MR HARDY ON BUTTERCUPS AND DAISIES. 15 



say Bays of the Lucken gowan, though this passage is more usually 

 referred to the Trollius europaetts — 



*' "We'll pou the daises on the green, 

 The lucken-gowans frae the bog." 



*• The plant, says Mr Hodgson, ** which, as a boy, I was taught to 

 call locken-gowen, or goudy-locks, is the Trolius europea (sic) of bo- 

 tanists."* In Wilson's Synopsis of British Plants in Bay's Method,*!' 

 we have ** Ranunculus glohosus^ the globe flower, or locker gowlons." 

 In Wallis, this name is repeated.^ This is nothing but the " locket'* 

 or ** closed goulions'" of some of the old herbalists.§ Lightfoot*s ex- 

 planation of 



** Lukin gowans, of the medoes green,'* 



by cabbage daisy, is singularly apt ; and it is somewhat remarkable 

 that the Berwickshire name for this plant, viz. Stocks, should justify 

 its propriety, the flower being an admirable miniature of a ** closed 

 cabbage- stock.'* 



In the instances above enumerated, under various forms of spelling, 

 the word gold appears to perform the part of a genuine term, of which 

 there are, in popular estimation, various species : the Marigold, the 

 flower of the Virgin, so specified in Roman Catholic times ** from a 

 fancied resemblance of the florets of its disk to the rays of glory round 

 the Virgin's head;"|| the guild, gule, or gowlon, pre-eminent as the 

 purest metal, not requiring heightening epithet ; the yellow gowlon, or 

 gowan, which is a gilding of the " refined gold ;" the water goland, 

 equally happy as the marsh Marigold ; and the locket or lucken a 

 closed gowan. 



What ideas suggested by the word gowan or gowlon made it be ex- 

 tended and transferred from the '* cuckoo buds of yellow hue," and the 

 ** constant" marigold '* that goes to bed with the sun,"^ to the daisy 



* Hodgson's History of Northumberland, Part 2, vol. 2. Mr Hodgson 

 quotes from the edition 1 548. 



t Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 1744. 



X Natural History and Antiquities of Northumberland, London, 1769, voL i 

 p. 201. 



§ Nicholas Culpeper, M, D., who, in his usual whimsical way, remarks of 

 Crowfoot, — " Many are the names this furious biting herb has obtained, almost 

 enough to make up a Welshman's pedigree, if he fetch no farther than John 

 of Gaunt, or William the Conqueror." 



II Forster, Perennial Calendar, Introduction, p. xxii. 



ir " Summe," says Dr Turner, writing about threehundred years ago, " use 



