Yeah - lets do that article! I'd always assumed 'barley' came from 'parley', to talk truce (from 'parler', to talk) but I don't know. I found a source about the origing of fainites soemwhere. I've found one site that mentions truce words in NZ - where 'pax' has become 'pecs'. There's odd discussions on the web with people swapping memories about it but not that many scholarly works, certainly not along the lines of Opie. I've got a copy of Opie arriving soon. I'm impressed about the maps! Do you draw it and then scan it or is it all much more brilliantly and technonolgically cleverer than that?  barley