Stray Leaves from a Border Garden 
flower (trollius) is abundant ; one can gather perfect sheaves 
of it. I know this will grow with me, as it is still to be 
found in some parts of the Merse, where it used to grow 
wild in abundance, and was called Stocks, from a fancied 
resemblance to a cabbage-stock. In Wiltshire I think they 
are still called May-blobs. Allan Ramsay, that quaint old 
poet, calls it the Luckengowan. “ Lucken ” means “shut” or 
“locked up,” and “gowan” is the old name of Caltha palus- 
tris, the Marsh-Marigold, so the derivation of Luckengowan is 
clear. In Iceland the Trollius is called the TroH’s-flower, 
and it is said the evil-minded trolls go at night and unlock 
the Luckengowan and drop poison into its cup to poison 
the dairymaids and herdsmen. An old name in Herbals 
for this flower used to be Troll-flower and Cabbage 
Daisy. 
June 22. — I never was one of those people who rave 
about the superiority of Alps over flats, but still there is a 
great beauty about a lush emerald-green valley set in a high 
setting of grim mountains clothed with beech and fir woods. 
Under the fir-trees, with their festoons of grey moss (I 
fancy it is the same species of Old Man’s Beard that hangs 
the trees in the Southern States), in just such a valley by a 
tumbling mountain beck, the Dore, with the low green 
whortleberry bushes all around, with scented white orchis 
and masses of golden creeping broom, I was sitting, look- 
ing at the blue distance and across to the great mountain 
in whose flanks yawned the dark craggy cleft of the Val 
d’Enfer, listening to the faint far-off bells of the cows and 
goats. “ What a halcyon day ! ” I said. “ Do not say so,” 
rejoined my companion. “ Halcyon days are said to pre- 
cede storms ! ” 
It was Jubilee Day in Britain far away ; loyal bonfires 
were dying down all over England and Scotland, and on 
the Border our poor little old mansion-house was burning, 
a victim to its own loyal illumination ; uprising flames, 
falling timbers, frightened birds forsaking the old ivied 
walls, shouts, despair, and wild confusion. Folk at a 
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