COLOUR IN MY GARDEN 



of this supposition. The ancient writers again and again 

 give "our women" or our "English Gentlewomen" credit 

 for the fanciful christenings of flowers. "Some English 

 Gentlewomen," says Parkinson, "call the white Grape- 

 flower Pearles of Spain," and of the gay scarlet Poppy "Our 

 English women call it by a name, lone Siluer Pinne: sub- 

 auditor, Faire without and fowle within." Here, too, is the 

 case of the "Frenticke or Foolish Cowslip," "come lately 

 into our gardens whose floures are curled and wrinkled 

 after a most strange manner, which our women have called 

 Jacknapes-on-horse-back." "Our women" it was, too, one 

 feels sure, whose tender scrutiny caught the resemblance 

 between another Cowslip and a sort of old-fashioned foot- 

 gear and called it the Cowslip, Galligaskins; and fitted the 

 double Cowslips, whose rounds of petals set one within the 

 other, so nicely with the name of Hose-in-hose. 



The burnished little Hawkweed (Hieracium aurantiacum), 

 a traveller to our roadsides and meadows from over seas, was 

 once a garden flower in good standing with a string of 

 friendly names to its credit. One of these names is Grim- 

 the-colliar — seemingly obscure enough as to origin — and 

 yet here we have old John Gerade informing us across three 

 hundred years in this wise: "The stalkes and cups of the 

 floures are all set thick with a blackish downe or hairiness 

 as it were the dust of coles; whence the women who keep 

 it in gardens for noueltie sake, have called it Grim the 

 Colliar." 



Mr. Frederick Hulm offers further elucidation of the ori- 

 gin of this curious name by telling us that during the reign 

 of Queen Elizabeth a comedy called "Grim the Colliar of 



335 



