‘Hercai Menekşe’ in Turkish, or commonly known as ‘Viola Tricolor’, is an annual European wild flower. It flowers from April to September. It is a relatively small one, only 15 cm. and does not have a nice, distinctive smell. Although the flower makes up this deficiency by having interesting and different colors on its petals. This makes ‘Viola Tricolor’ a highly preferred choice for gardeners.
This flower also has another popular name mostly used in literature, which is ‘Love-in-idleness’. According to Wikipedia; the love-in-idleness was originally a white flower, struck by one of Cupid’s arrows, which turned it purple and gave it its magic love potion. When dripped onto someone's eyelids this love potion causes an individual to fall madly in love with the next person they see.
‘Yet mark'd I where the bolt of Cupid fell:
It fell upon a little western flower,
Before, milk-white, now purple with love's wound,
And maidens call it love-in-idleness.’
A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Act 2, scene 1)
As a key plot device, in his play ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’, William Shakespeare used love-in-idleness superbly. The fairy king Oberon’s and mischievous fairy Puck’s intervention to the plot, using the magic love potion of the flower, creates a chaotic but also comical atmosphere in the play, which also resembles love’s effects in real life. So in a way, by using this flower, Shakespeare shows us that love can be used as a comical element, just like it can be used as a tragic one.
In
Turkish folklore, ‘Hercai Menekşe’
has a lovely, short story. First of all, you have to know that the Turkish word
‘hercai’ means ‘fickle’ in English. So a long time ago in a galaxy far, far
away, two wild flowers fall in love. They bloom every spring and say hello to
the sun, just like all other wild flowers. But before one particular spring,
one of these lovers tells the other one:
‘Let’s
not bloom in this spring like other flowers. Let’s bloom in
the snowy days of winter,
where every other flower escapes
from the cold. Then the whole nature can be ours!’
Both of
them decide not to bloom next spring. But suddenly, one of them blooms that
spring, while the other one still waits for the snow and winter. Since that
day, we call the one which waits for its lover and blooms in winter ‘Kardelen’
in Turkish or ‘Snowdrop’ in English, and the other one, the one that betrays
its lover and blooms
in spring ‘Hercai’. It is a really
common word that Turkish people use, to describe an unfaithful lover,
especially in songs and literary works.
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