Hence, we find that the works of
nature enter largely into children's pastimes; a few specimens of their
rhymes and games associated with plants we quote below.
In Lincolnshire, the butter-bur (_Petasites vulgaris_) is nicknamed
bog-horns, because the children use the hollow stalks as horns or
trumpets, and the young leaves and shoots of the common hawthorn
(_Cratoegus oxyacantha_), from being commonly eaten by children in
spring, are known as "bread and cheese;" while the ladies-smock
(_Cardamine pratensis_) is termed "bread and milk," from the custom, it
has been suggested, of country people having bread and milk for
breakfast about the season when the flower first comes in. In the North
of England this plant is known as cuckoo-spit, because almost every
flower stem has deposited upon it a frothy patch not unlike human
saliva, in which is enveloped a pale green insect. Few north-country
children will gather these flowers, believing that it is unlucky to do
so, adding that the cuckoo has spit upon it when flying over. [1]
The fruits of the mallow are popularly termed by children cheeses, in
allusion to which Clare writes:--
"The sitting down when school was o'er,
Upon the threshold of the door,
Picking from mallows, sport to please,
The crumpled seed we call a cheese.
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