70 WILD FLOWERS. 



And the Northumbrian name of ban-wort appears 

 to point to the same thing. " Bases/' says Turner, 

 " whyche gro withe abrode in every grene and hyhe 

 waye, the northern men they calle thys herbe a 

 banwurt, because it helpeth bones to knigt agayne." 

 The still more northern name of gowan has been 

 usually, though erroneously, supposed to relate to 

 the golden colour of the centre of the blossom ; 

 but it is evidently derived, as Dr. G. Johnston* 

 observes, from the Celtic guen or guenes (Welsh, 

 gweii), fair, white, and hence beautiful ; thus mean- 

 ing nearly the same as the Latin name Bellis 

 (bellus), pretty. The beautiful Italian names, Fiori 

 di prima vera, and Fiori gentili, speak for them- 

 selves; and if the Germans, in too earthly a manner, 

 call the eye of day the goose's eye flower, yanse- 

 augen-blume, they compensate for it by their names 

 of liebes-bliimchen, love-flowret, and maseliebchen, 

 love's wound ; which last is similar to the Dutch' 

 Madelieven. 



It would be almost as needless to say that Britain 

 possesses but one species of daisy as it would be 

 superfluous and impertinent to offer any descrip- 

 tion of this 



" Little children's friend," 



the first loved and the last ; though I may remark, 

 in passing, on the consternation with which, on 

 looking into some botanical volume for an enume- 

 ration of the beauties of the " wee modest flower," 

 we discover it to be possessed of a " scape one 



* " Botany of the E. Borders." 



