Part 24 (1/2)

because children blow the ripe fruit from the receptacle to tell the time of day and for various purposes of divination. Thus in the ”Sad Shepherd,” page 8, it is said:--

”Her treading would not bend a blade of gra.s.s, Or shake the downy blow-ball from his stalk.”

In Scotland, one of the popular names of the _Angelica sylvestris_ is ”aik-skeiters,” or ”hear-skeiters,” because children shoot oats through the hollow stems, as peas are shot through a pea-shooter. Then there is the goose-gra.s.s (_Galium aparine_), variously called goose-bill, beggar's-lice, scratch-weed, and which has been designated blind-tongue, because ”children with the leaves practise phlebotomy upon the tongue of those playmates who are simple enough to endure it,” a custom once very general in Scotland. [2]

The catkins of the willow are in some counties known as ”goslings,” or ”goslins,”--children, says Halliwell, [3] sometimes playing with them by putting them in the fire and singeing them brown, repeating verses at the same time. One of the names of the heath-pea (_Lathyrus macrorrhizus_) is liquory-knots, and school-boys in Berwicks.h.i.+re so call them, for when dried their taste is not unlike that of the real liquorice. [4] Again, a children's name of common henbane (_Hyoscyamus niger_) is ”loaves of bread,” an allusion to which is made by Clare in his ”Shepherd's Calendar”:--

”Hunting from the stack-yard sod The stinking henbane's belted pod, By youth's warm fancies sweetly led To christen them his loaves of bread.”

A Worcesters.h.i.+re name for a horse-chestnut is the ”oblionker tree.”

According to a correspondent of _Notes and Queries_ (5th Ser. x. 177), in the autumn, when the chestnuts are falling from their trunks, boys thread them on string and play a ”cob-nut” game with them. When the striker is taking aim, and preparing for a shot at his adversary's nut, he says:--

”Oblionker!

My first conker (conquer).”

The word oblionker apparently being a meaningless invention to rhyme with the word conquer, which has by degrees become applied to the fruit itself.

The wall peniterry (_Parietaria officinalis_) is known in Ireland as ”peniterry,” and is thus described in ”Father Connell, by the O'Hara Family” (chap, xii.):--

”A weed called, locally at least, peniterry, to which the suddenly terrified [schoolboy] idler might run in his need, grasping it hard and threateningly, and repeating the following 'words of power':--

'Peniterry, peniterry, that grows by the wall, Save me from a whipping, or I'll pull you roots and all.'”

Johnston, who has noticed so many odd superst.i.tions, tells us that the tuberous ground-nut (_Bunium flexuosum_), which has various nicknames, such as ”lousy,” ”loozie,” or ”lucie arnut,” is dug up by children who eat the roots, ”but they are hindered from indulging to excess by a cherished belief that the luxury tends to generate vermin in the head.” [5]

An old rhyme often in years past used by country children when the daffodils made their annual appearance in early spring, was as follows:--

”Daff-a-down-dill Has now come to town, In a yellow petticoat And a green gown.”

A name for the shepherd's purse is ”mother's-heart,” and in the eastern Border district, says Johnston, children have a sort of game with the seed-pouch. They hold it out to their companions, inviting them to ”take a haud o' that.” It immediately cracks, and then follows a triumphant shout, ”You've broken your mother's heart.” In Northamptons.h.i.+re, children pick the leaves of the herb called pick-folly, one by one, repeating each time the words, ”Rich man, poor man, beggar-man, thief,”

&c., fancying that the one which comes to be named at the last plucking will prove the conditions of their future partners. Variations of this custom exist elsewhere, and a correspondent of ”Science Gossip” (1876, xi. 94). writes:--”I remember when at school at Birmingham that my playmates manifested a very great repugnance to this plant. Very few of them would touch it, and it was known to us by the two bad names, ”haughty-man's plaything,” and ”pick your mother's heart out.” In Hanover, as well as in the Swiss canton of St. Gall, the same plant is offered to uninitiated persons with a request to pluck one of the pods.

Should he do so the others exclaim, ”You have stolen a purse of gold from your father and mother.”” ”It is interesting to find,” writes Mr.

Britten in the ”Folk-lore Record” (i. 159), ”that a common tropical weed, _Ageratum conyzoides_, is employed by children in Venezuela in a very similar manner.”

The compilers of the ”Dictionary of Plant Names” consider that the double (garden) form of _Saxifraga granulata_, designated ”pretty maids,” may be referred to in the old nursery rhyme:--

”Mary, Mary, quite contrary, How does your garden grow?

c.o.c.kle-sh.e.l.ls, and silver bells, And pretty maids all in a row.”

The old-man's-beard (_Clematis vitalba_) is in many places popularly known as smoke-wood, because ”our village-boys smoke pieces of the wood as they do of rattan cane; hence, it is sometimes called smoke-wood, and smoking-cane.” [6]

The children of Galloway play at hide-and-seek with a little black-topped flower which is known by them as the Davie-drap, meantime repeating the following rhyme:--

”Within the bounds of this I hap My black and bonnie Davie-drap: Wha is he, the cunning ane, To me my Davie-drap will fin'?”