Garden Poppies were the Joan Silver-pin of Gerarde, stigmatized also by Parkinson as "Jone Silver-pinne, subauditur; faire without and foule within." In Elizabeth's day Poppies met universal distrust and aversion, as being the source of the dreaded opium. Spenser called the flower "dead-sleeping" Poppy; Morris "the black heart, amorous Poppy"—which might refer to the black spots in the flower's heart.
Clare, in his Shepherd's Calendar also asperses them:—
"Corn-poppies, that in crimson dwell,
Called Head-aches from their sickly smell."
Forby adds this testimony: "Any one by smelling of it for a very short time may convince himself of the propriety of the name." Some fancied that the dazzle of color caused headaches—that vivid scarlet, so fine a word as well as color that it is annoying to hear the poets change it to crimson.
"Black Heart, Amorous Poppies."
This regard of and aversion to the Poppy lingered among elderly folks till our own day; and I well recall the horror of a visitor of antique years in our mother's garden during our childhood, when we were found cheerfully eating Poppy seeds. She viewed us with openly expressed apprehension that we would fall into a stupor; and quite terrified us and our relatives, in spite of our assertions that we "always ate them," which indeed we always did and do to this day; and very pleasant of taste they are, and of absolutely no effect, and not at all of evil smell to our present fancy, either in blossom or seed, though distinctly medicinal in odor.
Returned missionaries were frequent and honored visitors in our town and our house in those days; and one of these good men reassured us and reinstated in favor our uncanny feast by telling us that in the East, Poppy seeds were eaten everywhere, and were frequently baked with wheaten flour into cakes. A dislike of the scent of Field Poppies is often found among English folk. The author of A World in a Garden speaks in disgust of "the pungent and sickly odor of the flaring Poppies—they positively nauseate me"; but then he disliked their color too.
There is something very fine about a Poppy, in the extraordinary combination of boldness of color and great size with its slender delicacy of stem, the grace of the set of the beautiful buds, the fine turn of the flower as it opens, and the wonderful airiness of poise of so heavy a flower. The silkiness of tissue of the petals, and their semi-transparency in some colors, and the delicate fringes of some varieties, are great charms.