94 SCOTCH NAMES OF NATIVE WILD FLOWERS. 



Gaelic word gugan, meaning first a bud, or blossom, and then 

 a daisy. But to this I demur. There is a very old Scotch 

 word gow, meaning a halo, and this I hold to be the true 

 derivation. In tracing the origin of a word like this, it is 

 a safe plan always to take into consideration the derivation of 

 correlative words such as daisy. Daisy is the day's eye, i.e., the 

 sun. Note the old pictures of the sun — see the yellow, golden 

 eye, with the surrounding pencils of silvery white rays branching 

 out in all directions. The picture is the daisy to a T. The very 

 same idea is as picturesquely conveyed by the word gowan or 

 halo. What more natural than that the two portions of the 

 Anglo-Saxon race — the one north, the other south of the Tweed 

 — should have been struck with the same idea of the plant's 

 appearance, and should have translated it into their most poetic 

 figure of speech. The meaning of the word is alike poetic in 

 either case, but gowan has the softer sound — it wants the sibilant 

 " s." Gowan, therefore, is the superior word, and the English 

 dictionary makers have acknowledged as much by adopting it. 

 Ewe-gowan is the common daisy, so called from its being found 

 abundantly in sheep pastures. Horse-gowan is, first, the ox-eye 

 daisy {Chrysanthemum Leucanthemum), from its size; and second, 

 the larger flowers of the hawk-weed tribe, such as Crepis and 

 Hypochoeris. Yellow-gowan is not a composite at all. The term 

 is applied to the more conspicuous of the buttercups, such as 

 the lesser celandine (Ranunculus Ficarid) and the marsh-marigold 

 (Caltha palustris). In addition the marsh-marigold has the 

 name jonette, from its French name jaulnette. 



Hemlock (Conium maculatum) by our ancestors was called 

 humloik, the same word practically as the English name. The 

 derivation of hemlock is said to be from hem, the edge or border, 

 and kac, Saxon word for a leek, but applied, e.g. house leek, very 

 generally like crop, grass, and corn. Hemlock, then, would 

 mean the plant that grows on the border of cultivated ground 

 in hedges and such like places. The plant certainly answers 

 this description, but so would three out of every four plants 

 of the flora. Besides, to accept this derivation is to own 

 that our forefathers did not know its poisonous properties, 

 and this could scarcely be the case. If they knew the deadly 

 qualities of the hemlock, which I hold they must have done, the 



