PEOSAIC PLANT-NAMES 115 



Much difference of opinion has been elicited as 

 to the meaning of the name woodruff: it has been 

 spelt in a great variety of ways, as, for example, 

 woodrowe, woodrowel, and, to quote the old 

 rhyme 



" Double U, double O, double D, E, 

 R, O, double U, double F, E." 



In Anglo-Saxon plant lists it is the wudu-rofe, or 

 wudu-reeve. The reeve, in Saxon days, was one 

 in authority : our modern sheriff was in these 

 earlier times the shire-reeve, and this brings the 

 Saxon name woodreeve into line with the German 

 Waldmeister. 2 Row in Anglo-Saxon signified sweet, 



little sentiment in the old plant-names : heart's-joy, heart's- 

 ease, forget-me-not, and such-like, did not originally carry 

 the sentimental and poetic glamour that later folk would 

 read into them. The reference, for instance, to the heart 

 in these early names veils no allusion to the smart inflicted 

 by the dart of Cupid, but to those much more serious 

 cardiac troubles that the skill of the herbalist and leech of 

 mediaeval days or the modern specialist may perchance re- 

 lieve, to the joy and ease of the patient, while the name 

 forget-me-not was originally assigned to the ground-pine 

 from its nauseous taste a name borne for centuries, to be 

 found in Lyte, Gerard, Parkinson, and other early authorities, 

 and only lately transferred to the pretty little blue flower of 

 our streams that now bears it, in consequence of a senti- 

 mental legend that has got tacked on to it. 



2 While the woodruff is a particularly retiring plant, and 

 entirely exempt from all ambition of lordship over its fellows, 

 it closely resembles the goosegrass, a plant botanically allied 



