Note E215 — 39.
Reading edition
"Primerose," from Pryme rolles, the name it bears in old books and MSS. The Grete Herball, ch. cccl. says: "It is called Pryme Rolles of pryme tyme, because it beareth the first floure in pryme tyme." It is also so called in Frere Randolph's Catalogue. Chaucer writes it in one word primerole. (See also MS. Addit. 11, 307, f. 37:
"He shal ben lyk the lytel bee That seketh the blosme on the tre, And souketh on the prumorole.")
Primerole is an abbreviation of Fr. primeverole, It. primaverola, dimin. of prima vera, from fior di prima vera = the first spring flower. Primerole, as an outlandish unintelligible word, was soon familiarized into prime rolles, and this into primrose. This is explained in popular works as meaning the first rose of the spring, a name that never could have been given to a plant that in form and colour is so unlike a rose. But the rightful claimant is, strange to say, the daisy, which in the South of Europe is a common and conspicuous flower in early spring, while the primrose is an extremely rare one, and it is the daisy that bears the name in all the old books. See Fuchs, Hist. Stirpium, 1542, p. 145, where there is an excellent figure of it, titled primula veris; and the Ortus Sanitatis, ed. Augsb. 1486, ch. cccxxxiii., where we have a very good woodcut of a daisy titled "masslieben, Premula veris, Latine." Brunfelsius, Novum Herbarium, ed. 1531, speaking of the Herba paralysis, the cowslip, says, p. 1590, expressly, "Sye würt von etlichen Doctores Primula veris genaunt, das doch falsch ist wann Primula veris ist matsomen oder zeitlosen." Brunschwygk (De Arte Distillandi, 1500, book ii. c. viii.) uses the same words. The Zeitlose is the daisy. Parkinson (Th. Bot. p. 531) assigns the name to both the daisy and the primrose. Matthioli (ed. Frankfort, 1586, p. 653) calls his Bellis Major "Primo fiore maggiore, seu Fiore di prima vera, nonnullis Primula veris major" and figures the moon-daisy. His Bellis minor, which seems to be our daisy, he calls "Primo fiore minore, Fior di primavera, Gallis Marguerites, Germanis Masslieben." At p. 883, he figures the cowslip, and calls that also "Primula veris, Italis Fiore di primavera, Gallis primevere."—Dr. Prior's Pop. Names of British Plants. "Petie Mulleyn (whiche we call Cowslippe and Primerose) is of two sortes. The smaller sorte, which we call Primerose, Herbasculum minus, is of diuers kindes, as yellow and greene, single and dubble."—Lyte's Dodoens, p. 122.
Lupton (Book of Notable Things, v. 89) speaks of "Primroses, which some take to be Daisies."—Note by Mr. J. Britten, F.L.S.