§ 5. The Daisy. To this story Chaucer has added a pretty addition of his own invention, that this heroine was finally transformed into a daisy. The idea of choosing this flower as the emblem of perfect wifehood was certainly a happy one, and has often been admired. It is first alluded to by Lydgate, in a Poem against Self-Love (see Lydgate's Minor Poems, ed. Halliwell, p. 161):—
'Alcestis flower, with white, with red and greene,
Displaieth hir crown geyn Phebus bemys brihte.'
And again, in the same author's Temple of Glas, ll. 71-74:—
'I mene Alceste, the noble trewe wyf ...
Hou she was turned to a dayesye.'
The anonymous author of the Court of Love seized upon the same fancy to adorn his description of the Castle of Love, which, as he tells us, was—
'With-in and oute depeinted wonderly
With many a thousand daisy[es] rede as rose
And white also, this sawe I verely.