MR HARDY ON BUTTERCUPS AND DAISIES. 19 



well.* The good taste by which this general favourite has been con- 

 nected with the season of its first appearance has not been wanting to 

 other nations. The French, by their common name Marguerite Paque- 

 rette, have associated it with the festival of Easter, with which in France 

 its flowering is synchronous. It is pleasing to those who love to ap- 

 preciate the ameliorating influences of natural scenery, and of the pro- 

 secution of physical research upon the mind, to note the preservation of 

 those modes of thinking, by which the operations and festivities of the 

 season become linked with the most prominent natural objects at the 

 period of their occurrence or commemoration. To the clasical student 

 they recall the memories of those primitive times in the world's history 

 when, to the patriarchal labourer, the revolutions of seasons and pro- 

 verbial wisdom, deduced from a thousand experiences of nature's doings, 

 formed a calendar truly natural, t 



The instances remaining in which the word gowlon or gowan has 

 not yet been discussed, are in such cases where it occurs connected with 

 the names of places. The foregoing remarks will convey some idea of 

 the plants that were in view in such topographical nomenclature. In 

 Hodgson's Northumberland, J there is mentioned a locality in the parish 

 of Haltwhistle called the Gowan Syke. This, to all appearance, de- 

 rives its prajnomen from the prevalence in the half-stagnant marsh or 

 syke of Caltha palustris. Among the lands which in 1603 George, 

 Earl of Dunbar, had conferred upon him, by the favour of James VI. 

 on his accession to the English throne, along with several places in the 

 vicinity of Berwick, he had ** the meadow called the Yellow Gowland^ 

 near I«eatham, and extending to East and West Mordington."§ In the 

 charter of the same Sovereign to the town of Berwick-upon-Tweed, of 

 date 30th April of the same year, this meadow, *' vulgariter" termed 

 *• Le Yellowe Gowland^^ occurs as being, under the obligations of the 

 grant just cited, exempted from the jurisdiction of that borough,|| 

 This was a large piece of ground, and is still well remembered though 



* In Berwickshire, the common expression is, " Ye'll get ronnd Again, if 

 ye haid your fit (foot) on tho May gowan." 



tNo change of consuls marks to him the year ; 



I'ho change of seasons is his calendar : 



The cold and heat, winter and summer she-vs, 



Autumn by fruits, and spring by flo\**rs le knows. 



Claudian^s Old Man of VeronOf 6y Cowify, 

 X Part II. vol. iii. p. 352. 

 § Raine, History of North Durha-n, p. 32. 

 II lb. Appendix, p. clii. 



