Hazels are plants of the genus Corylus of deciduous trees and large shrubs native to the temperate Northern Hemisphere. The genus is usually placed in the birch family Betulaceae, though some botanists split the hazels (with the hornbeams and allied genera) into a separate family Corylaceae. The fruit of the hazel is the hazelnut. Archaeologists found large quantities of hazelnut shells in Mesolithic and Neolithic sites in what is now Sweden, Denmark, and Germany. Evidence of hazelnuts in China dates to around 3000 B.C.
“If you you love me, crack and fly; If you hate me, burn and die.”
Two hazel-nuts I threw into the flame,
And to each nut I gave a sweetheart’s name:
This with the loudest bounce me sore amazed,
That in a flame of brightest colour blazed;
As blazed the nut, so may thy passion grow,
For ’twas thy nut that did so brightly glow!
Burning the nuts is a favourite charm.
They name the lad and lass to each particular nut, as they lay them in the fire;
and accordingly as they burn quietly together, or start from beside one another,
the course and issue of the courtship will be.”
“Enamel is thus made : take lead, and melt it, continually taking off the pellicle which floats on the surface, until the whole of the lead is wasted away; of which take one part, and of the powder hereafter mentioned, as much; and this is the said powder: take small white pebbles which are found in streams, and pound them into most subtle powder; and if you wish to have yellow enamel, add oil of filberts and stir with a hazel rod; for green, add filings of copper, or verdigris; for red, add filings of latten with calamine; for blue, good azure* or saff’re, of which glaziers make blue glass.”
This website says:
and this website says:
Tipra Chonnlai, ba mór muirn, | Connla’s well, loud was its sound, |
(Gwynn 1913, Sinann II, pp.292–293) |
Nechtain mac Labrada laind, | Nechtain son of bold Labraid |
(Gwynn 1913, Boand I, pp.28–29) |
gianduja resembles a bar of chocolate. It is softer on the tooth than a plain chocolate bar (because of the oil from the hazelnuts)
The name of the ninth letter of the alphabet is the word for ‘hazel-tree’, Old Irish coll, cognate with Welsh collen pl. cyll hazel-tree(s), Latin corulus from the root *kos(e)lo-. The etymology confirms /k/ (as opposed to /kʶ/, see the next letter) as the value of this letter in Primitive Irish.