Note E119 — 20.
Reading edition
"Stouer." Stover is the term now applied to the coarser hay made of clover and artificial grasses, which is kept for the winter feed of cattle. But in Shakespeare's time the artificial grasses were not known in England, and were not introduced till about the middle of the seventeenth century. In Cambridgeshire I am informed that hay made in this manner is not called "stover" till the seeds have been threshed out. In the sixteenth century the word was apparently used to denote any kind of winter fodder except grass hay. Compare
"Thy turfy mountains, where live nibbling sheep, And flat meads thatch'd with stover, them to keep." —Shakspere, Tempest, Act iv. sc. I;
and Drayton, Polyolbion, xxv. 145,
"And others from their Carres, are busily about, To draw out Sedge and Reed, for Thatch and Stover fit."
"Stover" is enumerated by Ray among the South-and East-Country words as used in Essex, and is to be found in Moor's Suffolk Words and Forby's Vocabulary of East Anglia.