1858.] HISTORY OF THE HOUSELEEK. 487 



traced. In the Greek and Latin mythology Jupiter is styled 

 the Thunderer {Jupiter, to nam), and this mystical or mythological 

 plant was called barba Jovis in medieval latinity. But there is 

 another reason why the Houseleek bears the name of Jove's-beard, 

 or Joubarbe, as it is popularly styled in France to this day. 

 The term ' thunder' was derived from Thor, the thunder-god of 

 our Teutonic ancestors (as the thing itself was believed to pro- 

 ceed from him)j hence the name of our fifth day of the week^ 

 Thursday (Thorsdag) ; and when the northern nations of Europe 

 embraced Christianity in the ninth, tenth, and eleventh cen- 

 turies, the religion and mythology of Thor, Woden, Friga, etc., 

 gave way to a purer faith and to an equally objectionable my- 

 thology. Jupiter took the place of Thor, Mercury of Woden, 

 and Venus or the Virgin Mary of Friga, and the ancient Teu- 

 tonic name of Houseleek (probably Thorsbart) was converted 

 into Jupiter's- beard. But our plant has a series of genuine 

 popular or common names. Those above quoted, from Pliny's 

 time to the epoch of Isidore and the medieval glossologists, are 

 all names conferred on the plant by the literati, the learned of 

 those remote times. 



The name given to the Houseleek by Hippocrates, the father 

 of physicians, is a popular name, and, literally translated, means 

 " the lily-flower which grows on houses.'' This was the habitat 

 of the plant two thousand three hundred and twenty years ago. 

 In Sibthorp's time, who visited Greece about the end of the 

 last century, it was observed growing on roofs, as in the days of 

 Hippocrates. It was long, however, before this accidental pro- 

 perty of the plant, its locality, was taken into the scientific no- 

 menclature. Theophrastus's name, also adopted by Dioscorides 

 and Pliny with a slight modification, is also a popular name, or 

 was a popular name in Greece. It expressed a quality of the 

 plant which the unlearned could apprehend. Pliny's modifica- 

 tion, ai^oov, is derived from aei, always (in Latin semper), and 

 ^0)09, living,— from ^aw or ^co, I live. Dr. Billerbeck, the learned 

 author of the 'Flora Classica,' p. 114, writes, " Das Wort aei^wov 

 leitet man vom aetOaXe^ twv (pvWcov, wesshalb Gaza es durch 

 sempervivum gegeben hat." Gaza, a grammarian and translator 

 of the fifteenth century, first gave the Linntean generic name 

 Sempervivum to this plant. His etymology is not so satisfactory 

 as his translation : the Greek word aei6aXe<^ is not sempervivus, 



