Johnson: 'Good King Henry.' 



369 



their shape, the popular and the g-eneric names. But why 

 ' Mercury' or * Markery ' ? It may, perchance, have been trans- 

 ferred from the Dog's Mercury {Mercurialis perennis), or the 

 Annual Mercury (J/, anmia)^ because of a fancied connection 

 between the plants, each having a ' hard ' green colour, and the 

 leaves of some goosefoots being of a shape similar to those of 

 the mercuries. The god Mercury is apparently involved in the 

 christening ceremony of all three, but why, is a mystery. 

 The English Dialect Dictionary gives references to variants of 

 ' Mercury,' in use in several of the Northern Counties, and 

 quotes the catalogue of a Lincoln seedsman, ' Marquery, a 

 Lincolnshire Perennial Spinach,' but there is no hint of the 

 etymology. There is a further name — -All-good, which clearly 

 points to the value of Marquery as food. Henry Lyte (1578) 

 wrote ' Algood groweth about w^ayes . . . and pathes, and by 

 hedges,' and he gives cognate equivalents in 'high Douche,' 

 ^ Frenche,' and 'base Almaigne.' Coles (1677) alludes to ' All- 

 g-ood, herb Mercury, Good Henr}^' Here, and in the French 

 Anserine bon Henri, we come to a real difficulty, which is 

 increased by considering that we have now added another word — 

 'King' — Good King Henry. 



Is the name Good King Henry ever employed by country 

 people nowadays, or is it a mere book-name, kept alive by 

 botanists ? Gerarde, in whose Herbal the term seems to 

 appear for the first time, says that in his day it was in use in 

 Cambridgeshire. It would be pertinent to ascertain if anyone 

 who has not learnt the name from books or botanists has ever 

 been known to use it. Dr. B. C. A. Prior, quoted by Syme, 

 remarks, ' Good Henry, or Good King Harry ; German, Guter 

 Heinrich ; Dutch, Goeden Henrik. An obscure name, which 

 Dodonoeus (Dodoens) tells us was given to the plant to distin- 

 g-uish it from another one, called Mains Henricus^ but why they 

 were either of them called Henricus we are not told.' Britten 

 and Holland suppose that Mains Henricus w^as our Lathrcea 

 sqiiajnaria [L.j. If we now turn to Grimm's 'Teutonic 

 Mythology,' we get a possible clue. Grimm says that Atriplex, 

 which is a genus closely allied to Chenopodiiuji^ is called Stolz 

 Heinrich, or Proud Henry. Roth Heinrich, Red Henry, also 

 figures in Northern folk-lore. ' I account for it' (the name), he 

 says, ' by the old belief in elves and kobolds, for whom Heinz 

 or Heinrich was a favourite name, which was always transferred 

 to devils or witches, and to such demonic beings was ascribed 

 the healing virtue of the herbs.' 



1904 December i. z 



