370 



Johnson: ' Good King Henry.' 



Olher conjectures have been rife as to the derivation of Good 

 King- Henry. Someone started the hypothesis that Henry VI., 

 called in his own days Good King- Harry — (is this historical?), 

 the founder of Eton College, and a great favourite with the 

 monks, is the Henry referred to, and that these monks, who 

 named many plants, introduced the term in gratitude to their 

 benefactor. Dr. Prior drily says, ' It has nothing to do with 

 Harry the Eighth and his sore legs, to which some have thought 

 it referred.' Perhaps we have here an after-thought, for Ray 

 (1660) notes that the plant serves 'to cleanse dirty ulcers, and 

 to heal them ; and, as a poultice, to soothe the pains of gout.' 

 Another claimant has been put forward. Dr. Withering refers 

 to a French writer — -a writer whom Mr. Britten searched for in 

 vain — who states that ' This humble plant, which grows on our 

 plains without culture, will confer a more lasting duration on 

 the memory of Henri Quatre than the statue of bronze placed 

 on the Pont Neuf, though fenced with iron and guarded with 

 soldiers.' There is another local term for all the Chenopodium 

 group, namely, Fat Hen, and were not the fear of Professor Skeat 

 and Dr. Murray before one's eyes, along with deserved censure 

 for those who guess at etymologies, this nickname might be used 

 to support the claims of our own Henry the Eighth, and the 

 French Henry IV. Our monarch was corpulent, truly Fat 

 Henry, and was it not Henri Quatre who promised that every 

 peasant should have a fat hen in his pot? But laying aside 

 this trifling, it is necessary to state that the English Dialect 

 Dictionary says that the name Fat Hen is applied to other 

 plants also ; to the Ground Ivy in Bucks, the Corn-Marigold in 

 Hants, and to the Shepherd's Purse in Gloucestershire. To sum 

 up this question of nomenclature : facts seem to point to 

 a German origin. Mr. Britten thinks this very likely ; from 

 Guter Heinrich to Good Henry — the 'King' not at first being 

 interpolated — is not a much greater step than from the commonly 

 accepted Gromwell to the Shropshire ' Oliver Cromwell.' 



If the inquirer consults books as to the use of Good King- 

 Henry as an esculent, he may be led astray. Some of the earlier 

 authorities appear to have copied from each other, and when 

 later editions of their works were issued, mutual checking from 

 the original loose statements fixed a misunderstanding. Anne 

 Pratt (1S55) says, 'The leaves when boiled form a tolerably 

 good vegetable, resembling spinach ; and the plant was of old 

 times much cultivated in gardens, and was so very generally 

 a few years since, in the cottage plots of Boston, in Lincolnshire.' 



Naturalist, 



