PRIMROSE

Primula vulgaris Primroses are fittingly fairy flowers, at least in Welsh and Irish folk tradition. But Milton must have been aware of the belief, too. His “yellow-skirted fayes” wore primroses. But fairy flowers can give protection from the fairies, too. Manx children used to gather them to lay before the doors of houses on May Eve to prevent the entrance of fairies, who cannot pass them, so it was said (Hull). So they did in Ireland, too (Briggs. 1967), and tied them to the cows’ tails (Wilde. 1902), for no evil spirits can touch anything protected by these flowers (Buchanan. 1962). A primrose ball over the threshold served the same purpose in Somerset (Tongue. 1965). Those powers of protection went further – they could be used against the evil eye, for example (Wood- Martin). In the Derbyshire folk tale called Crooker, primroses formed one of the three magic posies given to the traveller to protect him from the evil Crooker. The others were St John’s Wort and daisies (Tongue. 1970). Another of the Somerset beliefs was that you should keep some primroses under a baby’s cot, or in its room, but always more than thirteen flowers (Tongue. 1965), but that proviso comes by confusion with another belief that will be mentioned shortly. The Welsh for primrose is Briallu. Perhaps Davies was right when he gave as its derivation bru, which means dignity, and gallu, power. He suggested too that the Druids used it in their mystical apparatus, so it is interesting to find that offerings of milk and primroses used to be made at a prehistoric burial chamber called the Water Stone, at Wrington, Avon (Grinsell. 1976).

Primroses were used as love charms in many places. Browne is talking about them when he says “maidens as a true-love in their bosoms place” (quoted by Dyer. 1889). Indeed, they symbolise wantonness in folk tradition, as Shakespeare well knew when he has Hamlet say “himself the primrose path of dalliance treads”. But in the language of flowers, it was associated with melancholy (Webster).

Primroses were not always entirely welcome, for they had their dark side. To dream of them, for instance, means sickness, deceit, sorrow and grief (Raphael). A primrose blooming in June is a sign of trouble and bad luck, according to Welsh belief (Trevelyan), and if it blooms in winter, then it is a death omen. Bringing them indoors – well, it all depended on how many were gathered. Two or three brought into a poultrykeeper’s house in early spring, before the chicks were hatched, meant bad luck to the sittings, but it would be alright if there were thirteen or more flowers, or “no less than a handful”. In Devonshire, they said that the number of primroses brought in would agree with the number of chickens reared (Friend. 1883; W Jones. 1880; Gill. 1963), for thirteen is the number traditional to a clutch of eggs placed under a hen during the spring (G E Evans. 1966). There was a similar belief in France – if you threw the first primroses you found before the goslings, it would kill them, and if you took the flowers indoors, the goslings would die before being hatched (Sebillot). It was even unlucky to include primroses (and hazel catkins) in the posy carried to church on Easter Sunday. Violets had to be put in too, to compensate for the primroses (Tongue. 1965). But it was probably a lot more serious than it seems, at least in some areas, those in which primroses were looked on as a death token, just as snowdrops are. One explanation from Sussex is that it was used to strew on graves, and to dress up corpses in the coffin (Latham). Certainly, quarrels have been recorded as arising from this belief, and it could lead to charges of ill-wishing. Anyone giving a child, say, one or two primroses, would leave himself open to such a charge ( W Jones. 1880).

In Lincolnshire, it was believed that if primroses were planted the wrong way up, the flowers would come red (Gutch & Peacock). They say exactly the same thing about cowslips, too. Northamptonshire people would claim that a common primrose fed with bullock’s blood will become deep red (Baker. 1977). Christina Hole had a note that the brown marks in the middle of primroses were supposed to be the rust marks left by the keys of heaven when St Peter carelessly lost them, and they were left out all night on the primroses – something else that really belongs to cowslips.

Primrose leaves and flowers were used in salads (when, so it is claimed, they will help to keep off arthritis (Page. 1978)), and as pot-herbs. The leaves were often used, too, in herbal medicines. “Primrose leaves stamped and laid on the place that bleedeth stauncheth the blood”, said Lupton, and Culpeper agreed – “of the leaves of primroses is made as fine a salve to heal wounds as any that I know”. The flowers and young leaves boiled in lard make an ointment for healing cuts and chapped hands, and they say in Dorset that an ointment made with bramble tips and primroses is excellent for getting rid of spots and pimples on the face (Dacombe), and something known in Scotland as “spring rashes” was treated with the juice of primroses used as a lotion (Gibson. 1959). Burns and cuts would be treated with a salve made from the leaves (Beith), while in Suffolk, the leaves were dried, soaked in linseed oil, and put on the burn, which would heal in two or three hours after that treatment (Hatfield. 1994). The leaves themselves are often rubbed on a cut by men working in the fields (Hampshire FWI).

In modern herbal medicine, it is the root infusion that is used, in tablespoonful doses, as a good remedy against nervous headaches (Grieve. 1931). If taken last thing at night it has a decided narcotic tendency (Leyel. 1926), and so is good for insomnia. A 15th century recipe recommended boiling lavender and primrose in ale, and drinking the result “for trembling hands, and hands asleep” (Dawson. 1934). Gerard included among the virtues of the flowers “sodden in vinegar”, and applied, the ability to cure the King’s Evil [scrofula, that is], “and the almonds of the throat and uvula, if you gargarise the part with the decoction thereof ”. Even more remarkable is a prescription included in the Welsh medical text known as the Physicians of Myddfai: “whosoever shall have lost his reason or his speech, let him drink of the juice of the primrose, within two months afterwards, and he will indeed recover”.

Primula auricula > AURICULA

Primula veris > COWSLIP