Hereward and The Woods
The twelfth century, Peterborough story of Hereward is often translated as referring to the 'woods near Bourne' (for example, both FNQ and Bevis, Chapter 27), when what the Latin text says is in brunneswald. The now lagely forgotten Brunneswald, or Bromswold, lay some tens of miles from Bourne, in the neighbouring county of Northamptonshire. However in chapter 19, it was super brunneswald, juxta brunne, beyond Brunneswald, near Bourne, that he 'then departed into the woods until his men should be gathered together'. While there, he was invited to come and organize the defence of Ely (FNQ chapter 19). After the siege, one of those he fought (FNQ and Bevis, Chapter 34), though not in the Bourne Woods, was Ogger, probably Odger the Breton, listed as the major landowner in Bourne in 10862. This holding included the lion's share of Bourne Wood, which had been the property of an unidentified Leofwine3 and of Hereward's father's grandson, Morcar.
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Famous quotes containing the words the woods and/or woods:
“The difference between Pound and Whitman is not between the democrat who in deep distress could look hopefully toward the future and the fascist madly in love with the past. It is that between the woodsman and the woodcarver. It is that between the mystic harking back to his vision and the artist whose first allegiance is to his craft, and so to the reality it presents.”
—Babette Deutsch (1895–1982)
“In the woods in a winter afternoon one will see as readily the origin of the stained glass window, with which Gothic cathedrals are adorned, in the colors of the western sky seen through the bare and crossing branches of the forest.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)