The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare
yet it contains a large number of most useful plants, as the Potato,
Tomato, Tobacco, Datura, and Cayenne Pepper.
PRIMROSE.
(1) _Queen._
The Violets, Cowslips, and the Primroses,
Bear to my closet.
_Cymbeline_, act i, sc. 5 (83).
(2) _Queen._
I would be blind with weeping, sick with groans,
Look pale as Primrose with blood-drinking sighs,
And all to have the noble duke alive.
_2nd Henry VI_, act iii, sc. 2 (62).
(3) _Arviragus._
Thou shalt not lack
The flower that's like thy face, pale Primrose.
_Cymbeline_, act iv, sc. 2 (220).
(4) _Hermia._
In the wood where often you and I
Upon faint Primrose-beds were wont to lie.
_Midsummer Night's Dream_, act i, sc. 1 (214).
(5) _Perdita._
Pale Primroses,
That die unmarried, ere they can behold
Bright Phoebus in his strength.
_Winter's Tale_, act iv, sc. 4 (122).
(6) _Ophelia._
Like a puff'd and reckless libertine,
Himself the Primrose path of dalliance treads
And recks not his own rede.
_Hamlet_, act i, sc. 3 (49).
(7) _Porter._
I had thought to have let in some of all professions that go
the Primrose way to the everlasting bonfire.
_Macbeth_, act ii, sc. 3 (20).
(8)
Primrose, first-born child of Ver
Merry spring-time's harbinger,
With her bells dim.
_Two Noble Kinsmen_, Introd. song.
(9)
Witness this Primrose bank whereon I lie.
_Venus and Adonis_ (151).
Whenever we speak of spring flowers, the first that comes into our
minds is the Primrose. Both for its simple beauty and for its early
arrival among us we give it the first place over
"Whatsoever other flowre of worth
And whatso other hearb of lovely hew,
The joyous Spring out of the ground brings forth
To cloath herself in colours fresh and new."
It is a plant equally dear to children and their elders, so that I
cannot believe that there is any one (except Peter Bell) to whom
"A Primrose by the river's brim
A yellow Primrose is to him--
And it is nothing more;"
rather I should believe that W. Browne's "Wayfaring Man" is a type of
most English countrymen in their simple admiration of the common
flower--
"As some wayfaring man passing a wood,
Whose waving top hath long a sea-mark stood,
Goes jogging on and in his mind nought hath,
But how the Primrose finely strews the path,
Or sweetest Violets lay down their heads
At some tree's roots or mossy feather beds."
_Britannia's Pastorals_, i, 5.
It is the first flower, except perhaps the Daisy, of which a child
learns the familiar name; and yet it is a plant of unfailing interest to
the botanical student, while its name is one of the greatest puzzles to
the etymologist. The common and easy explanation of the name is that it
means the first Rose of the year, but (like so many explanations that
are derived only from the sound and modern appearance of a a name) this
is not the true account. The full history of the name is too long to
give here, but the short account is this--"The old name was Prime
Rolles--or primerole. Primerole is an abbreviation of Fr.,
_primeverole_: It., _primaverola_, diminutive of _prima vera_ from _flor
di prima vera_, the first spring flower. _Primerole_, as an outlandish
unintelligible word, was soon familiarized into _primerolles_, and this
into _primrose_."--DR. PRIOR. The name Primrose was not at first always
applied to the flower, but was an old English word, used to show
excellence--
"A fairer nymph yet never saw mine eie,
She is the pride and Primrose of the rest."
SPENSER, _Colin Clout_.
"Was not I [the Briar] planted of thine own hande
To bee the Primrose of all thy lande;
With flow'ring blossomes to furnish the prime
And scarlet berries in sommer time?"
SPENSER, _Shepherd's Calendar--Februarie_.
It was also a flower name, but not of our present Primrose, but of a
very different plant. Thus in a Nominale of the fifteenth century we
have "hoc ligustrum, a Primerose;" and in a Pictorial Vocabulary of the
same date we have "hoc ligustrum, A{ce} a Prymrose;" and in the
"Promptorium Parvulorum," "Prymerose, primula, calendula,
ligustrum"--and this name for the Privet lasted with a slight alteration
into Shakespeare's time. Turner in 1538 says, "ligustrum arbor est non
herba ut literator[=u] vulgus credit; nihil que minus est quam a
Prymerose." In Tusser's "Husbandry" we have "set Privie or Prim"
(September Abstract), and--
"Now set ye may
The Box and Bay
Hawthorn and Prim
For clothe's trim"--(_January Abstract_).
And so it is described by Gerard as the Privet or Prim Print (_i.e._,
_primé printemps_), and even in the seventeenth century, Cole says of
ligustrum, "This herbe is called Primrose." When the name was fixed to
our present plant I cannot say, but certainly before Shakespeare's time,
though probably not long before. It is rather remarkable that the
flower, which we now so much admire, seems to have been very much
overlooked by the writers before Shakespeare. In the very old
vocabularies it does not at all appear by its present Latin name,
Primula vulgaris, but that is perhaps not to be wondered at, as nearly
all the old botanists applied that name to the Daisy. But neither is it
much noticed by any English name. I can only find it in two of the
vocabularies. In an English Vocabulary of the fourteenth century is "Hæc
pimpinella, A{e} primerolle," but it is very doubtful if this can be our
Primrose, as the Pimpernel of old writers was the Burnet. Gower
mentions it as the flower of the star Canis Minor--
"His stone and herbe as saith the scole
Ben Achates and Primerole."
_Conf. Aman._ lib. sept. (3, 130. Paulli).
And in the treatise of Walter de Biblesworth (13th century) is--
"Primerole et primeveyre (cousloppe)
Sur tere aperunt en tems de veyre."
I should think there is no doubt this is our Primrose. Then we have
Chaucer's description of a fine lady--
"Hir schos were laced on hir legges hyghe
Sche was a Primerole, a piggesneyghe
For any lord have liggyng in his bedde,
Or yet for any gode yeman to wedde."
_The Milleres Tale._
I have dwelt longer than usual on the name of this flower, because it
gives us an excellent example of how much literary interest may be found
even in the names of our common English plants.
But it is time to come from the name to the flower. The English Primrose
is one of a large family of more than fifty species, represented in
England by the Primrose, the Oxlip, the Cowslip, and the Bird's-eye
Primrose of the North of England and Scotland. All the members of the
family, whether British or exotic, are noted for the simple beauty of
their flowers, but in this special character there is none that
surpasses our own. "It is the very flower of delicacy and refinement;
not that it shrinks from our notice, for few plants are more easily
seen, coming as it does when there is a dearth of flowers, when the
first birds are singing, and the first bees humming, and the earliest
green putting forth in the March and April woods; and it is one of those
plants which dislikes to be looking cheerless, but keeps up a
smouldering fire of blossom from the very opening of the year, if the
weather will permit."--FORBES WATSON. It is this character of
cheerfulness that so much endears the flower to us; as it brightens up
our hedgerows after the dulness of winter, the harbinger of many
brighter perhaps, but not more acceptable, beauties to come, it is the
very emblem of cheerfulness. Yet it is very curious to note what
entirely different ideas it suggested to our forefathers. To them the
Primrose seems always to have brought associations of sadness, or even
worse than sadness, for the "Primrose paths" and "Primrose ways" of Nos.
6 and 7 are meant to be suggestive of pleasures, but sinful pleasures.
Spenser associates it with death in some beautiful lines, in which a
husband laments the loss of a young and beautiful wife--
"Mine was the Primerose in the lowly shade!
* * * * *
Oh! that so fair a flower so soon should fade,
And through untimely tempest fade away."
_Daphnidia_, 232.
In another place he speaks of it as "the Primrose trew"--_Prothalamion_;
but in another place his only epithet for it is "green," which quite
ignores its brightness--
"And Primroses greene
Embellish the sweete Violet."
_Shepherd's Calendar--April._
Shakespeare has no more pleasant epithets for our favourite flower than
"pale," "faint," "that die unmarried;" and Milton follows in the same
strain yet sadder. Once, indeed, he speaks of youth as "Brisk as the
April buds in Primrose season" ("Comus"); but only in three passages
does he speak of the Primrose itself, and in two of these he connects it
with death--
"Bring the rathe Primrose that forsaken dies,
* * * * *
And every flower that sad embroidery wears."--_Lycidas._
"O fairest flower, no sooner blown but blasted,
Soft silken Primrose fading timelesslie;
Summer's chief honour, if thou hadst outlasted
Bleak winter's force that made thy blossoms drie."
_On the Death of a Fair Infant._
His third account is a little more joyous--
"Now the bright morning star, daye's harbinger,
Comes dancing from the East, and leads with her
The flowery May, who from her green lap throws
The yellow Cowslip and the pale Primrose."
_On May Morning._
And nearly all the poets of that time spoke in the same strain, with the
exception of Ben Jonson and the two Fletchers. Jonson spoke of it as
"the glory of the spring" and as "the spring's own spouse." Giles
Fletcher says--
"Every bush lays deeply perfumed
With Violets; the wood's late wintry head,
Wide flaming Primroses set all on fire."
And Phineas Fletcher--
"The Primrose lighted new her flame displays,
And frights the neighbour hedge with fiery rays.
And here and there sweet Primrose scattered.
* * * * *
Nature seem'd work'd by Art, so lively true,
A little heaven or earth in narrow space she drew."
I can only refer very shortly to the botanical interest of the Primula,
and that only to direct attention to Mr. Darwin's paper in the "Journal
of the Linnæan Society," 1862, in which he records his very curious and
painstaking inquiries into the dimorphism of the Primula, a peculiarity
in the Primula that gardeners had long recognized in their arrangement
of Primroses as "pin-eyed" and "thrum-eyed." It is perhaps owing to this
dimorphism that the family is able to show a very large number of
natural hybrids. These have been carefully studied by Professor Kerner,
of Innspruck, and it seems not unlikely that a further study will show