Flower Lore of New England Children

IF the paradise of the Orientals is a garden, so was a garden of old-fashioned flowers the earthly paradise for a child : the long sunny days brought into life so many treasures, so many delightful playthings to be made through the exercise of that keen instinct of all children, destructiveness. Each year saw the fresh retelling and teaching of child to child of happy flower customs, almost intuitively, or through that curious system of transmission of nature lore which everywhere exists among children who are blessed enough to spend their summer days in the woods or in a garden. The sober teachings of science in later years can never make up the loss to those who lived their youth in cities, and grew up debarred from this inheritance, knowing not when

The dandelion was one of the earliest flowers to stir the children’s memories, — memories which had lain dormant all winter ; in New England it is “ the firstling of the year.” In the days of my childhood, we did not wait for the buttercup to open, to learn whether we “ loved butter ; ” the soft, dimpled chin of each child was held up, as had been those of other children for past decades, to catch the yellow reflection of the first dandelion on the pinky throat.

The dandelion had other charms for the child. When the blooms had grown long-stemmed through seeking the sun from under the dense box borders, what pale green curls could be made by splitting the stems and immersing them in water, or by placing them in the mouth ! I taste still their bitterness ! What grace these curls conferred when fastened to our round combs, or hung over our straight braids ! — far better than locks of corn silk. And what adorning necklaces and chains could be made by stringing “ dandelion beads,” formed by cutting the stems into sections !

When the dandelion had lost her golden locks, and had grown old and gray, the children still plucked the downy heads, the “ clocks ” or blowballs, and holding them by the long stems which bore aloft these airy seed - vessels, and fortifying the strong young lungs with a deep breath, they blew upon the head “to see whether my mother wants me,” or to learn the time o’ the day.

The ox-eye daisy, the farmer’s hated whiteweed, brought to New England by Endicott as a garden flower, soon followed the dandelion in bloom, and a fresh necklace could be strung from the starry blossoms, a daisy - chain. The daisy was also used as a medium of amatory divination, by pulling from the floret the white ray-flowers, saying, “ He loves me, he loves me not,” or by repeating the old “ apple rhyme : ” —

The yellow disk, or “ button,” which was formed by stripping off the white rays, made a pretty pumpkin pie for the dolls’ table. A very effective and bilious old lady, or “ daisy grandmother,” was made by clipping off the rays to shape the border or ruffle of a cap, leaving two long rays for strings, and marking in a grotesque old face with pen and ink. A dusky face, called with childish plainness of speech a “ nigger head,” could be made in like fashion from the “ blackeyed Susan ” or “ yellow daisy,” the Rudbeckia hirta, which now rivals the oxeye daisy as a pest of the New England farmer.

Though the spring violets were dearly loved, we slaughtered them ruthlessly by “ fighting roosters ” with them. The projecting spur under the curved stem at the base of the flower was a hook, and when the violets “ clinched ” we pulled till the stronger was conqueror. Sometimes a tough-stemmed violet would decapitate a score of its fellows.

What braided “ cat - ladders,” and quaint, mediæval - shaped boats with swelling lateen sail and pennant of striped grass, could be made from the flat, swordlike leaves of the flower-de-luce! And the dicentra, or “ dielytra ” (bleeding-heart, or lady’s-eardrops, we called it), had long, gracefully drooping racemes of bright red-pink flowers, which, when pulled apart and straightened out, made fairy gondolas ; or which might be twisted into a harp and bottle. How many scores have I carefully dissected, trying to preserve intact in skeleton shape the little heart-shaped “ frame ” of the delicate flower!

What black-headed puppets or dolls could be made from the great poppies, whose reflexed petals formed gay scarlet petticoats ; and also from the blossoms of vari-colored double balsams, with their frills and flounces ! The hollyhock, ever ready to render to the child a new pleasure, could be tied into tiny dolls with shining satin gowns, true fairies. Mertensia, or lungwort, we termed “ pink and blue ladies.” The lovely blossoms, which so delighted the English naturalist Wallace, and which he called “ drooping porcelain - blue bells,” are shaped something like a child’s straight-waisted, full-skirted frock. If pins are stuck upright in a piece of wood, the little blue silken frocks can be hung over them, and the green calyx looks like a tiny hat. A child friend, who was forbidden to play with dolls on the solemn New England Sabbath, was permitted to gather the mertensia bells on that holy day, and also to use the cherished income of a prosperous pin-store. It was discovered with maternal horror that she had carefully arranged her “ pink and blue ladies ” in quadrilles and contradances, and was very cheerfully “ playing dancing party,” to beguile the hours of a weary summer Sunday afternoon. The poppy pericarps made famous pepperboxes, from which the seed could be shaken as pepper; dishes and cups, too, for dolls’ tea-tables, and tiny handles of strong grass stems could be attached to the cups. The hollyhocks furnished food in their mucilaginous cheeses, and the insipid akenes of the sunflower and seeds of pumpkins swelled the feast. A daintier morsel, a drop of honey, the “ clear bee-wine ” of Keats, could be sucked from the curved spur of the columbine, and the scarlet - and - yellow trumpet of the coral honeysuckle, mellifluous of name, as well as from the tubes of the heads of clover. We ate rose-leaves, also, and grass roots, and smarting peppergrass. The sorrel and oxalis (which we called “ladies’ sorrel ”) and the curling tendrils of grapevines gave an acid zest and variety to our childish nibblings and browsings.

The gnarled plum-trees at the end of the garden exuded beautiful crystals of gum, of which we could say proudly, like Cornelia, “ These are my jewels.” Translucent topaz and amber were never more beautiful, and, void of settings, these pellucid gems could be stuck directly on the fingers or on the tip of the ear. And when our vanity was sated with the bravery, or we could no longer resist our appetite, there still remained another charm : like Cleopatra, with childish opulence we swallowed the jewels.

A low-growing mallow, wherever it chanced to run, shared with its cousin hollyhock the duty of providing cheeses. These mallow cheeses were also eaten by English children. In allusion to this custom the poet Clare wrote : —

The eating of “ cheeses ” and blowing dandelion clocks are almost the sole flower customs of children that are the same in England as in America. Nearly all our child habits seem to be truly national, developed in some way in the new land. They were acquired in the beginning through imagined fitness or suggestion, then learned by subtle transmission from child to child ; never through reading. All our English story-books told of making cowslip balls, of breaking the shepherd’s purse, of playing “ lords and ladies ” with the arum, — what we call “ jack-in-the-pulpit; ” yet we never thought of making any kindred attempts with these or similar flowers. We did gather eagerly the “ jack-in-thepulpit,” whose singularity of aspect seems always to attract the attention of children, and by pinching it at the base of the flower made it squeak, “ made Jack preach.” But like true republicans we never called our jacks lords and ladies.

From the live-for-ever, or orpine (once tenderly cherished as a garden favorite, now in many localities a hated and persistent weed), we made “frogs,” or “ purses,” by gently pinching the fleshy leaves between thumb and forefinger, and thus loosening the epidermis on the lower side of the leaf from the parenchyma, — purses that, when blown up, would burst with a delightful pop. The New England folk names by which this plant is called, such as “frog plant,” “blow-leaf,” “pudding-bag plant,” show the widespread prevalence of this custom. A rival in sound could be made by popping the foxglove’s fingers. English countrywomen call the foxglove a “ pop.” The morning-glory could also be blown up and popped, and the canterbury - bell. We placed rose petals and certain tender leaves over our lips, and drew in the centres for explosion.

Noisy boys found scores of other ways to make various resounding notes in the gardens. A louder pop could be made by placing broad leaves on the extended thumb and forefinger of one hand and striking them with the other. The boys also made “ squawks ” out of birch bark, and trumpets from the leaf - stalks of pumpkins and squashes, and fiddles of corn-stalks. An ear-piercing whistle could be constructed from a willow branch, and a particularly disagreeable sound could be evoked by every boy, and (I must acknowledge it) by every girl, too, by placing broad leaves of grass — preferably the pretty striped ribbon-grass, or “ gardener’s garters ” — between the thumbs and blowing thereon. Other skillful and girl-envied accomplishments of the boys I will simply name : making baskets and brooches by cutting or filing the furrowed butternut or the stone of a peach ; manufacturing old-women dolls of hickory nuts; squirt-guns and pop-guns of elderberry stems ; pipes of horse - chestnuts, corn-cobs, or acorns, in which dried sweet-fern could be smoked; sweet-fern or grape-stem or corn-silk cigars ; torches of the cat-o’-nine-tails.

Some child customs successfully defy the law of the survival of the needful, and ignore the lesson of reason ; they simply exist, without purpose, without meaning. A marked example of these, of bootless toil, is the laborious hoarding of horsechestnuts each autumn. With what eagerness and hard work do boys gather these pretty nuts; how they quarrel with one another over the possession of every one ; how stingily they dole out a few to the girls who cannot climb the trees, and are not permitted to belabor the branches with clubs and stones for dislodgment of the treasures, as do their lordly brothers ! How carefully the gathered store is laid away for winter, and not one thing ever done or made with one horse-chestnut, until all feed a grand blaze in the open fireplace ! At the time of their gathering they are converted to certain uses, are made into certain toys. They are tied to the ends of strings, and two boys, holding the stringed chestnuts, play cobnut. English boys then say. —

Two nuts are also tied together by a yard of cord, and, by a catching knack, circled in opposite directions. But these games have a very emphatic time and season,— the weeks when the horse-chestnuts ripen. The winter’s store is always untouched.

From a stray burdock plant which had escaped destruction in our kitchen garden, or from a group of these pestilent weeds in a neighboring by-path, could be gathered materials for many days of pleasure. The small, tenacious burs could be wrought into admirable furniture for the dolls’ house,— tables, chairs, and cradles. Traces of the upholstery clung long and disfiguringly to our clothing, but never deterred us from the fascinating occupation.

The milkweed, one of our few native weeds, and a determined and clinging settler on it’s native soil, furnished abundant playthings. The empty pods became fairy cradles, and tiny pillows could be made of the beautiful silvery silk.

Mr. Eggleston says this silk was the silkgrass of the early colonial travelers, from which the Indians made nets, bags, fishing-lines, etc. But Peter Kalm wrote, in 1748, that the Indian hemp, or silk-grass, was Apocynum cannabium.

The milkweed and thistle both furnish pretty, silvery silken balls when treated with deft fingers ; and their manufacture is no modern fashion. Manasseh Cutler, writing in 1786, says : —

“ I was pleased with a number of perfectly white silken halls, as they appeared to be, suspended by small threads along the frame of the looking-glass. They were made by taking off the calyx of the thistle at an early stage of blooming.”

Ingenious toys of various amusing shapes could be formed of the pith of the milkweed, and when weighted with a tack would always fall tack downward, as did the wonderful"corn-stalk witches,” who always fell with grotesque head and leaden cap downward.

Pressed flowers were devoted to special uses. I cannot recall ever, during early childhood, pressing any flower save larkspur,—the “lark-heels” of Shakespeare. Why this flower was chosen I do not know, unless for the reason that its colors were so enduring. We used to make charming wreaths of the stemless flowers by placing the spur of one in the centre of another flower, and thus forming a tiny circle. A favorite arrangement was alternating the colors pink and blue. These stiff little pressed wreaths were gummed on a sheet of paper, to be used at the proper time as a valentine,— were made for that definite purpose; yet I cannot now recall that, when February came, I ever sent one of these valentines, or indeed had any to send. I often wonder whether Holmes referred to one of these valentine wreaths when he wrote his graceful line, “ light as a loop of larkspur.” A similar wreath could be made of the columbine spurs. A friend tells me she made scores in her youth ; but we never pressed any flowers but larkspur.

Many similar wreaths were made of freshly gathered flowers. The daintiest were of lilac or phlox petals, and the alternation of color in these wreaths — one white and two purple lilac petals, or two white phlox petals and two crimson —• could easily prove the ingenuity and originality of the child who produced them.

In the beautiful and cleanly needles of the pine the children had an unlimited supply for the manufacture of toys. Pretty necklaces could be made for personal adornment, and tiny brooms for dolls’ houses. (In Lynn, Mass., they call the pine needles “besoms.”) A thickly growing cluster of needles was called “ a lady.” When her petticoats were carefully trimmed, she could be placed upright on a sheet of paper, and by softly blowing upon it could be made to dance. A winter’s amusement was furnished by gathering and storing the pitch-pine cones and hearing them snap open in the house. The cones could also be planted with grass-seeds, and form a pretty greengrowing ornament.

From birch bark could be made cornucopias and drinking-cups, and letters could be cut thereon and thereof. There wandered through the town, harmless and happy, one of “God’s fools,” whose like is seen in every country community. He found his greatest pleasure in early autumn in strolling through the country, and marking with his jack-knife, in cabalistic designs, the surface of all the unripe pumpkins and squashes. He was always driven by the farmers from this annoying trespass in the daytime, but “ by brave moonshine ” he still could make his mysterious mark on the harvest of the year, and find, in inscribing his rude symbols, which certainly meant something to his dull brain, a happiness which could reach him by no other path. The boys of the town, impressed by the sight of a garden or field of squashes thus curiously marked, also fell into a habit of similar inscription, which in them became wanton vandalism, and had none of the sense of baffled mystery which always hung around and illumined poor Elmer’s letters. A more favorite manner of using the autumn store of pumpkins was in the manufacture, by the boys, of Jack-o’-lanterns, which were most effective and hideous when lighted from within.

“ The umbrellas are out! ” call country children in spring, when the peltate leaves of the May-apple spread their umbrellashaped lobes, and the little girls gather them, and also the leaves of the wild sarsaparilla, for dolls’ parasols. The spreading head of what we called “ snake grass ” could also be tied into a very effective miniature parasol. There is no sense of caste among children when in a field or garden; all are equally well dressed when “ bedizened and brocaded ” with garden finery. Green leaves can be pinned with their stems into fantastic caps and bonnets ; foxglove fingers can be used as gloves ; the blossoms of the jewelweed make pretty earrings; and the dandelion and daisy chains are not the only necklaces, — the lilac and larkspur chains and pretty little circlets of phlox are proudly worn; and strings of rose-hips end the summer. Truly, the garden - bred child walks in gay attire from May to October.

The “ satten ” found by the traveler Josselyn in seventeenth - century New England gardens formed throughout New England a universal plaything, and a frequent winter posy, in country parlors, on mantel or table. The broad white oval partition, of satiny lustre, remaining after the side valves had fallen, made juvenile money, and the plant went by the appropriate name of “ money-inboth-pockets.” It was also called “ honesty,” and, in an old ante-Revolutionary paper which I have seen, the seed of honesty was advertised by a jocular seedmonger “to be sold in small quantities, that all may have a share.”

Other seeds were gathered as the children’s spoils : those of the garden balsam, to see them burst, or to feel them curl up in the hand like living creatures ; those, also, of the balsam’s cousin, the jewel weed, to watch them snap violently open, — hence its country name of touchme-not and snapweed. When the leaves were hung with dew it deserved its title of jewelweed, and when they were immersed in water its other pretty and descriptive folk name of “ silver-leaf.”

A grotesquery could be formed from the seed-pods in the centre of the peony. They could be opened in such a way that the tiny pink and white seeds resembled two sets of teeth in an open mouth. Imaginary miniature likenesses were found in the various parts of many flowers: the naked pistil and stamens of one were “ a pair of tongs ; ” another had a seed ovary which was a “ lady,” a very stout lady with extending hoops. The heartsease had in its centre an “ old lady washing her feet;” the monkshood, a “devil in his chariot.” A single petal of the columbine, with attached sepals, was a hovering dove, and the whole flower — Izaak Walton’s “culverkeys ” — formed a little dish with a ring of pigeon-heads bending within.

There were many primitive inks and staining juices that could be expressed, and milks and gums that exuded, from various plants ; and each summer’s round saw these stains and resins tried by every child. We painted pictures in our books with the red sap from the petals of the red peonies, and with the blue juice of the blossom of the spiderwort, or tradescantia, now a neglected and an exiled flower. We dyed dolls’ clothes with the juice of elderberries, and when dipped in soapsuds they turned a brilliant blue. The country child could also dye a vivid red with the juice of the pokeberry, the “ red-ink ” plant, or with the stems of the bloodroot; and the sap crushed from soft, pulpy leaves, such as those of the live-for-ever, furnished a green stain.

There was a certain garden lore connected with insects, not so varied or extensive, probably, as a child would have upon a farm. We said to the snail, —

We sang to the lady-bug, —

We caught the grasshoppers, and thus exhorted them, —

And we sang some song to the daddylong-legs, which memory has allowed to escape. We believed that earwigs lived for the sole purpose of penetrating our ears, that dragon-flies flew with the sole thought of sewing up our lips; devil’s darning-needles we called them. To this day I instinctively cover my mouth at their approach. We were bold enough to come into close contact with bees in a way I should scarcely dare to try now. We used to entrap them — especially bumble-bees — in the bells of monopetalous flowers such as canterbury-bells, or in the full, ample folds of the hollyhock, and listen to their indignant scolding and buzzing, and watch them gnaw and push out to freedom. I cannot recall ever being stung in the process.

We had the artistic floral diversion of “ pin-a-sights.” These were one of the shop-furnishings of pin-stores, whose curious lore, and the oddly shaped and named articles made solely for them, should be recorded ere they are forgotten. A “ pin-a-sight ” was made of a piece of glass, usually window-glass, of any shape, on which were stuck flowers in various designs. Over these flowers was pasted a covering of paper, in which a movable flap could be lifted, to display, on payment of a pin, the concealed treasures. I recall as our “ sights ” chiefly the tiny larkspur wreaths before named, and miniature trees carefully manufactured of grass-spires. A noted “ pin-asight,” glorious still in childish history and tradition, was made for my pin-store by a grown-up girl of fourteen. She cut in twain tiny baskets, which she pasted on the glass, and filled with wonderful artificial flowers manufactured out of the petals of real blossoms. I well remember her “ gilding refined gold ” by making a gorgeous blue rose out of the petals of a flower-de-luce.

I cannot recall playing much with roses. I think we fashioned some kind of a bird out of the buds. The old English rhyme describing the variation of the sepals was unknown to us : —

Still, with the rose is connected one of my most tender child memories, — somewhat of a gastronomic cast, yet suffused with an element of grace, of sentiment, — the making of “ rosy-cakes.” These dainty fairy cakes were made of layers of rose-leaves sprinkled with powdered sugar and cinnamon, and then carefully enfolded in slips of white paper. Sometimes they were placed in the garden over night, pressed between two flat stones. As a morsel for the epicure they were not altogether alluring, though inoffensive, but decidedly preferable to pumpkin or sunflower seeds, and they were englamoured with sentiment ; for these rosy-cakes were not destined to be greedily eaten by the concocter, but were to be given with much secrecy as a mark of affection, a true love token, to another child or some beloved older person, and were to be eaten also in secret. I recall to this day the thrill of happiness which the gift of one of these little paper-inclosed rosy-cakes brought to me, in the days of my childhood, when it was slipped into my hand by a beautiful and gentle child, who died the following evening, during a thunder-storm, of fright. The tragedy of her death, the memory of the startling glimpses given by the vivid lightning of agitated running to and fro in the heavy rain and lowering darkness, and the terrified summons of kindly neighbors, all have fixed more firmly in my mind the happy recollection of her last gift.

Another habit of my youth was watching at dusk the opening of the twisted buds of the garden primrose into wan, cold yellow stars, “pallid flowers, by dew and moonlight fed,” which filled the early evening with a faint, ineffable fragrance that drew a host of encircling nightmoths ; a habit thus told by Margaret Deland : —

In our home garden stood a clump of tall queen primroses, whose beautiful flowers, when opened, were four inches in diameter. When riding, one dark summer evening, along a seaside road on Cape Ann, we first saw one of these queens of the night in an humble dooryard. In the dark its seeds were gathered and given by an unknown hand and a flower-loving heart to my mother, to form under her “ fair tendance ” the luminous evening glory of her garden, and the delight of every child who saw the blossoms, as Keats said, “ leap from buds into ripe flowers.” To every garden - bred child the sudden blossoming and pale shining in the gloaming have ever given the evening primrose a special tender interest, a faintly mystic charm through the chill of falling dew and the dim light, and through a half-sad atmosphere which has always encircled the flower, and has been felt by many of the poets, making them seldom sing the evening primrose as a flower of happiness.

With the Good-night of children to the flowers, I close this list of the happy flower customs of New England children.

Alice Morse Earle.