Springtime and Other Essays Part 7

Anyone who has seen the band of the Life Guards must have admired (as I do) the splendid personage who plays the kettle-drums. These are not of the ordinary drum-form, being hemispherical instead of cylindrical, and having but a single membrane. They have a right to be called musical instruments since their pitch is alterable: {96d} I have often admired the drummer in an orchestra tuning his instrument at a change of key.

One sees him leaning over his children like an anxious mother until he gets his large babies into the proper temper.

The earliest record of kettle-drums in this country is in the list of Edward I.'s musicians, among whom was Janino le Nakerer. Henry VIII. is said to have sent to Vienna for kettle-drums {97} that could be played on horseback in the Hungarian manner. In England, Handel was the first to use the kettle-drum in the concert-room, and he used to borrow from the Tower the drums taken from the French at the battle of Malplaquet in 1709.

Cymbals and Chimes.

The cymbals are of a great antiquity, being depicted on ancient a.s.syrian monuments, and "in the British Museum may be seen a pair of bronze cymbals which once did duty for the sacred rites of Egyptian deities."

They are figured in English MSS. of the thirteenth century, and Mr Galpin gives a figure of a cymbal-player (as shown in a fourteenth century MS.) vigorously clas.h.i.+ng his instrument. There was also an apparatus known as a jingling johnny, figured by Galpin at p. 258. It was a pole bearing a number of bells, hence the name which it doubtless deserved. The crescents with which it is decorated are an inheritance from its forbears of the Janizary bands.

Mr Galpin ends his book with a very interesting chapter on the _Consort_, _i.e._ Concert, which, however, does not lend itself to that abbreviation to which the rest of the book has been mercilessly subjected.

THE TRADITIONAL NAMES OF ENGLISH PLANTS

I do not pretend to be a specialist in the study of plant-names. But there is something to be said for ignorance (in moderation), since it brings reader and writer more closely together than is the case when the author knows the last word in a subject of which the reader knows nothing. But we need not consider the case of the blankly ignorant reader, and I can undertake that (for very sufficient reasons) I shall not be offensively learned.

The fact that language is handed on from one generation to the next may remind us of heredity, and the way in which words change is a case of variation. But we cannot understand what determines the extinction of old words or the birth of new ones. We cannot, in fact, understand how the principle of natural selection is applicable to language: yet there must be a survival of the fittest in words, as in living creatures.

Language is a quality of man, and just as we can point to big racial groups such as that which includes the English, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Icelandic and German peoples, so their languages, though differing greatly in detail, have certain well-marked resemblances. Of course I do not mean to imply that language is hereditary, like the form of skull or the colour of the hair. I only insist on these familiar facts in order to show that the wonderful romance inherent in the great subject of evolution also illumines that cycle of birth and death to which existing plant-names are due.

In the case of living creatures we can at least make a guess as to what are the qualities that have made them succeed in the struggle for life.

But in the case of the birth and death of words we are surrounded with difficulties.

In some instances, however, it is clear that plant-names were forgotten with the growth of Protestantism. The common milk-wort used to be called the Gang-flower {100a} because it blossoms in what our ancestors called Gang Week,-"three days before the Ascension, when processions were made . . .

to perambulate the parishes with the Holy Cross and Litanies, to mark their boundaries, and invoke the blessing of G.o.d on the crops." {100b} Bishop Kennet says that the girls made garlands of milk-wort and used them "in those solemn processions." As far as dates are concerned the name is fairly appropriate, for Rogation Sunday is 27th April, _i.e._ 10th May, old style, and, according to Blomefield, {100c} from eight years' observation, the milk-wort flowers on 15th May. The milk-wort is a small plant, and the labour of making garlands from it must have been considerable. There must have been a reason for using a blue flower, and I gather from a friend learned in such matters that blue is a.s.sociated with the Virgin Mary, to whom the month of May is dedicated.

In this case we can perhaps understand why the name should have all but died out with the disappearance of these old ceremonies. But why should the name _milk-wort_ have survived? Its scientific name, Polygala, is derived from Greek and means "much milk," and the plant was supposed to encourage lactation. It is an instance of names being more long-lived than the beliefs which they chronicle.

There are, of course, many plants called after saints. Thus the pig-nut (_Bunium_) is called St Anthony's nut, because, as quoted by Prior, "The wretched Antonius" was "forced to mind the filthy herds of swine." The b.u.t.tercup (_R. bulbosus_) was called St Anthony's turnip from its tubers being said to be eaten by pigs.

St Catherine's flower (_Nigella_) (generally known as love-in-a-mist or devil-in-a-bush) is called after the martyr from the arrangement of its styles, which recall the spokes of St Catherine's wheel. I do not mean the well-known fireworks but the instrument of torture on which the saint died. St James' wort is the yellow daisy-like flower _Senecio Jacobaea_, known as rag-wort. It is said to have been used as a cure for the diseases of horses, of which he was the patron.

In the old herbals the cowslip is called St Peter's wort from the resemblance of the flowers to a bunch of keys-no doubt the keys of heaven, of which Peter is custodian.

A number of plants were called after the Virgin Mary: these were doubtless known as Our Lady's flowers, but their names have been corrupted in Protestant days by the omission of the p.r.o.noun.

Lady's fingers (_Anthyllis vulneraria_) is a common enough plant bearing a head or tuft of yellow flowers. Each has a pale swollen calyx, and these are, I suppose, the fingers on which the name is founded, though I find it said that it originates in the leaflets surrounding the flower head.

Butcher's broom is known in Wales as Mary's holly, the latter half of the name referring to its red berries and p.r.i.c.kly leaves. It was used to clean butcher's blocks.

Lady's slipper is so named from the strikingly shoe-like form of the flower. It is excessively rare in England, but in Southern France one may see great bunches gathered for sale, over which, by the way, I have often mourned.

Lady's tresses (the orchid _Spiranthes_) is so named from the curious twisted or braided arrangement of the flowers.

Lady's smock (_Cardamine pratensis_) bears a name immortalised in Shakespeare's song:-

"When daisies pied and violets blue, And lady's smocks all silver white, And cuckow-buds of yellow hue Do paint the meadows with delight."

I suspect that the poet called them _silver white_ to rhyme with _delight_, for they are distinctly lilac in colour. Nor are they especially smock-like-many other flowers suggest a woman's skirt equally well-but this is a carping criticism.

Lady's bedstraw seems to have been so called from the yellow colour of one or more kinds of Galium.

Lady's bower is _Clematis vitalba_, now known as traveller's joy. Anyone exploring Seven Leases Lane, which runs along the edge of the Cotswolds, will travel in continuous joy, for the lady's bower converts many hundred yards of hedge into continuous beauty.

_Pulmonaria_ has been called the Virgin Mary's tears, from the pale circular marks on its leaves. The blue flowers have been supposed to typify the beautiful eyes of the Virgin, while the red buds are the same eyes disfigured with weeping.

Many plants are named after the devil; there is, for instance, a species of _Scabiosa_ called devil's bit, because that eminent personage bit the root short off, and so it remains to this day. His object seems to have been to destroy the medicinal properties the plant was supposed to possess.

We now pa.s.s on to plants flowering on certain dates, such as Saints' days or other church festivals. The snowdrop has been called the Fair Maid of February, because it was supposed to flower on Candlemas Day, 2nd February, which would be 15th February according to the modern calendar.

The name St John's wort, which we habitually apply to several species of _Hyperic.u.m_, is correctly used only for _H. perforatum_. Its English name is said to have been given from its flowering on St John's Day, 24th June. This would be 7th July, new style, and I find that Blomefield's average of eight annual observations is 4th July.

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 _Hyperic.u.m androsaemum_, 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 _illet_, a word derived from the Latin _ocellus_, a little eye. So that the ancestry of the name runs thus:-_Ocellus_-illet-w.i.l.l.y-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 the phrase to take G.o.d's name "in idle." The flower referred to by Shakespeare is doubtless the pansy.

Some names recall the work of more modern people. Thus the wild chamomile was known in the Eastern counties as _Mawther_; and this, as all lovers of d.i.c.kens will remember, means not a mother but a girl; and the name is in fact a translation of the Greek Parthenion into the Suffolk dialect.

The elder used to be known as the _bour-tree_. I fear that the name is extinct in England, but a Scotch friend tells me that he was familiar with it in his youth. I love this name because it is a.s.sociated in my mind with the words of Meg Merrilees {106} in _Guy Mannering_, the first English cla.s.sic in which I took pleasure.

"Aye, on this very spot the man fell from his horse-I was behind the bour-tree bush at the very moment. Sair, sair he strove, and sair he cried for mercy; but he was in the hands of them that never kenn'd the word!"

The actual origin of the name is, however, not romantic; it is said to mean _bore_, and to refer to the fact that tubes were made from it by boring out the pith. It seems possible that such tubes were, in primitive times, used to blow the fire, and this would explain the name elder, which seems to mean _kindler_.

The dwarf elder, a distinct species, though not connected with an individual, commemorates a race, being known as Dane's blood. It grows on the Bartlow Hills, near Cambridge, where tradition says that Danes were killed in battle.