I had been wondering why there seemed to be no name for St John’s wort suggested by the glands, which show as pellucid dots when the leaf is held up to the light. And in Britten and Holland’s Dictionary of English Plant Names, 1886, I found that H. perforatum was called Balm of Warrior’s Wound, which must refer to the innumerable stabs it exhibits, though they are more numerous than most warriors can endure. A closely related plant is Hypericum androsæmum, known as Tutsan, said to mean toute saine, as curing all hurts. In Wales, as I well remember forty years ago, the leaves were kept in bibles. They are, as I learn from a Welsh scholar, known as Blessed One’s leaves.
The common yellow wayside plant Geum urbanum is known as Herb Benet, because, like St Benet, it had the power of counteracting the effect of poison.
The sweet-william is said by Forster to be so named from flowering on St William’s Day, 25th June. But Blomefield’s date is 17th June, which would
be 4th June, old style. A much more probable explanation is that William is a corruption of the French name œillet, a word derived from the Latin ocellus, a little eye. So that the ancestry of the name runs thus:—Ocellus—œillet—Willy—William.
Oxalis, the wood-sorrel, was known as hallelujah, not only in England but in several parts of the Continent, from its blossoming between Easter and Whitsuntide, when psalms were sung ending in the word hallelujah.
Historical.
Some plant-names take us back to historical personages. The Carline thistle is named after Karl the Great, better known as Charlemagne. There was a pestilence in his army, and in answer to his prayer an angel appeared and shot, from a crossbow, a bolt, which fell on the Carline thistle with which the Emperor proceeded to conquer the pestilence.
Another magical arrow-shot is described in well-known lines in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Act ii., scene I). Oberon speaks of Cupid loosing his “love shaft smartly from the bow” at “a fair vestal throned in the west.” Cupid missed his mark, and the poet continues:—
“Yet marked I where the bolt of Cupid fell:
It fell upon a little western flower,
Before milk-white, now purple with love’s wound,
And maidens call it Love-in-idleness.”
The name Love-in-idleness should be Love-in-idle if the metre could have allowed it. This means love-in-vain: witness the Anglo-Saxon bible, where occurs