CROSS-WORT. 127 



the very appropriate prefix of golden. A common old 

 English name for the plant is the May-wort, a term of 

 the same nature as Lent-lily, pasque-flower, and fair maids 

 of February, and descriptive of the season when the plant 

 may be found in flower. Other old names for it are the 

 mug-wort, mugget, or golden mugwert. The second and 

 third appear like corruptions of the first, but it would 

 appear that they have good claim to an independent 

 existence. A plant was once called moth-wort, and 

 moghe is the old English word for moth ; but the plant 

 that bore this name was the wormwood, and it is difficult 

 to see how the corrupted form of mug- wort can have been 

 transferred to the cross-wort. Mugget and mugwert are 

 corruptions of the French mnguet, a somewhat depreciatory 

 word, signifying a fop, or dandy. Charming as our plant 

 may be, it assumes no offensive airs on the strength of it, 

 and we, on the whole, consider that it is hardly used by such 

 an association of ideas. The same name is in France ap- 

 plied to the graceful lily of the valley. The generic name 

 Galium is derived from the Greek word for milk, some of. 

 the plants of the genus having been used formerly by the 

 dairy-maid to curdle milk with. Hence another old name 

 for the genus was cheese-rennet, and in France caille-lait. 

 The specific name is from the Latin word for a cross. Parkin- 

 son calls the plant the Cruciata vulgaris, while with Bauhin 

 it is Cruciata Mrsuta, the hairy nature of the plant making 

 this latter name a happily- chosen one. We have already 

 seen that its familiar name in Germany coincides with that 

 of the woodruff or Asperula odorata, plus the distinctive 

 addition of the adjective golden, and in the writings of 

 Lngdunensis we find this same idea reproduced, as we may 

 say, in fac-simile, for he calls the cross-wort the Asperula 



