The  Origin  of  some  Old  Agricultural  Words.  61 
we  turn  to  his  version  of  Matt.  xiii.  25,  we  find  him  using  the 
plural  form  tar  is  to  translate  the  Latin  zizania , or  darnel.  We 
even  find  the  words  compounded.  Thus  tarefitcli  is  used 
in  Cheshire  and  Shropshire,  and  tarevetch  in  Dorsetshire  and 
the  Isle  of  Wight,  to  denote  various  species  of  wild  vetch, 
especially  the  tuffed  vetch  and  the  hairy  vetch  ( Vicia  cracca, 
and  V.  hirsuta.) 
“ Finger-and-toe  ” is  a term  used  in  many  Northern  and 
Midland  dialects  to  signify  a disease  in  turnips  that  causes  the 
bulb  to  run  into  branches  instead  of  remaining  spherical ; and 
the  reference  is  tolerably  obvious.  I am  told  that  it  is  also 
sometimes  called  “ club-foot,”  doubtless  with  reference  to  its 
distorted  form.  In  Norfolk  it  is  called  anbury  or  anberry, 
less  correctly  ambury  ; and  the  same  term  is  also  used  of  a 
wart  or  spongy  swelling  on  a horse.  In  Florio’s  Italian 
Dictionary,  printed  in  1598,  the  Italian  word  moro  is  explained 
by  “a  mulberry  tree ; also  a wart  in  a horse  called  an  anburie.” 
There  is  little  doubt  that  the  original  form  was  ang-berry, 
literally  “painful  berry.”  Any  is  an  Anglo-Saxon  prefix 
related  to  a Gothic  adjective  signifying  “compressed,  tight, 
painful.”  It  is  fully  explained  in  the  New  English  Dictionary 
under  the  word  Agnail,  “a  word  of  which  the  application 
(and  perhaps  the  form)  has  been  much  perverted  by  pseudo- 
etymology.” So  much  so,  indeed,  that  it  actually  acquired  an 
h , and  became  a “ hang-nail,”  with  a much  varied  and  quite 
novel  sense. 
I am  told  that,  after  clover  is  cut  for  hay,  “ the  second 
growth  is  known  as  aftermath,  fog,  ollands,  stover,  &c.” 
Aftermath  means  “ that  which  is  mown  afterwards,”  or 
for  the  second  time.  Both  math  and  mead  are  derivatives 
from  a root  signifying  “ to  mow  ” ; math  is  properly  “ a 
mowing,”  and  mead  means  “ that  which  is  mown.”  It 
is  a singular  fact  that  the  Anglo-Saxon  word  for  “ mead  ” 
had  a dative  case  which  has  been  preserved  in  the  form 
“ meadow  ” ; and  the  Anglo-Saxon  word  for  “ shade  ” has 
the  dative  form  “shadow.”  Fog,  though  sometimes  used  for 
aftermath,  is  properly  coarse,  rank  grass  ; or,  particularly,  the 
long  grass  left  standing  in  the  fields  during  the  winter.  In  a 
poem  of  the  fourteenth  century,  we  are  told  of  Nebuchadnezzar, 
that  he  believed  himself  to  be  turned  into  a bull  or  an  ox  ; he 
fares  forth  on  all  fours,  and  “ fog  ” was  his  meat.  Hence  was 
formed  the  adjective  foggy,  abounding  in  coarse  grass,  mossy, 
boggy  ; hence,  misty,  giving  off  thick  vapour  ; whence  the 
word  fog  came  to  be  used  in  a new  sense,  viz.,  that  of  mist 
or  vapour,  in  which  sense  it  is  no  older  than  1544,  however 
familiar  it  may  seem  to  be  now.  Shakespeare  so  uses  it,  in 
Macbeth , Act  i.,  Sc.  1. 
