| 词源 |
gathering nuts in May. Since there are no nuts to be gathered in May, the old children’s song that goes, “Here we go gathering nuts in May” seems to make no sense—and indeed, it may have been intended as a nonsense song. But the nuts in the phrase has been explained as being knots of May, that is, bunches of flowers. In Elizabethan England Elizabeth herself gathered knots of May in the meadows, one author tells us, and this is a plausible explanation, even though there are no recorded quo- tations supporting the use of knots for flowers, except possibly the English knot gardens of herbs. |