Note E253 — 43.

"Sweete Williams,"from Fr. œillet, Lat. ocellus, a little eye, corrupted to Willy, and thence to William, "in reference, perhaps, to a popular ballad, 'Fair Margaret and Sweet William,' [printed in Ritson's Early Songs and Ballads, ed. Hazlitt, 1877] a name assigned by W. Bulleyn (f. 48) to the Wallflower, but by later herbalists and modern gardeners, as here, to a species of pink, Dianthus barbatus, Linn. According to an article in the Quarterly Review (No. 227), it formerly bore the name of 'Sweet Saint William'; but the writer gives no reference, and probably had no authority for saying so."—Dr. R. A. Prior, pp. 228 and 250.