256 POPULAR NAMES 



WRACK, seaweed thrown ashore, from a Norse or Frisian 

 word connected with Da. vrage, reject, Du. wraken, 

 GRASS-, a sea-plant with long grass-like leaves, 



Zostera marina, L. 



WYCH-ELM, an elm so named from its wood having been 

 used to make the chests called in old writers wyches, hucches, 

 or whycches, from Fr. huche, A.S. hwcscce, a term applied 

 by Sir John Mandeville (c. viii.) to the Ark of the Testi- 

 mony ; and in a poem called " Cleanness," edited by Dr. 

 R. Morris, to Noah's Ark : 



"And alle woned in ]>e whicche ]>e wylde and ]>e tame ;" 

 but more generally to the boxes used for keeping provisions, 

 as in Hazlitt's Early Popular Poetry, p. 210 : 



" His haU rofe was full of bacon flytches, 

 The chambre charged was with wyches 

 Full of egges, butter, and chese." 



Ulmus montana, L. 



WYCH-HAZEL, from the resemblance of its leaf to that of 

 the hazel, the wych-elm, Ulmus montana, L. 



YARR, abbreviated from yarrow, and applied to a very 

 different plant, the spurry, from both having been confused 

 under the name of milfoil, Spergula arvensis, L. 



YARROW, the milfoil, A.S. geartve, L.Ger. gerurce, 

 O.H.G-. garawa, O.Fris, kerva, G. garbe, a word that seems 

 to have been properly the name of the vervain, hiera- 

 botane, the gerebotanon of Apuleius, c. iii., from Gr. lepa 

 (Soravr), holy herb, with which and with the betony we 

 learn from a couplet in Macer, c. 58, that it was associated 

 in its vulnerary and other supposed virtues : 



" Herbam, cui nomen/o/m de mitte dedere, 

 Betonicamque pari verbenae pondere junge." 



The initial hi of Greek words has in the Germanic languages 

 been usually replaced with y orj, and thus, as Hieronymus 



