14 MR HARDY ON BUTTERCUPS AND DAISIES. 



constrained to issue stringent decrees for its extirpation.* Turner, the 

 father of English botany, who, as being a native of Moi'peth, is the 

 oldest authority for the Northumbrian names of plants, gives " a gal- 

 lande" as the common name for the crowfoot or kingcup.t Ray men- 

 tions it under the form giilan, as in Northumberland, appropriate to 

 the buttercup ; and at the present day, in the northern parts of that 

 shire, the '* yellow gowlon" is the term by which the various tribe of 

 crowfoots that " gild the plain" is designated. Passing the Tweed, 

 we find the appellation still retained, but altered by the omission of a 

 letter. In some parts of Berwickshire, the yellow gowan yet recalls 

 the memory of what is more popularly known as the buttercup (Ita- 

 nunculus repenSy acris, hulbosus, Sec.) In Lanarkshire, however, the 

 phrase, yellow gowans, yet flourishes as the common name of the creep- 

 ing meadow crowfoot (^Ranunculus repens.) Hamilton of Bangour, in 

 his ballad of the Braes of Yarrow, thus alludes to it by this familiar 

 term — 



" Sweet smells the birk, green grows, green grows the grass. 



Yellow on Yarrow's bank the gowan, 



Fair hangs the apple frae the rock. 



Sweet the wave of Yarrow flowan. 



Flows Yarrow sweet 1 as sweet, as sweet flows Tweed, 



Its grass as green, its gowan as yellow. 



As sweet, smells on its braes the birk. 



The apple frae its rock as mellow." 



Turner, in his Herbal, under the head " Lukken GoUande," as Mr 

 Hodgson, in his History of Northumberland, remarks, and as may be 

 seen from the subjoined description,^ pourtrays the Caltha palustris, 

 ♦* Turner's Lucken Golland," says Mr Hodgson, who, from passages 

 in his History, appears to be a native of Westmoreland, *♦ we called 

 water golland,^^ and as appropriate to it, he quotes what Allan Ram- 



• Lightfoot, Flora Scotica, vol. i. p. 490, borrowed from Linnaeus according 

 to Jamieson. 



t The Seconde Parte of William Turner's Herball, &c. &c. Imprinted 

 at CoUen, 1562 ; blackletter, fol. 114. 



X Tbys herbe uselh to growe comonly about water sydes, -and in watery 

 meadowes, the proporcion of the leffe is much like unto a water rose, other- 

 wyse called nunefar, but the lefe is sharper and many partes lesse, and there 

 grow many leves on one stalke, and in the toppe of the stalke is a yelow 

 flowre like unto the kyngcuppe called ranunculus ; but the leaves of the floures 

 tume inwarde agayne, in the manner of a knoppe or lyttell belle." A new 

 Herball, &c. &c., by Wylliam Turner, Physicion unto the Duke of Somer- 

 settes Grace. Lend. 1551. Fol. k. v. 



