188 POPULAR NAMES 



called Pryme Rolles of pryme tyme, because it beareth the 

 first floure in pryme tyme" It is also called so in Frere 

 Randolph's catalogue. Chaucer writes it in one word 

 primerole. This little common plant affords a most extra- 

 ordinary example of blundering. Primerole is an abbre- 

 viation of Fr. primeverole, It. primaverola, dim. of prima 

 vera, from fior di prima vera, the first spring flower. 

 Primerole, as an outlandish unintelligible word, was soon 

 familiarized into prime rolles, and this into primrose. This 

 is explained in popular works as meaning the first rose of 

 the spring, a name that never would have been given to a 

 plant that in form and colour is so unlike a rose. But the 

 rightful claimant of it, strange to say, is the daisy, which 

 in the south of Europe is a common and conspicuous flower 

 in early spring, while the primrose is an extremely rare 

 one, and it is the daisy that bears the name in all the old 

 books. See Fuchs, p. 145, where there is an excellent 

 figure of it, titled primula veris ; and the Ortus Sanitatis, 

 Ed. Augsb. 1486, ch. cccxxxiii., where we have a very 

 good woodcut of a daisy titled " masslieben, Premula 

 veris, Latine." Brunfelsius, ed. 1531, speaking of the 

 Herba paralysis, the cowslip, says, p. 190, expressly, "Sye 

 wiirt von etlichen Doctores Primula veris genannt, das 

 doch falsch ist wann Primula veris ist matsomen oder 

 zeitlosen." Brunschwygk (b. ii. c. viii.) uses the same 

 words. The Zeitlose is the daisy. Parkinson (Th. Bot. 

 p. 531) assigns the name to both the daisy and the prim- 

 rose. Matthioli (Ed. Frankf. 1586, p. 653) calls his Bellis 

 major " Primojiore maggiore, seu Fiore di prima vera, non- 

 nullis Primula veris major," and figures the moon-daisy. 

 His Bellis minor, which seems to be our daisy, he calls 

 '* Primojiore minore, Fior di primavera, Gallis Marguerites, 

 Germanis Masslieben." At p. 883 he figures the cowslip, 

 and calls that also " Primula veris, Italis Fiore di prima- 

 vera, Gallis primevere." But all the older writers, as the 



