“The maiden’s sword protects the royal crown;
Beneath the maiden’s sword the lilies safely blow.”
St. Louis conferred upon the Chateaubriands the device of a fleur-de-lis, and the motto, “Mon sang teint les bannièrs de France.” When Edward III. claimed the crown of France, in the year 1340, he quartered the ancient shield of France with the lions of England. It disappeared, however, from the English shield in the first year of the present century.
Gillyflower. This was the old name for the whole class of carnations, pinks, and sweet-williams, from the French girofle, which is itself corrupted from the Latin caryophyllum.[505] The streaked gillyflowers, says Mr. Beisly,[506] noticed by Perdita in “Winter’s Tale” (iv. 4)—
“the fairest flowers o’ the season
Are our carnations and streak’d gillyvors,
Which some call nature’s bastards”—
“are produced by the flowers of one kind being impregnated by the pollen of another kind, and this art (or law) in nature Shakespeare alludes to in the delicate language used by Perdita, as well as to the practice of increasing the plants by slips.” Tusser, in his “Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry,” says:
“The gilloflower also the skilful doe know,
Doth look to be covered in frost and in snow.”
Harebell. This flower, mentioned in “Cymbeline” (iv. 2), is no doubt another name for the wild hyacinth.
Arviragus says of Imogen:
“thou shalt not lack
The flower that’s like thy face, pale primrose; nor
The azured harebell, like thy veins.”
Hemlock. In consequence of its bad and poisonous character, this plant was considered an appropriate ingredient for witches’ broth. In “Macbeth” (iv. 1) we read of