The Folk-lore of Plants

"Her treading would not bend a blade of grass, Or shake the downy blow-ball from his stalk." In Scotland, one of the popular names of the Angelica sylvestris is "aik-skeiters," or "hear-skeiters," because children shoot oats through the hollow stems, as peas are shot through a pea-shooter. Then there is the goose-grass (Galium aparine), variously called goose-bill, beggar's-lice, scratch-weed, and which has been designated blind-tongue, because "children with the leaves practise phlebotomy upon the tongue of those playmates who are simple enough to endure it," a custom once very general in Scotland. [2] The catkins of the willow are in some counties known as "goslings," or "goslins,"--children, says Halliwell, [3] sometimes playing with them by putting them in the fire and singeing them brown, repeating verses at the same time. One of the names of the heath-pea (Lathyrus macrorrhizus) is liquory-knots, and school-boys in Berwickshire so call them, for when dried their taste is not unlike that of the real liquorice. [4] Again, a children's name of common henbane (Hyoscyamus niger) is "loaves of bread," an allusion to which is made by Clare in his "Shepherd's Calendar":-- "Hunting from the stack-yard sod The stinking henbane's belted pod, By youth's warm fancies sweetly led To christen them his loaves of bread." A Worcestershire name for a horse-chestnut is the "oblionker tree." According to a correspondent of Notes and Queries (5th Ser. x. 177), in the autumn, when the chestnuts are falling from their trunks, boys thread them on string and play a "cob-nut" game with them. When the striker is taking aim, and preparing for a shot at his adversary's nut, he says:--