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The common weeds and plants of the top were very like English ones, such as buttercups, sow-thistle, plantain, wormwood, chickweed, charlock, St. John's wort, violets and many others, all closely allied to our common plants of those names, but of distinct species. There was also a honey-suckle, and a tall and very pretty kind of cowslip.
Then there is the sow-thistle, which in Russia is said to belong to the devil; and Loki, the evil spirit in northern mythology, is occasionally spoken of as sowing weeds among the good seed; from whence, it has been suggested, originated the popular phrase of "sowing one's wild oats."
Our cattle and our horses, with the exception of those we had used the night before, had strayed in search of water; but Charley found them on the sow-thistle plains, beyond our last camp. Messrs. Calvert, Murphy, and Brown, came in early this morning; they had lost their way in the dark, in consequence of remaining too long at the water-hole.
Gathering in groups, they appeared to consult whether such a peculiar substance could be converted into use, or whether the glove should be drawn by main force, and precipitated to the sow-thistle below.
He drew out his knife, cut the plant, and carried it into his own house; stripped the leaves off it and cut up the stalk; and there came a thick, white juice out of it, as there comes out of the sow-thistle when it is bruised, except that the juice was more like oil.
How strange it is, too, that, to enforce this sense of desolation, sad dishevelled weeds cling ever to such antique masonry! Here are the henbane, the sow-thistle, the wild cucumber. At Avignon, at Orvieto, at Dolce Acqua, at Les Baux, we never missed them. And they have the dusty courtyards, the massive portals, where portcullises still threaten, of Fosdinovo to themselves.
But suddenly it opened its pretty blossom, that it might form a wreath around His head. On this account it has been held in high repute. Hence the practice in Italy of decking mangers at Christmas time with moss, sow-thistle, cypress, and holly.
He would like to be as smooth and as shapely as the rest, but he knows his own business, and he has adapted himself, like a sensible fellow, to his rough conditions." A little later Father Payne stopped to look at a great sow-thistle that was growing vigorously under a hedge-row. "Did you ever see such a bit of pure force?" said Father Payne.
Many curious names have resulted from the prefix pig, as in Sussex, where the bird's-foot trefoil is known as pig's-pettitoes; and in Devonshire the fruit of the dog-rose is pig's-noses. The common cyclamen is sow-head, and a popular name for the Sonchus oleraceus is sow-thistle.
He'd never be the man to walk into her ladyship's garden an' eat up her flowerbeds: raason why, he'd get a jolly good hiding if he did. But he says to hisself, he says, when he sees a nice bite o' clover or a sow-thistle by the roadside: "This here's what's left for the poor, the fatherless, and the widder it ain't much, but thank God for small mercies! an' he falls to.
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