Dairy women used to churn the petals of the Marigold with their cream for giving to their butter a yellow colour. The Marsh Marigold (_Caltha poetarum_) or the Marsh [330] Horsegowl of old writers, grows commonly in our wet meadows, and resembles a gigantic buttercup, being of the same order of plants (_Ranunculaceoe_). The term, Marsh Marigold, is a pleonasm for Marigold, which means of itself the Marsh Gowl or Marsh Golden Flower, being an abbreviation of the old Saxon _mear-gealla_. So that the term "Marsh" has become prefixed unnecessarily. Presently, the name "Marigold," "Marsh Gowl," was passed on to the _Calendula_ of the corn fields of Southern Europe, and to the garden Marigold. Furthermore, the botanical title, Caltha, of the Mare Blob, is got from _calathus_, a small round basket of twigs or osiers made two thousand years and more ago, which the concave golden bowl of the Marsh Marigold was thought to resemble. Persephone was collecting wild flowers in a _Calathus_ when carried off by the admiring Pluto. The earliest use of the floral name _Caltha_ occurs in Virgil's second Pastoral, "_Mollia luteola pingit vaccinia Caltha_." The title Mare Blob comes from the Anglo-Saxon, "_mere_" (a marsh), and "_bleb_" or "_blob_" (a bladder). These flowers were the _flaventia lumina Calthoe_ of Columella, described by Shakespeare in the _Winter's Tale_. They are also known as "Bublicans," "Meadowbrights," "Crazies," "Christ's Eyes," "Bull's Eyes," "May Blobs," "Drunkards," "Water Caltrops," and wild "Batchelor's Buttons." A tincture is made (H.) from the whole plant when in flower, and may be given with success for that form of bloodlessness with great impairment of the whole health, known as pernicious anaemia. In toxic quantities the marsh Marigold has produced in its provers, a pallid, yellow, swollen state of the face, constant headache and giddiness, a thickly-coated tongue, diarrhoea, a small rapid pulse sometimes intermittent, heaviness of the limbs, and an [331] unhealthy, eruptive state of the skin; so that the tincture of the plant in small, well-diluted doses will slowly overcome this totality of symptoms, and serve to establish a sound state of restored health. Five drops of the tincture diluted to the third strength should be given three times a day with water. Dr. Withering tells that on a large quantity of the flowers being put in the bed-room of a girl subject to fits, the attacks ceased; and an infusion of the flowers has been since given with success for similar fits. The Marsh Marigold has been called _Verrucaria_, because efficacious in curing warts; also _Solsequia_, or _Solsequium_; and Sponsa Solis, since the flower opens at the rising, and shuts at the setting of the sun. MARJORAM.