See also Primrose, Primula sp.; Auricula, P. auricula; Oxlip, P. elatior; and Polyanthus, Primula × polyantha.

See also also American cowslip, P. meadia.

☙ Cowslip

Primula veris L. (1753) WFO HP:FE EWW RT:LOF LB

 =Primula officinalis Hill (1765); WFO LB

 =Primula inflata Lehm. (1817). WFO LB

Period English: cowslip; common cowslip; EWW LB common European cowslip; EWW sulphur coloured cowslip; EWW

Period French: Formal: primevère officinale f. ('officinal primrose'). LB Colloquial: brairelle ?; LB brayette f. ('little pants'?); LB coqueluchons m.pl. ('whooping cough caps', from their visual resemblance to the garment); LB coucou m. ('cuckoo'); LB fleur de coucou f. ('cuckoo flower'); LB herbe à la paralysie f. ('paralysis herb'); LB herbe St-Paul f. ('herb St Paul'); LB herbe St-Pierre f. ('herb St Peter'); LB pâquette f.; LB printanière f. LB

Period German: Schlüsselblume f. ('key-flower'). LB JRV

Period Italian: prima vera f. LB

Plantagenet English: Cowslope, herbe; Herba petri, herba paralysis, ligustra. (Promptorium Parvulorum 1440); A Cowslope; ligustrum, vaccinium. (Catholicon Anglicum 1483). HNE

Tudor English: Cowslop, Cowslip (Turner 1548, 1568). HNE

Elizabethian English: Cowslips (Gerard 1597, 1568). HNE

Stuart English: Prime-vere; ... a Cowslip. (Cotgrave 1611). HNE

Yiddish: אַקדמות־בלימל n. (akdomes-bliml, 'introduction-bloom'?). Mordkhe Shekhter

Sentiments:

🏶︎ Pensiveness ▲︎◆︎ (1825-1884); HP:FE TTA TM FSO LH S&K HGA:OT HGA:LPF GAL JS KG

 Drooping sorrow ▲︎ (1829); DLD

 Gentle sorrow ▲︎ (1829); DLD

 Melancholy ▲︎ (1834); O&B

🏶︎ Infancy ▲︎ (1829); DLD

 Childhood ◆︎ (1839); ESP

 Early joys ◆︎ (1869); RT:LOF

🏶︎ Resolution ▲︎ (1829); DLD

🏶︎ Winning grace ▲︎◆︎ (1832-1884) EWW GAL JS KG See also American cowslip.

 Attractive grace ▲︎ (c.1871); JS*

🏶︎ Erſchleiße mir dein Herz.Open your heart to me. ●︎ ︎(c.1880). JRV

* Marked as American meaning.

Region:

Native: Across Europe into central Russia (Buryatia, Tuva, Ust'-Orda, Evenkia, Taymyria), including northern extremes, south to Xinjiang, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, west of the Caspian Sea, appearing southernmost in Iran, Turkey, and Algeria. Not present in Portugal, the Illes Balears, Corse, Sardegna, Sicilia, Kriti, or other Mediterranean Islands. Easternmost limits appear to be an isolated population in Khabarovsk.WFO

Introduced: Primorsky in Russian far east; Northern America (New Brunswick, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Québec, British Columbia; Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, Vermont, Maryland).WFO

Seasonality: Semi-evergreen perennial flowering in early spring.

Period Colours: TBC.

Calendar: TBC.

Heraldry: TBC.

Cultural and Religious: TBC.

Cited Species:

🏶︎ Primula veris L. (1753) WFO HP:FE EWW RT:LOF LB

 =Primula officinalis Hill (1765); WFO LB

 =Primula inflata Lehm. (1817). WFO LB

🏶︎ Primula veris subsp. columnae (Ten.) Maire & Petitm. (1908)

 =Primula suaveolens Vertol. (1813). WFO LB

Cited Verse:

❧ 'The cowslips tall her pensioners be; / [...] / and hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear.', ◆︎ William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream (c.1595) 2.1.10; HNE

 'Those yellow cowslip cheeks.', ibid., 5.1.339; HNE

❧ 'The even mead that erst brought sweetly forth / The freckled cowslip, burnet, and green clover.', ◆︎ William Shakespeare, Henry V (c.1599) 5.2.48; HNE

❧ 'The violets, cowslips, and the primroses, / Bear to my closet.', ◆︎ William Shakespeare, Cymbeline (c.1611) 1.5.95; HNE

 'On her left breast / A mole, cinque-spotted, like the crimson drops / I' the bottom of a cowslip', ibid., 2.2.37; HNE

❧ 'Where the bee sucks there suck I, / In a cowslip's bell I lie.', ◆︎ William Shakespeare, The Tempest (c.1611) 5.1.88; RT:LOF HNE

❧ '"At midnight the appointed hour, / And for the Queen a fitting bower," / Quoth he, "is that fair cowslip flower / On Hipcut hill that bloweth: / In all your train there's not a fay / That ever went to gather may / But she hath made it, in her way; / The tallest there that groweth."', ◆︎ Michael Drayton, Nymphidia (1627) ll.113-120 Read Here; HNE

❧ 'Whilst from off the waters fleet / Thus I set my printless feet / O're the Cowslips Velvet head, / That bends not as I tread, / Gentle swain at thy request / I am here.', ◆︎ John Milton, Comus (A Masque Presented at Ludlow Castle, 1634), London: Humphrey Robinson (1637) ll.897-902 (Sabrina's song) Read Here; HNE

❧ 'With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head, / And every flower that sad embroidery wears;', 'Lycidas', ◆︎ John Milton, Justa Edouardo King Naufrago (1637) Read Here; HP:FE HNE

❧ 'Now the bright morning Star, Dayes harbinger, / Comes dancing from the East, and leads with her / The Flowry May, who from her green lap throws / The yellow Cowslip, and the pale Primrose.', 'Song on May Morning', ◆︎ John Milton, Poems (1645) Read Here; HNE

❧ 'Thy little Sons / Permit to range the Pastures; gladly they / Will mow the Cowslip-Posies, faintly sweet, / From whence thou artificial Wines shalt drain / Of icy Taste, that, in mid Fervors, best / Slack craving Thirst, and mitigate the Day.', ◆︎ John Philips, Cyder. A poem. In two books., London: Jacob Tonson, within Grays-Inn Gate next Grays-Inn Lane (1708) ll.217-222 Read Here; EWW

❧ 'You could not do a worse thing for your Life. / Why, if the Nights seem tedious—take a Wife; / Or rather truly, if your Point be Rest, / Lettuce and Cowslip Wine; Probatum est.', ◆︎ Alexander Pope, The First Satire of the Second Book of Horace, Imitated: in a Dialogue Between Alexander Pope of Twickenham in Comm. Midd. Esq; on the One Part, and His Learned Council on the Other., London: Lawton Gilliver, A. Dodd, E. Nutt (1733) p.7 Read Here; EWW

❧ 'How chearful along the gay mead / The daisy and cowslip appear; / The flocks as they carelessly feed / Rejoice in the Spring of the year.', 'The Hymn of Eve', ◆︎ Thomas Augustine Arne, The Death of Abel (1744); EWW

  Arne's oratorio, The Death of Abel, is now lost save for 'The Hymn of Eve', which appears to have been printed in 1756 - I found reference in The Literary Magazine, Or, Universal Review Vol.1 from 1756, but could not view it to confirm. The oratorio is based on Pietro Metastasio's 1732 work La morte d'Abel, but I could not find reference to 'prima vera' or any similar verse inside.

  The verse became immensely popular and is variously referred to as 'The Hymn of Eve', 'Hymn, in the Oratorio of Abel', and 'How cheerful along the gay mead'. It is also sometimes mistakenly attributed to John Clare as 'The Praise of God', but as Gregory Dixon Crossan clarifies in his 1975 thesis for the University of Canterbury, 'A Relish for Eternity': The Process of Divinization in the Poetry of John Clare (p.169, footnote 91), this arises from it being mistakenly included in J.L. Cherry's 1873 compilation Life and Remains of John Clare, the 'Northamptonshire Peasant Poet'. EWW attributes it to Milton, for some reason.

❧ 'The love-ſick cowſlip, that her head inclines / To hide a bleeding heart.', ◆︎ James Hurdis, The Village Curate: A Poem, London: J. Johnson, No 72, St Paul's Church-yard (1788) p.36 Read Here; EWW

  Given by Wirt under Polyanthus, 'Crimson heart'.

❧ 'On Finding an early Cowslip', ◆︎ William Howitt, Time's Telescope for April 1826, London: Sherwood, Gilbert, and Piper, Paternoster Row (1826) p.116; HNE

  I have in passing seen this poem attributed to 'Anon.', and HNE does not attribute it, however it appears in the above publication attributed to Howitt, one of the editors, written specifically for Time's Telescope.

❧ 'And thou too, fair Ophelia! flowers are here, / That well might win thy footstep to the spot— / Pale cowslips, meet for maiden's early bier, / And pansies for sad thoughts', 'The Beings of the Mind', ◆︎ Felicia Dorothea Hemans, The New Monthly Magazine, Vol.22 (1828) pp.555-556 Read Here; HNE

❧ 'On pastures wide and green, / Upon a thousand stems, / Fit for a fairy queen / To wear for precious gems, / Young cowslips smile at earth and sky, / With sweetest breath and golden eye.', 'The Leafy Spring;, ◆︎ Ann Taylor & ◆︎ Jane Taylor, Original Poems, for Infant Minds, by Several Young Persons, Vol.II, London: Arthur Hall, Virtue & Co. (1854) pp.35-36; RT:LOF

  While this book is first published in 1804, this poem doesn't appear until 1854 editions. The poem is unattributed to a specific sister.

❧ 'V. The Cowslip' (chapter), ◆︎ Forbes Watson (ed. J B [John Brown?] Paton), Flowers and Gardens: Notes on Plant Beauty by a Medical Man, London: Strahan & Co., 56 Ludgate Hill (1872) pp.55-67 Read Here; HNE

Other Verse:

❧ 'Beneath their early shade, the half form'd nest / Of finch or woodlark; and the primrose pale, / And lavish cowslip, wildly scatter'd round, / Give their sweet spirits to the sighing gale.', 'Sonnet VIII. To Spring.', ◆︎ Charlotte Smith (née Turner), Elegiac Sonnets, and Other Essays, Chichester: Dodsley, Gardner, Baldwin, and Bew (1784) ll.4-7 Read here;

❧ 'By lanes or brooks where sunbeams love to lie, / A cowslip-peep will open faintly coy, / Soon seen and gather'd by a wondering boy.', 'March', in The Shepherd's Calendar, ◆︎ John Clare, The Shepherd's Calendar; with Village Stories, and Other Poems, London: John Taylor, Waterloo Place (1827) p.28 Read Here;

❧ 'The shepherd on his pasture walks / The first fair cowslip finds, / Whose tufted flowers, on slender stalks, / Keep nodding to the winds.', 'April', stanza IV, in The Shepherd's Calendar, ibid., p.37;

❧ 'The meadow-closes all about were lined / With cowslip bunches, nodding in the wind;', 'The Memory of Love', ◆︎ John Clare, op cit., p.170;

❧ 'To the Cowslip', ◆︎ John Clare, op cit., pp.207-209;

Sentiments

🜱 On sentiments: The sentiment of pensiveness and related refer to the cowslip's drooping flowers, hanging their head as though in sorrow.

The sentiment of infancy and related refer to the cowslip's early appearance in spring, for more on which see Primrose.

For once, I can shed some light on Vogl's sentiment of Erſchleiße mir dein Herz, 'Open your heart to me': the common name of this flower in German is Schlüsselblume, or 'key-flower', perfect for opening a locked heart.

The French texts I have so far consulted do not separate P. veris from Primrose as a whole.

Literary Themes

Ariel and fairies

🜱 From ◆︎ Shakespeare onwards, the cowslip is associated with fairies, established in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream (c.1595), where they are referred to by a fairy:

And I serve the Fairy Queen,
To dew her orbs upon the green.
The cowslips tall her pensioners be;
In their gold coats spots you see;
Those be rubies, fairy favors;
In those freckles live their savors.
I must go seek some dewdrops here
And hang a pearl in every cowslip’s ear.
(2.1.8-13)

In this passage, cowslips are compared to one of Queen Elizabeth's Pensioners (that is, retired, or veteran, soldiers), noted by Ellacombe as 'splendidly dressed, and [...] frequently noticed in the literature of the day'.

This is further reinforced in The Tempest (c.1611), where the air spirit Ariel sings:

Where the bee sucks, there suck I.
In a cowslip’s bell I lie.
There I couch when owls do cry.
On the bat’s back I do fly
After summer merrily.
Merrily, merrily shall I live now
Under the blossom that hangs on the bow.
(5.1.88-103)

◆︎ Michael Drayton echoes this in his Nymphidia (1627):

"At midnight the appointed hour,
And for the Queen a fitting bower,"
Quoth he, "is that fair cowslip flower
On Hipcut hill that bloweth:
In all your train there's not a fay
That ever went to gather may
But she hath made it, in her way;
The tallest there that groweth."
(ll.113-120)

The sentimental Victorians embraced this association, and we see references to the 'fairy queen' and 'Ariel'.


La Flore de la Manche

◼︎ Léon Besnou, 1881

G. Primula L. — Primevère.


De Primus, premier, et Ver, veris, printemps; première fleur du printemps.


P. OFFICINALIS Jacq. — P. OFFICINALE (P. veris L. — Var. inflata Bot. Cap. odorata C. B. P. — Suaveolens Bartol.) (Brairelle, brayette, coucou, fleur de coucou, coqueluchons, herbe St-Paul, St-Pierre, à la paralysie, pâquette, printanière.) Angl. Common cowslip. All. Schlussel-blume. Ital. Prima vera. — Viv. — Mars-mai. Prés, pelouses. RRR. Cherbourg, le Roule, Tourlaville, la Pierre-Buttée, Octeville, St-Sauveur, St-Lo, bords de la Vire, St-Sénier-sous-Avranches, Apilly, Les Biards, environs du vieux château, Macey, pelouses du château, Beauficel, St-James, la Palluelle, Thorigny, près le château, Les Chambres, la Baudonière, Subligny, près le bourg et la maison Bourgeois.


P. GRANDIFLORA Lamk. — P. A GRANDES FLEURS. ( P. Acaulis Jacq. — Vulgaris Huds. — Brevistyla Dc. Ver. Var. L.) Pommerole, Prumerolle, Promenolle, Pruniole, Printemps, fièvre, Suzannes, Dénuite. Angl. Primrose. Bret. Bleun-Nevez. — Viv. — Mars-juin. Haies, bois, prés, coteaux. TC.

Var. P. acaulis caulescens. Lebel. Lestre. St-Senier-sous-Avranches. RR.

Varie depuis le blanc (St-Oven) au rose et pourpre (Baffé).


P. GRANDIFLORA-OFFICINALIS Goup. — P. A GRANDES FLEURS ET OFFICINALE. (P. Variabilis Goup et Lebel). — Viv. — Mars-juin. RRR. Lestre, St-Senier-sous-Avranches, Apilly, sentier du château, Macey, bois et pelouses du château, Valognes, environs.


P. ELATIOR Jacq. — P. ÉLEVÉE. (P. veris. — Var. elatior L.) Brayes de coucou, pain de coucou. Angl. Jagging oxlip. — Viv. — Mars-juin. Prés ombragés. RRRR. St-Senier-sous-Avranches, Apilly.

Plantes d'ornement; doublant facilement par la culture, et variant de couleur et de madrure; sans usage médicinal.

Les feuilles et les fleurs sont mucilagineuses et béchiques.


(250-251)




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Cite this page (MLA 9th): Never Never. “Cowslip.” Glossa Hortensia, 17 Mar. 2025, neverxnever.neocities.org/glossahortensia/primula_veris. Accessed [DD Mon. YYYY].