Words - skip - Brewer’s

Rue

.

A slip of land (free of all manorial charges and claims) encompassing or bounding manorial land. It certainly is not derived from the French rue, a street, nor is it a corruption of row. (See Rewe.)

Rewe is a roll or slip, hence Ragman’s rewe or roll (q.v.).

“There is a whole world of curious history contained in the phrase Ragman’s rewe, meaning a roll. In Piers Plowman’s Vision, the pope’s bull is called a rewe.”—Edinburgh Review, July, 1870.

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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.