'With-in and oute depeinted wonderly With many a thousand daisy[es] rede as rose And white also, this sawe I verely. But what tho deis[y]es might do signifye Can I not tel, saufe that the quenes floure, Alceste, it was, that kept ther her soioure, Which vnder Uenus lady was and quene, And Admete kyng and souerain of that place, To whom obeied _the ladies good ninetene_, With many a thousand other bright of face[24].' The mention of 'the ladies good ninetene' at once shews us whence this mention of Alcestis was borrowed. In a modern book entitled Flora Historica, by Henry Phillips, 2nd ed. i. 42, we are gravely told that 'fabulous history informs us that this plant [the daisy] is called _Bellis_ because it owes its origin to Belides, a granddaughter of Danaus, and one of the nymphs called Dryads, that presided over the meadows and pastures in ancient times. Belides is said to have encouraged the suit of Ephigeus, but whilst dancing on the green with this rural deity she attracted the admiration of Vertumnus, who, just as he was about to seize her in his embrace, saw her transformed into the humble plant that now bears her name.' It is clear that the concocter of this stupid story was not aware that _Belides_ is a _plural_ substantive, being the collective name of the fifty daughters of Danaus, who are here rolled into one in order to be transformed into a single daisy; and all because the words _bellis_ and _Belides_ happen to begin with the same three letters! It may also be noticed that 'in ancient times' the business of the Dryads was to preside over trees rather than 'over meadows and pastures.' Who the 'rural deity' was who is here named 'Ephigeus' I neither know nor care. But it is curious to observe the degeneracy of the story for which Chaucer was (in my belief) originally responsible[25]. See Notes and Queries, 7th S. vi. 186, 309. Of course it is easy to see that this invention on the part of Chaucer is imitated from Ovid's Metamorphoses, where Clytie becomes a sun-flower, Daphne a laurel, and Narcissus, Crocus, and Hyacinthus become, respectively, a narcissus, a crocus, and a hyacinth. At the same time, Chaucer's attention may have been directed to the daisy in particular, as Tyrwhitt long ago pointed out, by a perusal of such poems as Le Dit de la fleur de lis et de la Marguerite, by Guillaume de Machault (printed in Tarbe's edition, 1849, p. 123), and Le Dittié de la flour de la Margherite, by Froissart (printed in Bartsch's Chrestomathie de l'ancien Français, 1875, p. 422); see Introduction to Chaucer's Minor Poems, in vol. i. p. 36. In particular, we may well compare lines 42, 48, 49, 60-63 of our B-text with Machault's Dit de la Marguerite (ed. Tarbé, p. 123):-- 'J'aim une fleur, qui s'uevre et qui s'encline Vers le soleil, de jour quant il chemine; Et quant il est couchiez soubz sa courtine Par nuit obscure, Elle se clost, ainsois que li jours fine.'