A Look At Nature by JM

So was the curlew, flying above his mate and sending out that beautiful, bubbling song announcing a mated pair.

Then, faint but clear, came the piercing cries of circling buzzards, up towards the 'Combe, the birds out of sight, lost to view against a rolling background of greening foothills.

Nervous peacock butterflies - four and five at a time rising hastily from our few flowers were another strong spring sign.

All this while the occasional blackcap of several visits pokes about our tangle of flowerless honeysuckle and clear-blue flowered periwinkle - with never a sign or sound of any chiffchaff, our longed-for first spring warbler.

Then there were the bumblebees; huge, fat females searching every nook and cranny for suitable nesting places; large white-tailed species and shorter but equally tubby red-tails.

The bees worked lower hedge and bank below tiger-striped hover flies within inches of face or shoulder, unafraid or uncaring of any human presence.

Then, there was the host of cowslips; pale yellow blooms peering above the tall grass alongside a stretch of the busy A590.

A host of dandelions also speckle the roadsides there with brightest yellow, and in shorter grasses, those so-called "swallow flowers" of the Greeks, the bright celandines (with name changed to "pilewort" by the stolid, unimaginative Briton) sprawled over the few violets.

Primroses, huge and pallid, star other areas; named in the mediaeval Latin as "prima rosa", the "first rose of spring".

Confusingly, this was applied both to Primula vulgaris - the true primrose of the botanist and Primula veris, the cowslip, which may be translates "...the spring primrose!

Cowslips, for example, have many other names, and once again, the common English title is decidedly unflattering.

It comes from the stolid Saxon label of cu-slyppe, meaning "one flourishing in cow dung," by the mistaken belief that the flowers sprang from cow pats.

Some local names are far more pleasing; such as "Freckled face" from the two-tone blooms or "St Peter's Keys" because the flowers heads resemble those fabled tools to be applied to the gate to heaven.

I much prefer the Old Welsh title of "dagrau mair," meaning "Mary's tears."

Then there is " Tissty-totsy" - but this is really a ball of cowslip flower heads used by young girls to prophesy marriage partners.

The ball was of cowslip blooms held on a length of string and twisted into a ball.

This was then tossed repeatedly into the air, accompanied by a chant of the following rhyme:

"Tissty-tosty tell me true

Who am I going to be married to?

Tinker, Tailor, soldier, sailor

Rich man, poor man, beggar man,

thief?"

This rhyme was repeated as the flower ball was thrown into the air repeatedly and caught.

Being loosely made, it soon disintegrated, and the last flower head to fall on or after a word in the third line of the chant indicated the job or profession of the girl's husband to be!

Cowslips, once common to many fields, and then destroyed so often by modern farming practice, are coming back.

Perhaps such a revival may restart "Cowslip Sunday" when children of one Nottinghamshire village gathered thousands of these flowers and sold them in bunches from roadside stalls.

This, sadly, is both impossible and illegal today! One fine show beside the A590 (M6 to Barrow road) is on the left bank approaching down hill the junction of the Kendal bypass.

In any warm weather at this time of the year (particularly in bright sunshine) this crowd of flowers releases the most delightful scent.

However, only those car-drivers with windows open will notice it! Country children would suck the flower heads

for the sweetness within - but any child doing this today would be in trouble

with various guardians of the countryside.

Cowslip wine is an ancient remedy for jaundice and measles.

One medieval book recommended cowslips as a cure for palsy - blooms and lavender flowers "boiled in ale," a medicine to cure "trembelynge hand and handis a-slepe"!

Who would - or could - refuse it?