UPRIGHT MEADOW CROWFOOT. 67 



but though it may be found in flower by the beginning 

 of June, it lasts much longer than many other blossoms, 

 and may often be found throughout the summer and 

 well into the autumn. It is naturally more noticeable, 

 however, in the earlier mouths of the year, when it 

 has not so many rivals to distract attention fr.om it, 

 and though roadside and waste-ground specimens greet 

 us all through the summer months, it is especially a 

 plant of the meadows, and shares with the rattle, the ox- 

 eye, and many other fair wildlings the fell doom of the 

 mower's scythe. It is a plant of general distribution, and 

 is in most places abundant. 



Our plant shares with the bulbous and the creeping 

 crowfoots the generally popular names of buttercups, king- 

 cups, and goldcups. It is also one of the " butter flowers " 

 of Gay and other poets. Gay associates the flower with 

 the rosemary, or herb remembrance, in his description of 

 the rustic funeral : 



" To show their love, the neighbours far and near 

 Followed with wistful looks the damsel's hier ; 

 Sprigged rosemary the lads and lasses bore, 

 While dismally the parson walked before. 

 Upon her grave the rosemary they threw, 

 The daisy, butter-flower, and endive blue." 



Though the rosemary was almost always associated by 

 the earlier writers with the idea of bereavement, the con 

 nection was not a necessary one, and we sometimes, as in 

 the boar's head carol, find the herb introduced as a remem- 

 brance of old customs of a joyous nature. 



Shakespeare writes of the " cuckoo-buds of yellow hue," 

 but the name cuckoo-bud or cuckoo-flower was applied 

 rather vaguely to various plants, such as the stitchwort, the 



