60  The  Origin  of  some  Old  Agricultural  Words. 
It  is  a term  of  great  antiquity,  answering  to  the  Latin  /ar,  with 
which  it  is  cognate,  just  as  the  verb  to  hear  answers  to  the 
Latin  ferre.  These  two  examples  may  help  any  one  who  is 
interested  in  the  phonetic  laws  of  language  to  remember  that, 
whenever  an  English  word  beginning  with  b has  a cognate 
Latin  equivalent,  the  latter  must  begin  with  /.  To  adduce  a 
third  example,  the  verb  to  bore  is  the  Latin  forare.  It  is  a 
remarkable  fact  that  the  Anglo-Saxon  word  for  “ barley  ” 
signified  “ bear-like,”  and  was  merely  a derivative  adjectival 
form  deduced  from  an  equivalent  of  the  shorter  form  above. 
But  barley,  or  rather  the  aforesaid  bear , is  also  called 
bigg.  This  is  because  a considerable  number  of  words  of 
Scandinavian  origin  have  found  their  way  into  English, 
especially  into  our  Northern  and  Eastern  dialects  ; and  it  so 
happened  that  the  grain  which  the  English  called  by  a name 
that  is  now  dialectally  spelt  bear  or  here  was  called  in  Old 
Norse  bygg  ; and  any  good  Danish  dictionary,  such  as  that  by 
Larsen,  will  give  “ Byg,  barley.”  These  provincial  names  are 
necessarily  spread,  as  a rule,  over  restricted  areas  ; and  it  is 
desirable  that  the  student  should  learn  to  include  them  in  his 
vocabulary,  in  order  that  he  may  be  more  in  sympathy  with 
those  who  use  such  terms  habitually.  It  is  no  more  than  is 
done  by  many  a student  of  English,  who  has  no  special 
interest  in  agricultural  details.  These  country  names  are 
frequently  of  great  antiquity  and  deserving  of  much  respect. 
I suppose  that  tares  and  vetches  are  not  much  distinguished 
now.  We  have  to  remember  that  there  was  once  a battle  near 
Hastings  which  had  great  results  ; one  of  which  was  to  fill  our 
language  with  a large  number  of  French  words  which  we 
might  never  otherwise  have  known.  Many  of  these  are 
explained  in  my  Concise  Etymological  Dictionary  ; where  it 
is  noted,  for  example,  that  the  word  vetch  is  not  derived  from 
the  Parisian  vesce , but  from  the  form  veche  (from  the  Latin 
vicia ),  used  in  the  Norman  dialect  as  well  as  in  the  Walloon 
of  the  Netherlands.  The  native  English  words  beginning  with 
v were,  in  olden  times,  mostly  to  be  found  in  the  Southern 
dialects,  which  employed  for  example,  the  words  vox  and  vixen , 
where  N orthern  dialects  had  fox  and  fixen  ; and  it  is  not  a 
little  extraordinary  that,  in  our  literary  dialect,  we  have 
selected  the  Southern  vixen  as  the  feminine  of  the  Midland 
and  Northern  fox.  Hence  it  was  that  our  Northern  dialects 
turned  vetch  into  fetch , or  occasionally  fitch  ; and  those  who 
are  best  acquainted  with  our  Authorised  Version  of  the  Bible 
will  recognise  what  is  meant  in  Isa.  xxviii.  25 — “ doth  he 
not  cast  abroad  the  fitches  ? ” 
Turning  to  Wyclif’s  version  of  the  Bible,  we  find,  in  the 
same  passage,  the  spelling  fetchis  (in  the  later  version)  ; but  if 
