chyard. "Castle field," north
of the village, probably marks the site of an ancient castle, or hunting
lodge, of the Barons of Pevensey. That there was good hunting in these
parts the name Hartfield itself goes to prove.

[Sidenote: OUR JOURNEY'S END]

Between Withyham and Hartfield in the north, and Crowborough Beacon and
Wych Cross in the south, is some of the finest open country in Sussex,
where one may walk for hours and meet no human creature. Here are silent
desolate woods--the Five Hundred Acre Wood, under Crowborough, chief of
them--and vast wastes of undulating heath, rising here and there to
great heights crowned with fir trees, as at Gill's Lap. A few enclosed
estates interrupt the forest's open freedom, but nothing can tame it.
Sombre dark heather gives the prevailing note, but between Old Lodge and
Pippinford Park I once came upon a green and luxuriant valley that would
not have been out of place in Tyrol; while there is a field near Chuck
Hatch where in April one may see more dancing daffodils than ever
Wordsworth did.

And here we leave the county.

CHAPTER XLI

THE SUSSEX DIALECT

French words at Hastings and Rye--Saxon on the farms--Mr. W. D.
Parish's _Dictionary of the Sussex Dialect_--The rules of the
game--The raciest of the words--A Sussex criticism of Disraeli--The
gender of a Sussex nose--A shepherd's adventures--Sussex words in
America--"The Song of Solomon" in the Sussex vernacular.

The body of the Sussex dialect is derived from the Saxon. Its
accessories can be traced to the Celts, to the Norse--thus _rape_, a
division of the county, is probably an adaptation of the Icelandic
_hreppr_--and to the French, some hundreds of Huguenots having fled to
our shores after the Edict of Nantes. The Hastings fishermen, for
example, often say _boco_ for plenty, and _frap_ to strike; while in the
Rye neighbourhood, where the Huguenots were strongest, such words as
_dishabil_ meaning untidy, undressed, and _peter grievous_ (from
_petit-grief_) meaning fretful, are still used.

But Saxon words are, of course, considerably more common. You meet them
at every turn. A Sussex auctioneer's list that lies before me--a
catalogue of live and dead farming stock to be sold at a homestead under
the South Downs--is full of them. So blunt and sturdy they are, these
ancient primitive terms of the soil: "Lot 1. Pitch prong, two half-pitch
prongs, two 4-speen spuds, and a road hoe. L