I wonder about the USA - don't their currency bills say something like "Legal for all debts public and private"? Do you think a shop there would get away with refusing them? Or the UK, where the currency has a status of "legal tender". Surely either system would require a change of law to allow "No cash please, we're British" to be introduced?

Meles meles wrote:

Forget-me-not ... now there's a flower with an interesting background.

From wiki:

'In a German legend, God named all the plants when a tiny unnamed one cried out, "Forget-me-not, O Lord!" God replied, "That shall be your name."
The forget-me-not is used as the flower of remembrance of the Armenian Genocide, which took place between 1915 and 1923. It is a prominent spring plant throughout Europe on the 24 April, which is the anniversary of the day the genocide began, and its name in many Indo-European languages conveys the same meaning of 'remember'. The Republic of Armenia issued an official illustration of the flower as a badge for the remembrance in preparation for the 2015 centenary.'

It always reminds me of this in any German context :-

Quote :

Vergissmeinnicht
Three weeks gone and the combatants gone,
returning over the nightmare ground
we found the place again, and found
the soldier sprawling in the sun.
The frowning barrel of his gun
overshadowing. As we came on
that day, he hit my tank with one
like the entry of a demon.
Look. Here in the gunpit spoil
the dishonored picture of his girl
who has put: Steffi. Vergissmeinnicht
in a copybook gothic script.
We see him almost with content
abased, and seeming to have paid
and mocked at by his own equipment
that's hard and good when he's decayed.
But she would weep to see today
how on his skin the swart flies move;
the dust upon the paper eye
and the burst stomach like a cave.
For here the lover and killer are mingled
who had one body and one heart.
And death who had the soldier singled
has done the lover mortal hurt.

Quote :

Quote :

Quote :

Keith Douglas (1920-1944)

Nielsen wrote:

So far it's been announced as a 'might' which is being hit upon, as we are about to go into electioneering mood here.

It looks as though at least one Copenhagen florist is ready for the fight. A floral guard on the door of this blomster to remind customers have coin of the realm in their purses.



You have my sympathy on the impending election campaign Nielsen. Thank goodness ours here is finally over. No more party politics for us for a while I'm pleased to say. One added bonus is that the airwaves are now being freed up. I note, for example, that the drama 1864 which was broadcast in Denmark last autumn is now to be shown by the BBC later this spring. Could it be that producers at DR1 were perusing the Res Historica Forum last year and were reading our comments regarding the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Dybbøl on the 'attacking when outnumbered' thread.

Re Longman Floral - the company who, acting on instructions from an unknown party, leave flowers at the Tower every year on May 19th, the anniversary of the execution of Anne Boleyn, I found this. I had never heard of Mr Longman - I always thought Constance Spry did the flowers for the Coronation.

http://flowersforroyalweddings.blogspot.co.uk/


From the blog:

For me, the most interesting of the Coronation anniversary observances was the recreation of the the Queen's Coronation bouquet, and the presentation of that bouquet to the Queen at Buckingham Palace.  For some five years now, I have been privileged to be in contact with Mr. David Longman.  Mr. Longman, now retired, headed Longmans Ltd. of London.  Longmans were the florists who for many years supplied special floral arrangements for special occasions in the life of the Royal family.  Martin Longman created the Queen's original coronation bouquet.  David Longman designed and oversaw the floral decorations and bridal flowers for Princess Diana, and Sarah Ferguson.  Last week marked a special gathering in the throne room at the Palace where representatives from The Worshipful Company of Gardeners presented the Queen with a near exact replica of the bouquet she carried on her coronation day.  The Worshipful Company supplied the flowers for many royal occasions, teaming with Longmans Ltd. to do the actual design work in creating the finished floral arrangements.

Would you say that the fragrance of the sweetest roses, such as the Damask and the York and Lancaster, is beyond any flower scent?

Scientists certainly agree with that statement, FL. Modern roses, even the "wild" ones, are the product of thousands of years (possibly tens of thousands of years) of human intervention through hybridisation and husbandry of the species, normally with a view to accentuating the fragrance, and often it appears through marrying the flowering plant to quite unrelated species too. This, for example, from the Garden Clinic website ...

"... scientists discovered that essential rose oil contains more than 400 components, including musk, nasturtium, orris, violet, apple, lemon, clover, fern/moss, hyacinth, orange, bay anise, lily-of-the-valley, linseed, honey, wine, marigold, quince, geranium, pepper, parsley and raspberry."

So long has it being going on that it is apparently impossible these days to identify a truly wild variant of the plant anymore which could be comparable to the ones that started the ball rolling in Mesopotamia at the dawn of civilisation, or even further back.

I've started "attending" the online shorthand dictation sessions again.  Tonight one of the passages the lady read was about carnations.  The passage piece mentioned that carnations are suitable for sprays, corsages and gentlemen's "button holes".  Also apparently they were once called "Tulley (Tully?) flowers in England because they were grown by a Mrs Tulley and also (I think) "dipped in wine" because they were sometimes dipped in wine.  Of course I was largely concentrating on taking down the notes but mention was made of a long cultivation of the carnation and I think that it grows wild still in France.  I'd never heard the apocryphal story of the carnation being reputed to have bloomed from Mary's tears  before - and looking for "Tulley flowers" only brought up instructions how to make ornamental artificial flowers out of tulle.

 I found a blog called Proflowers which contained the following "The carnation’s history dates back to ancient Greek and Roman times, when it was used in art and decor. Christians believe that the first carnation bloomed on earth when Mary wept for Jesus as he carried his cross. Carnations in these early times were predominantly found in shades of pale pink and peach, but over the years the palette of available colors has grown to include red, yellow, white, purple, and even green. Throughout so many centuries of change, the popularity of the carnation has remained undiminished. The fact that the carnation continues to endure is a testament to its vast appeal."

Lady,

as I read "carnation" although I have not the slightest idea what that flower is, I am always thinking at milk. And from my youth. Now we use only milk to make sauce, as cheese sauce and with a small sachet with the ingredients to add to the milk. Did it even this morning. Attention: one has to had the content of the sachet in "cold"! milk to start...



And as kids my sister and I were adepted to the sugared condensed milk tins that you had to shake till it became cream inside. Fabulous. The water came still in the mouth, when I saw! the label. But I see now that the label don't exist anymore. In the time it was something with white background and many silver in it. And sugar in it, lady, sugar!...I mean in the content, lady...


And the tin was only I guess a third of that size, perhaps a 150- 180 gr...

But now I see on the carnation milk picture the flowers...now at 76 years for the first time the link...
 
And now I see...as I see the translation: "anjer"...the best rememberance is about "de anjer in het knoopsgat van de revers"


But I said it already in the language thread...to translate that..."knoopsgat" is easy: buttonhole...and you can see it...but "revers" (as I don't know the word in Dutch...Dirk, "omslag"?). we use the French word and don't know another one:
https://dictionnaire.reverso.net/francais-definition/revers
revers: enves replié sur l'endroit (en parlant d'un vêtement)
and you can see on the image what a revers is...I wonder what it is in English...?

And about what is behind the colour of the carnation...
https://www.teleflora.com/meaning-of-flowers/carnation

Today, carnations can be found in a wide range of colors, and while in general they express love, fascination and distinction, virtually every color carries a unique and rich association. White carnations suggest pure love and good luck, light red symbolizes admiration, while dark red represents deep love and affection. Purple carnations imply capriciousness, and pink carnations carry the greatest significance, beginning with the belief that they first appeared on earth from the Virgin Mary's tears – making them the symbol of a mother's undying love.

PS: and what is the difference between pink and purple? For me is it all purple...and I know the shades of colour, while I had to check the colour shades in the time with an apparatus expressing colours in LAB or XYZ values...I have to check, perhaps we have other names for the shades of purple...

Kind regards from Paul.

a "revers" is what is known as a "lapel" in English.

Only time I use sweetened condensed milk nowadays is when making banoffee pie, but I remember havbing it on bread when I was at boarding school. Used to be available in a toothpaste-like tube.

btw - "Packet" cheese sauce is an abomination. Milk, cornflour, cheese and seasoning, cooked in the microwave (saves having to scrape it off the saucepan bottom)

The carnation is the cultivated variety of the clove pink (Dianthus caryophyllus), or perhaps one should rather say that the clove pink is the carnation's principal ancestor, amongst other hybridised wild dianthus plants, of which there are many. The wild clove pink, itself a native to Southern Europe, together with other related species of Dianthus such as the sweet william (Dianthus barbatus), were used not just for their pleasing scented blooms, but also for their edible flowers that taste/smell of cloves, ie the aromatic flower buds of the tree, Syzygium aromaticum, which is originally native to the so-called Spice Islands or Moluccas (part of the Indonesian archipelago). In old English recipes these flowers were often called gillyflowers or gilliflowers, from the French giroflée for the clove spice. In modern French un giroflée is also the name for the common wallflower, Erysimum sp, a plant in the cabbage family which grows wild around here along the dry Mediterranean coast. Although not closely related to pinks, carnations and sweet williams etc, wallflowers have a similar mild clove-like taste and smell, are edible, and were also used as a spicy herb in cooking. The English word clove, for the exotic spice, is derived from the French clou de giroflée, literally meaning a nail (un clou) of the clove spice, reflecting the shape of the hard dried flower bud - before spelling was regularised in the 18th century, French, like English, often used the letters u and v interchangeably, which was a hang-over from classical Latin with its 24 letter alphabet.

Gillyflowers, whether as wallflowers or dianthus (pinks, carnations or sweet williams etc) were not just dipped in wine to impart a spicy taste (wines were frequently drunk spiced and sweetened), but also sometimes themselves made into wine. Here's a recipe for gilliflower wine mentioned in 'Cornish Recipes Ancient & Modern' (1929) by Edith Martin, which is dated to 1753:

To 3 gallons water put 6lbs of the best powder sugar; boil together for the space of 1/2 an hour; keep skimming; let it stand to cool. Beet up 3 ounces of syrup of betony, with a large spoonful of ale yeast, put into liquor & brew it well; put a peck [ie. 2 dry gallons or 16 dry pints] of gilliflowers free of stalks; let work fore 3 days covered with a cloth; strain & cask for 3-4 weeks, then bottle.

Shakespeare, always quite learned about flowers, refers to "streaked gillyvors" in 'A Winter's Tale' (act IV, sc 4), where Perdita says of them rather scathingly; "I have heard it said/There is an art which in their piedness shares/With great creating Nature ... I'll not put/The dibble in earth to set one slip of them." Perdita actually calls the streaked gilliflowers "bastards" so her disdain for them is presumably because these fancy, multi-coloured, cultivated carnations were hybrids and the result of cross-fertilization by humans rather than the result of nature alone, and accordingly she considers them to be un-natural offspring.

Green George wrote:

a "revers" is what is known as a "lapel" in English.

Only time I use sweetened condensed milk nowadays is when making banoffee pie, but I remember havbing it on bread when I was at boarding school. Used to be available in a toothpaste-like tube.

btw - "Packet" cheese sauce is an abomination. Milk, cornflour, cheese and seasoning, cooked in the microwave (saves having to scrape it off the saucepan bottom)

Thanks Gil for that "lapel".

Banoffee pie. Gil, of course I had to search:
https://www.carnation.co.uk/recipes/8/Classic-Banoffee-Pie-Recipe



Gil, you seems to like the good things in life...
And a Dutch/Belgian recept
https://www.knoeienmetinge.nl/bananen-toffee-taart-banoffee-pie/



And they call it a "bananen-toffee taart" overhere.

"btw - "Packet" cheese sauce is an abomination. Milk, cornflour, cheese and seasoning, cooked in the microwave (saves having to scrape it off the saucepan bottom)"


Gil, I think you are right, but it is all a question of time (even at my 76 years). All that mixing takes perhaps more time than mixing my "sachet" into cold milk and let cook it in the pan on my butane gas burner. And I need no scraping of the pan, as it is only a slight thick layer on the pan, easy to remove with water with added detergent even with my " hand"  . But one is never too old to learn, and I will certainly give it a try, (a go?) and make the evaluation ...


Kind regards from paul.

I didn't know the Carnation was related to the Sweet William (or Stinking Billy depending where one lives).  MM, you seem to know a lot about flowers and plants generally.  Thinking of matters culinary, I may have to start cooking fish (or at least off cuts from fish) from scratch for my cat.  She has started turning her nose up at the special food for cats with colonic problems.  My present cooking apparatus is very basic.  One of those things with a frying part at the top and a grilling part underneath and my microwave went bump a while ago.

To get back to plants, I did have some carnations growing in the garden at one time but then allowed the weeds to take over.  The weeds have been cut back somewhat now but I think most of the flowers have "had it".  I do still get a few daffodils in spring but need to put some new bulbs in really.  Tulip bulbs are another staple of the English garden.

I hadn't known anything about the following until I looked up carnations in a gardening book and then, from just a passing reference, delved a bit further on-line.

Towards the end of the nineteenth century a green carnation seems to have become a covert symbol for homosexuality. Oscar Wilde - who often sported a button-hole carnation - whether green, white, pink, red or otherwise - claimed that he had invented the symbolic green carnation, however he probably just appropriated an already existing and fairly well-known symbol for his own ends. For the opening night of his play 'Lady Windermere’s Fan' (20 February 1892) he apparently asked all his friends to all wear a green carnation and he also instructed the actor who was portraying the dandy Cecil Graham on-stage to do the same. Wilde was asked what it meant and replied "nothing whatever, but that is just what nobody will guess" however as a publicity stunt it was certainly noticed by the audience and immediately became associated with Wilde himself. Just two weeks after the premier of 'Lady Windermere's Fan' the 'London Star' reported that on 5 March 1892, at the Royalty Theatre production of Theodore de Banville's play 'The Kiss', Wilde was present with "a suite of young gentlemen all wearing the vivid dyed carnation which has superseded the lily and the sunflower."

However Wilde almost certainly didn't invent the symbol. In 1891 (the year before the debut of 'Lady Windermere's Fan') the French press had commented that Parisian esthètes had taken to wearing green carnations, perhaps as a form of subtle identification between themselves. Moreover I'm sure that by the time this practice came to the attention of Parisians generally, it had already been going on quietly for some time. Green is not a natural colour variation of carnations and a carnation with green petals can only be obtained by putting the cut flower stem into a suitable dye; it was therefore considered an 'un-natural' flower, hence perhaps the association. Moreover green as a colour for clothing and ornament was believed to be "in individuals ... always a sign of a subtle artistic temperament", to quote an 1889 essay Wilde himself.

A novel called 'The Green Carnation' was published anonymously in 1894. This was a rather scandalous book by Robert Hichens whose lead characters were clearly very closely based on Oscar Wilde (the character of Esmé Amarinth) and Lord Alfred Douglas, "Bosie" (the character of Lord Reginald "Reggie" Hastings). Hitchens was one of the circle of Wilde's friends and admirers and so knew both Wilde and Douglas very well. Although claimed as fiction, the novel was almost fact with even the introduction succinctly stating that "only people's names have been changed to protect the innocent". The words Hitchens put into the mouths of the main character and his young friend in the story are mostly gathered from the sayings of their originals. Accordingly Hichens was able to very plausibly and realistically recreate the atmosphere and relationship between Wilde and Bosie. Indeed so accurate was the depiction of the manners and language of the two men that at the time it was widely believed that the anonymous work had actually been written by Wilde himself. 

The novel was an instant succès de scandal, with the reviewer for 'The Observer' writing, "The Green Carnation will be read and discussed by everyone... nothing so impudent, so bold, or so delicious has been printed these many years."  However because of its scandalous content and quasi-biographical nature the book was partly instrumental in Wilde’s arrest in 1895. Later that year the book was withdrawn from circulation, but by that time the damage had been done and Wilde's reputation was now irrevocably tarnished. Wilde stood two consecutive trials for gross indecency ('The Green Carnation' being one of the works used against him by the prosecution) and he was subsequently sentenced to two years in prison with hard labour.

'The Green Carnation' was only republished in 1948, when it included an introduction by the now named author, and which also reproduced Wilde's letter to 'The Pall Mall Gazette' of over fifty years earlier  in which he had denied he was the anonymous author. In the letter Wilde wrote (2 October 1894):
"Sir. Kindly allow me to contradict, in the most emphatic manner, the suggestion, made in your issue of Thursday last, and since then copied into many other newspapers, that I am the author of The Green Carnation. I invented that magnificent flower. But with the middle-class and mediocre book that usurps its strangely beautiful name I have, I need hardly say, nothing whatsoever to do. The Flower is a work of Art. The book is not."

A green carnation continued as a symbol for decadence, dandyism and homosexuality well into the twentieth century. For example it features in the Noel Coward song, 'We all wear a green carnation', which appears in his operetta 'Bitter Sweet' (1929). The song is sung by a quartet of the aesthetes parodying the Dandy life-style and the aestheticism movement of the 1890s while at the same time being a tongue-in-cheek reference to the contemporary 'gay' mores of the decadent 1920s:

"Pretty boys, witty boys, you may sneer
At our disintegration
Haughty boys, naughty boys, dear, dear, dear
Swooning with affectation
...
Faded boys, jaded boys, come what may
Art is our inspiration
And as we are the reason for the
nineties being gay
We all wear a green carnation"




It should be noted that Coward’s use of the word 'gay' ostensibly denotes the older definition meaning 'happy and carefree'. But in the 1920s, gay, meaning homosexual, was already in widespread use albeit perhaps only by those already 'in the know'. Nevertheless I'm sure Noel Coward, himself homosexual, was fully aware of the suggestive ambiguity in meaning. Incidentally the earliest use of the word 'gay' in its 'modern' sense - at least that I am aware of - dates from 1881. It occurs several times in the salacious novel, 'The Sins of the Cities of the Plain', (the title is of course an allusion to the biblical city of Sodom) in which the term 'gay' is very clearly used in relation to male homosexuality and indeed rather expicitly to male-on-male sexual activity (the novel is basically Victorian gay porn). As I say, this smutty little book is really just 140 year-old pornography, nevertheless in its clear and repeated use of the word 'gay' it does refute the modern prim and pious argument that the meaning of the word has only recently been appropriated and changed for mendacious political purposes.

Thanks MM for your elaborated "essay" about the green carnation. LiR mentioned it yet in her first message and I met it already just as a mentioning of green carnation and homosexuality, but here we have it that more in detail.
Btw: as nearly half of the words in English comes from French and Latin that word "gay" comes also from the French "gai, gaie"
https://www.larousse.fr/dictionnaires/francais/gai/35802?q=gaie#35765

How those English made from that gay person a "gay",  that has one to explain to me...or is a homo always...

Kind regards from Paul.

I'd heard that 'gay' in the sense of someone who was sexually attracted to their own gender was an acronym G.A.Y. for Good As You from the time (1970s?) when people campaigned for gay rights - gay people were claiming they were as good as straight people.  But then, if the word was used in that sense in Oscar Wilde's time it would seem to undermine the idea of the word 'gay' in that sense being an acronym.

PaulRyckier wrote:

Btw: as nearly half of the words in English comes from French and Latin that word "gay" comes also from the French "gai, gaie"

How those English made from that gay person a "gay",  that has one to explain to me...or is a homo always...

As you say the word gay arrived in English during the 12th century from Old French gai or gaie, and in English primarily meant "joyful", "carefree", or "bright and showy". The word may have started to acquire associations of immorality as early as the 14th century, but had certainly gained them by the 17th when it had taken on the additional and rather more specific meaning of one "addicted to hedonistic pleasures and dissipations", or "uninhibited by moral constraints". Context in language is of course all important, and so while one might comment to a woman that she seemed "very gay" - meaning she appeared happy or carefree - to say that she was "a gay woman" implied she was a prostitute, while "a gay man" was a womaniser or a frequenter of a brothel ("a gay house"). 

By the 19th century "a gay man" or "gay boy" had become specifically a male prostitute serving male clients, and from there, by the end of the late 19th century it came to refer to any homosexual male. However the old meaning of joyful or carefree still happily existed, so that well into the 20th century one could still describe a middle-aged bachelor as "gay", indicating that he was unattached and therefore free, without any implication of homosexuality ... or that the decade after the Great War were "the gay 20s" meaning they were carefree, uninhibited, hedonistic or frivolous. 

As the 20th century progressed "gay" with its overtones of inhibition and liberation, became the preferred term since other terms, such as queer, poof, homo, etc were felt to be derogatory. Remember also that in Britain male homosexuality was illegal until the Sexual Offences Act of 1967, and so to openly identify someone as homosexual was considered very offensive and an accusation of serious criminal activity. Additionally, none of the words describing any aspect of homosexuality were considered suitable for polite society. (Even the Parliamentary Commission set up to advise on decriminalising homosexuality and prostitution, which culminated in the 1967 Act, in their minutes coyly referred homosexuals and prostitutes as Huntley and Palmers, after the well-known biscuit makers).  

But, Paul, "homo", at least in English and French, is now deemed offensive or at least rather insensitive. There's nothing wrong with the word homosexual, although one might need to consider the context, but by shortening it to homo, you are making it pejorative. I trust you would not call someone who was was suffering from a psychiatric illness a "psycho"; someone that was educationally retarded a "retard"; or call a spastic a "spaz" (the English word spastic - meaning someone with the condition spasticity which is typically a symptom of cerebral palsy - is itelf now very rarely used outside of its specific medical meaning, and even The Spastics Society, a long-established Uk charity, has renamed itself Scope).

But now, since this is supposed to be a thread about flowers, what about "pansies"?  

The "green carnation" pre-dates the "pansy" association by a few decades it seems. I had naively believed the pansy euphemism for male homosexuality to have been British in origin and much older than - at least according to this author William A. Percy - it appears to have been. According to him it seems to have come originally from the USA, and wasn't first documented until 1903. He then goes on to explain why violets were later associated with lesbianism, also following the success of a particular literary work, in this case a Broadway play. Is this still a thing? (the association, I mean, not lesbianism)

"The association of pansies with male homosexuals is documented in America as early as 1903. Dressing up in over-elegant fashion may be called pansying up, while an effeminate boy may be called pansified. Other flowers that have been associated with male homosexuality are lilies and daffodils (the latter is jocular). The use of violets as a gift in Edouard Bourdet's play The Captive, a major event of the 1926 Broadway season, caused an association of this flower with lesbianism that lasted several decades. The slang term for the act of several persons having sexual intercourse with each other simultaneously is a daisy chain. While such a gathering might be heterosexual, the usual interpretation is that of a male-homosexual orgy. "

I'm not sure about his final sentence either - while unfamiliar with the euphemism altogether, I would reckon that the likelihood of forming a heterosexual "daisy chain", based solely on the logistics of the exercise, would far exceed in opportunity for occurrence any homosexual emulation of the feat.

Err, what then of the march/dance 'The gay Gordons?

I've danced it many the time, Nielsen. We learnt it at school along with a lot of other céilidh steps.

In Scotland and Ireland "gay" as "dashing" persevered in the vernacular long after its meaning had begun to shift in the rest of the UK. It might sound ridiculous to you for a band of bloodthirsty womanisers in uniform to be afflicted with such an epithet, but believe me, the members of that particular regiment are pretty proud of the moniker - and if you ever meet one I'd advise you to compliment him on his renowned gayness with as straight a face as possible!

I'd deleted the comment or thought I had last night.  I couldn't find the sketch (as in jokey short acted piece) so it was redundant. I'd replaced it with something about the jacaranda but somehow the edit didn't "take".

LiR - since you have deleted your, shall we say, 'provocative and patronising' comments, I'm deleting my 'insulted' response.

Nielsen wrote:

Err, what then of the march/dance 'The gay Gordons?

Yes, yes, the "Scottish", Niels, known overhere too...a dance on every of the "older" marriage "feasts"...
Kind regards from Paul.

Meles meles wrote:

PaulRyckier wrote:

Btw: as nearly half of the words in English comes from French and Latin that word "gay" comes also from the French "gai, gaie"

How those English made from that gay person a "gay",  that has one to explain to me...or is a homo always...

As you say the word gay arrived in English during the 12th century from Old French gai or gaie, and in English primarily meant "joyful", "carefree", or "bright and showy". The word may have started to acquire associations of immorality as early as the 14th century, but had certainly gained them by the 17th when it had taken on the additional and rather more specific meaning of one "addicted to hedonistic pleasures and dissipations", or "uninhibited by moral constraints". Context in language is of course all important, and so while one might comment to a woman that she seemed "very gay" - meaning she appeared happy or carefree - to say that she was "a gay woman" implied she was a prostitute, while "a gay man" was a womaniser or a frequenter of a brothel ("a gay house"). 

By the 19th century "a gay man" or "gay boy" had become specifically a male prostitute serving male clients, and from there, by the end of the late 19th century it came to refer to any homosexual male. However the old meaning of joyful or carefree still happily existed, so that well into the 20th century one could still describe a middle-aged bachelor as "gay", indicating that he was unattached and therefore free, without any implication of homosexuality ... or that the decade after the Great War were "the gay 20s" meaning they were carefree, uninhibited, hedonistic or frivolous. 

As the 20th century progressed "gay" with its overtones of inhibition and liberation, became the preferred term since other terms, such as queer, poof, homo, etc were felt to be derogatory. Remember also that in Britain male homosexuality was illegal until the Sexual Offences Act of 1967, and so to openly identify someone as homosexual was considered very offensive and an accusation of serious criminal activity. Additionally, none of the words describing any aspect of homosexuality were considered suitable for polite society. (Even the Parliamentary Commission set up to advise on decriminalising homosexuality and prostitution, which culminated in the 1967 Act, in their minutes coyly referred homosexuals and prostitutes as Huntley and Palmers, after the well-known biscuit makers).  

But, Paul, "homo", at least in English and French, is now deemed offensive or at least rather insensitive. There's nothing wrong with the word homosexual, although one might need to consider the context, but by shortening it to homo, you are making it pejorative. I trust you would not call someone who was was suffering from a psychiatric illness a "psycho"; someone that was educationally retarded a "retard"; or call a spastic a "spaz" (the English word spastic - meaning someone with the condition spasticity which is typically a symptom of cerebral palsy - is itelf now very rarely used outside of its specific medical meaning, and even The Spastics Society, a long-established Uk charity, has renamed itself Scope).

But now, since this is supposed to be a thread about flowers, what about "pansies"?  

MM,

to start with:
"But now, since this is supposed to be a thread about flowers, what about "pansies"?    "
Never heard, but see it seems to be our "viooltje" and yes now I understand:
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/pansy
I think we have in our dialects some ten or more coloquial equivalents to it but surprisingly only one or two for women, as lesbian and the more dull "she is for the women"...

And MM, thank you very much for the historical background.

"But, Paul, "homo", at least in English and French, is now deemed offensive or at least rather insensitive. There's nothing wrong with the word homosexual, although one might need to consider the context, but by shortening it to homo, you are making it pejorative. I trust you would not call someone who was was suffering from a psychiatric illness a "psycho"; someone that was educationally retarded a "retard"; or call a spastic a "spaz" (the English word spastic - meaning someone with the condition spasticity which is typically a symptom of cerebral palsy - is itelf now very rarely used outside of its specific medical meaning, and even The Spastics Society, a long-established Uk charity, has renamed itself Scope)."


MM, that's the problem with languages, even in the own language the connotation of a word can change overtime (at least in my lifetime of the last sexty years). And even many times you have in the standard language another connotation as in the dialect for the same word.
But apart of the many colloquial rather denigrating equivalents, the word "homo", at least in my generation, had a rather neutral connotation, as for instance : it are two homos. But it can that it now even in Dutch has an offensive or insensitive meaning. As in my youth the word "wuf, waife (with the "ai" as in the French "blaise") now certainly in the standard language denigrating and even nowedays in dialect too...
And yes, was it in Avignon or in Sète, in a "café" that the "garçon" said to me that I had not to use the term "nègre" in public... instead better noir or even better nothing...we are so used to the word "neger" from childhood on, without an offensive connotation, that we still use it in allday speaking as it even nowadays even in Dutch is offensive. Now it is more our "zwarte" (black) fellow man...it seems that "noir" is also less offensif in French. What do you think, MM? And I don't know why, but in English I will always say "black man" and certainly not "nigger"...

Kind regards from Paul.

The "cowboy" song "Streets of Laredo" uses the word "gay" to mean "dashing" as mentioned by nordmann earlier in the thread. (It's about a cowboy who has been shot and is dying).  It actually has the words:-

"It was once in the saddle I used to go dashing
Once in the saddle I used to go gay"

Some people think the song is related to an older folk song with versions from various parts of the British Isles (I think at that time Ireland would have been under British rule even if unwillingly) about an unfortunate young woman dying of an STD.  Anyway, a version of Marty Robbins singing "Streets of Laredo"

The lyrics of "Streets of Laredo" - the source is Lyricfind.  nordmann I've done a straight cut and paste - I thought it would be okay to do so because it's a "folk" song and in the public domain but if you think I shouldn't have done so please let me know.

"As I walked out on the streets of Laredo.
As I walked out on Laredo one day,
I spied a poor cowboy wrapped in white linen,
Wrapped in white linen as cold as the clay.
"I can see by your outfit that you are a cowboy."
These words he did say as I boldly walked by.
"Come an' sit down beside me an' hear my sad story.
"I'm shot in the breast an' I know I must die."
"It was once in the saddle, I used to go dashing.
"Once in the saddle, I used to go gay.
"First to the card-house and then down to Rose's.
"But I'm shot in the breast and I'm dying today."
"Get six jolly cowboys to carry my coffin.
"Six dance-hall maidens to bear up my pall.
"Throw bunches of roses all over my coffin.
"Roses to deaden the clods as they fall."
"Then beat… 
"

and the chorus is (again from Lyricfind - this one accompanying Marty's version - the top version was accompanying a version of the song sung by Johnny Cash.

"… Oh, beat the drum slowly and play the fife lowly 
Sing the Death March as you carry me along 
Take me to the valley, there lay the sod o'er me 
I'm a young cowboy, I know I've done wrong.."

Meles meles wrote:

Gilgamesh of Uruk wrote:

Bloomin horrible weed in Senior Monster's garden - been digging up & potting up the stuff by the trugful. Found a patch of hostas in the middle of it - might try to sell some.

Well yes, it can be tenaciously invasive if it gets established in places with suitable conditions (moist and shady under trees)  .... probably one reason why its collection from the wild was officially sancioned by right of 'custom', and more practically, by tax breaks.

It smells nice though. 

Lily of the valley is also toxic. Some people confuse it with wild garlic although I can’t see how because the bell-shaped flowers of lily of the valley are quite distinct.

I was hoeing and weeding an isolated corner of our patch the other day. The wet summer had resulted in a proliferation of parsley piert and wild garlic there. The former doesn’t flower and although it’s edible we don’t really eat parsley piert and it is relatively easy to uproot. The latter, however, produces small white flowers in the spring and we do occasionally use wild garlic in the kitchen. Yet there was so much wild garlic, and it spread so quickly, that there was way more growing than we could ever use. There was also a very heavy scent of garlic in that corner. I thus had to be quite methodical going down on hands and knees uprooting the bulbs one by one. Unlike the bulbs, however, the tiny seeds which the flowers shed during the summer are not really visible to the naked eye and will no doubt make a mockery of my efforts come springtime.

I felt for Dairyman Crick in Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles who, when realising that the butter was tasting off because the cows had eaten wild garlic, then had to form a line comprising himself, Tess, Angel Clare and the rest of the workers to go over the meadow inch by inch to find the culprit. Garlic flowers and allium flowers generally are supposed to indicate good fortune and prosperity although I suppose Crick didn’t feel so – quite the reverse. Unlike Crick, however, I didn’t have to completely eradicate the bulbs but left a small clump of garlic shoots visible for next year and because Mrs V said that she would like some shoots left growing until at least after Hallowe’en.  



(Ramsons – allium ursinum – also known as cowleek. The flowers of wild garlic are said to represent good fortune while the scent of the plant is said to ward off blood-sucking ghouls – apparently.)