128 ENGLISH BOTANY. 



The origin of the common name of this plant has given rise to many conjectures 

 and curious statements. In nearly all places where it occurs, it is known by some 

 name, referring to its finger-like, glove-like, or thimble-like blossom, that 



" Rears its pyramid of bells 

 Gloriously freckled, purpled and white." 



Dr. Prior, whose authority is great in the origin of popular names, says : " Foxglove 

 is a name so inappropriate to the plant, that many explanations of it have been 

 attempted, by which it might appear to mean something different from the 

 glove of a fox. Its Norwegian name, lievliehle, foxbell, is the only foreign one 

 that alludes to that animal. We get no help or light on the subject from any other of 

 its foreign synonyms. Its present Latin name, Digitalis, was given to it by Fuchs, 

 with the remark, that up to that time, 1542, there was none for it in Greek or 

 Latin. In France it is called Guilts de Notre Dame; in Germany Fingerhut. It 

 seems most probable that the name was, in the first place, foxes' glew, or music, in 

 reference to the favourite instrument of an earlier time, a ring of bells hung on an 

 arched support, the tintinnabulum, and thus answering to the Norwegian Revbielde." 

 We cannot quite agree with Dr.- Prior, for it seems quite probable that the shape of 

 the flowers may have suggested the idea of a glove, and that, associated with the name 

 of the botanist Fuchs, who first gave it a botanical name, may have been easily 

 corrupted into Foxglove. It happens, moreover, that the name Folksglove is a very 

 ancient one, and exists in a list of plants as old as the time of Edward III. The 

 " folks " of our ancestors were the " fairies," and nothing was more likely than that 

 the pretty coloured bells of the plant would be designated " Folhsgloves" afterwards 

 " Foxglove." In Wales it is still declared to be a favourite lurking-place of the 

 fairies, who are said to oocasion the snapping sound made when children, holding one 

 end of the digitalis bell, suddenly strike the other on the hand to hear the clap of 

 fairy thunder, with which the indignant fairy makes her escape from her injured 

 retreat. In the South of Scotland it is called " bloody fingers," more northward 

 " deadman's bells ;" whilst in Wales it is known as " fairy-folks-fingers, or " lambs- 

 tongue-leaves." Poets have not forgotten to honour the beauty of this stately plant 

 in their rhymes, and the characteristic manner in which the blossoms fall off one by 

 one, apparently in their full bloom and freshness, commencing at the lowest and 

 gradually mounting to the highest, is mentioned by Wordsworth : — 



" Through quaint obliquities I might pursue 

 These cravings ; when the Foxglove one by one 

 Upwards through every stage of the tall stem 

 Had shed beside the public way its bells, 

 And stood of all dismantled, save the last, 

 Left at the tapering ladder's top that scem'd 

 To bend, as doth a slender blade of grass 

 Tipp'd with a rain-drop." 



And again he writes — 



" The Foxglove now in crimson tresses rich 

 Depends, whose freckled bells to insect tribes 

 A fibril a canopy of velvet bliss." 



