Mr. Leigh Hunt observes, in his “Months,” that “the name of June, and indeed that of May, gave rise to various etymologies; but the most probable one derives it from Juno, in honour of whom a festival was celebrated at the beginning of the month.” He says, “it is now complete summer:—
‘Summer is ycomen in,
Loud sing cuckoo;
Groweth seed,
And bloweth mead,
And springeth the weed new.’
“Thus sings the oldest English song extant, in a measure which is its own music.—The temperature of the air, however, is still mild, and in our climate sometimes too chilly; but when the season is fine, this is, perhaps, the most delightful month of the year. The hopes of spring are realized, yet the enjoyment is but commenced: we have all summer before us; the cuckoo’s two notes are now at what may be called their ripest,—deep and loud; so is the hum of the bee; little clouds lie in lumps of silver about the sky, and sometimes fall to complete the growth of the herbage; yet we may now lie down on the grass, or the flowering banks, to read or write; the grasshoppers click about us in the warming verdure; and the fields and hedges are in full blossom with the clover, the still more exquisite bean, the pea, the blue and yellow nightshade, the fox-glove, the mallow, white briony, wild honeysuckle, and the flower of the hip or wild rose, which blushes through all the gradations of delicate red and white. The leaves of the hip, especially the young ones, are as beautiful as those of any garden rose. Towards evening, the bat and the owl venture forth, flitting through the glimmering quiet; and at night, the moon looks silveriest, the sky at once darkest and clearest; and when the nightingale, as well as the other birds have done singing, you may hear the undried brooks of the spring running and panting through their leafy channels. ‘It ceased,’ says the poet, speaking of a sound of heavenly voices about a ship,—
It ceased; yet still the sails made on
A pleasant noise till noon,
A noise like of a hidden brook,
In the leafy month of June,
That to the sleeping woods all night
Singeth a quiet tune.
Coleridge.
“There is a greater accession of flowers in this month than in any other. In addition to those of the last, the garden sparkles with marygolds, golden-road, larkspur, sun-flowers, amarynths, (which Milton intermingles with sun-beams for his angel’s hair,) lupins, carnations, Chinese pinks, holyhocks, ladies’ slipper, annual stocks, campanulas, or little bells, martagons, periwinkles, wall-flower, snap-dragon, orchis, nasturtium, apocynum, chrysanthemum, cornflower, gladiolus, and convolvulus. The reader who is fond of poetry, and of the Greek fables, and does not happen to be acquainted with professor Martyn’s notes upon Virgil, should here be informed, that the species of red lily, called the martagon or Turk’s-cap, has been proved by that writer, at least to our satisfaction, to be the real ancient hyacinth, into which the youth of that name was turned by Apollo. The hyacinth, commonly so called, has nothing to show for its being the ancient one, which should be of a blood colour, and was said to be inscribed with the Greek exclamation of sorrow AI, AI. Now, we were struck with the sort of literal black marks with which the Turk’s-cap is speckled, and on reading the professor’s notes, and turning to the flower again, we could plainly see, that with some allowance, quite pardonable in a superstition, the marks might now and then fall together, so as to indicate those characters. It is a most beautiful, glowing flower; and shoots gracefully forth in a vase or glass from among white lilies, and the double narcissus:—
Νυν υακινθε, λαλει τα σα γσαμματα, και πλεον Αι Αι
Λαμβανε σοις πεταλοισι.
Moschus.
‘Now tell your story, Hyacinth; and show
Ai Ai the more amidst your sanguine woe.’
“The rural business of this month is made up of two employments, as beautiful to look at as they are useful,—sheep-shearing and hay-making. Something like a holiday is still made of the former, and in the south-west of England, the custom, we believe, is still kept up, of throwing flowers into the streams, an evident relic of paganism; but, altogether, the holiday is but a gleam of the same merry period in the cheap and rural time of our ancestors.”