426 
A DICTIONARY OF 
Down, Meatli, Fermanagh, Dublin, Wicklow, Carlow, Westmeath, 
Wexford, Limerick, Waterford, Cork, and Kerrj". Medicago lupulinn, 
L,, occasionally takes its place in London, and is also sold as such in 
Dublin (Cj^bele Hibernica, p. 73). Some have supposed that the 
Wood-sorrel [Oxalis Acetosella, L.) was the original Shamrock — it is 
so called in some parts of Oxf. — and some references to early writers 
rather support this notion. Thus Spenser says, speaking of the fearful 
destitution to which the Irish had been reduced by the wars of 
Munster — ‘ If they found a plot of watercresses or shamrocJcs, there 
they flocked as to a feast for a time.’ Holinshed (Chron. I. 45 
(1577-87) has ‘Water cresses, which they tearme Shamrocks’; Speed 
(Theat. Gt. Brit., 138 (1614?) says, ‘Their diet is . . . mushromes, 
sliamrogli and butter’; and Campion (Hist. Ireland, a. 1581) has 
‘ Shamrotes, water-cresses, rootes.’ Taylor, the Water Poet, spells it 
shame-rags. Wither (Abuses Stript and "S^Tiipt, 1613) has the lines: 
‘ And for my cloathing in a mantle goe. 
And feed on shamroots, as the Irish doe.’ 
Sir Henry Piers (Description of Westmeath) says that ‘butter, new 
cheese, and curds, and shamrocks^ are the food of the meaner sort in 
all seasons.’ In the ‘ Irish Hudibras ’ (1689) are the lines : 
‘ Within a wood, near to this place. 
There grows a bunch of three-leaved grass, 
Called by the boglanders shamrogues.' 
In Moore’s History of Ireland (iv. 217 (1835), we read that the Earl of 
Antrim, in reply to Strafford’s question, ‘ Suppose Au-gyle should drive 
the cattle, carry off the corn, and lay waste the country, how were 
men, horses, and cows to And subsistence ? ’ — made answer : ‘ They 
would do well enough ; feed their horses with leaves of trees, and 
themselves with shamrocks.' We have received the Oxalis from Co. 
Waterford as one of the representatives of the Shamrock, and Moore’s 
description of the colour of the ‘ triple grass ’ — 
‘ As softly green as emeralds seen 
Through purest crystal gleaming’ — 
would seem to point in the same direction, the term ‘ emerald ’ being 
peculiarly appropriate to the green of the Wood-sorrel. The use of 
that plant in salads has no doubt given colour to the notion that in 
the above quotations the Oxalis was intended ; but we can hardly 
suppose it to have formed the food of any people, however reduced. 
Trifolium pratense, L., is considered by Gerard to be the true 
Shamrock ; and Tancred Eobinson informed Eay to the same effect : 
‘ Sunt Hiberni, qui suo Chamhroch (quod est Trifolium purpureum 
pratense) aluntur, celeres, et robusti, ut nos monuit D. Tancredus 
Eobinson’ (Eaii Hist. Plant, i. 944). Lhwyd, writing to Eobinson, 
would seem to have rather intended T. repens. He says : ‘ Their 
Shamrvg is the common clover’ (Phil. Trans, xxvii. 506 (1712). 
Threlkeld (1727) says of this: ‘ This Plant is worn by the People in 
their Hats upon the 17. Day of March yearly (which is called St. 
Patrick’s Day);’ and Wade (Cat. Plant., p. 202 (1794)) assigns the 
name seamrog to the same species. In the ‘ Cybele Hibernica ’ it is 
written : ‘ This is the plant still worn as Shamrock on St. Patrick’s 
Day.’ These quotations — and it would be easy to multiply them — 
will serve to show the conflicting opinions which prevail upon the 
