139 



doubtful), there is absolute proof that Clote never meant the 

 Water Lily in the days when Claverton first got its name. Clote 

 always meant the bur or burdock and nothing else. On this 

 point there is a complete consensus of all the old writers, 

 beginning with the early vocabularies, through the early diction- 

 aries, such as the Promptoiium, the Catholicon and the dictionaries 

 of Cotgrave and Palsgrave, through all the old Herbalists of the 

 16th and 17th centuries, down to our own day, in which the 

 name has been almost lost. In all of these the Clote is always 

 the Lappa, the bur or burdock, and there is not the slightest hint 

 that the name was ever applied to the Water Lily. But about 

 forty years ago Mr. Barnes stated in his Poems of Eural Life, 

 that in Dorsetshire the Water Lily is now called the Clote. It may 

 be so now occasionally, and the fact is curious as an instance Avhere 

 a lost name has survived and been transferred to another plant, 

 but it is no proof as to any such ancient use of the word, and the 

 loose way in which the English peasant names plants deprives the 

 fact of any etymological value.* But it was taken up by three 

 difi'erent persons, all of good authority — first by Cockayne, t In 

 an Anglo-Saxon Leechdom is a remedy against worms — '^take 

 dock or clote, such as would swim ; " and Cockayne, following 

 Barnes' lead, thinks that " Clote that would swim," may be the 

 Water Lily. But I have no doubt that the " Clote that would 

 swim " would be the Water Clote, i.e., the water-bur, ditch-bur, 

 or reed-bur,:|: especially as the medical qualities do not apply to 



* " Throughout our travels in India we were struck with the undue 

 reliance placed on native names of plants, and information of all kinds, 

 and the pertinacity with which each linguist adhered to his own 

 crotchet as to the application of terms to natural objects and their 

 pronunciation. It is a very prevalent but erroneous impression, that 

 savage and half-civilised people have an accurate knowledge of objects 

 of natural history and a uniform nomenclature for them." — Hooker, 

 " Himalayan Journal," II. 328— note. 



t Cockayne II. 123. % Sparganium ramosum. 



