Rye

Rye is a tall annual or biennial grass of the wheat tribe, grown for its seed as a grain, as a winter cover crop and as fodder. It stands one to three metres high, with long, pointed, blue-green leaves and its seeds held in a curved spike. Better able than other cereals to bear cold weather and poor, sandy or peaty ground, it is grown chiefly from eastern and northern Europe into Russia, and remains from a site in northern Syria suggest it was among the first cereals people ever cultivated, some 13,000 years ago. The grain goes into bread, crispbread, beer and whiskey, and was a staple of medieval Scandinavia. Rye is very prone to ergot, a fungus whose infected grains brought epidemics of poisoning to the damp northern countries that lived on it. German folklore peoples its fields with the Roggenwolf, a wolf-shaped spirit said to carry off children, and the Roggenmutter who runs with a pack of them. Kynes records rye laid on the threshold or under the rafters of a new German house for luck and protection, its grains used across Europe and the British Isles in love divination, and the Dutch use of rye to unmask a witch. Cunningham gives it to Venus and earth, for love and fidelity, noting its place in Romany love spells and that rye bread served to those you love keeps their love.