SOME OLD FAVOURITES AND NEW 81 



back as anything did. Over and over again 

 Narcissi occur in classic literature, often with the 

 qualifications purpled or croceum, which suggests 

 the dark centred Poeticus. Sometimes they are 

 spoken of as the flower of death, the treacherous 

 sweet-scented blossoms, beguiling in sweetness and 

 stupefying in effect. Plutarch definitely says they 

 derived their name from narce = numbness, because 

 of this effect. No such effect is known now ; 

 narcotics in plenty we have, and most of them of 

 vegetable origin, but none obtained from narcissus. 

 Still, evidently there is some such tradition in con- 

 nection with them, for more than one old writer 

 has regarded them as the flower of death. Milton 

 possibly had some such tradition in his mind when 

 in Lycidas, his In Memoriam, he says : 



daffodillies fill their cups with tears, 

 To strew the laureate hearse where Lycid lies. 



This reference is, of course, to the English wild 



Narcissus, the little yellow daffodil of woods and 



meadows, no doubt more plentiful in his day than 



in ours. 



Then, one hopes, there had not begun the 



reprehensible custom (described at the close of the 



eighteenth century) whereby, "In the counties 



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