Ladyday to Whitsunday 
white roseres, full of roses. And these weren the first roseres 
and roses, botte white and rede that evere any man saughe.” 
The delphiniums are in bud, and it is amusing to find 
our Scotch gardener calling the white delphinium Elijah’s 
Chariot ; why, I do not know. I like the old name, too, of 
Helmet-flower. How beautiful the laburnum is ! — Pea-tree 
or Peascod-tree, as it used to be called hereabouts. 
There is a small croft lying between the brown river and 
a high bank covered with beech-trees ; here the laburnums 
form a perfect golden fringe. Goldregen (Golden Rain) is the 
pretty German and Swedish name. The Dutch call it 
Goude Keten , and an old English name was Gold-chain. I 
always think it so well suited. And here, in the lush 
meadow-grass, I found purple orchis, Shakespeare’s long 
purples (unless he meant loose-strife or willow-herb, which 
perhaps he did), kingcups and the loveliest turquoise-blue 
forget-me-nots. There are three kinds of orchis here — Mas- 
cula , Metadata and Latifolia , and they have very queer local 
names : “ Cockskames,” u Dead man’s thumb,” because the 
root is said to have that shape, “ Addergrass,” “ Hens,” 
“ Henscombs,” “ Deilsfoot,” and “Adam and Eve.” Testi- 
cute de Pretre and Sabot de Venus are the French names, 
and Manntiches Knabenkraut the German. Foolstones was 
an old English name. There is a Border belief that if 
a village maid desire the love of any particular swain she 
must hide an orchis root in his pocket and he will lose his 
heart to her. The Marsh-marigolds, too, have quaint local 
names — “ Kingcups ” and “ Yellow gowans.” There is a 
saying, to an invalid : “ Ye’ll get round again gin ye had yer 
fit on the May gowan.” 
But I am not sure that in this case “ gowan ” does not 
mean a daisy — “daisy little,” sometimes called “ ewe gowan.” 
The big oxeye daisies the children call here “ horse gowans.” 
In Norway they are called Praste , meaning “priests,” from 
their resemblance to the ruff worn by Lutheran pastors. 
Allan Ramsay, the old barber-poet (what connection is there 
between barbers and poetry, I wonder ?), sings of “ burn 
banks where the yellow gowan grows,” meaning marsh- 
49 d 
