es, burs,
Losing both beauty and utility."

It has been suggested[515] that kecksies may be a mistaken form of the
plural kex; and that kex may have been formed from keck, something so
dry that the eater would keck at it, or be unable to swallow it. The
word is probably derived from the Welsh "cecys," which is applied to
several plants of the umbelliferous kind. Dr. Prior,[516] however, says
that kecksies is from an old English word keek, or kike, retained in the
northern counties in the sense of "peep" or "spy."

[515] See Nares's "Glossary," vol. ii. p. 482.

[516] "Popular Names of British Plants," 1879, p. 128.

_Knotgrass._[517] The allusion to this plant in "A Midsummer-Night's
Dream" (iii. 2)--

"Get you gone, you dwarf!
You minimus, of hindering knot-grass made;
You bead, you acorn!"--

refers to its supposed power of hindering the growth of any child or
animal, when taken in an infusion, a notion alluded to by Beaumont and
Fletcher ("Coxcombe," ii. 2):

"We want a boy extremely for this function,
Kept under for a year with milk and knot-grass."

[517] _Polygonum aviculare._

In "The Knight of the Burning Pestle" (ii. 2) we read: "The child's a
fatherless child, and say they should put him into a strait pair of
gaskins, 'twere worse than knot-grass; he would never grow after it."

_Lady-smocks._ This plant is so called from the resemblance of its white
flowers to little smocks hung out to dry ("Love's Labour's Lost," v. 2),
as they used to be at that season of the year especially

"When daisies pied, and violets blue,
And lady-smocks all silver white,
And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue,
Do paint the meadows with delight.

* * * * *

When shepherds pipe on oaten straws,

* * * * *

And maidens bleach their summer smocks."

According to another explanation, the lady-smock is a corruption of "Our
Lady's Smock," so called from its first flowering about Lady-tide. This
plant has also been called cuckoo-flower, because, as Gerarde says, "it
flowers in April and May, when the cuckoo doth begin to sing her
pleasant notes without stammering."

_Laurel._ From the very earliest times this classical plant has been
regarded as symbolical of victory, and used for crowns. In "Titus
Andronicus" (i. 1) Titus says:

"Cometh Andronicus, bound with laurel boughs."