AN old rhyming riddle went thus: ‘On a summer’s day, in sultry weather, Five brethren were born together. Two had beards and two had none, And the other had but half a one’. The answer: the flower of the dog rose. The earliest attribution is in the 13th century and several Latin versions were recorded, but this was not as abstruse a bit of clerical nonsense as we might suppose, for the dog rose enjoyed an important role in the era of plant-based medicine. An intimate association with hedgerow lore ensured an awareness, at least among rural folk, that two of the rose’s five sepals are whiskery on both sides, two are smooth and one bears whiskers on one side only.
The dog rose has a long English history, going by a variety of regional names—wild briar, sweet briar, pimpernel rose, cat rose, pig rose, canker rose, cock bramble, dike rose, hip rose, witches’ briar, ewernack and eglantine. Founded in 1323, the Academy of Floral Games awarded sprigs of dog rose for literary excellence. In educated circles, the eglantine (from the Latin for prickly, aculentus) was the preferred name and its first appearance in English literature was in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales with Madame Eglantine, a social-climbing prioress.
Medieval royal hanky-panky took the flower upstairs, for, if a visiting monarch espied a desirable daughter, a sprig of dog rose was placed on the maiden’s bed to indicate that, after the household settled, the king would expect her to join him. One might suppose that her failure to attend would not bode well for the host’s family fortunes.
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der June 24, 2020-Ausgabe von Country Life UK.
Starten Sie Ihre 7-tägige kostenlose Testversion von Magzter GOLD, um auf Tausende kuratierte Premium-Storys sowie über 8.000 Zeitschriften und Zeitungen zuzugreifen.
Bereits Abonnent ? Anmelden
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der June 24, 2020-Ausgabe von Country Life UK.
Starten Sie Ihre 7-tägige kostenlose Testversion von Magzter GOLD, um auf Tausende kuratierte Premium-Storys sowie über 8.000 Zeitschriften und Zeitungen zuzugreifen.
Bereits Abonnent? Anmelden
Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
