden – stinking mayweed Levers / liver / liver-leaves / sword flower / trin- Meary’s tears – spotted liverwort ity plant – yellow flag Merry – wild cherry Vi’let – violet Niddles – stinging nettles Vield poppy / red weed – field poppy Leavers Pissabed – dandelion Vuzz / vuzzen – furze Primrwose – primrose Wagwanton – quaking grass Rags an’ tatters – common mallow Withwind / withy wind – hedge bindweed Ram’s claws / ramsclaws – creeping crowfoot Woak – oak Ramsens / ramasens – broad-leaved garlic Yalier drott – common toadflax Robinhood – ragged robin or red campion Zilverweed – silverweed Rottlepenny – yellow rattle Zower dog – common sorrel Rwose – dog rose Skiver-wood – spindle tree Slingers – fir cones Withwind

20 Hidden Places A Hardy Glossary Durnover

WESSEX NAME GEOGRAPHICAL WESSEX NAME GEOGRAPHICAL WESSEX NAME GEOGRAPHICAL EQUIVALENT EQUIVALENT EQUIVALENT

Alderworth Affpuddle Heath Flintcomb-Ash Plush Lower Longpuddle Piddlehinton Athelhall Athelhampton Hall Forest of the White Hart Blackmore Vale Lower Mellstock Lower Froom-Everard Stafford House Bockhampton Blackon Blackdown Lulwind / Lulstead Cove Lulworth Cove Blooms-End The Hardys’ Great Hintock Melbury Osmund Cottage Maidon / Mai Dun MaiMaiden Castle Dun Bull-Stake Square North Square, Haggardon Hill Eggardon Hill Marlott Marnhull Dorchester Havenpool Poole Melchester Salisbury Higher Crowstairs Fiddlers Green Mellstock Stinsford Casterbridge Dorchester Hintock House Melbury House Mellstock Cross Bockhampton Chalk Walk Colliton Walk Cross Cirque of the Gladiators Maumbury Rings Isle of Slingers Portland Millpond St Jude Milborne St Corvsgate Corfe CrestonAndrew Creston Preston Kingsbere(-sub-Greenhill) Bere Regis Mistover Knap Green Hill King’s Hintock Melbury Osmund Mixen Lane Mill Street, Damer’s Wood Came Wood King’s Hintock Court Melbury House Fordington Durnover Fordington Knapwater House Kingston Maurward Nether Moynton Owermoigne East Egdon Affpuddle Knollsea Swanage Norcombe Hill Toller Down Egdon Heath Heathland between Overcombe Sutton Poyntz Dorchester & Little Hintock Melbury Bubb Oxwell Hall Poxwell Hall Bournemouth Little Weatherbury Farm Druce Farm

Isle of Slingers21 Hidden Places Pummery A Hardy Glossary

WESSEX NAME GEOGRAPHICAL WESSEX NAME GEOGRAPHICAL WESSEX NAME GEOGRAPHICAL EQUIVALENT EQUIVALENT EQUIVALENT

Peter’s Finger King’s Head, Mill Stourcastle Sturminster Wellbridge Abbey Bindon Abbey Street Newton Wintonchester Winchester Pilsdon Crest Pilsdon Pen Port Bredy Bridport/ West Bay Talbothays Norris Mill Farm Yalbury Yellowham Po’sham Portesham The Beal Portland Bill Pummery Poundbury Hill The Ring Maumbury Rings Fort The Slopes Boveridge House Tolchurch Tolpuddle Stourcastle Quiet Woman Inn Wild Duck/ Trantridge Boveridge Traveller’s Rest (Duck Dairy Farm) Upper Longpuddle Piddletrenthide Upper Mellstock Higher Roy-town Troy Town Bockhampton Rubdon Hill Bubb Down Valley of the Great Dairies Frome Valley Sandbourne Bournemouth Valley of the Little Dairies Blackmore Vale Shaston Shaftesbury Shadwater Weir Nine Hatches Weir, Warborne Wimborne Ilsington Weatherbury Puddletown Sherton Abbas Sherbourne Weatherbury Farm Waterston Manor Shottsford Forum Blandford Forum Wellbridge Wool

Wellbridge 22 With grateful thanks to Dr Tony Fincham and Dr Tracy Hayes, Thomas Hardy Society and Mark North, William Barnes Society

Further reading: Hardy’s Landscape Revisited by Tony Fincham, Robert Hale 2010 Exploring Thomas Hardy’s Wessex by Tony Fincham, Dovecote 2016

Thomas Hardy Society: www.hardysociety.org William Barnes Society: www.williambarnessociety.org.uk