[Herbalist] Re: Tussie-Mussies- Poesys, etc.

[Kathleen H. Keeler]

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    My favorite source on flowers is Jack Goody, The culture of flowers
(Cambridge U. Press, 1993).  While this is an eclectic book, written because
he was interested in the topic, he's a famous anthropologist and is careful
with evidence.  A lot of good documentation is quoted or footnoted.

He was very interested in the 19th century "Language of Flowers"--I didn't
read that chapter very carefully. Before that period, he doesn't think there
was much concensus on meanings to flowers--beyond very obvious ones like red
roses for passion and lilies for purity. While it is certain that Shakespeare
gives meaning to flowers (eg in Hamlet) Goody cites a number of different
Shakespearean commentaries that discuss and don't agree on the meanings.

   One of the things I find the most interesting is Goody's argument that
Christianity rejected flowers in much of the first half of Period because it
was trying to distance itself from pagan customs.  Since pagans threw flowers
on the dead, the early Catholic church forbid it.  (And, that helped make the
point that only the soul goes to heaven, "you can't take it with you", in
contrast to the beliefs of religions that buried artefacts with people for
their afterlives.)  Of course, flowers are beloved and so crept back into
funerals and other ceremonies, but the Church had recurrent periods of
asceticism in which they noticed and banned them again.  About 1000-1200, the
Church accepted flowers as Christian symbols and they flourish in the latter
part of the Middle Ages.

  I have long wanted to find the preChristian names for flowers.  There was a
lot of "political correctness" applied by the Church.  According to Goody,
before the Reformation, black bryony was rosaries; alchemilla, Our Lady's
mantle, convolvulus was our Lady's nightcap, meadowsweet was Our Lady's
girdle, dodder Our Lady's laces, harebell Our Lady's thimble, foxgloves were
Our Lady's gloves, portulaca Our Lady's purse, clematis was virgin's bower,
ground ivy was herb of the Madonna, lungwort Our Lady's tears, lily was the
Madonna lily, Sweet William was Sweet Saint William, etc.  And there are of
course lots and lots of Mary- flowers, such as Marigold.  The Reformation
stripped the religious names off many of these plants, but they may be the
names our personas would have used.

And sometimes you can find names like "Jupiter's beard" or "Thor's beard"
(alternate names of hensand chickens), which makes you think that the same
set of plants' names probably rang with Freya and Thor once.

Agnes

Corwyn and Carowyn wrote:

> Greetings!
>
> >Nice to have the citations for the period use of this.
>
> Yes, it would be, wouldn't it??  ;-)  This is what I was told, a long
> time ago, before I was documenting sources in the SCA: the language of
> flowers was indeed used in the Middle Ages, and here and there we catch
> glimpses of it - Shakespeare is one, and some of the herbals are another.
>  (Somewhere, where I can't find the darn things right now, is a
> translation of a writer waxing quite poetic over various flowers.
> Interspersed are the "meanings" for the flowers.)  The Victorians
> codified it, and went hog-wild with it along with their obsession over
> courtly love and romanticism.
>
> Another clue is to look in the margins of some of the Books of Hours, or
> to look at the background of the illuminations in other Books of Hours,
> or to look at the flowers in the background of tapestries.  Many went on
> a theme.  I've tested my Victorian list many times on the medieval pages
> by checking what each flower / herb means, and I havent seen a glaring
> error yet.  I've assumed my book is the best I'll have without doing the
> research myself (I'm already writing a book, someone else can have this
> one!!!  ;-) ;-)
>
>
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