PLANT-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE 
157 
%ong ©urples* 
There with fantastic garlands did she come 
Of Crow-flowers, Nettles, Daisies, and Long Purples, 
That liberal shepherds give a grosser name, 
But our cold maids do Dead Men’s Fingers call them. 
Hamlet , iv. 7, 169. 
In “ Flowers from Stratford-on-Avon ” (a pretty book pub¬ 
lished a few years ago with plates of twelve of Shakespeare’s 
flowers), it is said that “ there can be no doubt that the Wild 
Arum is the plant alluded to by Shakespeare as forming part of 
the nosegay of the crazed Ophelia : ” but the authoress gives no 
authority for this statement, and I believe that there can be 
no reasonable doubt that the Long Purples and Dead Men’s 
Fingers are the common purple Orchises of the woods and 
meadows (Orchis morio , O. mascula , and O. maculatci). The 
name of Dead Men’s Fingers was given to them from the pale 
palmate roots of some of the species (O. latifolia , O. metadata , 
and Gymnadenia conopsea ), and this seems to have been its 
more common name. 
* 6 Then round the meddowes did she walke, 
Catching each flower by the stalke, 
Such as within the meddowes grew, 
As Dead Man’s Thumb and Harebell blew 
And as she pluckt them, still cried she, 
Alas ! there’s none ’ere loved like me.” 
Roxburghe Ballads. 
As to the other names to which the Queen alludes, we need 
not inquire too curiously; they are given in all their “ liberality ” 
and “ grossness ” in the old Herbals, but as common names 
they are, fortunately, extinct. The name of Dead Men’s 
Fingers still lingers in a few places, but Long Purples has been 
transferred to a very different plant. It is named by Clare and 
Tennyson— 
“Gay Long-purples with its tufty spike; 
She’d wade o’er shoes to reach it in the dyke.” 
Clare’s Village Minstrel, ii. 90. 
