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feixe - sheaf - haz

Posted: Fri Oct 09, 2009 3:24 pm
by is
feixe: pronounced FAY-Sheh, chiefly West Asturian. A heap or bundle of cereal plants (wheat, rye), corn stalks or shrubs fastened together with twine. Hay or straw bound together with string, as in a haystack. By extension, anything tied into a sheaf or sheaves.

The word variant in Central Asturias is fexe (pronounced FEH-Sheh). Synonyms at knot, stack, heap, batch, truss.

Usage examples:

Apurrime esi feixe que trouxo Susana. [Hand me the sheaf that Susana just brought.]
Inda faltan 12 feixes pa teitar la capiel.la. [We still need 12 sheaves to thatch the roof of the chapel.]
Nolo nun quixo trabayar conos feixes—punxose a durmir nel prau. [Nolo didn’t want to work with the sheaves—he fell asleep on the grass.]
Nora, los tous feixes nun tan bien ataos. [Nora, your sheaves aren’t well tied.]

The Asturian word gaviella or gaviel.la is also used for stacks. But it means the hay or wheat stalks are not bound together with twine, as in:

Vamos atar el trigu que ta en gaviel.las ya vei chover. [Lets tie the bundle of wheat stalks because it’s going to rain.]

Here is a picture of what is technically a gaviel.la, but only seconds later is destined to become a feixe.

The material is xiniesta or xesta, the West Asturian and Galician words for a scrub brush whose taxon is Cytisus scoparius and is otherwise known as 'common broom'.

The name in Latin is Planta genista, which led to xiniesta and xesta. Broom is used in the mountains of SW Asturias to thatch roofs.


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