The Folk-lore of Plants

"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] The children of Galloway play at hide-and-seek with a little black-topped flower which is known by them as the Davie-drap, meantime repeating the following rhyme:-- "Within the bounds of this I hap My black and bonnie Davie-drap: Wha is he, the cunning ane, To me my Davie-drap will fin'?" This plant, it has been suggested, [7] being the cuckoo grass (Luzula campestris), which so often figures in children's games and rhymes. Once more, there are numerous games played by children in which certain flowers are introduced, as in the following, known as "the three flowers," played in Scotland, and thus described in Chambers's "Popular Rhymes," p. 127:--"A group of lads and lasses being assembled round the fire, two leave the party and consult together as to the names of three others, young men or girls, whom they designate as the red rose, the pink, and the gillyflower. The two young men then return, and having selected a member of the fairer group, they say to her:-- 'My mistress sent me unto thine, Wi' three young flowers baith fair and fine:-- The pink, the rose, and the gillyflower, And as they here do stand, Whilk will ye sink, whilk will ye swim, And whilk bring hame to land?'