The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespear - Henry Nicholson Ellacombe (color ebook reader txt) 📗
- Author: Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
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The Daïsie, or else the Eye of Day,
The Empresse and the flowre of flowres all."
And Ben Jonson boldly spoke of them as "bright Daye's-eyes."
There is, however, another derivation. Dr. Prior says: "Skinner derives it from dais or canopy, and Gavin Douglas seems to have understood it in the sense of a small canopy in the line:
"Had we not the A.-S. dæges-eage, we could hardly refuse to admit that this last is a far more obvious and probable explanation of the word than the pretty poetical thought conveyed in Day's-eye." This was Dr. Prior's opinion in his first edition of his valuable "Popular Names of British Plants;" but it is withdrawn in his second edition, and he now is content with the Day's-eye derivation. Dr. Prior has kindly informed me that he rejected it because he can find no old authority for Skinner's derivation, and because it is doubtful whether the Daisy in Gavin Douglas's line does not mean a Marigold, and not what we call a Daisy. The derivation, however, seemed worth a passing notice. Its other English names are Dog Daisy, to distinguish it from the large Ox-eyed Daisy; Banwort, "because it helpeth bones[362:1] to knit agayne" (Turner); Bruisewort, for the same reason; Herb Margaret, from its French name; and in the North, Bairnwort, from its associations with childhood. As to its other names, the plant seems to have been unknown to the Greeks, and has no Greek name, but is fortunate in having as pretty a name in Latin as it has in English. Its modern botanical name is Bellis, and it has had the name from the time of Pliny. Bellis must certainly come from bellus (pretty), and so it is at once stamped as the pretty one even by botanists—though another derivation has been given to the name, of which I will speak soon. The French call it Marguerite, no doubt for its pearly look, or Pasquerette, to mark it as the spring flower; the German name for it is very different, and not easy to explain—Gänseblume, i.e., Goose-flower; the Danish name is Tusinfryd (thousand joys); and the Welsh, Sensigl (trembling star).
As Pliny is the first that mentions the plant, his account is worth quoting. "As touching a Daisy," he says (I quote from Holland's translation, 1601), "a yellow cup it hath also, and the same is crowned, as it were, with a garland, consisting of five and fifty little leaves, set round about it in manner of fine pales. These be flowers of the meadow, and most of such are of no use at all, no marvile, therefore, if they be namelesse; howbeit, some give them one tearme and some another" (book xxi. cap. 8). And again, "There is a hearbe growing commonly in medows, called the Daisie, with a white floure, and partly inclining to red, which, if it is joined with Mugwort in an ointment, is thought to make the medicine farre more effectual for the King's evil" (book xxvi. cap. 5).
We have no less than three legends of the origin of the flower. In one legend, not older, I believe, than the fourteenth century (the legend is given at full length by Chaucer in his "Legende of Goode Women"), Alcestis was turned into a Daisy. Another legend records that "this plant is called Bellis, because it owes its origin to Belides, a granddaughter to Danaus, and one of the nymphs called Dryads, that presided over the meadows and pastures in ancient times. Belides is said to have encouraged the suit of Ephigeus, but whilst dancing on the grass with this rural deity she attracted the admiration of Vertumnus, who, just as he was about to seize her in his embrace, saw her transformed into the humble plant that now bears her name." This legend I have only seen in Phillips's "Flora Historica." I need scarcely tell you that neither Belides or Ephigeus are classical names—they are mediæval inventions. The next legend is a Celtic one; I find it recorded both by Lady Wilkinson and Mrs. Lankester. I should like to know its origin; but with that grand contempt for giving authorities which lady-authors too often show, neither of these ladies tells us whence she got the legend. The legend says that "the virgins of Morven, to soothe the grief of Malvina, who had lost her infant son, sang to her, 'We have seen, O! Malvina, we have seen the infant you regret, reclining on a light mist; it approached us, and shed on our fields a harvest of new flowers. Look, O! Malvina. Among these flowers we distinguish one with a golden disk surrounded by silver leaves; a sweet tinge of crimson adorns its delicate rays; waved by a gentle wind, we might call it a little infant playing in a green meadow; and the flower of thy bosom has given a new flower to the hills of Cromla.'" Since that day the daughters of Morven have consecrated the Daisy to infancy. "It is," said they, "the flower of innocence, the flower of the newborn." Besides these legends, the Daisy is also connected with the legendary history of St. Margaret. The legend is given by Chaucer, but I will tell it to you in the words of a more modern poet—
That our lasses call Herb Margaret
In honour of Cortona's penitent;
Whose contrite soul with red remorse was rent.
While on her penitence kind Heaven did throwe
The white of puritie surpassing snowe;
So white and rede in this faire floure entwine,
Which maids are wont to scatter on her shrine."
Yet, in spite of the general association of Daisies with St. Margaret, Mrs. Jameson says that she has seen one, and only one, picture of St. Margaret with Daisies.
The poetry or poetical history of the Daisy is very curious. It begins with Chaucer, whose love of the flower might almost be called an idolatry. But, as it begins with Chaucer, so, for a time, it almost ends with him. Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton scarcely mention it. It holds almost no place in the poetry of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; but, at the close of the eighteenth century, it has the good luck to be uprooted by Burns's plough, and he at once sings its dirge and its beauties; and then the flower at once becomes a celebrity. Wordsworth sings of it in many a beautiful verse; and I think it is scarcely too much to say that since his time not an English poet has failed to pay his homage to the humble beauty of the Daisy. I do not purpose to take you through all these poets—time and knowledge would fail me to introduce you to them all. I shall but select some of those which I consider best worth selection. I begin, of course, with Chaucer, and even with him I must content myself with a selection—
Then love I most those floures white and redde;
Such that men callen Daisies in our town.
To them I have so great affection,
As I said erst when comen is the Maye,
That in my bedde there dawneth me no daie,
That I n'am up and walking in the mede
To see this floure against the sunné sprede.
When it upriseth early by the morrow,
That blessed sight softeneth all my sorrow.
So glad am I, when that I have presence
Of it, to done it all reverence—
As she that is of all floures the floure,
Fulfilled of all virtue and honoure;
And ever ylike fair and fresh of hue,
And ever I love it, and ever ylike new,
And ever shall, till that mine heart die,
All swear I not, of this I will not lye.
There loved no wight hotter in his life,
And when that it is eve, I run blithe,
As soon as ever the sun gaineth west,
To see this floure, how it will go to rest.
For fear of night, so hateth she darkness,
Her cheer is plainly spread in the brightness
Of the sunne, for there it will unclose;
Alas, that I ne had English rhyme or prose
Suffisaunt this floure to praise aright."
I could give you several other quotations from Chaucer, but I will content myself with this, for I think unbounded admiration of a flower can scarcely go further than the lines I have read to you.
In an early poem published by Ritson is the following—
With blosmen ant with briddes roune
That al thys blisse bryngeth;
Dayeseyes in this dales,
Notes suete of nyghtegales
Vch foul song singeth."
Stephen Hawes, who lived in the time of Henry VII., wrote a poem called the "Temple of Glass." In that temple he tells us—
From est to west, fol many a fayre image
Of sundry lovers. . . . ."
And among these lovers—
I mean Alceste, the noble true wife,
And for Admete howe she lost her life,
And for her trouthe, if I shall not lye,
How she was turned into a Daysye."
We next come to Spenser. In the "Muiopotmos," he gives a list of flowers that the butterfly frequents, with most descriptive epithets to each flower most happily chosen. Among the flowers are—
Sharp Isope good for greene woundes' remedies,
Faire Marigoldes, and bees-alluring Thyme,
Sweet Marjoram, and Daysies decking prime."
By "decking prime" he means they are the ornament of the morning.[366:1] Again he introduces the Daisy in a stanza of much beauty, that commences the June Eclogue of the "Shepherd's Calendar."
From other shades hath weand my wandring minde.
Tell me, what wants me here to work delyte?
The simple ayre, the gentle warbling winde,
So calm, so cool, as no where else I finde;
The Grassie ground, with daintie Daysies dight;
The Bramble bush, where byrdes of every kinde
To the waters' fall their tunes attemper right."
From Spenser we come to Shakespeare, and when we remember the vast acquaintance with flowers of every kind that he shows, and especially when we remember how often he almost seems to go out of his way to tell of the simple wild flowers of England, it is surprising that the Daisy is almost passed over entirely by him. Here are the passages in which he names the flowers. First, in the poem of the "Rape of Lucrece," he has a very pretty picture of Lucrece as she lay asleep—
On the green coverlet, whose perfect white
Showed like an April Daisy on the Grass."
In "Love's Labour's Lost" is the song of Spring, beginning—
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