Britten in the "Folk-lore Record" (i. 159), "that a common tropical
weed, _Ageratum conyzoides_, is employed by children in Venezuela in a
very similar manner."
The compilers of the "Dictionary of Plant Names" consider that the
double (garden) form of _Saxifraga granulata_, designated "pretty
maids," may be referred to in the old nursery rhyme:--
"Mary, Mary, quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?
Cockle-shells, and silver bells,
And pretty maids all in a row."
The old-man's-beard (_Clematis vitalba_) is in many places popularly
known as smoke-wood, because "our village-boys smoke pieces of the wood
as they do of rattan cane; hence, it is sometimes called smoke-wood, and
smoking-cane." [6]
The children of Galloway play at hide-and-seek with a little
black-topped flower which is known by them as the Davie-drap, meantime
repeating the following rhyme:--
"Within the bounds of this I hap
My black and bonnie Davie-drap:
Wha is he, the cunning ane,
To me my Davie-drap will fin'?"
This plant, it has been suggested, [7] being the cuckoo grass (_Luzula
campestris_), which so often figures in children's games and rhymes.
Once more, there are numerous games played by children in which certain
flowers are introduced, as in the following, known as "the three
flowers," played in Scotland, and thus described in Chambers's "Popular
Rhymes," p.
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