Cymbals and Chimes.
The cymbals are of a great antiquity, being depicted on ancient Assyrian monuments, and “in the British Museum may be seen a pair of bronze cymbals which once did duty for the sacred rites of Egyptian deities.” They are figured in English MSS. of the thirteenth century, and Mr Galpin gives a figure of a cymbal-player (as shown in a fourteenth century MS.) vigorously clashing his instrument. There was also an apparatus known as a jingling johnny, figured by Galpin at p. 258. It was a pole bearing a number of bells, hence the name which it doubtless deserved. The crescents with which it is decorated are an inheritance from its forbears of the Janizary bands.
Mr Galpin ends his book with a very interesting chapter on the Consort, i.e. Concert, which, however, does not lend itself to that abbreviation to which the rest of the book has been mercilessly subjected.
THE TRADITIONAL NAMES OF ENGLISH PLANTS
I do not pretend to be a specialist in the study of plant-names. But there is something to be said for ignorance (in moderation), since it brings reader and writer more closely together than is the case when the author knows the last word in a subject of which the reader knows nothing. But we need not consider the case of the blankly ignorant reader, and I can undertake that (for very sufficient reasons) I shall not be offensively learned.
The fact that language is handed on from one generation to the next may remind us of heredity, and the way in which words change is a case of variation. But we cannot understand what determines the extinction of old words or the birth of new ones. We cannot, in fact, understand how the principle of natural selection is applicable to language: yet there must be a survival of the fittest in words, as in living creatures. Language is a quality of man, and just as we can point to big racial groups such as that which includes the English, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Icelandic and German peoples, so their languages, though differing greatly in detail, have certain well-marked resemblances.
Of course I do not mean to imply that language is hereditary, like the form of skull or the colour of the hair. I only insist on these familiar facts in order to show that the wonderful romance inherent in the great subject of evolution also illumines that cycle of birth and death to which existing plant-names are due.
In the case of living creatures we can at least make a guess as to what are the qualities that have made them succeed in the struggle for life. But in the case of the birth and death of words we are surrounded with difficulties.
In some instances, however, it is clear that plant-names were forgotten with the growth of Protestantism. The common milk-wort used to be called the Gang-flower [100a] because it blossoms in what our ancestors called Gang Week,—“three days before the Ascension, when processions were made . . . to perambulate the parishes with the Holy Cross and Litanies, to mark their boundaries, and invoke the blessing of God on the crops.” [100b] Bishop Kennet says that the girls made garlands of milk-wort and used them “in those solemn processions.” As far as dates are concerned the name is fairly appropriate, for Rogation Sunday is 27th April, i.e. 10th May, old style, and, according to Blomefield, [100c] from eight
years’ observation, the milk-wort flowers on 15th May. The milk-wort is a small plant, and the labour of making garlands from it must have been considerable. There must have been a reason for using a blue flower, and I gather from a friend learned in such matters that blue is associated with the Virgin Mary, to whom the month of May is dedicated.
In this case we can perhaps understand why the name should have all but died out with the disappearance of these old ceremonies. But why should the name milk-wort have survived? Its scientific name, Polygala, is derived from Greek and means “much milk,” and the plant was supposed to encourage lactation. It is an instance of names being more long-lived than the beliefs which they chronicle.
There are, of course, many plants called after saints. Thus the pig-nut (Bunium) is called St Anthony’s nut, because, as quoted by Prior, “The wretched Antonius” was “forced to mind the filthy herds of swine.” The buttercup (R. bulbosus) was called St Anthony’s turnip from its tubers being said to be eaten by pigs.
St Catherine’s flower (Nigella) (generally known as love-in-a-mist or devil-in-a-bush) is called after the martyr from the arrangement of its styles, which recall the spokes of St Catherine’s wheel. I do not
mean the well-known fireworks but the instrument of torture on which the saint died. St James’ wort is the yellow daisy-like flower Senecio Jacobæa, known as rag-wort. It is said to have been used as a cure for the diseases of horses, of which he was the patron.
In the old herbals the cowslip is called St Peter’s wort from the resemblance of the flowers to a bunch of keys—no doubt the keys of heaven, of which Peter is custodian.
A number of plants were called after the Virgin Mary: these were doubtless known as Our Lady’s flowers, but their names have been corrupted in Protestant days by the omission of the pronoun.
Lady’s fingers (Anthyllis vulneraria) is a common enough plant bearing a head or tuft of yellow flowers. Each has a pale swollen calyx, and these are, I suppose, the fingers on which the name is founded, though I find it said that it originates in the leaflets surrounding the flower head.
Butcher’s broom is known in Wales as Mary’s holly, the latter half of the name referring to its red berries and prickly leaves. It was used to clean butcher’s blocks.
Lady’s slipper is so named from the strikingly shoe-like form of the flower. It is excessively rare in England, but in Southern France one may see great bunches gathered for sale, over which, by the way, I have often mourned.
Lady’s tresses (the orchid Spiranthes) is so named from the curious twisted or braided arrangement of the flowers.
Lady’s smock (Cardamine pratensis) bears a name immortalised in Shakespeare’s song:—
“When daisies pied and violets blue,
And lady’s smocks all silver white,
And cuckow-buds of yellow hue
Do paint the meadows with delight.”
I suspect that the poet called them silver white to rhyme with delight, for they are distinctly lilac in colour. Nor are they especially smock-like—many other flowers suggest a woman’s skirt equally well—but this is a carping criticism.
Lady’s bedstraw seems to have been so called from the yellow colour of one or more kinds of Galium.
Lady’s bower is Clematis vitalba, now known as traveller’s joy. Anyone exploring Seven Leases Lane, which runs along the edge of the Cotswolds, will travel in continuous joy, for the lady’s bower converts many hundred yards of hedge into continuous beauty.
Pulmonaria has been called the Virgin Mary’s tears, from the pale circular marks on its leaves. The blue flowers have been supposed to typify the beautiful eyes of the Virgin, while the red buds are the same eyes disfigured with weeping.
Many plants are named after the devil; there is, for instance, a species of Scabiosa called devil’s bit, because that eminent personage bit the root short off, and so it remains to this day. His object seems to have been to destroy the medicinal properties the plant was supposed to possess.
We now pass on to plants flowering on certain
dates, such as Saints’ days or other church festivals. The snowdrop has been called the Fair Maid of February, because it was supposed to flower on Candlemas Day, 2nd February, which would be 15th February according to the modern calendar.
The name St John’s wort, which we habitually apply to several species of Hypericum, is correctly used only for H. perforatum. Its English name is said to have been given from its flowering on St John’s Day, 24th June. This would be 7th July, new style, and I find that Blomefield’s average of eight annual observations is 4th July.
I had been wondering why there seemed to be no name for St John’s wort suggested by the glands, which show as pellucid dots when the leaf is held up to the light. And in Britten and Holland’s Dictionary of English Plant Names, 1886, I found that H. perforatum was called Balm of Warrior’s Wound, which must refer to the innumerable stabs it exhibits, though they are more numerous than most warriors can endure. A closely related plant is Hypericum androsæmum, known as Tutsan, said to mean toute saine, as curing all hurts. In Wales, as I well remember forty years ago, the leaves were kept in bibles. They are, as I learn from a Welsh scholar, known as Blessed One’s leaves.
The common yellow wayside plant Geum urbanum is known as Herb Benet, because, like St Benet, it had the power of counteracting the effect of poison.
The sweet-william is said by Forster to be so named from flowering on St William’s Day, 25th June. But Blomefield’s date is 17th June, which would
be 4th June, old style. A much more probable explanation is that William is a corruption of the French name œillet, a word derived from the Latin ocellus, a little eye. So that the ancestry of the name runs thus:—Ocellus—œillet—Willy—William.
Oxalis, the wood-sorrel, was known as hallelujah, not only in England but in several parts of the Continent, from its blossoming between Easter and Whitsuntide, when psalms were sung ending in the word hallelujah.