“I have collected nine accounts and they contradict one another so completely that I have concluded the contradiction is the finding. The wood does not know what is in its own northern quarter. It has instead nine opinions, each held firmly, each by somebody with no more evidence than the next.”
As the woodwards of Wychwood tell it
A party went north in autumn, once the leaf was down, by one of the two dead rides where the old cutting line could still be traced for a mile and a half. They had fixed a day and marked their route, and they left one of their number at the last hearth to hold it. The burner there had taken to them, and before they went he put a charm of his own making into the leader’s hand and said nothing about what it was for. Past the end of the ride the wood closed in within a hundred yards, and they were out of sight.
The day came and the party did not. The one who waited held on as long as he could bear it, and then, against everything he had been told, he went in after them. Afterwards the party came out along the dead ride by itself. The woodwards know of two times it has gone that way, and they tell it for the one rule they are sure of: whoever waits does not come in.
Ask a woodward what is in there and he will say it is not his walk. The verderers say nothing need be in it at all. The burners say there are things in it, there since before the wood was worked, and the oldest of them say the wood is theirs. Nobody who refuses to guide a party past the rides gives the party’s danger as the reason.
What is known
Wychwood covers the western third of the march. The south is worked hard in coppice, charcoal and pannage; the north stopped being visited, and no one ever ruled on it. Of the nine principal rides seven are kept, and two run into the middle ground and stop. The regarders say crows will not settle over some four square miles. No office answers for the quarter, and opening it would cost more than its timber is worth.
In 4620 Brother Osbert Chevening collected nine accounts and concluded that their contradiction was the finding. The verderers, the burners, the priory, the Collegium’s surveyor and the middle-ground families each hold a position, none can be tested, and each implies a different job: extermination, containment and perhaps cure, terms, or husbandry. The surveyor, twice at the edge, is the only one with a method. Nobody guides past the point where the rides close. This is one quarter of one wood.