tland. [2]

The catkins of the willow are in some counties known as "goslings," or
"goslins,"--children, says Halliwell, [3] sometimes playing with them by
putting them in the fire and singeing them brown, repeating verses at
the same time. One of the names of the heath-pea (_Lathyrus
macrorrhizus_) is liquory-knots, and school-boys in Berwickshire so
call them, for when dried their taste is not unlike that of the real
liquorice. [4] Again, a children's name of common henbane (_Hyoscyamus
niger_) is "loaves of bread," an allusion to which is made by Clare in
his "Shepherd's Calendar":--

"Hunting from the stack-yard sod
The stinking henbane's belted pod,
By youth's warm fancies sweetly led
To christen them his loaves of bread."

A Worcestershire name for a horse-chestnut is the "oblionker tree."
According to a correspondent of _Notes and Queries_ (5th Ser. x. 177),
in the autumn, when the chestnuts are falling from their trunks, boys
thread them on string and play a "cob-nut" game with them. When the
striker is taking aim, and preparing for a shot at his adversary's nut,
he says:--

"Oblionker!
My first conker (conquer)."

The word oblionker apparently being a meaningless invention to rhyme
with the word conquer, which has by degrees become applied to the
fruit itself.

The wall peniterry (_Parietaria officinalis_) is known in Ireland as
"peniterry," and is thus described in "Father Connell, by the O'Hara
Family" (chap, xii.):--

"A weed called, locally at least, peniterry, to which the suddenly
terrified [schoolboy] idler might run in his need, grasping it hard and
threateningly, and repeating the following 'words of power':--

'Peniterry, peniterry, that grows by the wall,
Save me from a whipping, or I'll pull you roots and all.'"

Johnston, who has noticed so many odd superstitions, tells us that the
tuberous ground-nut (_Bunium flexuosum_), which has various nicknames,
such as "lousy," "loozie," or "lucie arnut," is dug up by children who
eat the roots, "but they are hindered from indulging to excess by a
cherished belief that the luxury tends to generate vermin in the
head." [5]

An old rhyme often in years past used by country children when the
daffodils made their annual appearance in early spring, was as
follows:--

"Daff-a-down-dill
Has now come to town,
In a yellow petticoat
And a green gown."

A name for the shepherd's purse is "mother's-heart," and in the