Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, fifth series, no. 124, vol. III, May 15, 1886

Another old-world plant included in these days under the generic name of _Campanula_, and which in many parts was known as ‘Country-bells,’ keeps in its Kentish name of ‘Canterbury-bells’ a local legend; and is so called not only from the prevalence of the plant in the neighbourhood of the old sainted city, but because it was the type of ‘Becket’s bells,’ which pilgrims to his shrine carried away with them, in token of their having been there. Another of its tribe, better known than liked, has the quaint name of ‘Little-steeple-bell-flower,’ a picturesque name one would not willingly blot out from floral nomenclature; though its common one of ‘Rampions’ is quite good enough for it, and highly characteristic of the exuberant mode in which its fleshy and at the same time fibrous roots take possession of the soil and overrun it. It is a dangerous plant to admit into gardens, where its tall tapering stem, beset with little watchet blue-bells, is occasionally seen.

In the north of England, the wild hyacinth of the south—sometimes erroneously called ‘Harebell’—with its pendulous flowers underhanging each other on one side only of its drooping stem, has the curious name of ‘Ring-of-bells’ from a fancied resemblance (a writer in _Notes and Queries_ tells us) to the bells on which King David is sometimes represented playing in old wood-engravings. In Shropshire, the fertile stems of the Horsetail (_Equisetum arvenses_), which shoot up like brown pencils out of the soil before the sterile ones appear, are called ‘Toadpipes’ by the children; and a similar name is applied to them in many parts of Scotland. In Shropshire, also, the chalk-white flowers of the rock alyssum have the pretty trivial name of ‘Summer Snow;’ and the scarlet pimpernel, that trusted hydroscope of hind and shepherd—of which Lord Bacon wrote: ‘There is a small flower in the stubble-fields which country-people call “Wincopipe,” which if it openeth in the morning, you may be sure of a fine day’—is ‘Wincopeep;’ which, methinks, to use his lordship’s idiom, is the more correct of the two, seeing the habit of the plant is to close its petals when a rain-cloud dulls the sky, and to open them wide in sunshine—alternations suggestive of the name ‘Wink-and-peep,’ which time has probably contracted. In some places it is known as ‘the poor man’s weather-glass.’

In the same district, that fine sour relish of our childhood, ‘Sorrel,’ is simply ‘Sour-dock;’ and the early Purple Orchis (_O. mascula_), with its dark-green leaves plashed with brown, and spikes of richly coloured flowers springing up in cowslip-covered meadows, is hailed as ‘King’s Fingers.’

The cowslip has in Shropshire the common name of ‘Paigle,’ a name the derivation of which no one appears to understand; but its old Kentish name of ‘Culver-keys’ is unknown. We have lately seen the meaning of this also queried. It had its origin most probably in the common country fashion of christening flowers, in Gerarde’s time, from some fancied resemblance in its drooping umbel of unopened flowers to a ‘bunch of keys’ hanging from a ring or girdle; just as the pendent clusters of ash-seeds are called—we presume from the same idea—‘Ashen-keys;’ and as a bunch of keys must belong to some one or some thing, why not to the ‘culver,’ or wood-pigeon? In this fanciful way we can imagine the pretty rustic name of ‘Culver-key’ coming about; an hypothesis wholly our own, and therefore open to correction.

It was after this fashion, Parkinson tells us, he named the ‘Wild Clematis’ (_C. vitalba_), ‘Traveller’s Joy,’ because it loves to spread green bowers in hedgerows near villages and the habitations of men. But whence came the name of ‘Roving Sailor?’—one of the trivial ones for the ivy-leaved Toad-flax (_Linaria cymbalaria_), the fine thread-like runners of which hang from old garden-walls—those of Hampton Court, for instance—bearing in their season little solitary blue or purple petaled flowers. No rustic would have so named it; to him, its other appellations of ‘Hen-and-chickens,’ or ‘Mother-of-thousands,’ would have been more natural. But ‘Roving Sailor’ savours of that other element with which the husbandman meddles not, and may have been bestowed by some maritime superannuant, whose imagination transformed the long streaming roots into cordage, and the tiny blue-jacketed flowers into sailors climbing it, while the straggling habit of the plant completed the similitude.

Traditions die hard in country villages, and faith in the specially remedial properties of plants once dedicated to holy names and anniversaries is by no means extinct amongst peasant-folk. Thus, we were gravely informed last summer by a cottager of our acquaintance, in the sweet hamlet of Harbledown, in Kent, that there was nothing for a green wound better than the leaves of our ‘Saviour’s Flannel’ (or ‘Blanket’), a startling name for the exquisitely soft, glaucous, green leaves of what some persons secularly call ‘Mouse-ear,’ and which—to liken nature to art—resemble in texture the finest silken plush, and retain their softness and pliability for months after they are gathered. It is often seen in borders, where its silvery leaves and pale mauve-coloured flowers render it effective.

Again, the great ‘White Lily’ (_Lilium candidum_), the ‘Sceptre Lily’ of our time, ‘Our Lady’s Lily’ in the past, of which the old masters made such effective use in their pictures of the Virgin, is in Shropshire still known as ‘Ascension Lily,’ an evident misnomer. It should be, remembering the time of its blooming, the ‘Lily of the Annunciation.’ In the neighbourhood of the Wrekin it has another name—it is the ‘Healing Lily;’ and the curative virtue of the whole plant is firmly believed in.

It was a pretty custom to name the plants after the saints and holy seasons about whose anniversaries they fell a-flowering. It saved some absurdities and vulgarities in christening them, and left us names so sweet and appropriate, that, like the gillyflowers and sops-in-wine, sweetbrier, &c., of the old poets, they will never become old or inapt. Who would exchange ‘Christmas Rose’ for ‘Black Hellebore,’ or ‘Lent Lily’ for ‘Pseudo Narcissus,’ or prefer ‘Anemone’ to ‘Easter-flower,’ or ‘Polygally’ to ‘Crosswort?’ (carried on wands in the ancient perambulations of Rogation-week). ‘Whitsuntide Flower’ is a prettier name than ‘Lilac,’ and ‘Michaelmas Daisy’ than ‘Aster Tradescanti,’ the one by which it was known when Charles I. was king.

But these are not the purely rustic names of plants with which we started. One more example—a local one—and our personally formed catalogue of them is ended. Any one who has observed the regular height to which the garden fumitory grows when planted against a wall, forming a background of its soft, finely cut, bright-green leaves, which overhang each other, and the seemingly equal distances at which its clusters of yellow or rose coloured flowers depend, will at once perceive the fitness of its quaint Shropshire name of ‘Ladies’ Needlework Flower.’ It has the richness, with some of the formality, of a flounce of old chenille embroidery, such as in other years exercised the industry and ingenuity of English ladies. This plant is said to be called fumitory (earth-smoke, _fume terre_) from the belief that it was produced without seed from vapours arising from the earth. This was an ancient and well-rooted belief as far back as 1485. In Kent it is called ‘waxdolls,’ from the doll-like appearance of its little flowers.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Near Weston, one of the seats of the Earl of Bradford, in Shropshire, there is a field locally called the ‘Falfalarie Field,’ which people annually visit for the sake of the fritillary, which abounds there, as it does in Christ Church Meadows, Oxford.

SPIRITED AWAY.

IN THREE CHAPTERS.—CHAP. III.

Five minutes later, when my eyes were unbandaged, I found myself being driven along a road which was apparently in the extreme suburbs of London, the houses that we passed were so scattered and far apart. Legros was by my side, and two other men were sitting opposite us; but the windows of the conveyance were drawn up, and although the night was now perfectly clear, only the vaguest outlines were discernible of anything outside, except for a moment now and again when we came within the faint circle of light radiated from an occasional street-lamp. Suddenly my heart gave a great throb, for by the momentary gleam of a lamp I saw that the conveyance in which I was travelling was a mourning-coach—a coach draped in black, and such as is never made use of except for following the dead. Could it be possible that the hearse with its dread burden was in front of us, and that we were following it to some bourn to me unknown? I sank back into my corner, and asked myself whether it was really true that I, who had left my far-off country home scarcely twenty-four hours ago, could thus suddenly, and without any action of my own, have become a participant in some dire tragedy, of which as yet I knew neither the beginning nor the end. I was but a boy, just recovering from a long illness, and if a few tears welled from my eyes in the darkness, it is perhaps hardly to be wondered at.

But it was of Karavich I was thinking more than of myself. There was little doubt left in my mind that the poor _cafetier_ had come to some foul and sudden end. But who and what was he, and what was the nature of his crime? Who were these men, who had constituted themselves at once his judges and his executioners, and to what place was the body of the murdered man being conveyed so mysteriously in the dead of night? Vain questions one and all. A sense sat heavily upon me of being in the power of an inexorable Destiny, who was leading me onward whether I willed it or no, by paths to me unknown, towards a goal I was unable to foresee.

Soon the last lamp was left behind, and we plunged forward into the blacker darkness of the country; and now our pace was increased, the horses breaking into a long swinging trot, which gradually became wearisome from its absolute monotony. As on our first journey, not a word was spoken by any one. By-and-by, from sheer fatigue I suppose, perhaps aided in part by the liqueur given me by Legros, I fell into a sort of troubled sleep, in which the real and the imaginary were strangely blended. How long this state of semi-consciousness lasted, and how many miles we travelled during the time, I had no means of judging. The abrupt stoppage of the coach, and the cessation of the monotonous grinding of the wheels, brought me back with a start to the realities of my position. Legros let down one of the windows. Day was just breaking. A dim misty light pervaded the atmosphere, through which as yet nothing was clearly visible. M. Legros and one of the others alighted and went forward, leaving me and the other man inside.

‘Are we near the end of our journey?’ I said to the silent figure sitting opposite me.

He started, stared at me for a moment, and then made some unintelligible reply. Presently the coach moved forward a little way, and then halted again. Then M. Legros came up, and standing on the carriage step, spoke to me through the window.

‘Another stage of our journey is at an end,’ he said. ‘We have one more stage to travel together before we separate. You will now please to alight; but before doing this, I must ask you to give me your promise that neither by word nor gesture will you endeavour to attract the attention or rouse the suspicions of any strangers, not of our party, whom you may presently see. As I have already told you, you have only to obey my instructions implicitly, and no harm shall befall you.—Have I your word, monsieur?’ There was a stern questioning look in his eyes as he finished speaking.

‘I am helpless, and in your power; I can only do as you wish.’

‘It is well,’ he said as he stepped down and opened the carriage door.

I was glad enough to get out and be able to stretch my cramped limbs. The other man followed, and during the next few minutes he and M. Legros kept close to me, one walking on either side of me.

My first glance round showed me that we had alighted some twenty or thirty yards from a broad, sluggish-flowing river, which I at once said to myself could be none other than the Thames. A thin white mist lay on the water, through which only the faintest outlines of the opposite shore were discernible. In mid-stream, a small steamer lay moored, from the funnel of which a thin black pennon of smoke was lazily trailing. We had alighted at a kind of wharf, roughly paved and shut in by some half-dilapidated buildings, which looked unspeakably forlorn and desolate in the light of early morning. Some half-score men, dressed in guernseys and high boots, were lounging about, their hands buried deep in their pockets, looking on with a stolidity which it seemed as if nothing could rouse into animation, at the proceedings of the party of which I formed one, which were conducted without the slightest pretence at secrecy. A little way in the background stood the plumeless hearse with its two black horses.

We three men, I in the middle, walked down to the edge of the wharf. The tide was low; and it was not till we were close to the water that I perceived a couple of boats which seemed to be waiting our arrival. The first looked like an ordinary ship’s boat; in it were seated some half-dozen men resting on their oars, with a cockswain in the stern. The second boat was a broad old-fashioned tub; but I could not repress a shudder when I saw the coffin which had been brought down in the hearse laid along its bottom. Two men were in this boat, one seated at the head, and the other at the foot, of the coffin.

There was barely time to note all this before, in compliance with a whispered word from Legros, who still kept by my side, I descended four or five slimy tide-washed steps, and stepped into the first boat, followed closely by my companions. As soon as we had seated ourselves, a signal was given; the men dipped their oars, and a moment later the ragged wharf and its staring denizens were left behind. And now it was I first became aware that we had the other boat with its awful freight in tow. It glided after us through the morning mist, as though the secret it held was one from which we might never more escape.

Our boat headed in a straight line from the wharf. I had undergone so many surprises during the last few hours that it was only one more added to the number to find that our destination was the steamer which was anchored out in mid-stream. Five minutes later, I found myself on board, and, at the invitation of Legros, I at once followed him below. He conducted me into a handsomely fitted up saloon, and then left me. It could not have been more than a few minutes after this when the engine gave its first palpitating throb, and the third stage of my strange journey had begun.

Whither were we bound? What would be the duration of our voyage? And what possible object could my captors have in taking me so far away from home? These were questions that put themselves to me again and again; and then I thought of the fate of poor Karavich, and my heart as I did so grew faint within me.

It was all an unfathomable mystery, and the more I strove to find some ray of light to guide me through its mazes, the more bewildered I became. In order to relieve in some measure the burden of my thoughts, I began to peer through the port-holes of the cabin, one after another; but there was little to be seen to gratify my curiosity. A dim line of desolate flats on the one hand; on the other, an equally dreary expanse of far-reaching shore, with here and there a few scattered buildings, from some of which sprung huge chimneys, which were already belching forth black volumes of smoke to the morning air. It had begun to rain by this time; but there seemed to be scarcely the faintest breath of wind; the quick soft pulsing of the engines told me that we were now making rapid progress through the water.

I had been about half an hour alone, when I was rejoined by Legros. He was all smiles and amiability. He gave me the impression of a man from whose mind some burden which had pressed heavily on it had been suddenly lifted. There was no longer that strained intense look in his eyes—that air of watchful suspicion which had been so noticeable in him earlier on, had altogether vanished. He was, if possible, more of an enigma to me under this new aspect than he had been before.

‘Your eyes have a drowsy look in them, my friend,’ he said pleasantly. ‘First of all, you must partake of some breakfast; and after that, you shall sleep—sleep—sleep for the next dozen hours, if it so please you. This little _appartement_ is set aside for your service so long as you favour us with your company.’ As he spoke, he opened one of a row of three or four doors, and disclosed a tiny sleeping berth, fitted up and in every respect ready for occupation, which looked infinitely tempting to my tired eyes. I took advantage of the opportunity to perform some needful ablutions. When I re-entered the saloon, breakfast was on the table. A minute later, Legros and I were joined by two men whom I had not seen before, together with one of the men who had accompanied us inside the carriage. The two strangers were in some kind of undress uniform. Legros smilingly introduced me to them as a young English friend of his who had taken a fancy to accompany them a little way on their voyage. They replied by a few polite words in English, in which they expressed a hope that my voyage would prove a pleasant one; but polite though their words might be, I thought I detected under them a hidden ring of sarcasm. After this, the conversation became general, except as far as I was concerned, it being conducted in the same unknown language as before.

When I sat down at table, I seemed to have no appetite, but it came with the occasion, and despite the doubts and fears which beset me, I made a hearty meal. When the others rose, I retired to my berth, and in less than ten minutes was sound asleep. It was on the point of three o’clock when I awoke. On gazing out through the port-hole, nothing could be seen but a slowly heaving expanse of waters, through which we were quickly cleaving our way. A dreary drizzle of rain was still falling. On entering the saloon, I found M. Legros lounging on the couch over a novel and a cigarette. ‘Ah, ha! you look better, much better,’ he said with a nod and a smile. ‘I advise you to do as I am doing. It’s the only thing on a day like this. Here are cigarettes, and on that shelf you will find some half hundred novels in half-a-dozen languages. You can of course go on deck if you wish to do so and prefer a wet coat to a dry one.’

‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘I will try what it’s like on deck—at least for a little while. The fresh air will do me good.’

Of a truth, there was not much to keep any one long on deck. A man at the wheel, an officer on the bridge, and two seamen forward, all in oilskins, were the only living beings visible. After lighting a cigar, I found a sheltered nook under the lee of one of the boats. As far as my defective geographical knowledge allowed me to judge, we were now somewhere about the mouth of the Thames and heading towards the North Sea. On our left, mile after mile of low-lying desolate shore was dimly discernible through the thin drizzle of rain. This I concluded must be some portion of the Essex coast. On our right, the gray heaving waters stretched out into infinitude. Already the dull November afternoon was darkening to its close. From minute to minute, my spirits within me seemed to be sinking deeper and deeper; the gloom and desolation of the great waste of waters seemed but a reflex of the gloom and disquietude of my own thoughts. In a little while I flung away the end of my cigar and went below. M. Legros was no longer there; I had the saloon to myself. It was necessary to pass the time somehow, so, after making choice of a book, I stretched myself on a sofa and made a resolute attempt to read. It was a vain effort. Karavich’s melancholy deep-set eyes and white face blotted out the printed words.