There's a book called Night Watch by Terry Pratchett, in which old soldiers wear lilac and sing a song with the above line in it to remember their fallen comrades. The rest of the book expounds on how this happens. I'm a huge geek for automatically associating the lilac in my garden with the song

Also, way back when Knife of Dreams came out, I posted about reading on the train home, and when Balwer made an appearance, thought to myself "great, there's Andy!". Similar when Sareitha showed up. Everyone was highly amused