122 FAMILIAR WILL FLOWERS. 



not, however, the origin of the name, as the plant is 

 so called from a belief in its virtue as a cure for 

 melancholy. There would appear to have been a lack 

 of the usual faith in these remedies in the present 

 case; for Parkinson, in his Herbal, in speaking of 

 the plant, says, " There are no other properties found 

 out or knowne whereunto any of these thistles may 

 be applyed than such which Dioscorides setteth downe, 

 taken from Andreas, who brought in many figments 

 and untruthes to bee used in physicke, that the roote 

 thereof being bound into the veine in the legge or other 

 parts of the body swollen with melancholy blood, doth 

 quickly helpe and heale it." All who have ever studied 

 our older literature will scarcely have failed to be struck 

 with the frequent mention of " the melancholy " in the 

 good old times of merrie England. In the Herbal to which 

 we have just referred we find forty-one plants mentioned 

 as "good against melancholy, and to purge it," while 

 three plants suffice to " breede melancholy/' so rarely does it 

 seem to have been necessary to curb inveterate and irre- 

 pressible good spirits and mediaeval Mark-Tapleyism. 



Much scholarship has been expended over the question 

 of the species of thistle adopted as the national emblem 

 of Scotland ; but the form is too conventional to enable us 

 now to assign any species in particular as the type. The 

 first real heraldic use of the plant to which we find any 

 reference would appear to be in the inventory of the 

 property of James III. made at his death in 1458, where 

 a hanging embroidered "with thrissils" is mentioned ; and 

 as this same drapery has the unicorn, an undoubted em- 

 blem of Scotland, introduced, we may fairly assume that 

 the thistles, too, carry a symbolic significance. It was 



