THE ORIGIN OF THE ENGLISH NAMES OF PLANTS. 62 7 



vera*", and gave rise to a diminutive " primaverola " . This passed 

 through French into English as " prime-rolles" in which form the 

 name appears in MSS. and the earliest herbal, and has since been 

 modified into the present name. The Jerusalem artichoke we might 

 imagine from its name to have come to us from the Holy Land ; and 

 with some such idea our cooks call the soup made from it " Palestine " 

 soup ; but, in reality, it is a sun-flower, brought originally from 

 America ; and its title " Jerusalem " is merely a corruption of the 

 Italian yirasole, meaning that which turns to the sun. The name thus 

 expresses the peculiarity attributed to the flower, which Moore refers to 



in the lines 



" As the sunflower turns to her god in the West 

 " The same look which she gave when he rose." 



From languages more closely related to our own, we have not bor- 

 rowed very many names, for many of their names are native also with 

 us. From the German, however, we get snowdrop, the " drop " 

 referring " not to icicles, but to the large pendants or drops that were 

 worn by the ladies of the 16th and 17th centuries both as earrings 

 and hanging to their brooches." From the Dutch we have gooseberry, 

 the first syllable of which is a corruption of the Dutch word for " cross ", 

 and describes the peculiar spines of the bush, three of which spring from 

 the same spot, at right angles to each other, so as to form a cross. 



Considering that at one time our country was inhabited altogether by 

 Celts, and Celtic dialects alone must have been spoken in it, it is some- 

 what strange how few Celtic words survive in the English of the present 

 day, except in the names of localities. We can only infer that the Celts 

 did not amalgamate with their conquerors, but retired before them, 

 carrying their language with them to the districts, where it still survives 

 in Welsh, Gaelic and Irish, and until quite recently also in Manse and 

 Cornish. Our plant-names show the same absence of a Celtic element ; 

 but the maple bears a title derived from the Welsh mapwl, a knob, and 

 referring to the knotty excrescence in the trunk of this tree, which was 

 at one time very highly prized for the ornamental wood it yields. 

 Strange to say, although the name was adopted by the Anglo-Saxons, it 

 does not survive in the Welsh of the present time. Ozier probably ori- 

 ginates from a Celtic word signifying water, whence the name of the 

 river Ouse and of a liquid possibly known to some of you termed whisky : 

 but the name ozier has come to us since the Norman conquest, from the 



