The Old English word for cup is bune. If you really want to be confused, you can read that bune can also mean purchase and maiden. A long time ago there used to be a thing called bride price. It actually cost something to get a wife. These days people expect to get everything for free, and then they don't appreciate it. Instead, they complain that it wasn't worth what they got it for - nothing.

Toward the end of the play Riders to The Sea, there is a small container of holy water mentioned in connection with Bartley's death:

"MAURYA (raising her head and speaking as if she did not see the people around her). They're all gone now, and there isn't anything more the sea can do to me. ...I'll have no call now to be up crying and praying when the wind breaks from the south, and you can hear the surf is in the east, and the surf is in the west, making a great stir with the two noises, and they hitting one on the other. I'll have no call now to be going down and getting Holy Water in the dark nights after Samhain, and I won't care what way the sea is when the other women will be keening. (To Nora.) Give me the Holy Water, Nora, there's a small sup still on the dresser."

These days, "surf's up", surf sup, at the beach.

In Riders to The Sea, there is no living husband, but since there is a sub-theme of Odin the trickster in Riders to The Sea, and Colum is in the house making the coffin, you can't help but wonder what they are really talking about.

In Porgy and Bess, a collection is taken up to pay for a funeral. They "fill up de saucer 'till it overflow". My grandmother would pour her cup very full with coffee and then spill it into her saucer and drink from it first before drinking from the cup. The practical reason for this was to cool the coffee quickly in the saucer, but I'm wondering if there is an unremembered custom behind this.

My great-grandparents homesteaded their farm. Buan is an Old English word that means to dwell, settle, or cultivate. In times past, the husband of the household would lead in the work of homesteading.

One linguist gives this definition:

"Webster's gives the etymology of husband as:
Etymology: Middle English husbonde, from Old English husbonda master of a house, from Old Norse husbOndi, from hus house + bOndi householder; akin to Old Norse, bua to inhabit; akin to Old English buan to dwell."

An agrarian society marked the seasons of the year with festivals that celebrated not only the important planting and harvesting times but also threw religion into the festival mix.

Sir Walter Scott writes: "On Hallowmas Eve, ere ye boune to rest". Halloween was once the festival of Samhain with customs and ideas that were really scary at that time.

Easter is a springtime festival. In England, they make hot crossed buns. The origin of this custom is pre-Christian:

"At the feast to Eastre, an ox was sacrificed and the image of his horns carved into ritual bread - which evolved into the twice-scored Easter biscuits we call 'hot cross buns.' In fact, the word 'bun' derives from the Saxon for 'sacred ox,' 'boun.'" Sacred Origins of Profound Things. A cross bun kept from one Good Friday to the next was thought to bring luck, the buns were supposed to serve as a charm against shipwreck, and hanging a bun over the chimney-piece ensured that all bread baked there would be perfect. Another belief was that eating hot cross buns on Good Friday served to protect the home from fire."

Livestock was once a vital part of the old homestead, but don't mistake the Old English word horsc, which means wise, for horse, even though real horse sense was needed in those times and also in ours.