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NOTES TO THE KINGIS QUAIR (47).
n agaln ' For also wel wol loue be set
Under ragges as rich rochet;
And eek as wel by amorettes
In mourning Make, as bright burnettes.
In the latter passageTyrwhitt explains amorettehy ‘an amorous woman,’
which seems quite right; Cotgrave quotes the very lines of le Roman
de la Rose (4437, &c.) which are here cited. But it is obvious that the
same explanation will not apply to the other passage, which Tyrwhitt
omitted to note or observe ; whilst at the same time, this other pas¬
sage is the very one of which King James was thinking. Cotgrave also
assigns to the word the sense of ‘ love-trick ’; but it is clearly here used
in the sense of ‘ love-device ’ or ‘ love-ornament.’ What was really the
precise shape of the amorette, it would now be hard to say; it can hardly
have been precisely a knot or love-knot, as that would be an awkward
shape, I fancy, for a spangle. It is perhaps worth adding that, accord¬
ing to Sigart, the Walloon word amoicretteis still used to mean penny-
cress, the English name of which is due to ‘the resemblance which its
seed-vessels in size and shape bear to silver pennies ’; Johns, Flowers
of the Field, 4th ed. p. 40. Perhaps it is meant, accordingly, that the
spangles were thin and circular, which is their usual shape.
Flonre-Ionettis, flowers of the great St John’s wort; see the Glos¬
sary. The great St John’s wort actually has, as it were, a tuft of
stamens in the centre of the flower, which may most aptly be com¬
pared to a golden plume; or, conversely, a golden plume may be
compared to the tuft. This leaves no doubt as to the flower intended.
Tytler supposes that the king “ may have dubbed some flower with
the name janetta, in honour of his mistress, the lady Jane.” But the
name jaunette is a real one, though it is quite possible that it was
chosen with a punning reference to Joan, which better represents
the name of the lady ; for it is spelt Johanne in the Chronicle of
London quoted by Irving.
Round crokettis. These two words are inserted by me, merely to
fill up the line; it is obvious that the MS. is wrong in repeating
floure-Ionettis from the line above. It is very difficult to find words that
rime ; we have only the choice of Jlourettis (see the quotation from the
Romaunt of the Rose just above), or violettis, ox crokettis—unless there
be some other word which has escaped me. The poet would hardly
compare plumes to flowerets (little flowers) or to violets, just after com¬
paring them to another flower; but the comparison to crockets is
just conceivable, though not perhaps highly appropriate. A crocket
was a sort of curled tuft, and was actually used of a particular kind of
ornament for the hair. Sir F. Madden, in his remarks on Havelok
the Dane, shews that Athelstan with the golden crocket is the name
of a lost romance; see Havelok, ed. Skeat, p. vi. note 1. Indeed,
the word still survives as a term of architecture. Still, if any critic
can make a better guess, by all means let him do so.