12 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN 



ever a name in common use ; it was simply the trans- 

 lation of the continental j^n-in de j)orcemi, Pan Porcina, 

 and with one exception I have never met with it in 

 English literature except in the old gardening books. 

 The one exception is in Calverley's translation of 

 Theocritus, and if Dr. Lindley was correct in saying 

 that it is the common food of the wild boars of Sicily, 

 there is a decided fitness in Calverley's translation of 

 the Fifth Idyll, The Battle of the Bards :— 



* Go to the river and dig up a clump of sow-bread leaves.' 



But I should think that the plant was never suffi- 

 ciently common in England to get a common name, 

 and Turner {Names of Herhes, 1548), says : — 



' I have never hearde yet the Englishe name of it. Me 

 thynke that it might well be called iu Englishe rape violet, 

 because it hath a root lyke a rape, and floores lyke a violet or 

 sow-brede.' 



Certainly sowbread could never have been an ap- 

 propriate English name for the flower : its scarcity 

 would have forbidden its use as food for pigs, and I 

 once had a practical proof that English pigs care little 

 for it. I had a night-raid on my garden from a 

 family of hungry pigs, and in the morning it was 

 easily seen that they had been grubbing in a bed that 

 had a large number of cyclamens in it, but not a 



