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
Northamptonshire, 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?
Cockle-shells, 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]