- roe deer. The obsolete form, 'ra', compounded with 'fell', an old word for skin to give raffell, provides a word which appears in many old quotations, showing how useful roe skin was. In the sixteenth-century poem Christis Kirk on the Grene we read:
Thair gluvis wes of the raffell rycht.
The Household Book of Lady Grizell Baillie (1702) contains an entry for payment for a reffile for herpsicords. There are also various references to the use of roe skin for making laces.