WALLFLOWERS IN FOLKLORE

Wallflowers are sometimes still sold under their old name of cheiranthus, which means ‘hand flower’ and probably refers to a medieval custom in which the cut flowers were carried in posies at festivals. Erysimum is derived from the Greek for ‘to help’ and may refer to the medicinal use of some species during the middle ages as a purgative as well as a treatment for liver disorders and fever. The common name of wallflower is easy enough to understand, as they are so often seen naturalised in old walls, where the well-drained conditions suit them so well. They were also known as gillyflowers, a name given in Elizabethan times to many scented flowers suitable for picking, including stocks, and the original gillyflower was actually the carnation. Wallflowers are associated with ‘fidelity in misfortune’ and linked with the rather Rapunzel-like story of a Scottish girl, whose lover was from a rival clan, and culminated in a tragic accident at Neidpath Castle on the banks of the River Tweed in Scotland. When the girl refused to marry the man her father had chosen, he locked her up in a tower. Disguising himself as a minstrel, her lover serenaded her, and the pair made plans to elope. But when the day came, the girl fell to her death when climbing from the window of the tower. She landed close to a wallflower that was growing along the wall, and her lover, broken-hearted, spent his days wandering the land, wearing a sprig of wallflower. The Cavalier poet Robert Herrick immortalised the tragic tale in verse.