u All in ye Merrie Month of May ” 
sorrel, too, has done well. It is not, however, a foreign 
vegetable likely to become very popular ; I fancy not like 
the tomato or love apple or gold apple which has had 
the most extraordinary popularity in a ‘ comparatively short 
space of time with all classes of English and Scotch. The 
Cowslips, Paigles, as they used to be called long ago, a name 
which still survives in East Anglia, (and there also means a 
“spangle,”) are out now, but do not seem to be doing very 
well yet in my garden. There is an old Scotch word, a 
verb, to be “ paigled,” meaning “ to be drooping with 
fatigue,” from the Icelandic piackur , drooping. I wonder if 
the Cowslips gained this name from their habit of drooping 
their heads ? Prim el or Coucou is their French name, 
perhaps because they come with the Cuckoo. They, too, 
are colonists in a small way here, from Weymouth, where 
the fields are full of them. They occur but infrequently 
about here. Boy can never know the pleasure of a Cowslip 
Ball. 
I always wondered what the name Cowslip, pronounced 
here Cooslip, came from, and I heard the other day it was a 
survival of the Anglo Saxon Cuslyppe. Doctors seem to 
differ very much as to the meaning and derivation of it. 
Cockayne says Cu-cow and slyppe-lip. Ben Jonson talks 
of Dayseyes and the Lips of Cows. Prior goes off to the 
Flemish Kouss-hose and Lopp-flap , and thinks it reached 
the Cowslip by a confusion with the Mullein, also a Verbas- 
cum. An old name for breeches was “ slops,” and to me 
there seems no difficulty in thinking the flower got its name 
from its similarity to the full hose or slops of the olden days. 
Not a very romantic derivation, but I think old-time folk 
were more practical and coarse than sentimental and dainty- 
fancied. Cowslip wine used to be made in the Borderland, 
but it seems a lost art now. I believe that Cowslip tart 
used to be a favourite dish with our forebears. I wish I had 
the recipe for it, though, indeed, I do not know where I 
would find enough of flowers to try it, as they do not seem 
a common flower in this neighbourhood ; though a few 
miles from here I know a field where they grow, and also 
12 1 
