and recognition. It is something
less than prong, and is the proper word for the metal point that fixes
the strap of a buckle. The homophonic ambiguity is notorious in
Shakespeare's

'She had a tongue with a tang',

where, as the _O.E.D._ suggests, the double sense of sting and ring were
perhaps intended.

21. 'The grutching pixies hedge me round'. (37)

_Grudge_ and #grutch# are the same word. The use of the obsolete
form would therefore be fanciful if there were no difference in the
sense; but there is a useful distinction: because grudge has entirely
lost its original sense of murmuring, making complaint, and is confined
to the consciousness and feeling of discontent, whereas _grutch_ is
recognized as carrying the old meaning of grumble. Thus Stevenson as
quoted in _O.E.D._, 'The rest is grunting and grutching'. It is a very
useful word to restore, but it may, perhaps, at this particular time
find _grouse_ rather strongly entrenched.

22. 'Where the channering insect channels'. (46)

This is, of course, our old friend

The cock doth craw, the day doth daw,
The channerin' worm doth chide',

and it looks like an attempt to define what is there meant, viz. that
the worm made a #channering# noise in burrowing through the wood.
The notion is perhaps admissible, though we cannot believe the sound to
be audible.

23. 'The lispering aspens'. (53)

#Lispering.# We should be grateful for this word. _O.E.D._ quotes
it from Clare's poems.

24. 'Of shallows with the shealings chalky white'. (64)

#Sheal# is a homophone, 1. a shepherd's hut or shanty; 2. a peascod
or seed-shell. Of the first, _shiel_ and _shieling_ are common forms;
the second is dialectal; _E.D.D._ gives #shealing# as the husk of
seeds. If this be the meaning in our quotation, the appearance described
is unrecognized by the present annotator.

25. 'Dull streams
Flow flagging in the undescribed deep fourms
Of creatures born the first of all, long dead'. (67)

#Fourm#, explained as a 'hare's lurking place', commonly called
_form_, widely used and understood because the lair has the shape or
form of the animal that lay in it. But perhaps it was originally only
the animal's seat or form, as we use the word in schools. _Form_ has so
many derivative senses