A colt pixie (also colepixie, colepixy, collepixie, collpixie, colt-pixie, colt pixy, and cold pixie) is a creature from English folklore in the South and South West of England (especially the New Forest and Dorset). According to local mythology, it is a type of Pixie which takes the form of a scruffy, pale horse or pony to lead travellers and other livestock astray (similar to a Will-o'-the-wisp), and is often associated with Puck. The earliest surviving written reference dates to the early 16th century (I shall be ready at thine elbow to plaie the parte of Hobgoblin or Collepixie). [1] [2]
The phrase "as ragged as a colt pixie" was common in the New Forest at least as recently as the early 20th century. [3] [4] [5] In the dialect of Dorset "to colt-pixy" meant to beat down the remaining apples after a crop has been harvested, i.e. to take the colts' horde. [6] [3]
Hampshire is a ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Berkshire to the north, Surrey and West Sussex to the east, the Isle of Wight across the Solent to the south, Dorset to the west, and Wiltshire to the north-west. The cities of Portsmouth and Southampton are the largest settlements and the county town is the city of Winchester.
William Barnes was an English polymath, writer, poet, philologist, priest, mathematician, engraving artist and inventor. He wrote over 800 poems, some in Dorset dialect, and much other work, including a comprehensive English grammar quoting from more than 70 different languages. A linguistic purist, Barnes strongly advocated against borrowing foreign words into English, and instead supported the use and proliferation of "strong old Anglo-Saxon speech".
Dorset is a ceremonial county in South West England. It is bordered by Somerset to the north-west, Wiltshire to the north and the north-east, Hampshire to the east, the Isle of Wight across the Solent to the south-east, the English Channel to the south, and Devon to the west. The largest settlement is Bournemouth, and the county town is Dorchester.
Scots is an Anglic language variety in the West Germanic language family, spoken in Scotland and parts of Ulster in the north of Ireland. Most commonly spoken in the Scottish Lowlands, Northern Isles, and northern Ulster, it is sometimes called Lowland Scots to distinguish it from Scottish Gaelic, the Goidelic Celtic language that was historically restricted to most of the Scottish Highlands, the Hebrides, and Galloway after the sixteenth century; or Broad Scots to distinguish it from Scottish Standard English. Modern Scots is a sister language of Modern English, as the two diverged independently from the same source: Early Middle English (1100–1300).
In folklore, a will-o'-the-wisp, will-o'-wisp, or ignis fatuus, is an atmospheric ghost light seen by travellers at night, especially over bogs, swamps or marshes. The phenomenon is known in much of European folklore by a variety of names, including jack-o'-lantern, friar's lantern, and hinkypunk, and is said to mislead travellers by resembling a flickering lamp or lantern. In literature, will-o'-the-wisp metaphorically refers to a hope or goal that leads one on, but is impossible to reach, or something one finds strange or sinister. Wills-o'-the-wisp appear in folk tales and traditional legends of numerous countries and cultures; notable named examples include St. Louis Light in Saskatchewan, the Spooklight in Southwestern Missouri and Northeastern Oklahoma, the Marfa lights of Texas, the Naga fireballs on the Mekong in Thailand, the Paulding Light in Upper Peninsula of Michigan, and the Hessdalen light in Norway.
Dorchester is the county town of Dorset, England. It is situated between Poole and Bridport on the A35 trunk route. A historic market town, Dorchester is on the banks of the River Frome to the south of the Dorset Downs and north of the South Dorset Ridgeway that separates the area from Weymouth, 7 miles (11 km) to the south. The civil parish includes the experimental community of Poundbury and the suburb of Fordington.
A pixie is a mythical creature of British folklore. Pixies are speculated to be particularly concentrated in the high moorland areas around Devon and Cornwall, suggesting some Celtic origin for the belief and name. However, the word 'pixie' also appears in Dorset, Somerset and to a lesser extent in Sussex, Wiltshire and Hampshire.
Wareham is a historic market town and, under the name Wareham Town, a civil parish, in the English county of Dorset. The town is situated on the River Frome eight miles (13 km) southwest of Poole.
The River Stour is a 61 mi (98 km) river which flows through Wiltshire and Dorset in southern England, and drains into the English Channel. The catchment area for the river and its tributaries is listed as 480 square miles (1,240 km2).
West Country English is a group of English language varieties and accents used by much of the native population of the West Country, an area found in the southwest of England.
Yola, more commonly and historically the Forth and Bargy dialect, was a dialect of the Middle English language once spoken in the baronies of Forth and Bargy in County Wexford, Ireland. As such, it was probably similar to the Fingallian dialect of the Fingal area. Both became functionally extinct in the 19th century when they were replaced by modern Hiberno-English. The word "yola" means "old" in the dialect.
Linguistic purism in English is the opposition to foreign influence in the English language. English has evolved with a great deal of borrowing from other languages, especially Old French, since the Norman conquest of England, and some of its native vocabulary and grammar have been supplanted by features of Latinate and Greek origin. Efforts to remove or consider the removal of foreign terms in English are often known as Anglish, a term coined by author and humorist Paul Jennings in 1966.
Beer Quarry Caves is a man-made limestone underground complex located about a mile west of the village of Beer, Devon, and the main source in England for beer stone. The tunnels resulted from 2,000 years of quarrying beer stone, which was particularly favoured for cathedral and church features such as door and window surrounds because of its colour and workability for carving. Stone from the quarry was used in the construction of several of southern England's ancient cathedrals and a number of other important buildings as well as for many town and village churches, and for some buildings in the United States. Extraction was particularly intense during the Middle Ages, but continued until the 1920s. An adit to another set of workings can be seen from the South West Coast Path east of Branscombe, having been exposed by a landslip in the late 18th century. The quarry is part of the Jurassic Coast, and is a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI).
The known history of the horse in Britain starts with horse remains found in Pakefield, Suffolk, dating from 700,000 BC, and in Boxgrove, West Sussex, dating from 500,000 BC. Early humans were active hunters of horses, and finds from the Ice Age have been recovered from many sites. At that time, land which now forms the British Isles was part of a peninsula attached to continental Europe by a low-lying area now known as "Doggerland", and land animals could migrate freely between what is now island Britain and continental Europe. The domestication of horses, and their use to pull vehicles, had begun in Britain by 2500 BC; by the time of the Roman conquest of Britain, British tribes could assemble armies which included thousands of chariots.
Dorset is a county in South West England on the English Channel coast. The ceremonial county comprises the area covered by the non-metropolitan county, which is governed by Dorset Council, together with the unitary authorities of Poole and Bournemouth. Dorset is an average sized county with an area of 2,653 square kilometres (1,024 sq mi); it borders Devon to the west, Somerset to the north-west, Wiltshire to the north-east, and Hampshire to the east. Around half of Dorset's population lives in the South East Dorset conurbation. The rest of the county is largely rural with a low population density.
Beaminster Grammar School, known in its final years as Beaminster and Netherbury Grammar School, was a small grammar school in the town of Beaminster, in Dorset, England, founded about 1868 and closed in 1962.
The Dorset dialect is the traditional dialect spoken in Dorset, a county in the West Country of England. Stemming from Old West Saxon, it is preserved in the isolated Blackmore Vale, despite it somewhat falling into disuse throughout the earlier part of the 20th century, when the arrival of the railways brought the customs and language of other parts of the country and in particular, London. The rural dialect is still spoken in some villages however and is kept alive in the poems of William Barnes and Robert Young.
These are some words which are unique to the Dorset dialect, spoken in Dorset in the West Country of England.
Joseph Clark was an English oil painter, well known in the Victorian era for his domestic scenes, especially of children.
Lazy Laurence is a pixie and nature spirit in English folklore who inhabits the New Forest area of Hampshire and Dorset. He is traditionally associated with the protection of orchards and of cider, and known to send people to sleep beneath fruit trees, make them lazy, make them dither, or to give them stomach cramps.