And some to grace the show,
Of lady-smocks do rob the neighbouring mead.
Wherewith their looser locks most curiously they braid.
Polyolbion, Song xx.
And now and then among, of eglantine a spray,
By which again a course of lady-smocks they lay.
Song xv.
The honeysuckle round the porch has wov’n its wavy bowers,
And by the meadow-trenches blow the faint, sweet cuckoo flowers,
And the wild march-marigold shines like fire on swamps and hollows gray.
The May Queen.—Tennyson.
“Cuckoo-flower” is a name laid claim to by many flowers, and authorities differ as to which one Shakespeare meant by it. Certainly not the plant under discussion, which is the one we most generally call Cuckoo-flower to-day, for there can be no doubt that this is the “lady’s-smocks” of the line above,—letting alone the fact that the “cuckoo-buds” in the song being of “yellow hue” put the idea out of court. Lord Tennyson’s lines point equally clearly to the Cardamine pratensis. Lady’s-smock is said to be a corruption of “Our Lady’s Smock,” and to be one of the plants dedicated to the Virgin, because it comes into blossom about Ladytide; though as a matter of fact the flower is seldom seen so early. It is remarkable how many attentions this graceful, but humble and scentless flower has received; and besides all the poets Isaac Walton mentions it twice: “Look! down at the bottom of the hill there, in that meadow, chequered with water-lilies and lady-smocks.”[42] And later: “Looking on the hills, I could behold them spotted with wood and groves—looking down in the meadow, could see there a boy gathering lilies and lady’s-smocks, and there, a girl cropping culverkeys and cowslips, all to make garlands suitable to this present month of May.” It is difficult to be positive about culverkeys. Columbines, bluebells, primroses and an orchis have all been called by this name at different times. The primrose is cut out of the question here by its colour, for in the poem which has been quoted a little while before Davors sings of “azure culverkeys.” The columbine is rarely found in a wild state and flowers later in the year, the orchis is hardly “azure,” so on the whole it looks as if the likeliest flower would be the wild hyacinth. To return to the lady’s-smocks, Gerarde says they are of “a blushing, white colour,” and like the “white sweet-john.” In the seventeenth century their titles were various and he gives some of them, and in doing so he shows an ingenuous, very pleasing clinging to the names familiar to his youth. “In English, cuckowe flowers, in Northfolke, Canterbury bells, at Namptwich in Cheshire, where I had my beginning, ladiesmocks which hath given me cause to christen it after my country fashion.” Parkinson finds that “these herbes are seldom used eyther as sauce or sallet or in physick, but more for pleasure to decke up the garlands of the country-people, yet divers have reported them to be as affectuall in the scorbute or scurvy as the water-cresses.” The plant was regarded as an excellent remedy for these evils by the inhabitants of those northern countries where salted fish and flesh are largely eaten. The leaves are slightly pungent and somewhat bitter; and in the early part of the nineteenth century it was regarded as an ordinary salad herb, so that its reputation in that respect must have risen since Parkinson’s days.
[42] Complete Angler.
Langdebeefe (Helminthia echoides).
Langdebeefe is mentioned with scanty praise. “The leaves are onely used in all places that I knew or ever could learne, for an herbe for the pot among others.” It is difficult to be absolutely certain as to the identity of the plant, for Gerarde places it with Bugloss, and Parkinson, among the Hawkweeds. Mr Britten says, however, that both writers referred to Helminthia echoides, but that Echium vulgare, Viper’s Bugloss, is the plant that Turner called Langdebeefe, and Viper’s Bugloss is still called Langdebeefe in Central France. Near Paris, however, Langue de bœuf means Anchusa Italica. “The leaves,” says Gerarde, “are like the rough tongue of an oxe or cow, whereof it took its name,” and he gives another instance of the insouciance of contemporary physicians. They “put them both into all kindes of medicines indifferently, which are of force and vertue to drive away sorrow and pensiveness of the minde, and to comfort and strengthen the heart.” “Both” refers to Bugloss and “little wilde Buglosse,” which he has just informed us grows upon “the drie ditch bankes about Pickadilla.” Times change!