34 
down there on the banks of the Styx so long, where there is nothing 
to be had, but asphodel (the roots were laid in the tombs as food 
for the dead) and libations and oblations, and a plant of the same 
name was in later times highly esteemed as an article of food 
especially the, no doubt bulbous, root. It seems probable that 
Narcissus poeticus or Narcissus pseudonarcissus (daffodil) was the 
asphodel of poetry. But when we come to our own nomenclature 
we find that this word asphodel has passed into common use under 
a much altered form. ‘‘Daffodil” is a corruption of ‘fleur 
d’affrodile,”’ the d@’ of the preposition having become attached to 
the word ‘‘ affrodile” or “‘affrodily,” as ‘‘an eft” has become 
‘“a newt.” 
““Strewe me the ground with daffadowndillies,” sings Spenser 
in his ‘‘Shepheard’s Calendar”; but where did he get the extra 
syllable ‘‘down”? There was another plant called Sapharoun 
lily: or saffron, Crocus sativa; which is of Arabic origin 
(zahafaran), and it is probable that the alliterative ring of the 
latter name rhyming with affodily led to the insertion of the extra 
syllable “‘ down ’’—sapharoun lily and daffadowndilly. 
The beautiful chorus in ‘‘ Aedipus at Colonus,’’ that chorus, 
which, as the story goes, Sophocles recited to his judges when 
required to prove that he had not yet sunk into dotage, contains 
the following allusion to the Narcissus: ‘‘ There bloom beneath 
the dews of heaven the beauteous clusters of the narcissus, time 
honoured chaplet of the mighty goddess, &c.’’ The goddesses were 
Ceres and Proserpina, queens of the world below, and the 
dark-blue clustering flowers and heavy narcotic odour of our 
Hyacinthus, make it the most probable plant for the ancient 
name, Narcissus, and not the white or yellow lilies, that now go 
by that name. The etymology of the word is “torpor” or 
‘‘numbness,”’ and Plutarch explains the name in the same way, 
adding ‘‘ those who are numbed with death should very fittingly 
be crowned with a benumbing flower.” 
But now see whither this literary identification leads us. If 
the asphodel of olden days be the narcissus of to-day, that is the 
daffodil, and the narcissus of old be the hyacinthus of to-day, that 
is the blue bell, what becomes of the hyacinthus of ancient days. 
Some suggest the iris of to-day is the hyacinthus of Greek poetry ; 
some the larkspur according to Dioscorides, some the martagon 
lily: for us it is the blue bell, but yet not the ‘blue bells of 
Scotland ’’—they are the hair bell—so difficult is it to fix the right 
names to the right plants. Theocritus (Jdyl. x. 28.) again, knew 
a plant called hyacinthus, and he styles it ‘‘inscribed’’; and 
Ovid (Met. x. 215.) narrating the legendary birth of his hyacinth 
from the blood of the slain Ajax, son of Telamon, at the bidding 
of Appollo, declares that its petals are inscribed with the first two 
