"the wind ... played a strange tune on the innumerable stems of the bents and the hard-stalked blossoms, to which the bees sang counterpoint"

In which Dice reads The Well at the World's End, by William Morris

1) "Riding the Wood Debateable" sounds like a euphemism.

2) "Gossip" is derived from God-Sib, apparently.

3) I don't know what "sele" means, and neither does dictionary.com.