62 FAMILIAR WILD FLOWERS. 



The strawberry lias been an object of cultivation in 

 England from a very early period, many of the finest 

 varieties being only developments from the wild straw- 

 berry, and others from the hautboy, F. elatior. One 

 naturally thinks of the well-known Shakespearian quotation 



" My lord of Ely, when I was last in Holborn, I saw 



o-ood strawberries in your garden there, " and we find 

 other references of much earlier date to the strawberry. 



" Then unto London I did me hye, 



Of all the lands it beareth the pryse ; 

 Gode pescode owne began to cry, 

 Strabeny rype, and cherrys in the ryse." 



The spelling of the word must be noted, as some persons 

 jump too readily at conclusions, and when they see the 

 plants in a well-ordered garden all neatly surrounded by 

 fresh straw, think that they have solved the easy mystery 

 of its name. In Anglo-Saxon it is the streowberie, and 

 the name was given to it either from its long suckers being 

 strewn on the ground, or from their straying propensities. 

 John Lydgate has the same form of spelling, and, though 

 the orthography of the earlier writers was of the most 

 erratic description, we may at least take it for what it is 

 worth, and neither build too much nor too little upon it, 

 and this form of spelling certainly .suggests stray-berry. 

 Any one \viio has noticed the long runners travelling for 

 many feet across a neglected bed will see considerable force 

 in the use of this term. John Lydgate, born about 1370, 

 was a writer of clear fluent verse, bringing home to the 

 uneducated the works of the Greek and Latin poets, or 

 satirising in his rhyming moralities the abuses of the time. 

 The reference to the strawberry will be found in his 

 "London Lickpeuny," wherein he introduces the street 



