Reflections and Nightmares- Irene A Waters (writer and memoirist)

© irene waters 2014

My husband brought home a dead looking bunch of daffodils the other day purchased in a fund raiser to collect funds for cancer research. Daffodil day is held each year for this purpose and as 115 Australians die each day from cancer growing hope for better treatment and thus more survivors is a very worthwhile cause. 

The next day the dead bunch of daffodils had opened into a gorgeous showing of gold and yellow. It made me think that the the other name for daffodil is truly warranted – Narcissus. Where this name comes from is not known fact though it is rumoured that on the ground that Narcissus (the chap that couldn’t stop staring at his reflections in puddles) died these blooms sprung up for the first time or it could have happened vice versa.  It could have been as Pliny expressed – named for its narcotic properties.

That is the amazing thing about the beautiful daffodil. It is highly toxic. They contain poisons lycorine (mostly in the bulb and leaves) and norbelladine. Of the two hundred different chemical structures of the latter poison 79 are found in the humble daffodil to the detriment of a number of children at a school in Suffolk who were poisoned when a daffodil bulb was mistaken for an onion and put in the cookery class soup.

© irene waters 2014

You also have to feel very sorry for the poor old florist who suffers from an ailment known as “daffodil itch” which causes a severe dermatitis with itchiness, dryness, scaly skin, redness and thickening of the nail. All this because of a poison, calcium oxalate, in the sap. 

Still there is nothing like going through a cold winter (which I no longer have to do) and seeing those first bulbs burst into colour. It is a sure sign that spring has sprung and summer is around the corner.  William Wordsworth vision is what I like to see. 

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o’er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

 

Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the milky way,

They stretched in never-ending line

Along the margin of a bay:

Ten thousand saw I at a glance,

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

 

The waves beside them danced; but they

Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:

A poet could not but be gay,

In such a jocund company:

I gazed—and gazed—but little thought

What wealth the show to me had brought:

 

For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils.

© irene waters 2014