PRIMROSE (Primula vulgaris). English poets have always regarded the primrose as the first flower of spring—the true Flor di prima vera. This name calls to mind Botticelli's enchanting Primevera that hangs in the Uffizi, in which the sward is dotted with spring flowers that seem to have burst into blossom beneath the footsteps of Venus and her three Graces—those lovely ladies of the Italian Renaissance, clad in light, fluttering draperies. This decorative picture expresses not only the joy and beauty of newly-awakened spring, but something much deeper, something that the painter did not realize himself; and this was what the Italian Renaissance was destined to mean to all the world: a New Birth of beauty in the arts and a new era of human sympathy for mankind.

Sandro Botticelli, whom we may appropriately call Flor di prima vera among painters, was as unaware of his mission in art as the primroses that come into being at the call of a new day of spring sunshine from a long dark winter's sleep in a soil of frozen stiffness. Something of the tender and wistful beauty of early spring—her faint dreams and soft twilights, her languid afternoons and her veiled nights, when pale stars tremble through gray mists and when warm rains softly kiss the drowsy earth—Botticelli has put into his enchanting spring idyl; and this same wistful, half-drowsy, and evanescent beauty is characteristic of the primrose.

is a perfect and sympathetic description of the flower in "The Two Noble Kinsmen."[20]

Observe that the bells of the primrose are "dim"—pale in hue—because the earth is not sufficiently awake for bright colors or for joyful chimes—so the color is faint and the sound is delicate. Trees are now timidly putting forth tender leaves, buds peer cautiously from the soil, and few birds sing; for leaves, buds, and birds know full well that winter is lurking in the distance and that rough winds occasionally issue from the bag of Boreas. The time has not yet come for "lisp of leaves and ripple of rain" and for choirs of feathered songsters. Yet all the more, because of its bold daring and its modest demeanor, the primrose deserves the enthusiastic welcome it has always received from poets and flower lovers.

"The primrose," writes Dr. Forbes Watson, "seems the very flower of delicacy and refinement; not that it shrinks from our notice, for few plants are more easily seen, coming as it does when there is a dearth of flowers, when the first birds are singing and the first bees humming and the earliest green putting forth in the March and April woods. And it is one of those plants which dislikes to be looking cheerless, but keeps up a smouldering fire of blossom from the very opening of the year, if the weather will permit.

"The flower is of a most unusual color, a pale, delicate yellow, slightly tinged with green. And the better flowers impress us by a peculiar paleness, not dependent upon any feebleness of hue, which we always find unpleasing, but rather upon the exquisite softness of their tone. And we must not overlook the little round stigma, that green and translucent gem, which forms the pupil of the eye, and is surrounded by a deeper circle of orange which helps it to shine forth more clearly. Many flowers have a somewhat pensive look; but in the pensiveness of the primrose there is a shade of melancholy—a melancholy which awakens no thought of sadness and does but give interest to the pale, sweet, inquiring faces which the plant upturns towards us.

"In the primrose, as a whole, we cannot help being struck by an exceeding softness and delicacy; there is nothing sharp, strong, or incisive; the smell is 'the faintest and most ethereal perfume,' as Mrs. Stowe has called it in her 'Sunny Memories,' though she was mistaken in saying that it disappears when we pluck the flower. It is meant to impress us as altogether soft and yielding. One of the most beautiful points in the primrose is the manner in which the paleness of the flowers is taken up by the herbage. This paleness seems to hang about the plant like a mystery, for though the leaves of the primrose may at times show a trace of the steady paleness of the cowslip, it is more usually confined to their undersurfaces and the white flower-stalks with their clothing of down. And when we are looking at the primrose one or other of these downy, changeful portions is continually coming into view, so that we get a feeling as if there hung about the whole plant a clothing of soft, evanescent mist, thickening about the center of the plant and the undersurfaces of the leaves which are less exposed to the sun. And then we reach one of the main expressions of the primrose. When we look at the pale, sweet flowers, and the soft-toned green of the herbage, softened further here and there by that uncertain mist of down, the dryness of the leaf and fur enters forcibly into our impression of the plant, giving a sense of extreme delicacy and need of shelter, as if it were some gentle creature which shrinks from exposure to the weather."

The Greeks associated the idea of melancholy with this flower. They had a story of a handsome youth, son of Flora and Priapus, whose betrothed bride died. His grief was so excessive that he died, too, and the gods than changed his body into a primrose.

In Shakespeare's time, the primrose was also associated with early death; and it is one of the flowers thrown upon the corse of Fidele, whose lovely, wistful face is compared to the "pale primrose." Thus Arviragus exclaims as he gazes on the beautiful youth, Fidele, the assumed name of Imogen in disguise:

Perdita, in "The Winter's Tale,"[22] mentions

Shakespeare appreciated the delicate hue and perfume of this flower. He seems to be alluding to both qualities when he makes Hermia touch Helena's memory by the following words:

Other English poets speak of the flower as "the pale," or "the dim." Milton writes:

And again, Thomas Carew:

The English primrose is one of a large family of more than fifty species, represented by the primrose, the cowslip, and the oxlip. All members of this family are noted for their simple beauty and their peculiar charm.

Parkinson writes:

"We have so great variety of Primroses and Cowslips in our country breeding that strangers, being much delighted with them, have often furnished into divers countries to their good content.

"All Primroses bear their long and large, broad yellowish-green leaves without stalks most usually, and all the Cowslips have small stalks under the leaves, which are smaller and of a darker green. The name of Primula veris, or Primrose, is indifferently conferred on those that I distinguish for Paralyses, or Cowslips. All these plants are called most usually in Latin PrimulÆ veris, PrimulÆ pretenses and PrimulÆ silvarum, because they shew by their flowering the new Spring to be coming on, they being, as it were, the first Embassadors thereof. They have also divers other names, as Herba Paralysis, Arthritica, Herba Sancti Petri, Claues Sancti Petri, Verbasculum odoratum, Lunaria arthritica, Phlomis, Alisma silvarum and Alismatis alterum genus. Some have distinguished them by calling the Cowslips Primula Veris Elatior, that is the Taller Primrose, and the other Humilis, Low, or Dwarf, Primrose.

"Primroses and Cowslips are in a manner wholly used in Cephalicall diseases to ease pains in the head. They are profitable both for the Palsy and pains of the joints, even as the Bears' Ears[24] are, which hath caused the names of Arthritica Paralysis and Paralytica to be given them."

Tusser in his "Husbandry" includes the primrose among the seeds and herbs of the kitchen; and Lyte says that "the cowslips, primroses and oxlips are now used daily amongst other pot-herbs, but in physic there is no great account made of them." "The old name was Primerolles," Dr. Prior notes in his quaint book on flowers. "Primerole as an outlandish, unintelligible word was soon familiarized into Primerolles and this into Primrose." The name was also written primrolles and finally settled down into primrose. Chaucer wrote primerole, a name derived from the French Primeverole, meaning, like the Italian Flor di prima vera, the first spring flower.

COWSLIP (Paralysis vulgaris pratensis). The cowslip is an ingratiating little flower, not so aloof as its cousin the primrose, and not at all melancholy. In the popular lore of Shakespeare's time the cowslip was associated with fairies. In many places it was known as "fairy cups." For this reason Shakespeare makes Ariel lie in a cowslip's bell when the fay is frightened by the hooting of owls, or tired of swinging merrily in "the blossom that hangs on the bough." One of the duties of Titania's little maid of honor was "to hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear"; and this gay little fairy informs Puck of the important place cowslips hold in the court of the tiny Queen Titania:

To appreciate the meaning of this comparison, it must be remembered that the "pensioners" of Queen Elizabeth's court were a guard of the tallest and handsomest men to be found in the whole kingdom, men, moreover, who were in the pride of youth, and scions of the most distinguished families. Their dress was of extraordinary elegance and enriched heavily with gold embroidery. Hence, "gold coats" for the cowslips. Here and there jewels sparkled and glistened on the pensioners' coats. Hence rubies—fairy favors—favors from the Queen! The pensioners also wore pearls in their ears, like Raleigh and Leicester and other noblemen. Hence the fairy had to "hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear." An idea, too, of the size of Titania and her elves is given when the cowslips are considered "tall," and tall enough to be the body-guard of Queen Titania. This was a pretty little allusion to Queen Elizabeth and her court, which the audience that gathered to see the first representation of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" did not fail to catch.

We get a sidelight on the importance of the pensioners in "The Merry Wives of Windsor"[26] when Dame Quickly tells Falstaff a great cock-and-bull story about the visitors who have called on Mistress Ford. "There have been knights and lords and gentlemen with their coaches, letter after letter, gift after gift; smelling so sweetly (all musk) and so rushling, I warrant you in silk and gold; and yet there has been earls, and, what is more, pensioners!" Shakespeare also speaks of "the freckled cowslip" in "Henry V,"[27] when the Duke of Burgundy refers to

All poets love the flower.

writes Tennyson—a charming fancy!

Sydney Dobell has a quaint flower song containing this verse:

Never mind if country dancers rarely wear rubies; the idea is pretty and on Shakespeare's authority we know that rubies do gleam in the cup of the cowslip, as he has told us through the lips of the fairy.

With great appreciation of the beauty of the flower he has Jachimo's description:

Most sympathetically did Dr. Forbes Watson, when lying on a bed of fatal illness, put into words what many persons have felt regarding this flower:

"Few of our wild flowers give intenser pleasure than the cowslip, yet perhaps there is scarcely any whose peculiar beauty depends so much upon locality and surroundings. There is a homely simplicity about the cowslip, much like that of the daisy, though more pensive,—the quiet, sober look of an unpretending country girl, not strikingly beautiful in feature or attire, but clean and fresh as if new bathed in milk and carrying us away to thoughts of daisies, flocks and pasturage and the manners of a simple, primitive time, some golden age of shepherd-life long since gone by. And more; in looking at the cowslip we are always most forcibly struck by its apparent wholesomeness and health. This wholesomeness is quite unmistakable. It belongs even to the smell so widely different from the often oppressive perfume of other plants, as lilies, narcissuses, or violets. Now just such a healthy milk-fed look, just such a sweet, healthy odor is what we find in cows—an odor which breathes around them as they sit at rest in the pasture. The 'lips,' of course, is but a general resemblance to the shape of the petals and suggests the source of the fragrance. The cowslip, as we have said, is a singularly healthy-looking plant, indeed, nothing about it is more remarkable. It has none of the delicacy and timidity of the primrose. All its characters are well and healthily pronounced. The paleness is uniform, steady, and rather impresses us as whiteness; and the yellow of the cup is as rich as gold. The odor is not faint, but saccharine and luscious. It does not shrink into the sheltered covert, but courts the free air and sunshine of the open fields; and instead of its flowers peeping timidly from behind surrounding leaves, it raises them boldly on a stout, sufficient stalk, the most conspicuous object in the meadow. Its poetry is the poetry of common life, but of the most delicious common life that can exist. The plant is in some respects careless to the verge of disorder; and you should note that carelessness well, till you feel the force of it, as especially in the lame imperfection of the flower buds, only, perhaps half of them well developed and the rest dangling all of unequal lengths. Essentially the cowslip and the primrose are only the same plant in two different forms, the one being convertible into the other. The primrose is the cowslip of the woods and sheltered lanes; the cowslip is the primrose of the fields."

The name cowslip is not derived from the lips of the cow, but, according to Skeat, the great Anglo-Saxon authority, it comes from an Anglo-Saxon word meaning dung and was given to the plant because it springs up in meadows where cows are pastured.

"The common field Cowslip," says Parkinson, "I might well forbear to set down, being so plentiful in the fields; but because many take delight in it and plant it in their gardens, I will give you the description of it here. It hath divers green leaves, very like unto the wild Primrose, but shorter, rounder, stiffer, rougher, more crumpled about the edges and of a sadder green color, every one standing upon his stalk which is an inch or two long. Among the leaves rise up divers long stalks, a foot or more high, bearing at the top many fair, yellow, single flowers with spots of a deep yellow at the bottom of each leaf, smelling very sweet.

"In England they have divers names according to several countries, as Primroses, Cowslips, Oxlips, Palsieworts and Petty Mullins. The Frantic Fantastic, or Foolish, Cowslip in some places is called by country people Jack-an-Apes-on-Horseback, which is a usual name given by them to many other plants, as Daisies, Marigolds, etc., if they be strange or fantastical, differing in form from the ordinary kind of the single ones. The smallest are usually called through all the North Country Birds' Eyen, because of the small yellow circle in the bottoms of the flowers resembling the eye of a bird."

OXLIP (Primula eliator). The oxlip combines the qualities of primrose and cowslip. "These two plants," writes a botanist, "appear as divergent expressions of a simple type, the cowslip being a contracted form of primrose, the sulphur yellow and the fine tawny, watery rays of the latter brightened into well defined orange spots. In the oxlip these characters anastomose."

Thus, partaking of the character of primrose and cowslip, the oxlip is considered by some authorities a hybrid. "The oxlip and the polyanthus," says Dr. Forbes Watson, "with its tortoiseshell blossoms, are two of the immediate forms; the polyanthus being a great triumph of the gardener's art, a delightful flower, quite a new creation and originally produced by cultivation of the primrose." In England the oxlip is found in woods, fields, meadows, and under hedges. Though a spring flower it lingers into summer and is found in company with the nodding violet, wild thyme, and luscious eglantine on the bank where Titania loved to sleep lulled to rest by song.[29] Perdita speaks of "bold oxlips" ("The Winter's Tale," Act iv, Scene iii); and compared With the primrose and cowslip the flower deserves the adjective.

"Oxlips in their cradles growing," in the song in "The Two Noble Kinsmen,"[30] which Shakespeare wrote with John Fletcher, shows great knowledge of the plant, for the root-leaves of the oxlip are shaped like a cradle.

Parkinson writes: "Those are usually called oxlips whose flowers are naked, or bare, without husks to contain them, being not so sweet as the cowslip, yet have they some little scent, although the Latin name doth make them to have none."