[503] See "Winter's Tale," iv. 3; "Henry V.," v. 2; "1 Henry VI.," i. 1.
In "1 Henry VI." (i. 2) Pucelle declares:
"I am prepared; here is my keen-edged sword, Deck'd with five flower-de-luces on each side."
Some think the lily is meant, others the iris. For the lily theory, says Mr. Ellacombe,[504] "there are the facts that Shakespeare calls it one of the lilies, and that the other way of spelling is fleur-de-lys."
[504] "Plant-Lore of Shakespeare," p. 73.
Chaucer seems to connect it with the lily ("Canterbury Tales," Prol. 238):
"Her nekke was white as the flour-de-lis."
On the other hand, Spenser separates the lilies from the flower-de-luces in his "Shepherd's Calendar;" and Ben Jonson mentions "rich carnations, flower-de-luces, lilies."
The fleur-de-lis was not always confined to royalty as a badge. Thus, in the square of La Pucelle, in Rouen, there is a statue of Jeanne D'Arc with fleurs-de-lis sculptured upon it, and an inscription as follows:
"The maiden's sword protects the royal crown; Beneath the maiden's sword the lilies safely blow."
St. Louis conferred upon the Chateaubriands the device of a fleur-de-lis, and the motto, "Mon sang teint les bannièrs de France." When Edward III. claimed the crown of France, in the year 1340, he quartered the ancient shield of France with the lions of England. It disappeared, however, from the English shield in the first year of the present century.
_Gillyflower._ This was the old name for the whole class of carnations, pinks, and sweet-williams, from the French _girofle_, which is itself corrupted from the Latin _caryophyllum_.[505] The streaked gillyflowers, says Mr. Beisly,[506] noticed by Perdita in "Winter's Tale" (iv. 4)--
"the fairest flowers o' the season Are our carnations and streak'd gillyvors, Which some call nature's bastards"--
"are produced by the flowers of one kind being impregnated by the pollen of another kind, and this art (or law) in nature Shakespeare alludes to in the delicate language used by Perdita, as well as to the practice of increasing the plants by slips." Tusser, in his "Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry," says:
"The gilloflower also the skilful doe know, Doth look to be covered in frost and in snow."