To entomologists the Daisy is interesting as an attractive flower to insects; for "it is visited by nine hymenoptera, thirteen diptera, three coleoptera, and two lepidoptera—namely, the least meadow-brown and the common blue butterflies."[377:1]
In medicine, I am afraid, the Daisy has so lost its virtues that it has no place in the modern pharmacopœia: but in old days it was not so. Coghan says "of Deysies, they are used to be given in potions in fractures of the head and deep wounds of the breast. And this experience I have of them, that the juyce of the leaves and rootes of Deysies being put into the nosethrils purgeth the brain; they are good to be used in pottage."[377:2] Gerard says, "the Daisies do mitigate all kinds of paines, especially in the joints, and gout proceeding from a hot or dry humoure, if they be stamped with new butter, unsalted, and applied upon the pained place." Nor was this all. In those days, doctors prescribed according to the so-called "doctrines of signatures," i.e., it was supposed that Nature had shown, by special marks, for what special disease each plant was useful; and so in the humble growth of the little low-growing Daisy the doctors read its uses, and here they are. "It is said that the roots thereof being boyled in milk, and given to little puppies, will not suffer them to grow great."—Cole's Adam in Eden. One more virtue. Miss Pratt says that "an author, writing in 1696, tells us that they who wish to have pleasant dreams of the loved and absent, should put 'Dazy roots under their pillow.'"
On the English language, the Daisy has had little influence, though some have derived "lackadaisy" and "lackadaisical" from the Daisy, but there is, certainly, no connection between the words. Daisy, however, was (and, perhaps, still is) a provincial adjective in the eastern counties. A writer in "Notes and Queries" (2nd Series, ix. 261) says that Samuel Parkis, in a letter to George Chalmers, dated February 16, 1799, notices the following provincialisms: "Daisy: remarkable, extraordinary excellent, as 'She's a Daisy lass to work,' i.e., 'She is a good working girl.' 'I'm a Daisy body for pudding,' i.e., 'I eat a great deal of pudding.'"
And I must not leave the Daisy without noticing one special charm, that it is peculiarly the flower of childhood. The Daisy is one of the few flowers of which the child may pick any quantity without fear of scolding from the surliest gardener. It is to the child the herald of spring, when it can set its little foot on six at once, and it readily lends itself to the delightful manufacture of Daisy chains.
"In the spring and play-time of the year,
. . . . the little ones, a sportive team,
Gather king-cups in the yellow mead,
And prank their hair with Daisies."—Cowper.
It is then the special flower of childhood, but we cannot entirely give it up to our children. And I have tried to show you that the humble Daisy has been the delight of many noble minds, and may be a fit subject of study even for those children of a larger growth who form the "Bath Field Club."
FOOTNOTES:
[362:1] "In the curious Treatise of the Virtues of Herbs, Royal MS. 18, a. vi, fol. 72 b, is mentioned: 'Brysewort, or Bonwort, or Daysye, consolida minor, good to breke bocches.'"—Promptorium Parvulorum, p. 52, note. See also a good note on the same word in "Babee's Book," p. 185.
[366:1] This is the general interpretation, but "decking prime" may mean the ornament of spring.