Daisies

  • While Daisies may seem like humble flowers, they have played a key role in making love prophesies in England, France, and America for centuries.
  • In France children sing the following as they pluck a daisy's petals, "he loves me, a little bit, passionately, insanely, not at all" and start the song over again.
  • An American variation of the petal-plucking words is "Rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief, merchant, tailor, banker, chief."
  • In England and the U.S., women have sung "This year, next year, sometime, never."
  • Chamomile flowers were used instead of daisies for love prophesies in 19th century Germany.
  • The Dandelion also has a role to play, in America it is once it has lost its petal and turned into a fluffy seed-laden globe ("Blowball"). After blowing three times, a child knows how many children they will have, how many years will pass before a wish comes true, or whether her mother loves her. In Scotland, the blowing method show "in which direction an unknown loved lived, and whether he were coming soon."
  • Dreaming of daisies is considered good luck in spring, and bad luck in winter.
  • It is lucky to "step on the first flowers in the spring but extremely unlucky to uproot them."
  • In medieval times, daisies were a reminder of the innocence of the infant Jesus.
  • American colonists treated cuts and bruises with a daisy lotion, and daisy tea was used for whooping cough, asthma, and as an "anti-spasmodic, as a diuretic, and as a tonic."
  • Yugoslavians drank Daisy juice for their upset stomachs, Elizabethans cured joint pain with daisies, "New England Puritans used Daisies to cure deafness"
  • American books from the late 30s still refer to daisy's medical powers for hearts.
  • Despite the fact that two types of daisies are considered to be weeds and plague farmers in America and England the public continues to love the flower, much in the same way it loves mistletoe, "a semi-parasitic vine capable of killing its host tree."
  • "Fresh as a Daisy" was first written in 1833.
  • There are many colloquial English expression that refer to daisies, the one we know best in the U.S. is "to push up daisies".
  • Daisy's are symbolically linked to women and children, which is why they can be used as a slur on masculinity.
  • Daisies were popular even in medieval times, when "knights at tournaments wore the flower, while their ladies wore daisy wreaths as crowns."
  • The French king St. Louis is supposed to have had a ring embossed with both a Daisy and a Lily, the first for his wife (named Marguerite) and the second for France.
  • Historically, princesses named Marguerite or Margaret have adopted the daisy as their flower. This is true of Italian, British and French princesses.

Researched and written by Sylvie Beauvais, adapted from Katharine T. Kell, "The Folklore of the Daisy" The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 69, No. 274 (Oct-Dec 1956), 369-376.