Xylon, Gr. (lit. wood). A Greek measure of length, equal to 4 feet and 6·6 inches.
Xylopyrography. Poker-painting; the art of burning pictures on to wood.
Xyneciæ, Gr. (συν-οίκια). Festivals held at Athens in honour of Minerva, to commemorate the union of the inhabitants of Attica into a single city. These festivals were instituted by Theseus, and held every year in the month of July. Another name for them was Metœciæ (μετοίκιαι).
Xystus, Gr. (ξυστός). A covered place situated near a portico, within which, in a palæstra or stadium, athletes went through their exercises. Pausanias tells us that this part of the stadium received its name from the fact that Hercules used every day to clear out the palæstra at Elis in order to inure himself to toil, and that he tore up many weeds by scraping (ξύω, to scrape, ξυστός). The baths and thermæ at Rome were furnished with large xysti, in which young men went through a number of exercises. The term xystus was also generally applied by the Romans to the beds of rare flowers and shrubs in the centre of the peristyle; it also denoted a garden walk perfectly straight, and planted in a regular style; and lastly, an open walk or terrace in a garden attached to any building.
Y.
The letter Y is called the letter of Pythagoras because that philosopher made it the symbol of life. The foot of the letter, he said, represented infancy, and as man gradually rises to the age of reason, he finds two paths set before him, the one leading to good, the other to evil, portrayed by two forks of the letter. The illustration is the device of Jean de Morvilliers (+ 1577), Chancellor of France; the harrow tied to the Pythagorean Υ, a rebus on his name Mort-vie-liers—“Death and life united.” The harrow is the symbol of Death, which makes all things equal. (Fig. [701].)
Fig. 701. Device of Morvilliers. (The Pythagorean Y.)
Yacca. An ornamental Jamaica wood used for cabinet-making.
Yard (from the Saxon geard or gyrd, from gyrdan, to enclose). Originally estimated to measure the girth of a man’s body; until Henry I. decreed that it should be the length of his arm.