My Garden in Spring 



English history omits the tale of Alfred the Great's failure 

 as a cook, and would like to believe many fanciful deriva- 

 tions of words to be true. It is a tempting text for a 

 philological sermon that D, but I must not give you unto 

 fifthly and lastly, so condense it into the half sheet of notes 

 which, if cunningly concealed in a book, gives a preacher 

 or lecturer a reputation for extempore fluency, (i) The 

 D may be due to playful distortion, as in Ted from Edward ; 

 (2) part of the definite article ; (3) the final d of and, or the 

 Flemish article de. I hope it is the playful friendliness of 

 No. i. 



Anyway in English use it was at first confined to the 

 Asphodel, then confused with the Narcissus, some think 

 through both plants once bearing the fanciful name Laus 

 tibi, but I would rather try to believe it was from a desire 

 to find some wild English equivalent for the Asphodel, 1 and 

 what would give us as flowery a mead as the wild Lent-lily ? 

 Both Turner and Lyte testify to this confusion. Turner 

 speaks of " Asphodillus ... in English whyte affodil or 

 duche daffodil." Lyte writes of his third kind of Asphodel 

 " in English also Affodyl and Daffodyl." Botanists, after 

 unsuccessfully resisting this mis-application, compromised 

 the matter by retaining affodil ivi the Asphodel, and accept- 

 ing the more popular daffodil for the Narcissus, which has 

 lived on as a familiar word, while the other has been 

 rectified to a form nearer its classic original. That 

 Daffodil is Affo dyle, " that which cometh early " has been 

 confidently asserted by some (see Sowerby's English Botany 



1 Turner, Herbal, I. b. iii. 6, supports this : " I could never se thys herb 

 (asphodelos ryght affodil) in England but ones, for the herbe that the people 

 calleth here affodil (or daffodill) is a kind of narcissus." 

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