crayse, craisey local.
Also crazey, crazy.
[Derivation unknown.]
A rustic name of various species of Ranunculus or buttercup.
| c 1652 Roxb. Ball. (1873) I. 340 With milkmaids Hunney⁓suckle's phrase, The crow's-foot, nor the yellow crayse. 1789 Marshall Glocestersh. I. 178 Creeping crowfoot, provincially creeping-crazey. 1847–78 Halliwell, Craisey, the butter-cup. Wilts..Crazey, crow's foot. South. 1869 J. Britten Q. Jrnl. Folkestone Nat. Hist. Soc. I. 29 In Gloucestershire, Wiltshire, etc., Buttercups are known as ‘Crazies’—a word, which is in Buckinghamshire embodied in ‘Butter-creeses’ and ‘Yellow creeses’, applied indiscriminately to the three species. 1879 Prior Plant-n. 57 Crazy or Craisey, the buttercup, apparently a corruption of Christ's eye, L. oculus Christi, the medieval name of the marigold. 1884 Upton-on-Severn Gloss., Craisy, a buttercup. |