pfant Tsore, '\s>^Qe'r^f, and la^nc/. 343 



According to Grimm, the orif,anal Forget-me-not was a certain 

 Luck-flower, concerning which there is a favourite legend in Ger- 

 many (see Key-flower). And there is another traditional origin 

 of the flower, which for antiquity should have the precedence of 

 all others. According to this version, Adam, when he named the 

 plants in Paradise, cautioned them not to forget what he called 

 them. One little flower, however, was heedless, and forgot its 

 name. Ashamed of its inattention and forgetfulness, the flower 

 asked the father of men, " By what name dost thou call me ? " 

 "Forget-me-not," was the reply; and ever since that humble 



flower has drooped its head in shame and ignominy. A 



fourth origin of the name " Forget-me-not " is given by Miss 

 Strickland in her work on the Queens of England. Writing of 

 Henry of Lancaster (afterwards Henry IV.), she says: — "This 

 royal adventurer, the banished and aspiring Lancaster, appears to 

 have been the person who gave to the Myosotis its emblematical 

 and poetical meaning, by writing it, at the period of his exile, on his 

 collar of S.S., with the initial letter of his mot or vja.ich'word, Souveigm 

 vous de moy, thus rendering it the symbol of remembrance." It 

 was with his hostess, at the time wife of the Duke of Bretagne, that 



Henry exchanged this token of goodwill and remembrance. 



The Italians call the Myosotis, Nontiscordar di me, and in one of their 

 ballads represent the flower as the embodiment of the spirit of a 

 young girl who was drowned, and transformed into the Myosotis 



growing by the river's banks. The ancient English name of the 



Myosotis palustris was Mouse - Ear - Scorpion - Grass ; " Mouse - Ear " 

 describing the oval leaves, and " Scorpion " the curve of the one- 

 sided raceme, like a scorpion's tail. According to some investi- 

 gators, the Forget-me-not is the Sun-flower of the classics — the 

 flower into which poor Clytie was metamorphosed — the pale blossom 

 which, says Ovid, held firmly by the root, still turns to the sun she 

 loves. Caesalpinus called it Heliotvopium, and Gerarde figured it as 



such. (See Heliotrope). The Germans are fond of planting 



the Forget-me-not upon their graves, probably on account of its 

 name ; for the beauty of the flower is lost if taken far from the 



water. It is said that after the battle of Waterloo, an immense 



quantity of Forget-me-nots sprung up upon different parts of that 

 sanguinary field, the soil of which had been enriched by the blood 

 of heroes. A writer in ' All the Year Round ' remarks, that pos- 

 sibly the story of the origin of the Forget-me-not's sentimental 

 designation may have been in the mind of the Princess Marie of 

 Baden, that Winter day, when, strolling along the banks of the 

 Rhine with her cousin, Louis Napoleon, she inveighed against the 

 degeneracy of modern gallants, vowing they were incapable of 

 emulating the devotion to beauty that characterised the cavaliers of 

 olden times. As they lingered on the causeway-dykes, where the 

 Neckar joins the Rhine, a sudden gust of wind carried away a 

 flower from the hair of the princess, and sent it into the rushing 



