104 WILD FI.Ou'ERS. 



attempting to gather for a lady some of the 

 flowers from a stream in which the current was 

 rapid, and whose dying Avords are said to have 

 given the name to the flower, must now yield 

 to an apparently more authentic account of its 

 origin. Miss Strickland, in her late work on 

 the queens of England, has given us a state- 

 ment of the cause of the name, forget-me-notj 

 scarcely less poetical than that Avhich has, for 

 centuries, been sung by poets of all the lands 

 of Europe. Speaking of Henry of Lancaster, 

 she says, "This royal adventurer — the ban- 

 ished and aspiring Lancaster — appears to have 

 been the person who gave to the myosotis ar- 

 vensis, or forget-me-not, its emblematical and 

 poetical meaning, by uniting it at the period of 

 his exile, on his collar of S. S., with the initial 

 letter of his mot, or watchword, Souveigne vous 

 de moif : thus rendering it the symbol of re- 

 membrance, and, like the subsequent fatal roses 

 of York, and Lancaster, and Stuart — the lily 

 of Bourbon, and the violet of Napoleon — 

 an historical flower. Few of those, who, at 

 parting, exchange this simple touching appeal 

 to memory, are aware of the fact, that it was 

 fij'st used as such by a royal Plantagenet prince, 

 who was, perhaps, indebted to the agency of 

 this mystic blossom for the crown of England. 

 It was with his hostess, at that time wife of the 

 duke of Bretagne, that Henry exchanged this 

 token of good-will and remembrance." 



" Can the rush grow up without mire ? can 

 the flag grow without water?" was the question 



