386 



NA TURE 



\A 11 gust 30, 1877 



dwelling ill timber houses, roofed and thatched, launching boats 

 upon the river?, possessing cattle anj ilaves, recognising the 

 rights of property and the sacredness of liome, fijjhting with 

 cudgels, swords, and spears, familiar with cereal agriculture, in 

 some way not ignorant of letters. All these facts, just hinted at 

 here, but challenging minute investigation, we owe to a dozen 

 common names of English plants, whose Latin equivalents teach 

 and commemorate nothing of any national interest to ourselves. 



These names, and a few more, are as old as the English lan- 

 guage ; but from the Conquest to the sixteenth century botanical 

 inquiry ceased in England, and the rest of our popular names 

 are little more than three hundred years old. Most of these 

 come to us from the Greek and Latin ; but some of them 

 are so corrupted as not to be easily recognisable. Any scholar 

 will detect in acacia the Greek word for ^nilclessness ; in 

 the amaranlh, with which Milton's worshipping archangels 

 wreathed their brows, the Greek for unfading ; in the periwiukle 

 the pit~jinca used to hind about the head ; in lettuce, the 

 meaning of milky : in geranium, the descriptive name crane's bill. 

 In the plane he will see the Platanus of the poets ; in the rose, 

 the Khodon of Homer and the Rosa of Virgil ; in the sycamore, 

 the wild fig of the Bible, transferred in medieval miracle plays 

 to the tree which now bears the name ; in the vine, the oinon and 

 vitmm, whose Sanskrit root is still present in our words /;(//«(■ and 

 t-it)ist. He will understand that the basil which poor simple 

 Isabel planted in the pot which held her murdered lover's head was 

 the rei;al plant, used perhaps of old in some royal bath or un- 

 guent ; that the ani;eliea, which now flavours our soups, and was 

 once a specific against the plague, was given to mankind by angels ; 

 that the belladonna was applied as a cosmetic to make ladies beauti- 

 ful for ever ; that the cyclamen, which still grows wild in Devon- 

 shire, owes its name to its prominent circular tuber. He will not 

 so readily discover that the tansy of our cottage gardens is the 

 Greek athanasia, immortality, administered to Ganymede that 

 he might become fit for his life in heaven ; that the common 

 milfoil yarrow is the hiira, or holy herb, pledged to heal all 

 herbs with its fragrant leaves ; that nasturtium means nose- 

 ttvister, from its jjungent smell ; that our Quantock rvhortle-berry 

 is a corruption of myrtillns, myrtle-berry : that eglantine is acu- 

 lenta, the prickly rose, or sweet-briar ; that the herb Bennett or 

 avens, is the benedicta, blessed herb, kept in houses to prevent 

 the entrance of the devil ; that the hip of the dog-rose is a form 

 of the Greek and Latin words which people afflicted with sore 

 throats know as jujuhes ; that liijuorice is an Anglicism of the 

 Greek Glyeyrriza, sweet-toot ; that the larc/i is from the Latin 

 lar, a Jiouse, in consequence of its use in building ; that laven- 

 der, from the Latin la-nre, to wash, was in the twelfth century 

 Scotch and northern English for washerwoman, because then as 

 now its sweet spikes were laid amongst fresh linen ; that the ser- 

 %'ice-tree is the Latin cerevisium, beer, its leaves having been used 

 to flavour ale before the virtues of the hop were known ; that the 

 little sqainancy-wort was the ancient remedy for the disease 

 Kynanche or dogchoker, which we know in its modern sound as 

 quinsy ; that the mushroom is the muscaniis or fly- bane, because 

 a particular agaricus, pulverised and mi.\ed with milk, was used in 

 Southern Europe as we now use the poison called " Keating's 

 Insect Powder." Least of all will our scholar be quick to admit 

 that the narcissus owes nothing to the love-sick youth over 

 whom Ovid sung and Bacon moralised, but is connected with the 

 Greek narkodes, sluggish, a derivative from narke, the torpedo, 

 itself sprung from the Sanskrit nark, hell ; cited by Sophocles 

 (Q£d., Col., 682), as crowning the goddesses of Hades ; gathered 

 by Proserpine beforL- her wedding tour into the same dark 

 region, because its heavy odour (for by it the ancients meant the 

 hyacinth) blunts the nerves .and makes men sleepy and torpid. I 

 can find comparatively few name; which we have borrowed from 

 the French. Dandelion is, of course, the lion's tooth ; why, 

 botanists are not agreed. Alignonette is applied by us to a very 

 difierent plant from that which be,irs the name in France. 

 Woodruffe, known to travellers in Germany ^as flavouring the 

 pleasant drink called Maitrank, takes its last syllable from roue, 

 a vheel, its verticillate leaves being set like a wheel or rowell on 

 the stone. Pansy is penst'e, thought, from its significance in the 

 language of flowers: "There's pansy," says Ophelia, "that's 

 for thoughts." Gillijhnver is, girojU'e, iiora caiyophyllum, a clove, 

 a name originally given to the carnation, but now transferred to 

 the wall-flower. Tutsan is toute-saine, the oil in its le.ives 

 having made it a remedy for wounds. Most curious of all is 

 Apricot, from abricot, which at one time I contentedly referred 

 to the Latin apriais, sunny, ripening as it dues on surny walls. 

 It is, in fact, traceable to the Latin pr,ceoqtia, early, the fruit 



being supposed by the Romans to be an early peach. The 

 Arabs took the Latin name and twisted it into al burquj ; the 

 Sjianiards altered its Moorish name into aUnricoque ; the Italians 

 reproduced it as albicocco, the French as abricot, and we get it 

 next in England, curiously enough, as apricock, so spelt in Shak- 

 speare's time, and finally as apricot. 



Many curious bits of myth and history reveal themselves as we 

 excavate down ti these old meanings. The p,eonv, or healing- 

 plant, commemorates the Homeric god Pa;on, the first physician 

 of the gods, who tended the bellowing Ares when smarting from 

 the spear of Diomed. The centaury is the plant with which the 

 centaur Chiron salved the wound inflicted by the poisoned arrow 

 of Hercules. The ambrose, or wormwood, is the immortal food 

 which Venus gave to yEneas, and Jupiter to Psyche; the Sanskrit 

 amrtta which Kehama and Kailyal quaff in Southey's splendid 

 poem. The anemone, or wind-flower, sprang from the tears 

 wept by Venus over the body of Adonis, as the rose sprang from 

 his blood — 



ai^a pooov TLKTei, ra oe ociKpva Tav nvefjLOJvay. 



The daphne, syringa, and andromeda tell their own tales : the last, 

 which you may find in the peat-bogs round Shapwick station, is 

 due to the delicate fancy of Linnaeus, who first discovered and 

 named it, blooming lonely on a barren, rocky isle, like the 

 daughter of Cepheus, chained to her sea-washed cliff. The Juno 

 rose, or tall white lily, was blanched by milk which fell from the 

 bosom of Juno, the tale being transferred in Roman Catholic 

 mythology to the Virgin Mary and the milk-thistle. The yellow 

 carline thistle is named after Carl the Great (in Mr. Freeman's 

 county I must not call him Charlemagne), who, praying earnestly 

 for the removal of a pestilence which had broken out in his army, 

 saw in vision an angel pointing out this plant as a heaven-sent 

 cure. The hei'b Robert healed a disease endured by Robert, 

 Duke of Normandy, still known in Germany as Ritprechf s-plage. 

 Tht filbert, though this is disputed, commemorates the horticul- 

 tural skill of one king Philibert. The treacle mustard, a showy 

 crucifer resembling wallflower, was an ingredient in the famous 

 Venice treacle, compounded, as you will remember, by Waylind 

 Smith to treat the poison sickness of the Duke of Sussex. The 

 word treacle is corrupted from the Greek theriacum, connected 

 with wild beasts, whose blood formed part of the antidote. It 

 was at first made up by the physician to Mithridates, King of 

 Pontus ; and is still in many parts of England known as mithri- 

 date mustard. The foioer-de-liice, or fleur-dedys, is the flower 

 of King Louis, having been assumed as a royal device by Louis 

 VII. of France, though legend figures it on a shield brought 

 down from heaven to Clovis, when fighting against the Saracens. 

 It is probably a white iris. 



Not a few strange superstitions and beliefs are embalmed 

 in well-known nam.es. The celandine, from chelidon, the swal- 

 low, exudes a yellow juice, which, applied by the old birds 

 to the eyes of young swallows, who are b)rn blind, or have 

 lost their sigh^ at once restores it. The hazok-weed has the 

 same virtue in the case of hawks. The fumitory, futnelerre, 

 was produced without seed by smoke or vapour rising from the 

 ground. The dcvil's-bit is a common scabious, with a premorse 

 or shortened root, which was used so successfully for all manner 

 of diseases, that the devil spitefully bit it off, and for ever 

 checked its growth. The eyebright, or euphrasy, was given to 

 cure ophthalmia. 



" Michael from Adam's eves the film removed, 

 . . . Then purged with cuplirasy and rue 

 The visual nerve, for he had much to see. " 



The Judas-tree, with its thorns and pink blossoms, was the tree 

 on which Judas hanged himself. The mandrake gathered round 

 itself a host of wild credulities. It was the atropa mandragora, 

 a plant nearly allied to the deadly nightshade, but with a large 

 forked tuber resembling the human form. Hence it was held to 

 remove sterility, a belief shared by Rachel in the Book of 

 Genesis, and was sold for high prices in the middle ages with 

 this idea. In fact, the demand being greater than the supply, 

 the dealer used to cut the large roots of the white bryony into 

 the figure of a man, and insert grains of wheat or millet in the 

 head and face, which soon sprouted and grew, producing the 

 semblance of hair and beard. These monstrosities fetched in 

 Italy as much as thirty gold ducats, and were sold largely, as Sir 

 T. Brown tells us, in our own country. It was thought that the 

 plant would only grow beneath a murderer's gibbet, being nursed 

 by the fat which fell from his decaying body : hence it formed 

 an ingredient in the love-philtres and other hell-broths of witches; 

 and, as it was believed that the root, when torn from the earth. 



