by putting them in the fire and singeing them brown, repeating verses at
the same time. One of the names of the heath-pea (Lathyrus
macrorrhizus) is liquory-knots, and school-boys in Berwickshire so call
them, for when dried their taste is not unlike that of the real liquorice. [4]
Again, a children's name of common henbane (Hyoscyamus niger) is
"loaves of bread," an allusion to which is made by Clare in his
"Shepherd's Calendar":--"Hunting from the stack-yard sod
The stinking henbane's belted pod,
By youth's warm fancies sweetly led
To christen them his loaves of bread."A Worcestershire name for a horse-chestnut is the "oblionker tree."
According to a correspondent of Notes and Queries (5th Ser. x. 177), in
the autumn, when the chestnuts are falling from their trunks, boys
thread them on string and play a "cob-nut" game with them. When the
striker is taking aim, and preparing for a shot at his adversary's nut, he
says:--"Oblionker!
My first conker (conquer)."The word oblionker apparently being a meaningless invention to
rhyme with the word conquer, which has by degrees become applied to
the fruit itself.
The wall peniterry (Parietaria officinalis) is known in Ireland as
"peniterry," and is thus described in "Father Connell, by the O'Hara
Family" (chap, xii.):--"A weed called, locally at least, peniterry, to which the suddenly terrified
[schoolboy] idler might run in his need, grasping it hard and threateningly,
and repeating the following 'words of power':--
'Peniterry, peniterry, that grows by the wall,
Save me from a whipping, or I'll pull you roots and all.'"Johnston, who has noticed so many odd superstitions, tells us that the
tuberous ground-nut (Bunium flexuosum), which has various
nicknames, such as "lousy," "loozie," or "lucie arnut," is dug up by
children who eat the roots, "but they are hindered from indulging to
excess by a cherished belief that the luxury tends to generate vermin in
the head." [5]