76 FAMILIAR GARDEN FLOWERS. 



White Sunday or a Pink Sunday, but simply the " fiftieth/' 

 From "Pentecost/' however, we have not only the name of a 

 festival of the Church, but the name of a flower and of a 

 colour, and of a process that has melancholy suggestions 

 that of " pinking/' By a roundabout but not uncertain 

 process, a pink becomes an eye, and also anything that 

 glitters. The French term for the flower is ceillet, an eye, 

 or eyelet, and it is in accordance with the most common 

 mutations of words to find thatj0t is a merely sharpened 

 form of the older word link, and this again a departure 

 from wink, and, following this up, we attain to the Anglo- 

 Saxon wincian, or, as we have it in common parlance, 

 winking, a movement of the lids of the eyes. A pilot's 

 boat is sometimes called a " pink," and the scar resulting 

 from a wound is also called by the same name. Thus, in 

 Cowper's expostulation, " pink'd " means marked with 



stabs 



" He found thee savage, and he left thee tame ; 

 Taught thee to clothe thy pink'd and painted hide, 

 And grace thy figure with a soldier's pride." 



