IRISH GARDENING 



VOLUME V. 

 Xo. .= 1 



A MONTHLY JOURNAL DEVOTED TO THE 



ADVANCEMENT OF HORTICULTURE AND 



ARBORICULTURE IN IRELAND 



MAY 

 1910 



(( 



The White Flowers of the Narcissus" 



By Padraic Colum. 



F you have two 

 loaves, sell one and 

 buy the white flowers 

 of the narcissus." 

 The saying- is Maho- 

 met's. It reminds 

 us that beauty is a 

 primal need, coming- 

 after bread. More- 

 over, the saying ex- 

 presses an obligation that is not often in 

 our consciousness. Morality, rightly under- 

 stood, is not repression, but an attempt on 

 our part to restore harmony to the world. 

 A g-reat moralist, wishing to contrast the 

 intentions of nature with the perversions 

 of men, beg-ins with the beauty of flower- 

 ing thing-s. The book I have in mind is 

 Tolstoy's " Resurrection." Spring has come 

 to the place that men have tried to disfigure. 

 In the town the grass revives and springs up 

 between the stones ; the birches, the poplars, 

 and the cherry trees unfold their buds. " It 

 was not this spring morning men thought 

 sacred and worthy of consideration, nor the 

 beauty of God's world, given as a joy to all 

 creatures, this beauty which inclines the heart 

 to peace, harmony, and love." To permit the 

 free expression of beauty, to grant to others a 

 share in that beauty, is part of morality. We 

 owe to ourselves the white flowers of the nar- 

 cissus. To sell a loaf and buy them may be an 

 obligation. To consider the lilies of the field 

 may be as binding as the obligation to consider 

 the poor. 



The fact that there are few flowers is a real 

 reproach to our countryside. Harsh and lui- 



lovely our farmhouses stand, the barest expres- 

 sion of mere living. The lack of flowers about 

 our houses was in a measure due to harsh con- 

 ditions that have passed. We look for more 

 flowers around the houses of the new order. 

 Our people have got the second loaf, and now 

 they should remember the oblig-ation of the 

 text — to exchange it for the flowers of the white 

 narcissus. 



To-day in the town we have the flowers of 

 spring. Daffodils carried about the streets 

 flash a message throug-h the city. The bank of 

 flowers at Nelson's Pillar gives colour and 

 freshness that the city sadly needs. When 

 will we realise that it is worth our while to 

 have boxes of growing flowers around the base 

 of that central column, and to set climbing^ 

 plants inside the ugly iron bars ? In the 

 country the sloe-bloom has come on the hedg-e, 

 and in the gardens we pass we see daffodils 

 and flowering pear trees. These labourers' 

 cottages are the houses of the new order 

 In the g-arden of one cottage there are 

 pansies and wild flowers growing ; another 

 cottage has a creeper across the porch. But 

 then we come to rows of new cottages bare of 

 flowers and creeper. The powers that con- 

 ferred the cottage and the half-acre can do some- 

 thing to set flowers there. I learn from Irish 

 Gardening that our County Councils have 

 power to deal particularly with cottage and 

 allotment gardening. It is in the power of the 

 Dublin County Council to appoint a horticul- 

 tural instructor who would visit these allot- 

 ments and put the labourers in the way of 

 making good use of their half-acre. The 

 expense of this appointment should not be con- 



