The Jeweller's Window

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30847, 4 September 1965, Page 5

The Jeweller's Window

LITTLE FROG

(Specially written for “The Press” by ARNOLD WALL) A RANUNCULUS is, literally, a little frog; the plant was so named by the ancients because they supposed the original aquatic species to have sprung from frog-spawn. From time to time one after another of this huge group comes into cultivation and, as at present, is known to all gardeners. I get the impression that some horticulturists know of only one kind that is the one just now in favour. But the botanist knows better. This genus of plants is abundant all over the temperate world and especially so, as it happens, in New Zealand where the finest of all buttercups grows though, alas, not as abundantly as, say, a hundred years ago. Some idea of the magnitude of the group can be got from these figures: the total number of species in cultivation, according to a standard Gardeners' Dictionary of 50 years ago, was about 150: the number of those indigenous to New Zealand is 43: of those indigenous to Britain is 15; the Old World species now naturalised here number 17. The popular name is buttercup and it has also been called butterflower, goldcup, while the original “little grey” is crowfoot.

The name buttercup, dating from 1777, is due to the belief that the plant increases the yield of butter or that it gives butter the yellow colour.

It is, in my opinion, a great pity that the finest of our ranunculi, the finest in the world in fact, was formerly misnamed lily or Mt. Cook lily. This may be considered a compliment, but it is, nonetheless, a gross blunder and an insult to an aristocrat among wild flowers.

Stage Finery Women friends find it hard to believe me when I tell them that I once wore a dress which cost £3O. I am reminded of this by an account given in a recent book on Shakespeare of the prices paid for costumes in the Elizabethan theatre.

Two examples may suffice to illustrate the point. A cloak was bought for £2O which means at least £2OO of our money and lace for a pair of hose cost 16/- the equivalent of £8 now. These prices seem fantastic even when it is recognised that the actors of that day were obliged to distinguish themselves very clearly from the audience by whom they were pretty well surrounded, even on the stage itself.

I have vivid recollections of my schoolboy career as an actor. I was called upon at short notice to “play” Rosalind in “As You Like It.”

As our school was quite near London we used to engage a famous old firm of theatrical costumiers, Nathan’s, to supply the dresses and bring a staff to oversee the job. So when I

was dressed for the wedding scene one of the assistants followed me about exhorting me to be careful as my dress cost £3O.

This was not my first female impersonation for, on a previous occasion, I had “played” the gipsy Meg Merrilies in a stage version of Scott’s “Guy Mannering” when I was duly shot and had to produce a life-like dying shriek which taxed my histrionic powers to the utmost.

Mars’ Canals It surprised me that when the photographs of Mars were discussed in the press I saw no mention made of the origin of the idea of “canals." At one time, I thought everybody knew the facts. An Italian astronomer, Schiaparelli, was the first to draw attention to the lines visible on the surface of Mars, these he referred to as “canali” meaning “channels," that is, natural water-courses, rivers, streams. But when his words were translated into English his “canali” became “canals” (a mistranslation) and as our “canal" means a man-made water-course, the mistaken idea was born: no such idea had been in the mind of the Italian astronomer. “Canal” and “channel” are not the only representations in English of the Latin word “canalis.” We also have it as “kennel” an obsolete or obsolescent term for gutter. This “kennel" is from the AngloNorman French form “canel” of the same Latin “canalis.” Naturally, the dog's "kennel” has nothing to do with this word. .

Truepenny “Art thou there truepenny?” says Hamlet to his father's ghost. Is he complimenting the ghost or using a contemptuous term? The modern dictionary says that “truepenny” is a trusty person; an honest fellow compared to a coin of genuine metal. The word is now obsolete, but must have changed its meaning for the worse before dying out. In Bailey’s Dictionary, 1727, it is spelt “trupenny” and defined to mean “a name given by taunt to some sorry fellow, etc., as an old trupenny." Bailey quotes an older authority for an “explanation” of the word. It is, the story goes, from Greek “tropanon,” a crafty fellow. I do not find any such word in the Greek dictionary. The early English etymologists seem to have been determined to find a Greek or a Latin derivation for every word of more than two syllables.