ific language, is
popular. But real meanings are often so rapidly obscured that words
become mere labels, and cease to call up the image or the poetic idea
with which they were first associated. To take a simple instance, how
many people realise that the _daisy_ is the "day's eye"?--

"Wele by reson men it calle may
The _dayeseye_ or ellis the 'eye of day.'"
(CHAUCER, _Legend of Good Women_, Prol., l. 184.)

In studying that part of our vocabulary which especially illustrates the
tendencies shown in popular name-giving, one is struck by the keen
observation and imaginative power shown by our far-off ancestors, and
the lack of these qualities in later ages.

Perhaps in no part of the language does this appear so clearly as in the
names of plants and flowers. The most primitive way of naming a flower
is from some observed resemblance, and it is curious to notice the
parallelism of this process in various languages. Thus our _crowfoot_,
_crane's bill_, _larkspur_, _monkshood_, _snapdragon_, are in German
_Hahnenfuss_ (cock's foot), _Storchschnabel_ (stork's bill),
_Rittersporn_ (knight's spur), _Eisenhut_ (iron hat), _Loewenmaul_
(lion's mouth). I have purposely chosen instances in which the
correspondence is not absolute, because examples like _Loewenzahn_
(lion's tooth), _dandelion_ (Fr. _dent de lion_) may be suspected of
being mere translations. I give the names in most general use, but the
provincial variants are numerous, though usually of the same type. The
French names of the flowers mentioned are still more like the English.
The more learned words which sometimes replace the above are, though now
felt as mere symbols, of similar origin, e.g., _geranium_ and
_pelargonium_, used for the cultivated _crane's bill_, are derived from
the Greek for crane and stork respectively. So also in _chelidonium_,
whence our _celandine_ or _swallow-wort_, we have the Greek for swallow.

In the English names of plants we observe various tendencies of the
popular imagination. We have the crudeness of _cowslip_ for earlier
_cowslop_, cow-dung, and many old names of unquotable coarseness, the
quaintness of _Sweet William_, _lords and ladies_, _bachelors' buttons_,
_dead men's fingers_, and the exquisite poetry of _forget-me-not_,
_heart's ease_, _love in a mist_, _traveller's joy_. There is also a
special group named from medicinal properties, such as _feverfew_, a
doublet of _febrifuge_, and _tansy_, F