HYACINTH OR IRIS? 49 



Ave Maria, the sole words of prayer he knew. 

 From all of which it seems one must conclude 

 that the flower called forth by Phoebus Apollo 

 when Hyacinthus died was not what we call 

 hyacinth now. 



Not that hyacinths are not of respectable 

 antiquity, quite as respectable as iris. Very long 

 ago they must have made the wreaths at festivals 

 and of bridesmaids in Greece, as they sometimes do 

 to this day ; very long ago the Persian poet sang 

 his fancy — 



That every Hyacinth the Garden wears 

 Dropt in her lap from some once lovely head. 



Though in the latter case, when one thinks of the 

 great hyacinths of the bulb growers, one feels them 

 to be a rather unwieldy decoration for the " lovely 

 head," and likely rather easily to be dislodged 

 and fall to the "garden's lap." But the original 

 Hyacinthus orientalis, parent of all our hyacinths, 

 whether it came to us from Persia or from the 

 other side of the Himalayas, as Parkinson's sub- 

 name zumbul indi rather suggests, was a very 

 different thing from the hyacinth of to-day. It 

 was a very small, poor thing, not so good as a 

 poor specimen of the white Roman hyacinth that 

 blooms for us at Christmas. Even in Parkinson's 



7 



