Although cuckoo-flower and lady's smock are now the usual names,
Geoffrey Grigson in his Englishman's [sic] Flora, 1955, recorded over
50 local names for this flower, many of them connected with cuckoos,
ladies and milkmaids and all those associated nudge-nudge-wink-wink
vernal pastimes! In Somerset and S. Wales he says it was known as
Cuckoo's shoes and stockings, the paler flowers being the stockings
and the darker ones the shoes... In many parts of Europe it was
considered an unlucky flower and if you picked it you risked being
bitten by an adder, struck by lightning or otherwise doomed!
Richard Mabey's Flora Britanica (1996) records the existence of both
double and hose-in-hose (one flower growing through another - there
must be a technical term?) forms and he also lists comparitive dates
for the appearance of the flower and the sound of the cuckoo all over
Britain in 1994 - in most cases the former preceded the latter by
only a few days.
Natasha de Chroustchoff