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 Hunneysuckle’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.
