SCOTCH NAMES OF NATIVE WILD FLOWERS. 95 



plant would be named from this outstanding fact. Haulm is 

 applied usually to a stalk of corn, but is also used to designate 

 other stems, as of such plants as potatoes and hops. Lock 

 or, loik (Celtic) is from the root of the word lie or lyke, which 

 we find still in the words lykewake, a wake or watch over a 

 dead body; Lichfield, the field of slaughter; Lackford and Leck- 

 ford, the sites of bloody battles; and Bolleit, the house of blood. 

 If I am correct, then hemlock means the " plant of death," and I 

 maintain that the derivation I have given is the only tenable one 

 if the plant was known to our ancestors deeper than the skin. 

 Further, our old Scotch words are many degrees nearer the 

 original Anglo-Saxon fountain-head than modern English words 

 are. Humloik, then, is a much older form than hemlock. The 

 change brought about by the wear and tear of words is always 

 from complex to simple. Hum could never come from hem, but 

 it would quite naturally result from haulm. Put leek or leac on 

 the grindstone of time and loik would never be the result; whereas 

 loik and lyke are almost identical. 



Jacinctyne is the hyacinth, hoxa.jacin.the, the French name. 



Lucken-gowan I ought to have given under gowan. It is the 

 globe-flower (Trollius enropceus), one of the yellow buttercups to 

 which the Scots applied the term gowan. Tannahill speaks of the 

 eventide as the time when " the daisy turns a pea, and the bonnie 

 lucken-gowan has falded up her e'e." Lucken is the Saxon verb to 

 lock, to shut up, and this plant, like the daisy and many others, is 

 sensitive to light, and locks or closes its flower when the sun sets. 

 The Scotch word luckie means a widow who is landlady of a hotel 

 or public-house; and Jamieson (who must have been a teetotaler) 

 says the word is derived from hlok, a witch. With all due defer- 

 ence to such a high authority, I hold that the word luckie is 

 derived, like lucken-gowan, from lucken, to lock. Luckie is so 

 named because she carries the keys and locks up. Lucken-handcd 

 was niggardly or close-fisted, and lucken-footed was web-footed. 

 But this is away from our plants. 



Maskwort is the Scotch name for the woundwort or all-heal 

 {Stachys), and the three words point to the same notion. Wound- 

 wort is good for healing wounds. All-heal is better — it cures all 

 the ills that flesh or spirit is heir to; and maskwort is the plant 

 that grows for the special purpose of being "masked" or infused for 



