and Sir Walter Scott crowns it as the queen of wild flowers—
"The Violet in her greenwood bower,
Where Birchen boughs with Hazels mingle,
May boast itself the fairest flower
In glen, in copse, or forest dingle."
Yet favourite though it ever has been, it has no English name. Violet is the diminutive form of the Latin Viola, which again is the Latin form of the Greek ἴον. In the old Vocabularies Viola frequently occurs, and with the following various translations:—"Ban-wyrt," i.e., Bone-wort (eleventh century Vocabulary); "Clœfre," i.e., Clover (eleventh century Vocabulary); "Violé, Appel-leaf" (thirteenth century Vocabulary);[310:1] "Wyolet" (fourteenth century Vocabulary); "Vyolytte" (fifteenth century Nominale); "Violetta, Ace, a Violet" (fifteenth century Pictorial Vocabulary); and "Viola Cleafre, Ban-vyrt" (Durham Glossary). It is also mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon translation of the Herbarium of Apuleius in the tenth century as "the Herb Viola purpurea; (1) for new wounds and eke for old; (2) for hardness of the maw" (Cockayne's translation). In this last example it is most probable that our sweet-scented Violet is the plant meant, but in some of the other cases it is quite certain that some other plant is meant, and perhaps in all. For Violet was a name given very loosely to many plants, so that Laurembergius says: "Vox Violæ distinctissimis floribus communis est. Videntur mihi antiqui suaveolentes quosque flores generatim Violas appellasse, cujuscunque etiam forent generis quasi vi oleant."—Apparat. Plant., 1632. This confusion seems to have arisen in a very simple way. Theophrastus described the Leucojum, which was either the Snowdrop or the spring Snowflake, as the earliest-flowering plant; Pliny literally translated Leucojum into Alba Viola. All the earlier writers on natural history were in the habit of taking Pliny for their guide, and so they translated his Viola by any early-flowering plant that most took their fancy. Even as late as 1693, Samuel Gilbert, in "The Florists' Vade Mecum," under the head of Violets, only describes "the lesser early bulbous Violet, a common flower yet not to be wasted, because when none other appears that does, though in the snow, whence called Snowflower or Snowdrop;" and I think that even later instances may be found.
When I say that there is no genuine English name for the Violet, I ought, perhaps, to mention that one name has been attributed to it, but I do not think that it is more than a clever guess. "The commentators on Shakespeare have been much puzzled by the epithet 'happy lowlie down,' applied to the man of humble station in "Henry IV.," and have proposed to read 'lowly clown,' or to divide the phrase into 'low lie down,' but the following lines from Browne clearly prove 'lowly down' to be the correct term, for he uses it in precisely the same sense—
'The humble Violet that lowly down
Salutes the gay nymphs as they trimly pass.'
Poet's Pleasaunce."
This may prove that Browne called the Violet a Lowly-down, but it certainly does not prove that name to have been a common name for the Violet. It was, however, the character of lowliness combined with sweetness that gave the charm to the Violet in the eyes of the emblem writers: it was for them the readiest symbol of the meekness of humility. "Humilitas dat gratiam" is the motto that Camerarius places over a clump of Violets. "A true widow is, in the church, as a little March Violet shedding around an exquisite perfume by the fragrance of her devotion, and always hidden under the ample leaves of her lowliness, and by her subdued colouring showing the spirit of her mortification, she seeks untrodden and solitary places," &c.—St. Francis de Sales. And the poets could nowhere find a fitter similitude for a modest maiden than
"A Violet by a mossy stone
Half hidden from the eye."
Violets, like Primroses, must always have had their joyful associations as coming to tell that the winter is passing away and brighter days are near, for they are among
"The first to rise
And smile beneath spring's wakening skies,
The courier of a band
Of coming flowers."