226 OUR WILD FLOWERS AND 



nature, — who has sought to flatter and to woo, — sohcit many a time 

 and often the aid of flowers ; and to him — if rightly invoked — 



" not a beauty blows. 

 And not an opeuing blossom breathes in vain." 



Now, it will be my object to describe — not exactly, I admit — in 

 the severe dress of truth *, some of those customs, beliefs and inci- 

 dents of rural life associated with our wild flowers, as I have myself 

 observed them, and as they have been described in floral metaphors 

 by our poets. This may be deemed a very childish theme, and I 

 dare say it may be so, but not therefore necessarily unfruitful. In 

 spring the Romans held annual games in honour to Flora, accom- 

 panied with supplications for beneficial influences on the grass, trees, 

 flowers, and other products of the earth. For my descriptions I 

 plead even a higher aim, — even to revive some buried scenes of your 

 infancy, of your youth, and of your age ; and thereby to re-open once 

 more the flood-gates of those virtuous feelings which the wisdom of the 

 world has made us lock up, and would have dried away to dust, had it 

 been possible, by her hard chemistry, to have separated them from our 

 human nature. " There may be a pleasure," says John Younger of 

 St. Boswells, and, as he is a mechanic, I the more willingly adduce 

 his authority, — " there may be a pleasure, to a mind jaded and 

 harassed amidst the toys and trammels of life, to throw back an 

 occasional glance of reflection over the sunny hours and flowery 

 fields of our simplest delights, when the opening roses of life were 

 enjoyed in their freshness, their prickles yet undiscovered f." 



It is the first Sunday in May — and a sunny day it is — -when a 

 group of little children issue from the schealing |, dressed in their 

 best, and clean and tidy as the fondest mother can make them. The 

 eldest carries the chubby baby in her arms, while the three inter- 



* " But the lowest scenes of simple nature will not please generally, if 

 copied precisely as they are." — Thomson to Burns. Works by Chambers, 

 iii. p. 306. 



t Author's Life, in his "The Light of the Week," p. 19.— "The im- 

 provements we make in mental acquu'ements only render us each day 

 more sensible of the defects of our constitution ; with this in view, there- 

 fore, let us often recur to the amusements of youth ; endeavour to forget 

 age and wisdom, and as far as innocence goes, be as much a boy as the 

 best of them." — Goldsmith. 



X Camden describes the herdsmen upon the wastes of Northumberland 

 as a sort of nomades who lived in huts which were called Scheales and 

 Schealings, translated into Scalingas in the charters of the 12th and 13th 

 centuries. The ancient Schealings in Berwickshire lay all in the Lammer- 

 moors, and many of them discover their sites in the names of existing 

 onsteads. Winsheels, Hensheel, Gamilsheels, Bowsheel are on the Bothil' 

 or not far from it ; and we have Penmanshiel on the verge of Coldingham 

 moor, &e. Several manors in the Merse had shealings in the Lammer- 

 moors. In the 12th century, WilUam de Veterepont granted to the monks 

 of Kelso, " quosdam Scalingas in Lambermore que pertinebat ad Horner- 

 dane." See Chalmers' Caledonia, ii. p. 309. 



