More Leys
Extremely, learned letters on the etymology of the word " Ley " and its earlier meaning continue to reach me. They are interesting, but omit the point of my complaint against the later lexicographers. Ley is a slightly technical, but in no sense a local, word. It is one of the commonest words today in the mouths of farmers and critics all over Britain and overseas. It is always used in the sense of a temporary pasture, not a space in a wood ; and the extension of the ley, as solving some of the toughest problems of modern husbandry, is one of the outstanding facts in recent farming methods. This use of the word finds no mention at all even in so excellent and so modern a work as the little Oxford Dictionary. As to farming words, I was scolded one summer for using the word " stook." It is doubtless a Scottish word by birth, but it has now won its place into English and, I should say, is more frequently used by the general public than " shock," though this is still the farmers' word, perhaps in all counties.
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