PLANT-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE 
331 
“ Viole,Appel-leaf ” (thirteenth century Vocabulary); 1 “ Wyolet” 
(fourteenth century Vocabulary); “ Vyolytte ” (fifteenth century 
Nominale); “ Violetta, A ce , a Violet ” (fifteenth century Pic¬ 
torial Vocabulary); and “ Viola Cleafre, Ban-vyrt ” (Durham 
Glossary). It is also mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon translation 
of the Herbarium of Apuleius in the tenth century as “the 
Herb Viola purpurea ; (1) for new wounds and eke for old; (2) 
for hardness of the maw” (Cockayne’s translation). In this 
last example it is most probable that our sweet-scented Violet 
is the plant meant, but in some of the other cases it is quite 
certain that some other plant is meant, and perhaps in all. 
For Violet was a name given very loosely to many plants, so 
that Laurembergius says : “ Vox Vioke distinctissimis floribus 
communis est. Videntur mihi antiqui suaveolentes quosque 
flores generatim Violas appellasse, cujuscunque etiam forent 
generis quasi vi oleant.”—- Aftparat . Plant , 1632. This confu¬ 
sion seems to have arisen in a very simple way. Theophrastus 
described the Leucojum, which was either the Snowdrop or 
the spring Snowflake, as the earliest-flowering plant; Pliny 
literally translated Leucojum into Alba Viola. All the earlier 
writers on natural history were in the habit of taking Pliny for 
their guide, and so they translated his Viola by any early 
flowering plant that most took their fancy. Even as late as 
1693, Samuel Gilbert, in “The Florists’ Vade Mecum,” under 
the head of Violets, only describes “ the lesser early bulbous 
Violet, a common flower yet not to be wasted, because when 
none other appears that does, though in the snow, whence 
called Snowflower or Snowdrop; ” and I think that even later 
instances may be found. 
When I say that there is no genuine English name for the 
Violet, I ought, perhaps, to mention that one name has been 
attributed to it, but I do not think that it is more than a clever 
guess. “ The commentators on Shakespeare have been much 
puzzled by the epithet ‘happy lowlie down,’ applied to the 
man of humble station in ‘ Henry IV,’ and have proposed to 
1 Appel-leaf is given as the English name for Viola in two other MS. 
Glossaries quoted by Cockayne, iii. 312. 
