France has supplied Scotland with many expressive derivatives, and in Silver Tassie we have an adaptation of the Ercnch "la tasse" - the cup. The young silver birch trees grouped at this point, fringing as it were the wide-brimmed cup that forms the green, cave the rue. "Silver tassies " arc rare to-day, but they arc sti1! immortalised in souli. Burns, you may recall, gave . the ballad:

Go fetch to me a pint <>' wine,

An' till it in a silver tassie; That I may drink before I no

A service to my bonngglie lassie.

A tine reference to the nUl stirrup cup - the beaker without a base that could not be set down but must be quaffed while the rider was in the saddle. The Silver Tassie worthily vies with the famous Punch Howl green at Hoylake.