"Ielofler"—gelofer, gelofre, gillofre, gelevor, gillyvor, gillofer, jerefloure, gerraflour—all these are ways of spelling Gillyflower, gelofre coming nearest to its original French: giroflée—meaning spiced like the clove. There were of old, I find, three kinds of gillyflowers: the clove, the stock and the wall. It was the first of these kinds that was meant in the earlier writers by the small clove carnation (or Coronation, because it was made into chaplets or garlands). Its Greek name was dianthus (the flower divine); and its twin-sister is the Pink, so called because its edges are, as it were, picked out, jagged, notched, scalloped. Country names for it are Sweet John, Pagiants, Blunket and Sops-in-Wine, for it spices what it floats in, and used to be candied for a sweetmeat. Blossoming in July, the Gillyflower suggests July-flower, and if Julia is one's sweetheart, it may also be a Julie-flower. So one name may carry many echoes. It has been truly described as a gimp and gallant flower, and, says Parkinson, who wrote Paradisus Terrestris, it was the chiefest of account in Tudor gardens. By 1700 indeed there were 360 kinds and four classes of clove gillyflower—the Flake, the Bizarre, the Piquette or picotee (picotée or pricketed), and the Painted Lady, the last now gone. Its ancestor, the dianthus, seems to have crossed the Channel with the Normans, for it flourishes on the battlements of Falaise, the Conqueror's birthplace, and crowns the walls of many a Norman Castle—Dover, Ludlow, Rochester, Deal—to this day.
[43]. "Pygsnye"
must be Piggie's eye, or, from an old word, Twinkle-eye, just as we nowadays call a child or loved-one Goosikins or Pussikins, or Lambkin Pie, or Bunch-of-Roses, or Chickabiddy, or Come-kiss-me-quick. Minion means anything small, minikin, delicate, dainty, darling. Look close, for example, at the brown-green florets of a stalk of mignonette.
[44]. "A Worm's Light." (line 10)
Many years ago I had the curious pleasure of reading a little book—and one in small print too (Alice Meynell's lovely Flower of the Mind)—by English glowworm light. The worm was lifting its green beam in the grasses of a cliff by the sea, and shone the clearer the while because it was during an eclipse of the moon. But see No. 93.
[50]. "But Never Cam' He."
... "O wha will shoe my bonny foot?
And wha will glove my hand?
And wha will lace my middle jimp,
Wi' a lang, lang linen band?