[21] "Cymbeline"; Act IV, Scene II.
[22] Act IV, Scene III.
[23] "A Midsummer Night's Dream"; Act I, Scene I.
The English primrose is one of a large family of more than fifty species, represented by the primrose, the cowslip, and the oxlip. All members of this family are noted for their simple beauty and their peculiar charm.
Parkinson writes:
"We have so great variety of Primroses and Cowslips in our country breeding that strangers, being much delighted with them, have often furnished into divers countries to their good content.
"All Primroses bear their long and large, broad yellowish-green leaves without stalks most usually, and all the Cowslips have small stalks under the leaves, which are smaller and of a darker green. The name of Primula veris, or Primrose, is indifferently conferred on those that I distinguish for Paralyses, or Cowslips. All these plants are called most usually in Latin Primulæ veris, Primulæ pretenses and Primulæ silvarum, because they shew by their flowering the new Spring to be coming on, they being, as it were, the first Embassadors thereof. They have also divers other names, as Herba Paralysis, Arthritica, Herba Sancti Petri, Claues Sancti Petri, Verbasculum odoratum, Lunaria arthritica, Phlomis, Alisma silvarum and Alismatis alterum genus. Some have distinguished them by calling the Cowslips Primula Veris Elatior, that is the Taller Primrose, and the other Humilis, Low, or Dwarf, Primrose.
"Primroses and Cowslips are in a manner wholly used in Cephalicall diseases to ease pains in the head. They are profitable both for the Palsy and pains of the joints, even as the Bears' Ears[24] are, which hath caused the names of Arthritica Paralysis and Paralytica to be given them."
[24] Auriculas.
Tusser in his "Husbandry" includes the primrose among the seeds and herbs of the kitchen; and Lyte says that "the cowslips, primroses and oxlips are now used daily amongst other pot-herbs, but in physic there is no great account made of them." "The old name was Primerolles," Dr. Prior notes in his quaint book on flowers. "Primerole as an outlandish, unintelligible word was soon familiarized into Primerolles and this into Primrose." The name was also written primrolles and finally settled down into primrose. Chaucer wrote primerole, a name derived from the French Primeverole, meaning, like the Italian Flor di prima vera, the first spring flower.