The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare Part 80

(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 Phbus 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 n.o.ble 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 pa.s.sing 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 literatoru 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._, _prime 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 "Haec 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 G.o.de 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 surpa.s.ses 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 a.s.sociations 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 a.s.sociates 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."