How funny that out of thousands of things at a brocante fair a charm that size of my fingernail could grab my attention. This green daisy or Margurite in French has two parts, a cover that turns around a stationary part the has words written on each petal. The finely printed words I could not read when I bought it, but I took a chance that it would convey a sweet secret and I wasn't wrong.
On the petals are written, "I love you with all my heart."
It sure beats that game of plucking petals and saying, "(S)he loves me (s)he loves me not."
Origins: The Daisy Oracle (He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not)
Recited while plucking the petals from a flower (usually a daisy):
He loves me,
He loves me not.
He loves me,
He loves me not.
He loves me,
He loves me not…
The couplet is repeated until all of the petals are discarded; the line is spoken when the final petal is plucked divines the truer statement.
While the rhyme can be gendered in any direction our heterocentric, traditionalist media would have you believe the ritual is the preserve of lovelorn adolescent girls and their younger counterparts.
Flowers and their symbolic ties to human affections are deeply ingrained in our culture, spawning mythology and language of their own. Roses have long been associated with love, Daisies represent innocence, youth, and vitality, appropriate to the carefree folly of early love the rhyme invokes. The tradition of daisy-divination is noted in Goethe’s Faust part one of which was completed in 1806:
Faust: Sweet darling!
Margaret: Wait a bit![She plucks a star-flower and picks off the petals, one after the other.]
Faust: What’s that? A nosegay?
Margaret: No, it’s just a game.
Faust: What?
Margaret: You will laugh at me, do go![She pulls off the petals and murmurs.]
Faust: What are you murmuring?
Margaret [half aloud]: He loves me – loves me not!
Faust: Sweet, heavenly vision!
Margaret [goes on]: Loves me – not – loves me – not-[Plucking off the last petal with lovely joy.]
He loves me!
Faust: Yes, my child! and let this blossom’s word
Be oracle of gods to you! He loves you!
You understand that word and what it means? He loves you![He seizes both her hands.]
Malcolm Jones (in his book The Secret Middle Ages dates the first printing of the “The Daisy Oracle” 1471, when Augsburg nun and scribe Clara Hätzlerin included it in her Liederhandschrift (songbook), making this the oldest rhyme we’ve tackled so far. The rhyme is still sung in Germany (liebt mich, liebt mich nicht).
“The Daisy Oracle” is thought to be French in origin but all the evidence is anecdotal." via the Ouora.
"He loves me, he loves me not or She loves me, she loves me not (originally effeuiller la marguerite in French) is a game of French origin[citation needed], in which one person seeks to determine whether the object of their affection returns that affection.
A person playing the game alternately speaks the phrases "He (or she) loves me," and "He loves me not," while picking one petal off a flower (usually an oxeye daisy) for each phrase. The phrase they speak on picking off the last petal supposedly represents the truth between the object of their affection loving them or not. The player typically is motivated by attraction to the person they are speaking of while reciting the phrases. They may seek to reaffirm a pre-existing belief or act out of whimsy.
In the original French version of the game, the petals do not simply indicate whether the object of the player's affection loves them, but to what extent: un peu or "a little", beaucoup or "a lot", passionnément or "passionately", à la folie or "to madness", or pas du tout or "not at all." Via Wiki.
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