[Vwoolf] Cornflower mystery

[Toni McNaron]

Not sure about eye shadow, but there is another name for cornflowers in 
the South where I grew up.  The flower is called "ragged robin," the 
word I learned for it as a child.  I always loved planting them--dark 
blue, soft pink, off white.  Their bloom looks like a wind-torn object; 
it's an "untidy" bloom, hence the common name of "ragged," though I had 
no idea about the "robin" part.

Years ago, in a PBS production about Elizabeth I, in powerful scene in 
which Elizabeth tells Robert Dudley, her main sexual interest in many of 
our minds, that his future was going to be grim, she calls him 
affectionately "My ragged Robin."  I began to wonder if the gardener in 
the South who began calling the flower a "ragged robin" might have known 
this story and thought the tattered blossom was like poor Robert 
Dudley's fate.

Woolf was fascinated with Elizabeth I's life, so I offer this anecdote 
to the list.


Toni

Toni McNaron