and welcome. This they do before going to bed, and when they 

 rise in the morning they look at the ashes for the impress of 

 Briid's club there ; if seen, a prosperous year will follow. 



A. fatua and pretensis — Wild oats. Gaelic : coirce fiadhain, 

 wild oats ; coirc dubh, black oats. Also applied to the Brome 

 grasses. 



" Do'n t-siol chruithneachd, chuireadh gu tiugh ; 

 Cha b' e' n fhideag, no' n coirce dubh." — MACDONALD. 



When oats become black with blight, the name coirc dubh is 

 applied, but especially to the variety called Avena strigosa. 



Elymus arenarius — Lyme grass. Gaelic : taithean (Carmichael). 

 A common seaside grass, with long creeping root stocks, some- 

 thing in appearance like barley, but much stiffer, two to four feet 

 high. 



Hordeum distichon — Barley, the kind which is in common 

 cultivation. ("Barley" comes from Celtic bar, bread, now 

 obsolete in Gaelic, but still retained in Welsh — hence barn, and 

 by the change of the vowel, beer.) Gaelic and Irish : eorna, brna. 

 Manx : oarn. Irish : earn (perhaps from Latin, horreo, to bristle ; 

 Gaelic, br, a beard) — O'Reilly. "The bearded or bristly barley;" 

 "brag" a sheaf of corn. Hordeum, sometimes written ordeum 

 (Freund), is from the same root. "It was cultivated by the 

 Romans for horses, and also for the army; and gladiators in 

 training were fed with it, and hence called hordiarii." It is still 

 used largely in the Highlands for bread, but was formerly made 

 into "crowdie,'' properly corrody, from Low Latin, corrodium, a worry. 

 " Fuarag eorna 'n sail mo bhroige, 

 Biadh a b' fhearr a fhuair mi riamh." 

 Barley-aov/die in my shoe, 

 The sweetest food I ever knew. 

 Irish : cainebg, oats and barley — from cain (Greek, Kijvo-os ; Latin, 

 census), rent, tribute. Rents were frequently paid in "kind," 

 instead of in money." 



Secale cereale — Common rye. Gaelic and Irish: seagal. 

 Greek : o-cxaArj. Armoric : segal. French : seigle. Manx : feiyr 

 shoggvl. 



" An cruithneach agiis an seagal." — ExODUS. 

 The wheat and the rye. 

 Welsh : rhyg, rye. 



Molinia caerulea — Purple melic-grass. Gaelic: bunglas (Mac- 



