"Across the centuries, they have been stitched into our Britishness as the stuff of folklore, poetry, song – from Robert Herrick's account of Corinna going a-Maying to the belief that eating primroses would allow a person to see fairies, via Shakespeare's talk in Hamlet of "A violet in the youth of primy nature,/ Forward, not permanent, sweet, not lasting,/ The perfume and suppliance of a minute.""