Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 4.djvu/461

 n s. iv. DEC. 2, ion.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

455

RAGNOR LOD BUCK'S SONS : HTJLDA (11 S. iv. 249, 315, 337). Hulda seems to have been somewhat of a favourite girl's name with the early English Puritans, a liking inherited by their offspring, the early New England or American Puritans. In the five New England States, but more especially in their farming- districts, the name still occurs ; other- wise that very solid New England scholar, James Russell Lowell, would hardly have countenanced its use as an everyday familiar Yankee feminine appellative in his Yankee farmhouse idyll of ' The Courtin',' told in Yankee Doric. Hulda, as one of its characters, appears in the following verse from that poem :

Zekle crep' up quite unbeknown

An' peeked in thru' the winder, An' there sot Huldy all alone,

With no one nigh to hender.

J. G. CtlPPLES. Brookline, Massachusetts.

THE AMERICAN NATIONAL FLOWER (11 S. iv. 228, 352). The golden-rod is certainly not such, its pollen being popularly held responsible for " hay-fever " (or autumnal catarrh), and so leading to the objection, " Better have a flower which is not to be sneezed at." Among the other candidates urged have been the trailing arbutus, the pansy, maize or Indian corn, the mountain laurel, the tobacco plant, and the columbine (which for several years has been the floral emblem of the State of Colorado). Sundry other States have adopted specific flowers, but the United States (or the people thereof unofficially) have adopted none, and are unlikely to do so. RCCKINGHAM.

Boston, Mass.

In the matter of a national flower, let me say that the United States have not as yet adopted one. Some States have chosen &, flower, but nothing has as yet been decided in regard to the national flower. As you will see from the following extract, the Women's Clubs have decided in favour of the mountain laurel :

" Kansas City, Nov. 6. The National Federa- tion of Women's Clubs has decided that the United States has gone too long without a national flower, and club women of the country have been asked to sign a petition asking Congress to select the mountain laurel. When the movement has been indorsed by the clubs the federation will appoint .a committee to present the petition to Congress .and work for the passage of an act. The mountain laurel is a small flower containing the red and white colors of the United States flag and unfolding in almost a perfect star."

ARTHUR, LOWNDES.

143, East 37th St., New York.

The following reference to the golden-rod occurs in Cobbett's ' American Gardener ' (1821). Since the book is dedicated to an American lady, the writer could scarcely have spoken of the plant in question in this manner, if it had been at that date the American national flower :

" That there is a great deal in rarity is evident enough ; for, while the English think nothing of the Hawthorn, the Americans think nothing of the Arbutus, the Rhododendron, the Kalmia, and hundreds of other shrubs, which are amongst the

choicest in England Nay, that accursed

stinking thing With a yellow flower, called the ' Plain- Weed,' which is the torment of the neigh- bouring farmer, has been, above all the plants in this world, chosen as the most conspicuous orna- ment of the front of the King of England's grandest palace, that of Hampton-Court, where, growing in a rich soil to the height of five or six feet, it, under the name of ' Golden Rod,' nods over the whole length of the edge of a walk, three- quarters of a mile long, and, perhaps, thirty feet wide, the most magnificent, perhaps, in Europe. But, be not too hasty, American, in laughing at John Bull's king." Paragraph 330.

F, D, WESLEY,

'PROGRESS OF ERROR' (11 S. iv. 389). This poem was written (together with ' Truth,' ' Table-Talk,' and ' Expostulation ') by Cow- per in the winter of 1780, and appeared early in 1782. The lines (335-52) reflecting so strongly upon Lord Chesterfield and his letters to his son were not in the original draft, but were sent for insertion in a letter to Newton dated 21 January, 1781, and slightly altered not naming Chesterfield.

Probably W. B. H. will find it interesting to consult the notes in Bailey's edition of Cowper's poems (Methuen & Co.).

W. T. LYNN,

Blackheath.

TATTERSHALL : ELSHAM : GRANTHAM (US. iv. 269, 314). There was a time when I knew Grantham intimately : in my family, educated or uneducated, we called it Gran- tham, and I can only recall one person of my acquaintance and he came from another county who spoke of Grant-ham, and was smiled at in consequence. MR. W. H. PINCHBECK may be right in his statement that now " Grantham people generally say Grant-um " ; and so much the better, if we can be quite sure that the original ending of the word was ham, and not something that has become tham. How did the h get into Thames, which is the " smooth " or " tran- quil " stream ? PROF. SKEAT says Grant, whatever it may mean, is a Celtic river-name ; is it very unlikely that the calmness of the water by which Grantham stands should