MONEEITH 



WIGTOWNSHIRE 



|NE writing about daffodils should fore- 

 swear poetic quotation, were it only in 

 common consideration for his readers. 

 Nevertheless there is one practical point 

 connected with this favourite flower 

 rendering excusable a reference to a passage in the 

 greatest of English poets. When Shakespeare wrote 

 of daffodils 



That come before the swallow dares, and take 

 The winds of March with beauty, 



he had in mind, not the March of our calendar, but 

 March old style, which, according to Julian reckoning, 

 was in the seventeenth century, ten days in retard of 

 the Gregorian dates. Although the Scottish Privy 

 Council decreed the adoption of the new style from 

 1600, it was not until 1751 that the British Parliament 

 followed suit, passing an Act in that year which set 

 matters in order by the omission of all dates between 

 the 2nd and the 14th of September, 1752. Thus 

 when The Winters Tale was produced in 1611, Shake- 

 speare's month of March corresponded to the period 



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