crayse, craisey
DATE:
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.