Folklore: Dandelion always knows the time??

Subject: Folklore: Dandelion always knows the time??
From: clueless don
Date: 03 Sep 04 - 08:31 AM

I have run into a number of references in various books to the notion that "a Dandelion always knows the time". I did a web search, and came up with the following:

"Blow on a seed head until all the seeds are gone. The number of puffs it took will tell you what time it is. Alternatively, blow three times on the seed head and the number of seeds left will tell the time."

But I didn't find anything else.

I'm pretty sure that I saw this notion about Dandelions and the time in one of the Mary Poppins books, and also in The Hobbit, both times in connection with a riddle game. Could it be from the British side of the pond? I never heard anything about this growing up here in the USA.

Any insights appreciated!

Don

Subject: RE: Folklore: Dandelion always knows the time??
From: Scooby Doo
Date: 03 Sep 04 - 08:36 AM

It was something i was brought up with in the UK,i thought it was a farming theme been brought up on a farm and the countryside.It seems to work too if i remember 40ish years ago.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Dandelion always knows the time??
From: DMcG
Date: 03 Sep 04 - 08:43 AM

I was brought up with the 'number of blows' rather than the 'number of seeds left' method. I can't say I like the idea of the latter approach ("Oh look, its 27 o'clock - or does that mean its 3 o'clock tomorrow?")

Subject: RE: Folklore: Dandelion always knows the time??
From: GUEST,MMario
Date: 03 Sep 04 - 08:44 AM

I had heard of it as a child - but there was a lot of british influence in our growing up -

Subject: RE: Folklore: Dandelion always knows the time??
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 03 Sep 04 - 08:51 AM

The Dandelion Clock, we called it. It was one of those things that you just knew about, so I've no idea where I got it from. This was South London in the 1950s, but I think it will have been known pretty much everywhere in those days.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Dandelion always knows the time??
From: GUEST,Mingulay
Date: 03 Sep 04 - 08:55 AM

We always blew on dandelions when we were kids 50 years ago but never knew if they could tell the time as we never had watches to check them against. But time has little meaning when you are free to roam the fields all day. The rumbling stomach always let you know when it was teatime. Time to amble home picking blackberries on the way and wondering why the best ones were always just out of reach. Funny how those far off summer holidays seem like yesterday. Don't ask me what happened yesterday, did we even have a yesterday?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Dandelion always knows the time??
From: Willa
Date: 03 Sep 04 - 09:54 AM

That brings back memories - yes Mingulay, mina are like yours. That was in the UK and we used the 'number of puffs'.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Dandelion always knows the time??
From: Bert
Date: 03 Sep 04 - 10:08 AM

It was number of Puffs in the mid Forties too. And it was quite a ritual. You had to say the time as you blew.

fwoo - 'One O'Clock'; fwoo - 'Two O'Clock' and so on until all the seeds had gone. If there were a few obstinate seeds left, then 'Oh that one doesn't work, let's try again'.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Dandelion always knows the time??
From: Leadfingers
Date: 03 Sep 04 - 12:15 PM

And of course Jez Lowe wrote a song about Dandelion Clocks !

Subject: RE: Folklore: Dandelion always knows the time??
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 03 Sep 04 - 12:49 PM

No idea except Pip born 1935 learned it from her mother, etc. I was taught by Pip who did the number of puffs.

Another old one with a dandelion is that if you pick one, you will wet the bed. There is an element of truth in this in the sense that the dandelion is a diuretic.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Dandelion always knows the time??
From: GUEST,milk monitor
Date: 03 Sep 04 - 01:32 PM

We did the 'counting of the puffs' as kids, and mine still do it today. But my daughter calls them fairy clocks, because she thinks that each seed that flies away becomes a fairy...and who am I to correct her? Maybe she's right?
And the buttercup under the chin trick to see who likes butter...did that cross the pond?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Dandelion always knows the time??
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 03 Sep 04 - 01:36 PM

"Dandelion-clock" was added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 1987 as a name for the seed head. No comment on origin. Perhaps the latest edition may have dated quotations.
A quick look at Google shows that it is known in Hungary and Australia.
Not mentioned in Opie.

Gay novel, "The Dandelion Clock," by Jay Mandal. Available from Amazon among others. What has being gay got to do with the children's game?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Dandelion always knows the time??
From: GUEST,nickr90
Date: 03 Sep 04 - 01:58 PM

More than you ever wanted to know about the dandelion
Dandelion comes from the French 'dent de lion' or lions tooth. Where the name comes from is a mystery but it probably refers to the leaf shapes.
Where the plant comes from is not. It comes from just about everywhere.
The dandelion has been around for about 30 million years. It grows in Europe, Asia, North America and everybody's garden.
Such a wide habitat shows that it is resistant not only to people, but also to disease, bugs, heat, cold, wind and weather.
The dandelion is related to both lettuce and chicory and is more useful than both.
It can cover a garden with bright yellow flowers which then turn to a white, fluffy cover.
The young leaves make a spicy salad.
The flowers add flavour and colour to wine.
The roots, toasted, ground and brewed are said to make quite acceptable 'coffee'.
The older leaves are high in iron as well as vitamins A and C. They also have laxative properties.
This weed is also used in folk remedies to treat gall stones, liver complaints, jaundice, skin eruptions, rheumatism, warts and freckles.
Cage birds love dandelion seeds. Pigs eat the whole plant, roots and all. Rabbits enjoy dandelion leaves.
With the assistance of the bees, dandelions make honey.
Children will tell you that dandelions make good clocks by blowing the 'helicopter' seeds and counting the hours until the plant is bare.
Young lovers use it to decide the intentions of a suitor just like plucking daisy petals, but in this instance blowing seeds away. A book published in 1884 suggested young lovers to speak their romantic thoughts to the feathery head then gently to blow them in the direction of the loved one.
When you think about it, if the dandelion was a bit more rare we would have official societies for its preservation.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Dandelion always knows the time??
From: Jim McLean
Date: 03 Sep 04 - 02:42 PM

We (in Scotland) knew the dandelion by the name of 'pee the bed' and the French call it 'pis en lit' ... exactly the same.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Dandelion always knows the time??
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 03 Sep 04 - 02:43 PM

The dandelion is much maligned by the grass lawn lovers. In a natural meadow, it is part of the succession of wild plants with yellow, purple, pink and white flowers that succeed one another as the season progresses. A balance is achieved and maintained. Care is mostly devoted to removing encroaching seedling trees (mostly poplars here in central Alberta).

Subject: RE: Folklore: Dandelion always knows the time??
From: GUEST,Ard Mhacha.
Date: 04 Sep 04 - 05:41 AM

In Ireland we blew the seed heads to tell the time , it never worked, also used the seed heads, when matured to brown, to feed our Budgies and Canaries.
I have tasted the "Coffee" made from the toasted roots,and each time I conjure up the memory I am sick, the flower was known as"piss the beds".

Subject: RE: Folklore: Dandelion always knows the time??
From: JennyO
Date: 04 Sep 04 - 09:22 AM

In Oz when I was a child we called them "Santa Clauses" and we blew on them saying with each blow - "He loves me, he loves me not" until they were all gone. Of course we would try really hard to make the final blow "He loves me".

Subject: RE: Folklore: Dandelion always knows the time??
From: clueless don
Date: 08 Sep 04 - 10:12 AM

My thanks to everyone who posted!

Based on these answers plus answers I received on another forum, it appears that telling the time with "dandelion clocks" is one of those bits of folklore that are almost universal on the British side of the pond, but mostly unheard of here in the USA. Can't speak for Canada, Mexico, or other parts of the world, though I thank JennyO for her report from Oz.

Don

Subject: RE: Folklore: Dandelion always knows the time??
From: GUEST,Anne Croucher
Date: 08 Sep 04 - 07:39 PM

In Yorkshire the 'clocks' were blown to tell the time - and the single floating seeds were called fairies.

The slightly different and larger seed carriers of Rose Bay Willow Herb were called angels, and although I never found the plants growing in the area I frequented in their season the seed carriers would come floating on the breeze - usually from the NorthWest in the evenings, and go off down the hill.

They were called pis your bed, presumably they have diuretic properties, on the estate we moved to when I was seven. The nasty big boys would pull up the largest plants they could find and lash the dirty root in the faces of smaller children, shouting that it would make them wet their beds that night. I think the fun went out of it for them when I learned what a knee in the jocks would do to them, and encouraged all the other victims to attack the same spot.

Anne

Subject: RE: Folklore: Dandelion always knows the time??
From: alison
Date: 08 Sep 04 - 10:08 PM

it was the number of puffs in Ireland too..... my kids still do it over here in Oz....

on a similar theme we used to hold buttercups under peoples chins to see if they liked butter... if there was a yellow glow reflected on the skin... the person liked butter.

slainte

alison

Subject: Lyr Add: THE DANDYLION CLOCK (Alexander Hay, 1879)
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 17 Oct 04 - 08:08 PM

Lyr. Add: THE DANDYLION CLOCK
Alexander Hay, 1879
Tune: "Days We Went A-gipsying"

When wor aud toon was the aud toon,
Wi' mony a grassy nyuk,
And posies ivvoreewhere adorn'd
It like sum pikter-byuk;
We lay above the sighin' burn,
On hills ov fern and rock,
To blaw thaw balloon life away,
Maw "dandylion clock,"

Two bonnie lasses and me-sel,
But bairns- dash! hoo we play'd
Wi' buttercups and daisies pure,
And babby-hooses made.
Before the manly cares cam oot
To gie won's heart a shock,
We lay and blaw'd to tell the time-
The "dandylion clock."

Luk! the dear sunshine's teeming doon
Neagarrays of joy,
On Lizzie's bonnie curly heed,
Like dolls her lovin' toy,
It sparkles like the goold itsel-
Aw might hev had a lock
Is easy as aw blew for her
The "dandylion clock."

And there wis little katie, tee,
Whe's figur aw wad paint;
But God saves me the trubbil noo,
He's tyun hur to the saint,
And Lizzie tee's an angel gud,
Iv her brite lalock frock;
Aw think aw see her blawin' yit
The "dandylion clock."

Alexander Hay was born in Newcastle in 1826. Apprenticed as a cabinet maker, he took to the sea as a ship's carpenter. He was "brutally used" for writing a song damning the skipper ("Board of Trade, Ahoy," which he recited at a public meeting in Limehouse, with Samuel Plimsoll in the chair. He later was a tutor, a journalist and at London worked on the Great Exhibition of 1862. He contributed songs, including this one, to the Newcastle press.
From "Allan's Illustrated Edition of Tyneside Songs," 1862, latest ed. 1972 (from ed. of 1891), pp. 560-562.