August 30, 1877] 



NATURE 



387 



emitted a shriek which brought death to those who heard it, all 

 manner of terrible devices were invented to obtain it. The readers 

 of Thalaba will remember the fine scene in which the witch 

 Khawla procures the plant to form part of the waxen figure of the 

 Destroyer. I have seen the plant growing in the Cambridge 

 Botanical Gardens ; it is not uncommon in Crete and Southern 

 Italy ; its fruit is narcotic, and its name is probably derived from 

 maiuira, an inclosed, over-grown place, such as forms its usual 

 home. 



The medical beliefs revealed by many names are not less 

 curious than their legendary associations. It was the opinion of 

 the old herbalists or simplers that God had not only provided 

 special plants as a cure for every disease, but had made their 

 curative power evident by stamping them with some resemblance 

 to the malady they were meant to heal ; and this faith, known 

 to students of our older botany as the " Doctrine of Signatures," 

 lurks or reveals itself in many an English name. The Um^-wort, 

 spotted with tubercular scars, was a heal for consumption ; the 

 liveT'Wort, liver-shaped in its green fructification, was a specific 

 for bilious maladies ; the scaly pappus of the scabious for cuta- 

 neous eruptions ; the throat-like corolla of the tJtroat--oort, or 

 Canterbury bell, caused it to be administered for bronchitis ; 

 the saxifrage, cleaving the hard stones with its penetrating fibres, 

 was efficient against calculus ; the scorpioii-gmss, now known 

 as the forget-me-not, whose flower-spike dimly resembles a 

 scorpion's tail, was an antidote to the sting of that or of other 

 venomous creatures ; the moon-Uaiiy averted lunacy ; the birth- 

 wort, Iddtuy-vctch, iiipph-wort, spleen-wort, were all appropriated, 

 as their names suggest, according to resemblances, real or 

 fancied. The pretty toad-flax of our walls and hedges owes its 

 name to a strange mistake. Beheved to be the cure for a com- 

 plaint called buboes, it received the Latin name btibonium. A 

 confusion between bubo and biifo, which is Latin for a toad, 

 gave birth to its present name ; and stories were not long 

 wanting that sick or wounded toads had been seen to eat of it 

 and to recover health. 



Similar distortions occur in non-medical names ; and it is 

 most curious to notice how soon a story springs up or a 

 belief asserts itself in confirmation of the mistaken identity. 

 The common fumitory, which we have already noticed, re- 

 ceived its name oi fume-terre, earth smoke, from its causing the 

 eyes to smart and water when applied to them, as smoke does. 

 The meaning was lost as time went on, and was supplied by the 

 belief that it was produced without seed by smoke or vapour 

 rising from the earth. Buttercup was said to give colour and 

 flavour to butter, as being eaten by cows, when in blossom, the 

 facts being that it is a corruption of boutoii-cop, button-head, 

 and that cows eat the grass all round it, but always, if possible, 

 avoid it. Ji/eadow-s-iveet is a corruption of mead-wort, lisney-inine 

 plant, a beverage being still extracted from it by cottagers. 

 Bullrush is pool-rush, as growing in pools, not in mud ; snap- 

 dragon is snout-dragon, from its shape ; marigold is marsh-gold ; 

 sweet-william is aillet, a little eye ; puik is the low German 

 pinksten, Pentecost, from its flowering at Whitsuntide, the name 

 being transferred first to the colour of the flower, then to a 

 method of working flowers on muslin, called pinking ; and so to 

 the sword-stab in a duel, piercing or pinking an adversary as the 

 needle pierced the cambric. Nightshade is night-^cada, soother, 

 or anodyne ; samphire is St. Pierre, from its love of rocks ; 

 sanicle is St. Nicholas, the restorer of the three murdered 

 children, from its healing powers ; poplar comes from the Indian 

 pepul, whose leaves when varnished and painted closely resemble 

 those of the large Spanish poplar ; primrose was anciently the daisy, 

 and is called by Chaucer /W;«t>r»/i', from the old French /Wwc- 

 verole, the first spring flower ; primerole was changed to pritn- 

 rolles, that to primrose, the first rose of spring ; and it was not till 

 the sixteenth century that it attached itself to the familiar flower 

 which now bears its name. Cowslip is more strange still. It 

 was originally hose-fiap, and belonged to the mullein, whose 

 great fiannelly leaf might v/efl be likened to the flap or skirt of a 

 woollen under-garment. Later on it was transferred to the wild 

 primula of our meadows, and the mistake was stereotyped by 

 the unlucky botanist, who in ignorance of its origin gave the 

 name of oxlip to its pretty congener, the Primula elatior. 

 The 'Jerusalem artichoke is a sun-flower, not an artichoke ; 

 but the tubers resemble the artichoke in flavour. From its 

 Italian name girasole, turn to the sun, came Jerusalem ; and by 

 a further quibble the soup made of it is called Palestine soup. 

 "Wi^ forget-me-not was originally the germander speedwell, whose 

 blossoms, falling off and flying'away as soon as it is plucked, gave 

 emblematic force to the name. It was known in the days of 



chivalry as the "flower of souvenance," and was embroidered 

 into the collars of the knights, a fact still recalled by its German 

 name Ehrenpreis, prize of honour. About 200 years ago we 

 find the name given to the ground-pine, yljuga chamcepitys, whose 

 nauseous taste once realised can never be forgotten. Finally it 

 was seized upon by the river-side Myosotis, and forthwith sprung 

 up a charming legend, created obviously to suit its latest identi- 

 fication, how that while two lovers loitered by a lake, the maiden 

 saw and longed for the bright blue flowers, the knight plunged 

 in to get them, but, unable to regain the shore, had yet agility 

 enough to fling them into his lady's lap, and then with a last 

 devoted look and the words "forget me not," sank below the 

 waves for ever. 



Many names of plants contain the geography of their origin. 

 The Canterbury bell is obvious, so is the Guelder rose. The 

 Alexanders, a rare plant round Taunton, but growing in 

 great quantities at Blue Anchor, comes from Alexandria ; the 

 candy-tuft, from Candia ; the elecampane, from Campania ; the 

 medick, from Media ; the carraway, from Caria ; the walnut or 

 Welsh nut from the north of Italy, called Walsh by the Ger- 

 mans. Peach is Persicus ; shalol, Ascalonicus ; spinach, His- 

 panicus ; the damson, rightly spelt as Damascene, tells its own 

 tale, which is less clear in the case of the Dame's or Damascene 

 violet, a corruption extended and perpetuated, as often happens, 

 by its Latin equivalent, matronalis. 



All first attempts at classification, etymological or other, 

 leave a large margin of miscellaneous items refusing to be 

 ticketed or systematised ; and there remain a few names falling 

 under none of the categories which I have cited, yet too in- 

 teresting to be omitted. .Such is apple, retaining its form in 

 the Teutonic, Celtic, Sclavonic, and I^ettish languages, and 

 springing apparently from the Sanscrit ap, water, which reap- 

 pears inverted in the Latin pa of Padus, po of Poto and Pomum, 

 meaning therefore the water fruit or juice fruit. Such again is 

 daffodil, the daffadowndilly of Spenser and other poets. It is a 

 combination of sapharoun, or saffron lily, with a phodelus, the 

 old English affodilly. With the taste for alliteration often shown 

 in popular names the sapharoun lily blending with the alTodilly 

 became by a mutual compromise daffadowndilly, whence daffo- 

 dilly and daffodil. Foxglove is \ht fox's gleiu, or tintinnabulum, 

 a ring of bells hung on an arched support. Bedstraw was a 

 plant much used for couches before mattresses were invented, 

 and a species which when dry yields a pleasant scent is still 

 called lady's bedstraw. Carnation is coronation, its flowers being 

 used as crowns or chaplets, just as campion is champion, gathered 

 to crown the champions in a tournament. Cress is possibly from 

 cross, its petals being cruciate ; possibly from crescere, to grow, 

 in token of its rapid increase. It was used in Chaucer's time 

 under the form olkers to express any insignificant quantity. 



" Of paramours ne raugfit fie not a kers," 



from which comes, perhaps, our vulgar phrase, " I do not care 

 a curse," though a yet ruder parallelism has since been manufac- 

 tured to confuse its spelling and its etymology. Nettle is from 

 ne, to spin, indicating that its coarse fibres were used for thread 

 in early times, an idea Ijorne out by Hans Andersen's beautiful 

 tale of the wild swans, in which you rencember that the princess 

 was permitted to redeem her brothers from their transformation by 

 weaving them shirts of nettles. Shamrock is from an Erse word 

 signifying the little trejoil. The story of its theological use by St. 

 Pitrick is of modern date, and it has been taken by various 

 writers to represent the water cress, the vood sorrel, the 

 Dutch clover, and the black medick. Irishmen are divided in the 

 present day between the two last, which are sold on St. Patrick's 

 day both in London and Dublin. The snowdrop is so-called 

 from its resemblance to the large eardrops worn by ladies in the 

 sixteenth century, and represented olten by painters of that 

 period. The tobacco v/as the Indian name for the pipe in 

 which the weed was smoked, not of the weed itself; and 

 potato belonged at first to a tropical convolvulus, and was 

 transferred by mistake to the well-known esculent. The goose- 

 berry was the cross-berry, from its triple spine, which frequently 

 takes the form of a cross. The hollihock is the caiili-hock, hock 

 being an old name for the mallow, to whose order it belongs, and 

 cauli, meaning cabbage, either from its lofty cabbage-tike stalk, 

 or, as in cabbage-rose, with reference to its rich double bloom. 

 The laburnum closes its petals at night-fall like a tired labourer, 

 and the ozicr is named from the oozy beds which suits its growth. 

 I bring my list to an end, not because it is exhausted, but for 

 fear my hearers should become so. I have picked only the most 

 suggestive and curious of our many floral names, leaving an 



