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."
The word was doubtless in the first place an onomatopoieia, denoting the humming, buzzing sound of wings. Since, however, it was particularly connected with birds, it seems to have been used in the sense of music and song by our Elizabethan poets, and by Milton. Thus:—
With charm of earliest birds."
(Paradise Lost, Book iv. 642.)
And again:—
With charm of earliest birds."
(Paradise Lost, Book iv. 651.)
Here, however, in the New Forest, we find the original signification of the word preserved.
Let us further notice one or two more words, which are used by Milton and his contemporaries, and even much later, but which are now found in the Forest, and doubtless elsewhere, as mere provincialisms. Thus, though we do not meet his "tale," in the sense of number, as in L'Allegro—
"And every shepherd tells his tale,
Under the hawthorn in the dale;"
