Chapter 5

FOOTNOTES:

[202:1] The original meaning of Peascod is a bag of peas. Cod is bag as Matt. x. 10--"ne codd, ne hlaf, ne feo on heora gyrdlum--'not a bag, not a loaf, not (fee) money in their girdles.'"--COCKAYNE, _Spoon and Sparrow_, p. 518.

PEONY, _see_ PIONY.

PEPPER.

(1) _Hotspur._

Such protest of Pepper-gingerbread.

_1st Henry IV_, act iii, sc. 1 (260). (_See_ GINGER, 9.)

(2) _Falstaff._

An I have not forgotten what the inside of a church is made of, I am a Pepper-corn, a brewer's horse.

_Ibid._, act iii, sc. 3 (8).

(3) _Poins._

Pray God, you have not murdered some of them.

_Falstaff._

Nay, that's past praying for, for I have Peppered two of them.

_Ibid._, act ii, sc. 4 (210).

(4) _Falstaff._

I have led my ragamuffins, where they are Peppered.

_Ibid._, act v, sc. 3 (36).

(5) _Mercutio._

I am Peppered, I warrant, for this world.

_Romeo and Juliet_, act iii, sc. 1 (102).

(6) _Ford._

He cannot 'scape me, 'tis impossible he should; he cannot creep into a halfpenny purse or into a Pepper-box.

_Merry Wives_, act iii, sc. 5 (147).

(7) _Sir Andrew._

Here's the challenge, read it; I warrant there's vinegar and Pepper in't.

_Twelfth Night_, act iii, sc. 4 (157).

Pepper is the seed of Piper nigrum, "whose drupes form the black Pepper of the shops when dried with the skin upon them, and white Pepper when that flesh is removed by washing."--LINDLEY. It is, like all the pepperworts, a native of the Tropics, but was well known both to the Greeks and Romans. By the Greeks it was probably not much used, but in Rome it seems to have been very common, if we may judge by Horace's lines--

"Deferar in vicum, vendentem thus et odores, Et piper, et quidquid chartis amicitur ineptis."

_Epistolæ_ ii, 1-270.

And in another place he mentions "Pipere albo" as an ingredient in cooking. Juvenal mentions it as an article of commerce, "piperis coemti" (Sat. xiv. 293). Persius speaks of it in more than one passage, and Pliny describes it so minutely that he evidently not only knew the imported spice, but also had seen the living plant. By the Romans it was probably introduced into England, being frequently met with in the Anglo-Saxon Leech-books. It is mentioned by Chaucer--

"And in an erthen pot how put is al, And salt y-put in and also Paupere."

_Prologue of the Chanoune's Yeman._

It was apparently, like Ginger, a very common condiment in Shakespeare's time, and its early introduction into England as an article of commerce is shown by passages in our old law writers, who speak of the reservation of rent, not only in money, but in "pepper, cummim, and wheat;" whence arose the familiar reservation of a single peppercorn as a rent so nominal as to have no appreciable pecuniary value.[204:1]

The red or Cayenne Pepper is made from the ground seeds of the Capsicum, but I do not find that it was used to known in the sixteenth century.

FOOTNOTES:

[204:1] Littleton does not mention Pepper when speaking of rents reserved otherwise than in money, but specifies as instances, "un chival, ou un esperon dor, ou un clovegylofer"--a horse, a golden spur, or a clove gilliflower.

PIG-NUTS.

_Caliban._

I prythee let me bring thee where Crabs grow; And I with my long nails will dig thee Pig-nuts.

_Tempest_, act ii, sc. 2 (171).

Pig-nuts or Earth-nuts are the tuberous roots of Conopodium denudatum (_Bunium flexuosum_), a common weed in old upland pastures; it is found also in woods. This root is really of a pleasant flavour when first eaten, but leaves an unpleasant taste in the mouth. It is said to be much improved by roasting, and to be then quite equal to Chestnuts. Yet it is not much prized in England except by pigs and children, who do not mind the trouble of digging for it. But the root lies deep, and the stalk above it is very brittle, and "when the little 'howker' breaks the white shank he at once desists from his attempt to reach the root, for he believes that it will elude his search by sinking deeper and deeper into the ground" (Johnston). I have never heard of its being cultivated in England, but it is cultivated in some European countries, and much prized as a wholesome and palatable root.

PINE.

(1) _Prospero._

She did confine thee,

* * * * *

Into a cloven Pine;

* * * * *

It was mine art, When I arrived and heard thee, that made gape The Pine and let thee out.

_Tempest_, act i, sc. 2 (273).

(2) _Suffolk._

Thus droops this lofty Pine and hangs his sprays.

_2nd Henry VI_, act ii, sc. 3 (45).

(3) _Prospero._

And by the spurs plucked up The Pine and Cedar.

_Tempest_, act v, sc. 1 (47).

(4) _Agamemnon._

As knots, by the conflux of meeting sap, Infect the sound Pine and divert his grain Tortive and errant from his course of growth.

_Troilus and Cressida_, act i, sc. 3 (7).

(5) _Antony._

Where yonder Pine does stand I shall discover all.

* * * * *

This Pine is bark'd That overtopped them all.

_Antony and Cleopatra_, act iv, sc. 12 (23).

(6) _Belarius._

As the rudest wind That by the top doth take the mountain Pine, And make him stoop to the vale.

_Cymbeline_, act iv, sc. 2 (174).

(7) _1st Lord._

Behind the tuft of Pines I met them.

_Winter's Tale_, act ii, sc. 1 (33).

(8) _Richard._

But when from under this terrestrial ball He fires the proud top of the eastern Pines.

_Richard II_, act iii, sc. 2 (41).

(9) _Antonio._

You may as well forbid the mountain Pines To wag their high tops and to make no noise, When they are fretten with the gusts of heaven.

_Merchant of Venice_, act iv, sc. 1 (75).

(10)

Ay me! the bark peel'd from the lofty Pine, His leaves will wither, and his sap decay; So must my soul, her bark being peel'd away.

_Lucrece_ (1167).

In No. 8 is one of those delicate touches which show Shakespeare's keen observation of nature, in the effect of the rising sun upon a group of Pine trees. Mr. Ruskin says that with the one exception of Wordsworth no other English poet has noticed this. Wordsworth's lines occur in one of his minor poems on leaving Italy--

"My thoughts become bright like yon edging of Pines On the steep's lofty verge--how it blackened the air! But touched from behind by the sun, it now shines With threads that seem part of its own silver hair."

While Mr. Ruskin's account of it is this: "When the sun rises behind a ridge of Pines, and those Pines are seen from a distance of a mile or two against his light, the whole form of the tree, trunk, branches and all, becomes one frost-work of intensely brilliant silver, which is relieved against the clear sky like a burning fringe, for some distance on either side of the sun."--_Stones of Venice_, i. 240.

The Pine is the established emblem of everything that is "high and lifted up," but always with a suggestion of dreariness and solitude. So it is used by Shakespeare and by Milton, who always associated the Pine with mountains; and so it has always been used by the poets, even down to our own day. Thus Tennyson--

"They came, they cut away my tallest Pines-- My dark tall Pines, that plumed the craggy ledge-- High o'er the blue gorge, and all between The snowy peak and snow-white cataract Fostered the callow eaglet; from beneath Whose thick mysterious boughs in the dark morn The panther's roar came muffled while I sat Down in the valley."

_Complaint of Ænone._

Sir Walter Scott similarly describes the tree in the pretty and well-known lines--

"Aloft the Ash and warrior Oak Cast anchor in the rifted rock; And higher yet the Pine tree hung His shattered trunk, and frequent flung, Where seemed the cliffs to meet on high, His boughs athwart the narrow sky."

Yet the Pine which was best known to Shakespeare, and perhaps the only Pine he knew, was the Pinus sylvestris, or Scotch fir, and this, though flourishing on the highest hills where nothing else will flourish, certainly attains its fullest beauty in sheltered lowland districts. There are probably much finer Scotch firs in Devonshire than can be found in Scotland. This is the only indigenous Fir, though the Pinus pinaster claims to be a native of Ireland, some cones having been supposed to be found in the bogs, but the claim is not generally allowed (there is no proof of the discovery of the cones); and yet it has become so completely naturalized on the coast of Dorsetshire, especially about Bournemouth, that it has been admitted into the last edition of Sowerby's "English Botany."

But though the Scotch Fir is a true native, and was probably much more abundant in England formerly than it is now, the tree has no genuine English name, and apparently never had. Pine comes directly and without change from the Latin, _Pinus_, as one of the chief products, pitch, comes directly from the Latin, _pix_. In the early vocabularies it is called "Pin-treow," and the cones are "Pin-nuttes." They were also called "Pine apples," and the tree was called the Pine-Apple Tree.[208:1] This name was transferred to the rich West Indian fruit[208:2] from its similarity to a fir-cone, and so was lost to the fruit of the fir-tree, which had to borrow a new name from the Greek; but it was still in use in Shakespeare's day--

"Sweete smelling Firre that frankensence provokes, And Pine Apples from whence sweet juyce doth come."

CHESTER'S _Love's Martyr_.

And Gerard describing the fruit of the Pine Tree, says: "This Apple is called in . . . Low Dutch, Pyn Appel, and in English, Pine-apple, clog, and cones." We also find "Fyre-tree," which is a true English word meaning the "fire-tree;" but I believe that "Fir" was originally confined to the timber, from its large use for torches, and was not till later years applied to the living tree.

The sweetness of the Pine seeds, joined to the difficulty of extracting them, and the length of time necessary for their ripening, did not escape the notice of the emblem-writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. With them it was the favourite emblem of the happy results of persevering labour. Camerarius, a contemporary of Shakespeare and a great botanist, gives a pretty plate of a man holding a Fir-cone, with this moral: "Sic ad virtutem et honestatem et laudabiles actiones non nisi per labores ac varias difficultates perveniri potest, at postea sequuntur suavissimi fructus." He acknowledges his obligation for this moral to the proverb of Plautus: "Qui e nuce nucleum esse vult, frangat nucem" ("Symbolorum," &c., 1590).

In Shakespeare's time a few of the European Conifers were grown in England, including the Larch, but only as curiosities. The very large number of species which now ornament our gardens and Pineta from America and Japan were quite unknown. The many uses of the Pine--for its timber, production of pitch, tar, resin, and turpentine--were well known and valued. Shakespeare mentions both pitch and tar.

FOOTNOTES:

[208:1] For many examples see "Catholicon Anglicum," s.v. Pyne-Tree, with note.

[208:2] The West Indian Pine Apple is described by Gerard as "Ananas, the Pinea, or Pine Thistle."

PINKS.

(1) _Romeo._

A most courteous exposition.

_Mercutio._

Nay, I am the very Pink of courtesy.

_Romeo._

Pink for flower.

_Mercutio._

Right.

_Romeo._

Why, then is my pump well flowered.

_Romeo and Juliet_, act ii, sc. 4 (60).

(2) _Maiden._

Pinks of odour faint.

_Two Noble Kinsmen_, Introd. song.

To these may perhaps be added the following, from the second verse sung by Mariana in "Measure for Measure," act iv, sc. 1 (337)--

Hide, oh hide, those hills of snow Which thy frozen bosom bears! On whose tops the Pinks that grow Are of those that April wears.

The authority is doubtful, but it is attributed to Shakespeare in some editions of his poems.

The Pink or Pincke was, as now, the name of the smaller sorts of Carnations, and was generally applied to the single sorts. It must have been a very favourite flower, as we may gather from the phrase "Pink of courtesy," which means courtesy carried to its highest point; and from Spenser's pretty comparison--

"Her lovely eyes like Pincks but newly spred."

_Amoretti_, Sonnet 64.

The name has a curious history. It is not, as most of us would suppose, derived from the colour, but the colour gets its name from the plant. The name (according to Dr. Prior) comes through _Pinksten_ (German), from Pentecost, and so was originally applied to one species--the Whitsuntide Gilliflower. From this it was applied to other species of the same family. It is certainly "a curious accident," as Dr. Prior observes, "that a word that originally meant 'fiftieth' should come to be successively the name of a festival of the Church, of a flower, of an ornament in muslin called _pinking_, of a colour, and of a sword stab." Shakespeare uses the word in three of its senses. First, as applied to a colour--

Come, thou monarch of the Vine, Plumpy Bacchus with Pink eyne.

_Antony and Cleopatra_, act ii, sc. 7.[210:1]

Second, as applied to an ornament of dress in Romeo's person--

Then is my pump well flowered;

_Romeo and Juliet_, act ii, sc. 4.

_i.e._, well pinked. And in Grumio's excuses to Petruchio for the non-attendance of the servants--

Nathaniel's coat, Sir, was not fully made, And Gabriel's pumps were all unpinked I' the heel.

_Taming of the Shrew_, act iv, sc. 1.

And thirdly, as the pinked ornament in muslin--

There's a haberdasher's wife of small wit near him, that railed upon me till her Pink'd porringer fell off her head.

_Henry VIII_, act v, sc. 3.

And as applied to the flower in the passage quoted above. He also uses it in another sense--

This Pink is one of Cupid's carriers; Clap on more sail--pursue!

_Merry Wives of Windsor_, act ii, sc. 7.

where pink means a small country vessel often mentioned under that name by writers of the sixteenth century.

FOOTNOTES:

[210:1] It is very probable that this does not refer to the colour--"Pink = winking, half-shut."--SCHMIDT. And see Nares, s.v. Pinke eyne.

PIONY.

_Iris._

Thy banks with Pioned and twilled brims, Which spongy April at thy best betrims, To make cold nymphs chaste crowns.

_Tempest_, act iv, sc. 1 (65).

There is much dispute about this passage, the dispute turning on the question whether "Pioned" has reference to the Peony flower or not. The word by some is supposed to mean only "digged," and it doubtless often had this meaning,[211:1] though the word is now obsolete, and only survives with us in "pioneer," which, in Shakespeare's time, meant "digger" only, and not as now, "one who goes before to prepare the way"--thus Hamlet--

Well said, old mole! cans't work i' the earth so fast? A worthy pioner?

_Hamlet_, act i, sc. 5 (161).

and again--

There might you see the labouring pioner Begrim'd with sweat, and smeared all with dust.

_Lucrece_ (1380).

But this reading seems very tame, tame in itself, and doubly tame when taken in connection with the context, and "Certainly savours more of the commentators' prose than of Shakespeare's poetry" ("Edinburgh Review," 1872, p. 363). I shall assume, therefore, that the flower is meant, spelt in the form of "Piony," instead of Peony or Pæony.[211:2]

The Pæony (_P. corallina_) is sometimes allowed a place in the British flora, having been found apparently wild at the Steep Holmes in the Bristol Channel and a few other places, but it is now considered certain that in all these places it is a garden escape. Gerard gave one such habitat: "The male Peionie groweth wilde upon a Coneyberry in Betsome, being in the parish of Southfleet, in Kent, two miles from Gravesend, and in the ground sometimes belonging to a farmer there, called John Bradley;" but on this his editor adds the damaging note: "I have been told that our author himselfe planted that Peionee there, and afterwards seemed to find it there by accident; and I do believe it was so, because none before or since have ever seen or heard of it growing wild since in any part of this kingdome."

But though not a native plant, it had been cultivated in England long before Shakespeare's and Gerard's time. It occurs in most of the old vocabularies from the tenth century downwards, and in Shakespeare's time the English gardens had most of the European species that are now grown, including also the handsome double-red and white varieties. Since his time the number of species and varieties has been largely increased by the addition of the Chinese and Japanese species, and by the labours of the French nurserymen, who have paid more attention to the flower than the English.

In the hardy flower garden there is no more showy family than the Pæony. They have flowers of many colours, from almost pure white and pale yellow to the richest crimson; and they vary very much in their foliage, most of them having large fleshy leaves, "not much unlike the leaves of the Walnut tree," but some of them having their leaves finely cut and divided almost like the leaves of Fennel (_P. tenuifolia_). They further vary in that some are herbaceous, disappearing entirely in winter, while others, Moutan or Tree Pæonies, are shrubs; and in favourable seasons, when the shrub is not injured by spring frosts, there is no grander shrub than an old Tree Pæony in full flower.

Of the many different species the best are the Moutans, which, according to Chinese tradition, have been grown in China for 1500 years, and which are now produced in great variety of colour; P. corallina, for the beauty of its coral-like seeds; P. Cretica, for its earliness in flowering; P. tenuifolia, single and double, for its elegant foliage; P. Whitmaniana, for its pale yellow but very fleeting flowers, which, before they are fully expanded, have all the appearance of immense Globe-flowers (_trollius_); P. lobata, for the wonderful richness of its bright crimson flowers; and P. Whitleji, a very old and very double form of P. edulis, of great size, and most delicate pink and white colour.

FOOTNOTES:

[211:1]

"Which to outbarre, with painful pyonings, From sea to sea, he heapt a mighty mound!"

SPENSER, _F. Q._, ii, 10, 46.

[211:2] The name was variously spelt, _e.g._--

"And other trees there was mane one The Pyany, the Poplar, and the Plane."

_The Squyr of Lowe Degre_, 39.

"The pretie Pinke and purple Pianet."

CUTWODE, _Caltha Poetarum_, 1599, st. 24.

"A Pyon (Pyion A.) dionia, herba est."--_Catholicon Anglicum._

PIPPIN, _see_ APPLE.

PLANE.

_Daughter._

I have sent him where a Cedar, Higher than all the rest, spreads like a Plane Fast by a brook.

_Two Noble Kinsmen_, act ii, sc. 6 (4).

There is no certain record how long the Plane has been introduced into England; it is certainly not a native tree, nor even an European tree, but came from the East, and was largely planted and much admired both by the Greeks and Romans. We know from Pliny that it was growing in France in his day on the part opposite Britain, and the name occurs in the old vocabularies. But from Turner's evidence in 1548 it must have been a very scarce tree in the sixteenth century. He says: "I never saw any Plaine tree in Englande, saving once in Northumberlande besyde Morpeth, and an other at Barnwell Abbey besyde Cambryge." And more than a hundred years later Evelyn records a special visit to Lee to inspect one as a great curiosity. The Plane is not only a very handsome tree, and a fast grower, but from the fact that it yearly sheds its bark it has become one of the most useful trees for growing in towns. The wood is of very little value. To the emblem writers the Plane was an example of something good to the eye, but of no real use. Camerarius so moralizes it (Pl. xix.), and, quoting Virgil's "steriles platanos," he says of it, "umbram non fructum platanus dat."

PLANTAIN.

(1) _Costard._

O sir, Plantain, a plain Plantain! no l'envoy, no l'envoy; no salve, sir, but a Plantain.

* * * * *

_Moth._

By saying that a costard was broken in a shin. Then call'd you for the l'envoy.

_Costard._

True! and I for a Plantain.

_Loves Labour's Lost_, act iii, sc. 1 (76).

(2) _Romeo._

Your Plantain leaf is excellent for that.

_Benvolio._

For what, I pray thee?

_Romeo._

For your broken shin.

_Romeo and Juliet_, act i, sc. 2 (52).

(3) _Troilus._

As true as steel, as Plantage to the moon.

_Troilus and Cressida_, act iii, sc. 2 (184).

(4) _Palamon._

These poore slight sores Neede not a Plantin.

_Two Noble Kinsmen_, act i, sc. 2 (65).

The most common old names for the Plantain were Waybroad (corrupted to Weybread, Wayborn, and Wayforn) and Ribwort. It was also called Lamb's-tongue and Kemps, while the flower spike with the stalk was called Cocks and Cockfighters (still so called by children).[214:1] The old name of Ribwort was derived from the ribbed leaves, while Waybroad marked its universal appearance, scattered by all roadsides and pathways, and literally bred by the wayside. It has a similar name in German, Wegetritt, that is Waytread; and on this account the Swedes name the plant Wagbredblad, and the Indians of North America Whiteman's Foot, for it springs up near every new settlement, having sprung up after the English settlers, not only in America, but also in Australia and New Zealand--

"Whereso'er they move, before them Swarms the stinging fly, the Ahmo, Swarms the bee, the honey-maker: Wheresoe'er they tread, beneath them Springs a flower unknown among us, Springs the 'White man's foot' in blossom."

LONGFELLOW'S _Hiawatha_.

And "so it is a mistake to say that Plantain is derived from the likeness of the plant to the sole of the foot, as in Richardson's Dictionary. Rather say, because the herb grows under the sole of the foot."--JOHNSTON. How, or when, or why the plant lost its old English names to take the Latin name of Plantain, it is hard to say. It occurs in a vocabulary of the names of plants of the middle of the thirteenth century--"Plantago, Planteine, Weibrode," and apparently came to us from the French, "Cy est assets de Planteyne, Weybrede."--WALTER DE BIBLESWORTH (13th cent.) But with the exception of Chaucer[215:1] I believe Shakespeare is almost the only early writer that uses the name, though it is very certain that he did not invent it; but "Plantage" (No 3), which is doubtless the same plant, is peculiar to him.[215:2]

It was as a medical herb that our forefathers chiefly valued the Plantain, and for medical purposes its reputation was of the very highest. In a book of recipes (Lacnunga) of the eleventh century, by Ælfric, is an address to the Waybroad, which is worth extracting at length--

"And thou, Waybroad! Mother of worts, Open from eastward, Mighty within; Over thee carts creaked, Over thee Queens rode, Over thee brides bridalled, Over thee bulls breathed, All these thou withstood'st Venom and vile things And all the loathly ones That through the land rove."

COCKAYNE'S _Translation_.

In another earlier recipe book the Waybroad is prescribed for twenty-two diseases, one after another; and in another of the same date we are taught how to apply it: "If a man ache in half his head . . . delve up Waybroad without iron ere the rising of the sun, bind the roots about the head with Crosswort by a red fillet, soon he will be well." But the Plantain did not long sustain its high reputation, which even in Shakespeare's time had become much diminished. "I find," says Gerard, "in ancient writers many good-morrowes, which I think not meet to bring into your memorie againe; as that three roots will cure one griefe, four another disease, six hanged about the neck are good for another maladie, &c., all which are but ridiculous toys." Yet the bruised leaves still have some reputation as a styptic and healing plaster among country herbalists, and perhaps the alleged virtues are not altogether fanciful.

As a garden plant the Plantain can only be regarded as a weed and nuisance, especially on lawns, where it is very difficult to destroy them. Yet there are some curious varieties which may claim a corner where botanical curiosities are grown. The Plantain seems to have a peculiar tendency to run into abnormal forms, many of which will be found described and figured in Dr. Masters' "Vegetable Teratology," and among these forms are two which are exactly like a double green Rose, and have been cultivated as the Rose Plantain for many years. They were grown by Gerard, who speaks of "the beauty which is in the plant," and compared it to "a fine double Rose of a hoary or rusty greene colour." Parkinson also grew it and valued it highly.

FOOTNOTES:

[214:1] Of these names Plantain properly belongs to Plantago major; Lamb's-tongue to P. media; and Kemps, Cocks, and Ribwort to P. lanceolata.

[215:1]

"His forehead dropped as a stillatorie Were ful of Plantayn and peritorie."

_Prologue of the Chanoune's Yeman._

[215:2] Nares, and Schmidt from him, consider Plantage = anything planted.

PLUMS, WITH DAMSONS AND PRUNES.

(1) _Constance._

Give grandam kingdom, and it grandam will Give it a Plum, a Cherry, and a Fig.

_King John_, act ii, sc. 1 (161).

(2) _Hamlet._

The satirical rogue says here that old men have grey beards, that their faces are wrinkled, their eyes purging thick amber and Plum-tree gum.

_Hamlet_, act ii, sc. 2 (198).

(3) _Simpcox._

A fall off a tree.

_Wife._

A Plum-tree, master.

* * * * *

_Gloucester._

Mass, thou lovedst Plums well that wouldst venture so.

_Simpcox._

Alas! good master, my wife desired some Damsons, And made me climb with danger of my life.

_2nd Henry VI_, act ii, sc. 1 (196).

(4) _Evans._

I will dance and eat Plums at your wedding.

_Merry Wives of Windsor_, act v, sc. 5.[217:1]

(5)

The mellow Plum doth fall, the green sticks fast, Or, being early pluck'd, is sour to taste.

_Venus and Adonis_ (527).

(6)

Like a green Plum that hangs upon a tree, And falls, through wind, before the fall should be.

_Passionate Pilgrim_ (135).

(7) _Slender._

Three veneys for a dish of stewed Prunes.

_Merry Wives of Windsor_, act i, sc. 1 (295).

(8) _Falstaff._

There's no more faith in thee than in a stewed Prune.

_1st Henry IV_, act iii, sc. 3 (127).

(9) _Pompey._

Longing (saving your honour's presence) for stewed Prunes.

* * * * *

And longing, as I said, for Prunes.

* * * * *

You being then, if you he remembered, cracking the stones of the foresaid Prunes.

_Measure for Measure_, act ii, sc. 1 (92).

(10) _Clown._

Four pounds of Prunes, and as many of Raisins of the sun.

_Winters Tale_, act iv, sc. 3 (51).

(11) _Falstaff._

Hang him, rogue; he lives upon mouldy stewed Prunes and dried cakes.

_2nd Henry IV_, act ii, sc. 4 (158).

Plums, Damsons, and Prunes may conveniently be joined together, Plums and Damsons being often used synonymously (as in No. 3), and Prunes being the dried Plums. The Damsons were originally, no doubt, a good variety from the East, and nominally from Damascus.[217:2] They seem to have been considered great delicacies, as in a curious allegorical drama of the fifteenth century, called "La Nef de Sante," of which an account is given by Mr. Wright: "Bonne-Compagnie, to begin the day, orders a collation, at which, among other things, are served Damsons (_Prunes de Damas_), which appear at this time to have been considered as delicacies. There is here a marginal direction to the purport that if the morality should be performed in the season when real Damsons could not be had, the performers must have some made of wax to look like real ones" ("History of Domestic Manners," &c.).

The garden Plums are a good cultivated variety of our own wild Sloe, but a variety that did not originate in England, and may very probably have been introduced by the Romans. The Sloe and Bullace are, speaking botanically, two sub-species of Prunus communis, while the Plum is a third sub-species (P. communis domestica). The garden Plum is occasionally found wild in England, but is certainly not indigenous. It is somewhat strange that our wild plant is not mentioned by Shakespeare under any of its well-known names of Sloe, Bullace, and Blackthorn. Not only is it a shrub of very marked appearance in our hedgerows in early spring, when it is covered with its pure white blossoms, but Blackthorn staves were indispensable in the rough game of quarterstaff, and the Sloe gave point to more than one English proverb: "as black as a Sloe," was a very common comparison, and "as useless as a Sloe," or "not worth a Sloe," was as common.

"Sir Amys answered, 'Tho' I give thee thereof not one Sloe! Do right all that thou may!"

_Amys and Amylion_--ELLIS'S _Romances_.

"The offecial seyde, Thys ys nowth Be God, that me der bowthe, Het ys not worthe a Sclo."

_The Frere and His Boy_--RITSON'S _Ancient Popular Poetry_.

Though even as a fruit the Sloe had its value, and was not altogether despised by our ancestors, for thus Tusser advises--

"By thend of October go gather up Sloes, Have thou in readines plentie of thoes, And keepe them in bed-straw, or still on the bow, To staie both the flix of thyselfe and thy cow."

As soon as the garden Plum was introduced, great attention seems to have been paid to it, and the gardeners of Shakespeare's time could probably show as good Plums as we can now. "To write of Plums particularly," said Gerard, "would require a peculiar volume. . . . Every clymate hath his owne fruite, far different from that of other countries; my selfe have threescore sorts in my garden, and all strange and rare; there be in other places many more common, and yet yearly commeth to our hands others not before knowne."

FOOTNOTES:

[217:1] Omitted in the Globe edition.

[217:2] Bullein, in his "Government of Health," 1588, calls them "Damaske Prunes."

POMEGRANATE.

(1) _Lafeu._

Go to, sir, you were beaten in Italy for picking a kernel out of a Pomegranate.

_All's Well that Ends Well_, act ii, sc. 3 (275).

(2) _Juliet._

It was the nightingale and not the lark, That pierced the fearful hollow of thine ear; Nightly she sings on yon Pomegranate tree.[219:1]

_Romeo and Juliet_, act iii, sc. 5 (2).

(3) _Francis._

Anon, anon, sir, Look down into the Pomegarnet, Ralph.

_1st Henry IV_, act ii, sc. 4 (41).

There are few trees that surpass the Pomegranate in interest and beauty combined. "Whoever has seen the Pomegranate in a favourable soil and climate, whether as a single shrub or grouped many together, has seen one of the most beautiful of green trees; its spiry shape and thick-tufted foliage of vigorous green, each growing shoot shaded into tenderer verdure and bordered with crimson and adorned with the loveliest flowers; filmy petals of scarlet lustre are put forth from the solid crimson cup, and the ripe fruit of richest hue and most admirable shape."--LADY CALCOTT'S _Scripture Herbal_. A simpler but more valued testimony to the beauty of the Pomegranate is borne in its selection for the choicest ornaments on the ark of the Tabernacle, on the priest's vestments, and on the rich capitals of the pillars in the Temple of Solomon.

The native home of the Pomegranate is not very certainly known, but the evidence chiefly points to the North of Africa. It was very early cultivated in Egypt, and was one of the Egyptian delicacies so fondly remembered by the Israelites in their desert wanderings, and is frequently met with in Egyptian sculpture. It was abundant in Palestine, and is often mentioned in the Bible, and always as an object of beauty and desire. It was highly appreciated by the Greeks and Romans, but it was probably not introduced into Italy in very early times, as Pliny is the first author that certainly mentions it, though some critics have supposed that the _aurea mala_ and _aurea poma_ of Virgil and Ovid were Pomegranates. From Italy the tree soon spread into other parts of Europe, taking with it its Roman name of _Punica malus_ or _Pomum granatum_. _Punica_ showed the country from which the Romans derived it, while _granatum_ (full of grains) marked the special characteristic of the fruit that distinguished it from all other so-called Apples. Gerard says: "Pomegranates grow in hot countries, towards the south in Italy, Spaine, and chiefly in the kingdom of Granada, which is thought to be so named of the great multitude of Pomegranates, which be commonly called _Granata_."[220:1] This derivation is very doubtful, but was commonly accepted in Gerard's day.[220:2] The Pomegranate lives and flowers well in England, but when it was first introduced is not recorded. I do not find it in the old vocabularies, but a prominent place is given to it in "that Gardeyn, wele wrought," "the garden that so lyked me;"--

"There were, and that I wote fulle well, Of Pomgarnettys a fulle gret delle, That is a fruit fulle welle to lyke, Namely to folk whaune they ben sike."

_Romaunt of the Rose._

Turner describes it in 1548: "Pomegranat trees growe plentuously in Italy and in Spayne, and there are certayne in my Lorde's gardene at Syon, but their fruite cometh never with perfection."[221:1]

Gerard had it in 1596, but from his description it seems that it was a recent acquisition. "I have recovered," he says, "divers young trees hereof, by sowing of the seed or grains of the height of three or four cubits, attending God's leisure for floures and fruit." Three years later, in 1599, it is noticed for its flowers in Buttes's "Dyet's Dry Dinner" (as quoted by Brand), where it is asserted that "if one eate three small Pomegranate flowers (they say) for a whole yeare he shall be safe from all manner of eyesore;" and Gerard speaks of the "wine which is pressed forth of the Pomegranate berries named Rhoitas or wine of Pomegranates," but this may have been imported. But, when introduced, it at once took kindly to its new home, so that Parkinson was able to describe its flowers and fruits from personal observation. In all the southern parts of England it grows very well, and is one of the very best trees we have to cover a south wall; it also grows well in towns, as may be seen at Bath, where a great many very fine specimens have been planted in the areas in front of the houses, and have grown to a considerable height. When thus planted and properly pruned, the tree will bear its beautiful flowers from May all through the summer; but generally the tree is so pruned that it cannot flower. It should be pruned like a Banksian Rose, and other plants that bear their flowers on last year's shoots, _i.e._, simply thinned, but not cut back or spurred. With this treatment the branches may be allowed to grow in their natural way without being nailed in, and if the single-blossomed species be grown, the flowers in good summers will bear fruit. In 1876 I counted on a tree in Bath more than sixty fruit; the fruits will perhaps seldom be worth eating, but they are curious and handsome. The sorts usually grown are the pure scarlet (double and single), and a very double variety with the flowers somewhat variegated. These are the most desirable, but there are a few other species and varieties, including a very beautiful dwarf one from the East Indies that is too tender for our climate out-of-doors, but is largely grown on the Continent as a window plant.

FOOTNOTES:

[219:1] In illustration of Juliet's speech Mr. Knight very aptly quotes a similar remark from Russell's "History of Aleppo," adding that a "friend whose observations as a traveller are as accurate as his descriptions are graphic and forcible, informs us that throughout his journeys in the East he never heard such a choir of nightingales as in a row of Pomegranate trees that skirt the road from Smyrna to Bondjia."

[220:1] In a Bill of Medicines furnished for the use of Edward I. 1306-7, is--

"Item pro malis granatis vi. lx s. Item pro vino malorum granatorun xx lb., lx s."

_Archæological Journal_, xiv, 27.

[220:2] See Prescott's "Ferdinand and Isabella," vol. iii. p. 346, note (Ed. 1849)--the arms of the city are a split Pomegranate.

[221:1] "Names of Herbes," s.v. Malus Punica.

POMEWATER, _see_ APPLE.

POPERING, _see_ PEAR.

POPPY.

_Iago._

Not Poppy or Mandragora, Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world, Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep Which thou ownedst yesterday.

_Othello_, act iii, sc. 3 (330).

The Poppy had of old a few other names, such as Corn-rose and Cheese-bowls (a very old name for the flower), and being "of great beautie, although of evil smell, our gentlewomen doe call it Jone Silverpin." This name is difficult of explanation, even with Parkinson's help, who says it meanes "faire without and foule within," but it probably alludes to its gaudy colour and worthlessness. But these names are scarcely the common names of the plant, but rather nicknames; the usual name is, and always has been, Poppy, which is an easily traced corruption from the Latin _papaver_, the Saxon and Early English names being variously spelt, _popig_ and _papig_, _popi_ and _papy_; so that the Poppy is another instance of a very common and conspicuous English plant known only or chiefly by its Latin name Anglicised.

Our common English Poppy, "being of a beautiful and gallant red colour," is certainly one of the handsomest of our wild flowers, and a Wheat field with a rich undergrowth of scarlet Poppies is a sight very dear to the artist,[223:1] while the weed is not supposed to do much harm to the farmer. But this is not the Poppy mentioned by Iago, for its narcotic qualities are very small; the Poppy that he alludes to is the Opium Poppy (_P. somniferum_). This Poppy was well known and cultivated in England long before Shakespeare's day, but only as a garden ornament; the Opium was then, as now, imported from the East. Its deadly qualities were well known. Gower describes it--

"There is growend upon the ground Popy that bereth the sede of slepe."

_Conf. Aman._, lib. quint. (2, 102 Paulli).

Spenser speaks of the plant as the "dull Poppy," and describing the Garden of Proserpina, he says--

"There mournful Cypress grew in greatest store, And trees of bitter gall, and Heben sad, Dead-sleeping Poppy, and black Hellebore, Cold Coloquintida."

_F. Q._, ii, 7, 52.

And Drayton similarly describes it--

"Here Henbane, Poppy, Hemlock here, Procuring deadly sleeping."

_Nymphal_ v.

The name of opium does not seem to have been in general use, except among the apothecaries. Chaucer, however, uses it--

"A claire made of a certayn wyn, With necotykes, and opye of Thebes fyn."

_The Knightes Tale._

And so does Milton--

"Which no cooling herb Or medicinal liquor can asswage, Nor breath of vernal air from Snowy Alp; Sleep hath forsook and given me o'er To death's benumming opium as my only cure."

_Samson Agonistes._

Many of the Poppies are very ornamental garden plants. The pretty yellow Welsh Poppy (_Meconopsis Cambrica_), abundant at Cheddar Cliffs, is an excellent plant for the rockwork where, when once established, it will grow freely and sow itself; and for the same place the little Papaver Alpinum, with its varieties, is equally well suited. For the open border the larger Poppies are very suitable, especially the great Oriental Poppy (_P. orientale_) and the grand scarlet Siberian Poppy (_P. bracteatum_), perhaps the most gorgeous of hardy plants: while among the rarer species of the tribe we must reckon the Meconopses of the Himalayas (_M. Wallichi_ and _M. Nepalensis_), plants of singular beauty and elegance, but very difficult to grow, and still more difficult to keep, even if once established; for though perfectly hardy, they are little more than biennials. Besides these Poppies, the large double garden Poppies are very showy and of great variety in colour, but they are only annuals.

FOOTNOTES:

[223:1] "We usually think of the Poppy as a coarse flower; but it is the most transparent and delicate of all the blossoms of the field. The rest, nearly all of them, depend on the texture of their surface for colour. But the Poppy is painted _glass_; it never glows so brightly as when the sun shines through it. Wherever it is seen, against the light or with the light, always it is a flame, and warms the wind like a blown ruby."--RUSKIN, _Proserpina_, p. 86.

POTATO.

(1) _Thersites._

How the devil Luxury, with his fat rump and Potato-finger, tickles these together.

_Troilus and Cressida_, act v, sc. 2 (55).

(2) _Falstaff._

Let the sky rain Potatoes; let it thunder to the tune of Green Sleeves, hail kissing-comfits, and snow Eringoes.

_Merry Wives of Windsor_, act v, sc. 5 (20).

The chief interest in these two passages is that they contain almost the earliest notice of Potatoes after their introduction into England. The generally received account is that they were introduced into Ireland in 1584 by Sir Walter Raleigh, and from thence brought into England; but the year of their first planting in England is not recorded. They are not mentioned by Lyte in 1586. Gerard grew them in 1597, but only as curiosities, under the name of Virginian Potatoes (_Battata Virginianorum_ and _Pappas_), to distinguish them from the Spanish Potato, or Convolvulus Battatas, which had been long grown in Europe, and in the first edition of his "Herbal" is his portrait, showing him holding a Potato in his hand. They seem to have grown into favour very slowly, for half a century after their introduction, Waller still spoke of them as one of the tropical luxuries of the Bermudas--

"With candy'd Plantains and the juicy Pine, On choicest Melons and sweet Grapes they dine, And with Potatoes fat their wanton swine."

_The Battel of the Summer Islands._

Potato is a corruption of Batatas or Patatas.

As soon as the Potato arrived in England, it was at once invested with wonderful restorative powers, and in a long exhaustive note in Steevens' Shakespeare, Mr. Collins has given all the passages in the early writers in which the Potato is mentioned, and in every case they have reference to these supposed virtues. These passages, which are chiefly from the old dramatists, are curious and interesting in the early history of the Potato, and as throwing light on the manners of our ancestors; but as in every instance they are all more or less indelicate, I refrain from quoting them here.

As a garden plant, we now restrict the Potato to the kitchen garden and the field, but it belongs to a very large family, the Solanaceæ or Nightshades, of which many members are very ornamental, though as they chiefly come from the tropical regions, there are very few that can be treated as entirely hardy plants. One, however, is a very beautiful climber--the Solanum jasminoides from South America--and quite hardy in the South of England. Trained against a wall it will soon cover it, and when once established will bear its handsome trusses of white flowers with yellow anthers in great profusion during the whole summer. A better known member of the family is the Petunia, very handsome, but little better than an annual. The pretty Winter Cherry (_Physalis alkekengi_) is another member of the family, and so is the Mandrake (_see_ MANDRAKE). The whole tribe is poisonous, or at least to be suspected, yet it contains a large number of most useful plants, as the Potato, Tomato, Tobacco, Datura, and Cayenne Pepper.

PRIMROSE.

(1) _Queen._

The Violets, Cowslips, and the Primroses, Bear to my closet.

_Cymbeline_, act i, sc. 5 (83).

(2) _Queen._

I would be blind with weeping, sick with groans, Look pale as Primrose with blood-drinking sighs, And all to have the noble duke alive.

_2nd Henry VI_, act iii, sc. 2 (62).

(3) _Arviragus._

Thou shalt not lack The flower that's like thy face, pale Primrose.

_Cymbeline_, act iv, sc. 2 (220).

(4) _Hermia._

In the wood where often you and I Upon faint Primrose-beds were wont to lie.

_Midsummer Night's Dream_, act i, sc. 1 (214).

(5) _Perdita._

Pale Primroses, That die unmarried, ere they can behold Bright Phoebus in his strength.

_Winter's Tale_, act iv, sc. 4 (122).

(6) _Ophelia._

Like a puff'd and reckless libertine, Himself the Primrose path of dalliance treads And recks not his own rede.

_Hamlet_, act i, sc. 3 (49).

(7) _Porter._

I had thought to have let in some of all professions that go the Primrose way to the everlasting bonfire.

_Macbeth_, act ii, sc. 3 (20).

(8)

Primrose, first-born child of Ver Merry spring-time's harbinger, With her bells dim.

_Two Noble Kinsmen_, Introd. song.

(9)

Witness this Primrose bank whereon I lie.

_Venus and Adonis_ (151).

Whenever we speak of spring flowers, the first that comes into our minds is the Primrose. Both for its simple beauty and for its early arrival among us we give it the first place over

"Whatsoever other flowre of worth And whatso other hearb of lovely hew, The joyous Spring out of the ground brings forth To cloath herself in colours fresh and new."

It is a plant equally dear to children and their elders, so that I cannot believe that there is any one (except Peter Bell) to whom

"A Primrose by the river's brim A yellow Primrose is to him-- And it is nothing more;"

rather I should believe that W. Browne's "Wayfaring Man" is a type of most English countrymen in their simple admiration of the common flower--

"As some wayfaring man passing a wood, Whose waving top hath long a sea-mark stood, Goes jogging on and in his mind nought hath, But how the Primrose finely strews the path, Or sweetest Violets lay down their heads At some tree's roots or mossy feather beds."

_Britannia's Pastorals_, i, 5.

It is the first flower, except perhaps the Daisy, of which a child learns the familiar name; and yet it is a plant of unfailing interest to the botanical student, while its name is one of the greatest puzzles to the etymologist. The common and easy explanation of the name is that it means the first Rose of the year, but (like so many explanations that are derived only from the sound and modern appearance of a a name) this is not the true account. The full history of the name is too long to give here, but the short account is this--"The old name was Prime Rolles--or primerole. Primerole is an abbreviation of Fr., _primeverole_: It., _primaverola_, diminutive of _prima vera_ from _flor di prima vera_, the first spring flower. _Primerole_, as an outlandish unintelligible word, was soon familiarized into _primerolles_, and this into _primrose_."--DR. PRIOR. The name Primrose was not at first always applied to the flower, but was an old English word, used to show excellence--

"A fairer nymph yet never saw mine eie, She is the pride and Primrose of the rest."

SPENSER, _Colin Clout_.

"Was not I [the Briar] planted of thine own hande To bee the Primrose of all thy lande; With flow'ring blossomes to furnish the prime And scarlet berries in sommer time?"

SPENSER, _Shepherd's Calendar--Februarie_.

It was also a flower name, but not of our present Primrose, but of a very different plant. Thus in a Nominale of the fifteenth century we have "hoc ligustrum, a Primerose;" and in a Pictorial Vocabulary of the same date we have "hoc ligustrum, A{ce} a Prymrose;" and in the "Promptorium Parvulorum," "Prymerose, primula, calendula, ligustrum"--and this name for the Privet lasted with a slight alteration into Shakespeare's time. Turner in 1538 says, "ligustrum arbor est non herba ut literator[=u] vulgus credit; nihil que minus est quam a Prymerose." In Tusser's "Husbandry" we have "set Privie or Prim" (September Abstract), and--

"Now set ye may The Box and Bay Hawthorn and Prim For clothe's trim"--(_January Abstract_).

And so it is described by Gerard as the Privet or Prim Print (_i.e._, _primé printemps_), and even in the seventeenth century, Cole says of ligustrum, "This herbe is called Primrose." When the name was fixed to our present plant I cannot say, but certainly before Shakespeare's time, though probably not long before. It is rather remarkable that the flower, which we now so much admire, seems to have been very much overlooked by the writers before Shakespeare. In the very old vocabularies it does not at all appear by its present Latin name, Primula vulgaris, but that is perhaps not to be wondered at, as nearly all the old botanists applied that name to the Daisy. But neither is it much noticed by any English name. I can only find it in two of the vocabularies. In an English Vocabulary of the fourteenth century is "Hæc pimpinella, A{e} primerolle," but it is very doubtful if this can be our Primrose, as the Pimpernel of old writers was the Burnet. Gower mentions it as the flower of the star Canis Minor--

"His stone and herbe as saith the scole Ben Achates and Primerole."

_Conf. Aman._ lib. sept. (3, 130. Paulli).

And in the treatise of Walter de Biblesworth (13th century) is--

"Primerole et primeveyre (cousloppe) Sur tere aperunt en tems de veyre."

I should think there is no doubt this is our Primrose. Then we have Chaucer's description of a fine lady--

"Hir schos were laced on hir legges hyghe Sche was a Primerole, a piggesneyghe For any lord have liggyng in his bedde, Or yet for any gode yeman to wedde."

_The Milleres Tale._

I have dwelt longer than usual on the name of this flower, because it gives us an excellent example of how much literary interest may be found even in the names of our common English plants.

But it is time to come from the name to the flower. The English Primrose is one of a large family of more than fifty species, represented in England by the Primrose, the Oxlip, the Cowslip, and the Bird's-eye Primrose of the North of England and Scotland. All the members of the family, whether British or exotic, are noted for the simple beauty of their flowers, but in this special character there is none that surpasses our own. "It is the very flower of delicacy and refinement; not that it shrinks from our notice, for few plants are more easily seen, coming as it does when there is a dearth of flowers, when the first birds are singing, and the first bees humming, and the earliest green putting forth in the March and April woods; and it is one of those plants which dislikes to be looking cheerless, but keeps up a smouldering fire of blossom from the very opening of the year, if the weather will permit."--FORBES WATSON. It is this character of cheerfulness that so much endears the flower to us; as it brightens up our hedgerows after the dulness of winter, the harbinger of many brighter perhaps, but not more acceptable, beauties to come, it is the very emblem of cheerfulness. Yet it is very curious to note what entirely different ideas it suggested to our forefathers. To them the Primrose seems always to have brought associations of sadness, or even worse than sadness, for the "Primrose paths" and "Primrose ways" of Nos. 6 and 7 are meant to be suggestive of pleasures, but sinful pleasures.

Spenser associates it with death in some beautiful lines, in which a husband laments the loss of a young and beautiful wife--

"Mine was the Primerose in the lowly shade!

* * * * *

Oh! that so fair a flower so soon should fade, And through untimely tempest fade away."

_Daphnidia_, 232.

In another place he speaks of it as "the Primrose trew"--_Prothalamion_; but in another place his only epithet for it is "green," which quite ignores its brightness--

"And Primroses greene Embellish the sweete Violet."

_Shepherd's Calendar--April._

Shakespeare has no more pleasant epithets for our favourite flower than "pale," "faint," "that die unmarried;" and Milton follows in the same strain yet sadder. Once, indeed, he speaks of youth as "Brisk as the April buds in Primrose season" ("Comus"); but only in three passages does he speak of the Primrose itself, and in two of these he connects it with death--

"Bring the rathe Primrose that forsaken dies,

* * * * *

And every flower that sad embroidery wears."--_Lycidas._

"O fairest flower, no sooner blown but blasted, Soft silken Primrose fading timelesslie; Summer's chief honour, if thou hadst outlasted Bleak winter's force that made thy blossoms drie."

_On the Death of a Fair Infant._

His third account is a little more joyous--

"Now the bright morning star, daye's harbinger, Comes dancing from the East, and leads with her The flowery May, who from her green lap throws The yellow Cowslip and the pale Primrose."

_On May Morning._

And nearly all the poets of that time spoke in the same strain, with the exception of Ben Jonson and the two Fletchers. Jonson spoke of it as "the glory of the spring" and as "the spring's own spouse." Giles Fletcher says--

"Every bush lays deeply perfumed With Violets; the wood's late wintry head, Wide flaming Primroses set all on fire."

And Phineas Fletcher--

"The Primrose lighted new her flame displays, And frights the neighbour hedge with fiery rays. And here and there sweet Primrose scattered.

* * * * *

Nature seem'd work'd by Art, so lively true, A little heaven or earth in narrow space she drew."

I can only refer very shortly to the botanical interest of the Primula, and that only to direct attention to Mr. Darwin's paper in the "Journal of the Linnæan Society," 1862, in which he records his very curious and painstaking inquiries into the dimorphism of the Primula, a peculiarity in the Primula that gardeners had long recognized in their arrangement of Primroses as "pin-eyed" and "thrum-eyed." It is perhaps owing to this dimorphism that the family is able to show a very large number of natural hybrids. These have been carefully studied by Professor Kerner, of Innspruck, and it seems not unlikely that a further study will show that all the European so-called species are natural hybrids from a very few parents.

Yet a few words on the Primrose as a garden plant. If the Primrose be taken from the hedges in November, and planted in beds thickly in the garden, they make a beautiful display of flowers and foliage from February till the beds are required for the summer flowers; and there are few of our wild flowers that run into so many varieties in their wild state. In Pembrokeshire and Cardiganshire I have seen the wild Primrose of nearly all shades of colour, from the purest white to an almost bright red, and these can all be brought into the garden with a certainty of success and a certainty of rapid increase. There are also many double varieties, all of which are more often seen in cottage gardens than elsewhere; yet no gardener need despise them.

One other British Primrose, the Bird's-eye Primrose, almost defies garden cultivation, though in its native habitats in the north it grows in most ungenial places. I have seen places in the neighbourhood of the bleak hill of Ingleborough, where it almost forms the turf; yet away from its native habitat it is difficult to keep, except in a greenhouse. For the cultivation of the other non-English species, I cannot do better than refer to an excellent paper by Mr. Niven in the "The Garden" for January 29, 1876, in which he gives an exhaustive account of them.

I am not aware that Primroses are of any use in medicine or cookery, yet Tusser names the Primrose among "seeds and herbs for the kitchen," and Lyte says "the Cowslips, Primroses, and Oxlips are now used dayly amongst other pot herbes, but in physicke there is no great account made of them." They occur in heraldy. The arms of the Earls of Rosebery (Primrose) are three Primroses within a double tressure fleury counter-fleury, or.

PRUNES, _see_ PLUMS.

PUMPION.

_Mrs. Ford._

Go to, then. We'll use this unwholesome humidity, this gross watery Pumpion.

_Merry Wives of Windsor_, act iii, sc. 3 (42).

The old name for the Cucumber (in Ælfric's "Vocabulary") is hwer-hwette, _i.e._, wet ewer, but Pumpion, Pompion, and Pumpkin were general terms including all the Cucurbitaceæ such as Melons, Gourds, Cucumbers, and Vegetable Marrows. All were largely grown in Shakespeare's days, but I should think the reference here must be to one of the large useless Gourds, for Mrs. Ford's comparison is to Falstaff, and Gourds were grown large enough to bear out even that comparison. "The Gourd groweth into any forme or fashion you would have it, . . . being suffered to clime upon an arbour where the fruit may hang; it hath beene seene to be nine foot long." And the little value placed upon the whole tribe helped to bear out the comparison. They were chiefly good to "cure copper faces, red and shining fierce noses (as red as red Roses), with pimples, pumples, rubies, and such-like precious faces." This was Gerard's account of the Cucumber, while of the Cucumber Pompion, which was evidently our Vegetable Marrow, and of which he has described and figured the variety which we now call the Custard Marrow, he says, "it maketh a man apt and ready to fall into the disease called the colericke passion, and of some the felonie."

Mrs. Ford's comparison of a big loutish man to an overgrown Gourd has not been lost in the English language, for "bumpkin" is only another form of "Pumpkin," and Mr. Fox Talbot, in his "English Etymologies," has a very curious account of the antiquity of the nickname. "The Greeks," he says, "called a very weak and soft-headed person a Pumpion, whence the proverb +peponos malakôteros+, softer than a Pumpion; and even one of Homer's heroes, incensed at the timidity of his soldiers, exclaims +ô pepones+, you Pumpions! So also _cornichon_ (Cucumber) is a term of derision in French."

Yet the Pumpion or Gourd had its uses, moral uses. Modern critics have decided that Jonah's Gourd, "which came up in a night and perished in a night," was not a Gourd, but the Palma Christi, or Castor-oil tree. But our forefathers called it a Gourd, and believing that it was so, they used the Gourd to point many a moral and illustrate many a religious emblem. Thus viewed it was the standing emblem of the rapid growth and quick decay of evil-doers and their evil deeds. "Cito nata, cito pereunt," was the history of the evil deeds, while the doers of them could only say--

"Quasi solstitialis herba fui, Repente exortus sum, repente occidi."

PLAUTUS.

QUINCE.

_Nurse._

They call for Dates and Quinces in the pastry.

_Romeo and Juliet_, act iv, sc. 4 (2).

Quince is also the name of one of the "homespun actors" in "Midsummer Night's Dream," and is no doubt there used as a ludicrous name. The name was anciently spelt "coynes"--

"And many homely trees ther were That Peches, Coynes, and Apples bere, Medlers, Plommes, Perys, Chesteyns, Cherys, of which many oon fayne is."

_Romaunt of the Rose._

The same name occurs in the old English vocabularies, as in a Nominale of the fifteenth century, "hæc cocianus, a coventre;" in an English vocabulary of the fourteenth century, "Hoc coccinum, a quoyne," and in the treatise of Walter de Biblesworth, in the thirteenth century--

"Issi troverez en ce verger Estang un sek Coigner (a Coyn-tre, Quince-tre)."

And there is little doubt that "Quince" is a corruption of "coynes" which again is a corruption, not difficult to trace, of Cydonia, one of the most ancient cities of Crete, where the Quince tree is indigenous, and whence it derived its name of Pyrus Cydonia, or simply Cydonia. If not indigenous elsewhere in the East, it was very soon cultivated, and especially in Palestine. It is not yet a settled point, and probably never will be, but there is a strong consensus of most of the best commentators, that the _Tappuach_ of Scripture, always translated Apple, was the Quince. It is supposed to be the fruit alluded to in the Canticles, "As the Apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons; I sat down under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste;" and in Proverbs, "A word fitly spoken is like Apples of gold in pictures of silver;" and the tree is supposed to have given its name to various places in Palestine, as Tappuach, Beth-Tappuach, and Aen-Tappuach.

By the Greeks and Romans the Quince was held in honour as the fruit especially sacred to Venus, who is often represented as holding a Quince in her right hand, the gift which she received from Paris. In other sculptures "the amorous deities pull Quinces in gardens and play with them. For persons to send Quinces in presents, to throw them at each other, to eat them together, were all tokens of love; to dream of Quinces was a sign of successful love" (Rosenmuller). The custom was handed down to mediæval times. It was at a wedding feast that "they called for Dates and Quinces in the pastry;" and Brand quotes a curious passage from the "Praise of Musicke," 1586 ("Romeo and Juliet" was published in 1596)--"I come to marriages, wherein as our ancestors did fondly, and with a kind of doting, maintaine many rites and ceremonies, some whereof were either shadowes or abodements of a pleasant life to come, as the eating of a Quince Peare to be a preparative of sweet and delightful dayes between the married persons."

To understand this high repute in which the Quince was held, we must remember that the Quince of hot countries differs somewhat from the English Quince. With us the fruit is of a fine, handsome shape, and of a rich golden colour when fully ripe, and of a strong scent, which is very agreeable to many, though too heavy and overpowering to others. But the rind is rough and woolly, and the flesh is harsh and unpalatable, and only fit to be eaten when cooked. In hotter countries the woolly rind is said to disappear, and the fruit can be eaten raw; and this is the case not only in Eastern countries, but also in the parts of Tropical America to which the tree has been introduced from Europe.

In England the Quince is probably less grown now than it was in Shakespeare's time--yet it may well be grown as an ornamental shrub even by those who do not appreciate its fruit. It forms a thick bush, with large white flowers, followed in the autumn by its handsome fruit, and requires no care. "They love shadowy, moist places;" "It delighteth to grow on plaine and even ground and somewhat moist withall." This was Lyte's and Gerard's experience, and I have never seen handsomer bushes or finer fruit than I once saw on some neglected bushes that skirted a horsepond on a farm in Kent; the trees were evidently revelling in their state of moisture and neglect. The tree has a horticultural value as giving an excellent stock for Pear-trees, on which it has a very remarkable effect, for "Cabanis asserts that when certain Pears are grafted on the Quince, their seeds yield more varieties than do the seeds of the same variety of Pear when grafted on the wild Pear."--DARWIN. Its economic value is considered to be but small, being chiefly used for Marmalade,[236:1] but in Shakespeare's time, Browne spoke of it as "the stomach's comforter, the pleasing Quince," and Parkinson speaks highly of it, for "there is no fruit growing in the land," he says, "that is of so many excellent uses as this, serving as well to make many dishes of meat for the table, as for banquets, and much more for their physical virtues, whereof to write at large is neither convenient for me nor for this work."

FOOTNOTES:

[236:1] This was a very old use for the Quince. Wynkyn de Worde, in the "Boke of Kervynge" (p. 266), speaks of "char de Quynce;" and John Russell, in the "Boke of Nurture" (l. 75), speaks of "chare de Quynces." This was Quince marmalade.

RADISH.

(1) _Falstaff._

When a' was naked, he was, for all the world, like a fork'd Radish.

_2nd Henry IV_, act iii, sc. 2 (333).

(2) _Falstaff._

If I fought not with fifty of them, I am a bunch of Radish.

_1st Henry IV_, act ii, sc. 4 (205).

There can be no doubt that the Radish was so named because it was considered by the Romans, for some reason unknown to us, _the_ root _par excellence_. It was used by them, as by us, "as a stimulus before meat, giving an appetite thereunto"--

"Acria circum Rapula, lactucæ, Radices, qualia lassum Pervellunt stomachum."--HORACE.

But it was cultivated, or allowed to grow, to a much larger size than we now think desirable. Pliny speaks of Radishes weighing 40lb. each, and others speak even of 60lb. and 100lb. But in Shakespeare's time the Radish was very much what it is now, a pleasant salad vegetable, but of no great value. We read, however, of Radishes being put to strange uses. Lupton, a writer of Shakespeare's day, says: "If you would kill snakes and adders strike them with a large Radish, and to handle adders and snakes without harm, wash your hands in the juice of Radishes and you may do without harm" ("Notable Things," 1586).

We read also of great attempts being made to procure oil from the seed, but to no great effect. Hakluyt, in describing the sufficiency of the English soil to produce everything necessary in the manufacture of cloth, says: "So as there wanteth, if colours might be brought in and made naturall, but onely oile; the want whereof if any man could devise to supply at the full with anything that might become naturall in this realme, he, whatsoever he were that might bring it about, might deserve immortal fame in this our Commonwealth, and such a devise was offered to Parliament and refused, because they denied to allow him a certain liberty, some others having obtained the same before that practised to work that effect by Radish seed, which onely made a trial of small quantity, and that went no further to make that oile in plenty, and now he that offered this devise was a merchant, and is dead, and withal the devise is dead with him" ("Voiages," vol. ii.).

The Radish is not a native of Britain, but was probably introduced by the Romans, and was well-known to the Anglo-Saxon gardener under its present name, but with a closer approach to the Latin, being called Rædic, or Radiolle.[237:1]

A curious testimony to the former high reputation of the Radish survives in the "Annual Radish Feast at Levens Hall, a custom dating from time immemorial, and supposed by some to be a relic of feudal times, held on May 12th at Levens Hall, the seat of the Hon. Mrs. Howard, and adjoining the high road about midway between Kendal and Milnthorpe. Tradition hath it that the Radish feast arose out of a rivalry between the families of Levens Hall and Dallam Tower, as to which should entertain the Corporation with their friends and followers, and in which Levens Hall eventually carried the palm. The feast is provided on the bowling green in front of the Hall, where several long tables are plentifully spread with Radishes and brown bread and butter, the tables being repeatedly furnished with guests" ("Gardener's Chronicle").

FOOTNOTES:

[237:1] "Catholicon Anglicum."

RAISINS.

_Clown._

Four pounds of Prunes and as many of Raisins o' the sun.

_Winter's Tale_, act iv, sc. 3 (51).

Raisins are alluded to, if not actually named, in "1st Henry IV.," act ii, sc. 4, when Falstaff says: "If reasons were as plentiful as Blackberries, I would give no man a reason upon compulsion, I----" "It seems that a pun underlies this, the association of reasons with Blackberries springing out of the fact that _reasons_ sounded like _raisins_."--EARLE, _Philology_, &c.

Bearing in mind that Raisin is a corruption of _racemus_, a bunch of Grapes, we can understand that the word was not always applied, as it is now, to the dried fruit, but was sometimes applied to the bunch of Grapes as it hung ripe on the tree--

"For no man at the firste stroke He may not felle down an Oke; Nor of the Reisins have the wyne Till Grapes be ripe and welle afyne."

_Romaunt of the Rose._

The best dried fruit were Raisins of the sun, _i.e._, dried in the sun, to distinguish them from those which were dried in ovens. They were, of course, foreign fruit, and were largely imported. The process of drying in the sun is still the method in use, at least, with "the finer kinds, such as Muscatels, which are distinguished as much by the mode of drying as by the variety and soil in which they are grown, the finest being dried on the Vines before gathering, the stalk being partly cut through when the fruits are ripe, and the leaves being removed from near the clusters, so as to allow the full effect of the sun in ripening."

The Grape thus becomes a Raisin, but it is still further transformed when it reaches the cook; it then becomes a Plum, for Plum pudding has, as we all know, Raisins for its chief ingredient and certainly no Plums; and the Christmas pie into which Jack Horner put in his thumb and pulled out a Plum must have been a mince-pie, also made of Raisins; but how a cooked Raisin came to be called a Plum is not recorded. In Devonshire and Dorsetshire it undergoes a further transformation, for there Raisins are called Figs, and a Plum pudding is called a Fig pudding.

REEDS.

(1) _2nd Servant._

I had as lief have a Reed that will do me no service, as a partizan I could not heave.

_Antony and Cleopatra_, act ii, sc. 7 (13).

(2) _Arviragus._

Fear no more the frown o' the great, Thou art past the tyrant's stroke; Care no more to clothe and eat; To thee the Reed is as the Oak; The sceptre, learning, physick, must All follow this, and come to dust.

_Cymbeline_, act iv, sc. 2 (264).

(3) _Ariel._

His tears run down his beard, like winter's drops From eaves of Reeds.

_Tempest_, act v, sc. 1 (16).

(4) _Ariel._

With hair up-staring--then like Reeds, not hair--

_Ibid._, act i, sc. 2 (213).

(5) _Hotspur._

Swift Severn's flood; Who then, affrighted with their bloody looks, Ran fearfully among the trembling Reeds.

_1st Henry IV_, act 1, sc. 3 (103).

(6) _Portia._

And speak between the change of man and boy With a Reed voice.

_Merchant of Venice_, act iii, sc. 4 (66).

(7) _Wooer._

In the great Lake that lies behind the Pallace From the far shore thick set with Reeds and Sedges.

* * * * *

The Rushes and the Reeds Had so encompast it.

_Two Noble Kinsmen_, act iv, sc. 1 (71, 80).

(8)

To Simois' Reedy banks the red blood ran.

_Lucrece_ (1437).

Reed is a general term for almost any water-loving, grassy plant, and so it is used by Shakespeare. In the Bible it is perhaps possible to identify some of the Reeds mentioned, with the Sugar Cane in some places, with the Papyrus in others, and in others with the Arundo donax. As a Biblical plant it has a special interest, not only as giving the emblem of the tenderest mercy that will be careful even of "the bruised Reed," but also as entering largely into the mockery of the Crucifixion: "They put a Reed in His right hand," and "they filled a sponge full of vinegar, and put it upon a Reed and gave Him to drink." The Reed in these passages was probably the Arundo donax, a very elegant Reed, which was used for many purposes in Palestine, and is a most graceful plant for English gardens, being perfectly hardy, and growing every year from 12ft. to 14ft. in height, but very seldom flowering.[240:1]

But in Shakespeare, as in most writers, the Reed is simply the emblem of weakness, tossed about by and bending to a superior force, and of little or no use--"a Reed that will do me no service" (No. 1). It is also the emblem of the blessedness of submission, and of the power that lies in humility to outlast its oppressor--

"Like as in tempest great, Where wind doth bear the stroke, Much safer stands the bowing Reed Then doth the stubborn Oak."

Shakespeare mentions but two uses to which the Reed was applied, the thatching of houses (No. 3), and the making of Pan or Shepherd's pipes (No. 6). Nor has he anything to say of its beauty, yet the Reeds of our river sides (_Arundo phragmites_) are most graceful plants, especially when they have their dark plumes of flowers, and this Milton seems to have felt--

"Forth flourish't thick the flustering Vine, forth crept The swelling Gourd, up stood the Cornie Reed Embattled in her field."

_Paradise Lost_, book vii.

FOOTNOTES:

[240:1] I have only been able to find one record of the flowering of Arundo donax in England--"Mem: Arundo donax in flower, 15th September, 1762, the first time I ever saw it, but this very hot dry summer has made many exotics flower. . . . It bears a handsome tassel of flowers."--P. COLLINSON'S _Hortus Collinsonianus_.

RHUBARB.

_Macbeth._

What Rhubarb, Cyme, or what purgative drug Would scour these English hence?

_Macbeth_, act v, sc. 3 (55).

Andrew Boorde writing from Spayne in 1535, to Thomas Cromwell, says, "I have sent to your Mastershipp the seeds of Reuberbe the whiche come forth of Barbary in this parte ytt ys had for a grett tresure."[241:1] But the plant does not seem to have become established and Shakespeare could only have known the imported drug, for the Rheum was first grown by Parkinson, though it had been described in an uncertain way both by Lyte and Gerard. Lyte said: "Rha, as it is thought, hath great broad leaves;" and then he says: "We have found here in the gardens of certaine diligent herboristes that strange plant which is thought by some to be Rha or Rhabarbum;" but from the figure it is very certain that the plant was not a Rheum. After the time of Parkinson, it was largely grown for the sake of producing the drug, and it is still grown in England to some extent for the same purpose, chiefly in the neighbourhood of Banbury; though it is doubtful whether any of the species now grown in England are the true species that has long produced Turkey Rhubarb. The plant is now grown most extensively as a spring vegetable, though I cannot find when it first began to be so used. Parkinson evidently tried it and thought well of it. "The leaves have a fine acid taste; a syrup, therefore, made with the juice and sugar cannot but be very effectual in dejected appetites." Yet even in 1807 Professor Martyn, the editor of "Millar's Dictionary," in a long article on the Rhubarb, makes no mention of its culinary qualities, but in 1822 Phillips speaks of it as largely cultivated for spring tarts, and forced for the London markets, "medical men recommending it as one of the most cooling and wholesome tarts sent to table."

As a garden plant the Rhubarb is highly ornamental, though it is seldom seen out of the kitchen garden, but where room can be given to them, Rheum palmatum or Rheum officinale, will always be admired as some of the handsomest of foliage plants. The finest species of the family is the Himalayan Rheum nobile, but it is exceedingly difficult to grow. Botanically the Rhubarb is allied to the Dock and Sorrel, and all the species are herbaceous.

FOOTNOTES:

[241:1] Quoted in Furnival's forewords to Boorde's "Introduction to Knowledge," p. 56.

RICE.

_Clown._

Let me see; what am I to buy for our sheep-shearing feast? Three pound of sugar, five pound of Currants, Rice----What will this sister of mine do with Rice?[242:1]

_Winter's Tale_, act iv, sc. 3 (38).

Shakespeare may have had no more acquaintance with Rice than his knowledge of the imported grain, which seems to have been long ago introduced into England, for in a Nominale of the fifteenth century we have "Hoc risi, indeclinabile, Ryse." And in the "Promptorium Parvulorum," "Ryce, frute. Risia, vel risi, n. indecl. secundum quosdam, vel risium, vel risorum granum (rizi vel granum Indicum)." Turner was acquainted with it: "Ryse groweth plentuously in watery myddowes between Myllane and Pavia."[242:2] And Shakespeare may have seen the plant, for Gerard grew it in his London garden, though "the floure did not show itselfe by reason of the injurie of our unseasonable yeare 1596." It is a native of Africa, and was soon transferred to Europe as a nourishing and wholesome grain, especially for invalids--"sume hoc ptisanarium oryzæ," says the doctor to his patient in Horace, and it is mentioned both by Dioscorides and Theophrastus. It has been occasionally grown in England as a curiosity, but seldom comes to any perfection out-of-doors, as it requires a mixture of moisture and heat that we cannot easily give it. There are said to be species in the North of China growing in dry places, which would perhaps be hardy in England and easier of cultivation, but I am not aware that they have ever been introduced.

FOOTNOTES:

[242:1] In 1468 the price of rice was 3d. a pound = 3s. of our money ("Babee's Book," xxx.).

[242:2] "Names of Herbes," s.v. Oryza.

ROSES.

(1) _Titania._

Some to kill cankers in the Musk-rose buds.

_Midsummer Night's Dream_, act ii, sc. 3 (3).

(2) _Titania._

And stick Musk-Roses in thy sleek, smooth head.

_Ibid._, act iv, sc. 1 (3).

(3) _Julia._

The air hath starved the Roses in her cheeks.

_Two Gentlemen of Verona_, act iv, sc. 4 (159).

(4) _Song._

There will we make our beds of Roses And a thousand fragrant posies.

_Merry Wives of Windsor_, act iii, sc. 1 (19).

(5) _Autolycus._

Gloves as sweet as Damask Roses.

_Winter's Tale_, act iv, sc. 3 (222).

(6) _Olivia._

Cæsario, by the Roses of the spring, By maidhood, honour, truth, and everything, I love thee so.

_Twelfth Night_, act iii, sc. 1 (161).

(7) _Diana._

When you have our Roses, You barely leave us thorns to prick ourselves And mock us with our bareness.

_All's Well that Ends Well_, act iv, sc. 2 (18).

(8) _Lord._

Let one attend him with a silver basin Full of Rose-water and bestrew'd with flowers.

_Taming of the Shrew_, Induction, sc. 1 (55).

(9) _Petruchio._

I'll say she looks as clear As morning Roses newly wash'd with dew.

_Ibid._, act ii, sc. 1 (173).

(10) _Tyrrell._

Their lips were four red Roses on a stalk, Which in their summer beauty kiss'd each other.

_Richard III_, act iv, sc. 3 (12).

(11) _Friar._

The Roses in thy lips and cheeks shall fade To paly ashes.

_Romeo and Juliet_, act iv, sc. 1 (99).

(12) _Romeo._

Remnants of packthread and old cakes of Roses Were thinly scatter'd, to make up a show.

_Ibid._, act v, sc. 1 (47).

(13) _Hamlet._

With two Provincial Roses on my razed shoes.

_Hamlet_, act iii, sc. 2 (287).

(14) _Laertes._

O Rose of May, Dear maid, kind sister, sweet Ophelia!

_Ibid._, act iv, sc. 5 (157).

(15) _Duke._

For women are as Roses, whose fair flower Being once display'd doth fall that very hour.

_Twelfth Night_, act ii, sc. 4 (39).

(16) _Constance._

Of Nature's gifts, thou may'st with Lilies boast, And with the half-blown Rose.

_King John_, act iii, sc. 1 (153).

(17) _Queen._

But soft, but see, or rather do not see, My fair Rose wither.

_Richard II_, act v, sc. 1 (7).

(18) _Hotspur._

To put down Richard, that sweet lovely Rose, And plant this Thorn, this canker, Bolingbroke.

_1st Henry IV_, act i, sc. 3 (175).

(19) _Hostess._

Your colour, I warrant you, is as red as any Rose.

_2nd Henry IV_, act ii, sc. 4 (27).

(20) _York._

Then will I raise aloft the milk-white Rose, With whose sweet smell the air shall be perfumed.

_2nd Henry VI_, act i, sc. 1 (254).

(21) _Don John._

I had rather be a canker in a hedge than a Rose in his grace.

_Much Ado About Nothing_, act i, sc. 3 (27).

(22) _Theseus._

But earthlier happy is the Rose distill'd Than that which withering on the virgin Thorn Grows, lives, and dies in single blessedness.[244:1]

_Midsummer Night's Dream_, act i, sc. 1 (76).

(23) _Lysander._

How now, my love! Why is your cheek so pale? How chance the Roses there do fade so fast?

_Midsummer Night's Dream_, act i, sc. 1 (128).

(24) _Titania._

The seasons alter: hoary-headed frosts Fall in the fresh lap of the crimson Rose.

_Ibid._, act ii, sc. 1 (107).

(25) _Thisbe._

Of colour like the red Rose on triumphant Brier.

_Ibid._, act iii, sc. 1 (95).

(26) _Biron._

Why should I joy in any abortive mirth? At Christmas I no more desire a Rose Than wish a snow in May's new-fangled mirth, But like of each thing that in season grows.[245:1]

_Love's Labour's Lost_, act i, sc. 1 (105).

(27) _King_ (reads).

So sweet a kiss the golden sun gives not To those fresh morning drops upon the Rose.

_Ibid._, act iv, sc. 3 (26).

(28) _Boyet._

Blow like sweet Roses in this summer air.

_Princess._

How blow? how blow? Speak to be understood.

_Boyet._

Fair ladies mask'd are Roses in their bud; Dismask'd, their damask sweet commixture shown, Are angels veiling clouds, or Roses blown.

_Ibid._, act v, sc. 2 (293).

(29) _Touchstone._

He that sweetest Rose will find, Must find Love's prick and Rosalind.

_As You Like It_, act iii, sc. 2 (117).

(30) _Countess._

This Thorn Doth to our Rose of youth rightly belong.

_All's Well that Ends Well_, act i, sc. 3 (135).

(31) _Bastard._

My face so thin, That in mine ear I durst not stick a Rose.

_King John_, act i, sc. 1 (141).

(32) _Antony._

Tell him he wears the Rose Of youth upon him.

_Antony and Cleopatra_, act iii, sc. 13 (20).

(33) _Cleopatra._

Against the blown Rose may they stop their nose That kneel'd unto the buds.

_Ibid._ (39).

(34) _Boult._

For flesh and blood, sir, white and red, you shall see a Rose; and she were a Rose indeed!

_Pericles_, act iv, sc. 6 (37).

(35) _Gower._

Even her art sisters the natural Roses.

_Ibid._, act v, chorus (7). (_See_ CHERRY, No. 5.)

(36) _Juliet._

What's in a name? That which we call a Rose By any other name would smell as sweet.

_Romeo and Juliet_, act ii, sc. 2 (43).

(37) _Ophelia._

The expectancy and Rose of the fair state.

_Hamlet_, act iii, sc. 1 (160).

(38) _Hamlet._

Such an act . . . takes off the Rose From the fair forehead of an innocent love, And sets a blister there.

_Ibid._, act iii, sc. 4 (40).

(39) _Othello._

When I have pluck'd the Rose, I cannot give it vital growth again, It needs must wither. I'll smell it on the tree.

_Othello_, act v, sc. 2 (13).

(40) _Timon._

Rose-cheeked youth.

_Timon of Athens_, act iv, sc. 3 (86).

(41) _Othello._

Thou young and Rose-lipp'd cherubim.

_Othello_, act iv, sc. 2 (63).

(42)

Roses, their sharp spines being gone, Not royall in their smells alone But in their hue.

_Two Noble Kinsmen_, Introd. song.

(43) _Emilia._

Of all flowres Methinks a Rose is best.

_Woman._

Why, gentle madam?

_Emilia._

It is the very Embleme of a maide. For when the west wind courts her gently, How modestly she blows, and paints the Sun With her chaste blushes? When the north winds neere her, Rude and impatient, then, like Chastity, Shee locks her beauties in her bud againe, And leaves him to base Briers.

_Ibid._, act ii, sc. 2 (160).

(44) _Wooer._

With cherry lips and cheekes of Damaske Roses.

_Ibid._, act iv, sc. 2 (95).

(45) _See_ NETTLES, No. 13.

(46)

Roses have thorns and silver fountains mud, And loathsome canker lives in sweetest bud.

_Sonnet_ xxxv.

(47)

The Rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem For that sweet odour that doth in it live. The canker-blooms have full as deep a dye As the perfumed tincture of the Roses, Hang on such thorns, and play as wantonly When summer's breath their masked buds discloses; But, for their virtue only is their show, They live unwoo'd and unrespected fade; Die to themselves--sweet Roses do not so; Of their sweet deaths are sweetest odours made.

_Sonnet_ liv.

(48)

Why should poor beauty indirectly seek Roses of shadow, since his Rose is true?

_Ibid._ lxvii.

(49)

Shame, like a canker in the fragrant Rose, Doth spot the beauty of thy budding name.

_Ibid._ xcv.

(50)

Nor did I wonder at the Lily's white, Nor praise the deep vermilion of the Rose.

_Ibid._ xcviii.

(51)

The Roses fearfully in thorns did stand, One blushing shame, another white despair; A third, nor red nor white, had stol'n of both And to his robbery had annex'd thy breath.

_Ibid._ xcix.

(52)

I have seen Roses damask'd, red and white, But no such Roses see I in her cheeks.

_Ibid._ cxxx.

(53)

More white and red than dove and Roses are.

_Venus and Adonis_ (10).

(54)

What though the Rose has prickles? yet 'tis plucked.

_Ibid._ (574).

(55)

Who, when he lived, his breath and beauty set Gloss on the Rose, smell to the Violet.

_Ibid._ (935).

(56)

Their silent war of Lilies and of Roses.

_Lucrece_ (71).

(57)

O how her fear did make her colour rise, First red as Roses that on lawn we lay, Then white as lawn, the Roses took away.

_Ibid._ (257).

(58)

That even for anger makes the Lily pale, And the red Rose blush at her own disgrace.

_Ibid._ (477).

(59)

I know what Thorns the growing Rose defends.

_Ibid._ (492).

(60)

Rose-cheeked Adonis hied him to the chase.

_Venus and Adonis._ (3).

(61)

A sudden pale, Like lawn being spread upon the blushing Rose, Usurps her cheek.

_Ibid._ (589).

(62)

That beauty's Rose might never die.

_Sonnet_ i.

(63)

Nothing this wide universe I call Save thou, my Rose; in it thou art my all.

_Ibid._ cix.

(64)

Rosy lips and cheeks Within time's bending sickle's compass come.

_Ibid._ cxvi.

(65)

Sweet Rose, fair flower, untimely pluck'd, soon vaded, Pluck'd in the bud, and vaded in the spring!

_The Passionate Pilgrim_ (131).

In addition to these many passages, there are perhaps thirty more in which the Rose is mentioned with reference to the Red and White Roses of the houses of York and Lancaster. To quote these it would be necessary to extract an entire act, which is very graphic, but too long. I must, therefore, content myself with the beginning and the end of the chief scene, and refer the reader who desires to see it _in extenso_ to "1st Henry VI.," act ii, sc. 4. The scene is in the Temple Gardens, and Plantagenet and Somerset thus begin the fatal quarrel--

_Plantagenet._

Let him that is a true-born gentleman And stands upon the honour of his birth, If he suppose that I have pleaded truth, From off this Brier pluck a White Rose with me.

_Somerset._

Let him that is no coward nor no flatterer, But dare maintain the party of the truth, Pluck a Red Rose from off this Thorn with me.

And Warwick's wise conclusion on the whole matter is--

This brawl to-day, Grown to this faction in the Temple Garden, Shall send, between the Red Rose and the White, A thousand souls to death and deadly night.

There are further allusions to the same Red and White Roses in "3rd Henry VI.," act i, sc. 1 and 2, act ii, sc. 5, and act v, sc. 1; "1st Henry VI.," act iv, sc. 1; and "Richard III.," act v, sc. 4.

There is no flower so often mentioned by Shakespeare as the Rose, and he would probably consider it the queen of flowers, for it was so deemed in his time. "The Rose doth deserve the cheefest and most principall place among all flowers whatsoever, being not onely esteemed for his beautie, vertues, and his fragrant and odoriferous smell, but also because it is the honore and ornament of our English Scepter."--GERARD. Yet the kingdom of the Rose even then was not undisputed; the Lily was always its rival (_see_ LILY), for thus sang Walter de Biblesworth in the thirteenth century--

"En ço verger troveroums les flurs Des queus issunt les doux odours (swote smel) Les herbes ausi pur medicine La flur de Rose, la flur de Liz (lilie) Liz vaut per royne, Rose pur piz."

But a little later the great Scotch poet Dunbar, who lived from 1460 to 1520, that is, a century before Shakespeare, asserted the dignity of the Rose as even superior to the Thistle of Scotland.

"Nor hold none other flower in sic dainty As the fresh Rose of colour red and white; For if thou dost, hurt is thine honesty, Considering that no flower is so perfite, So full of virtue, pleasaunce, and delight, So full of blissful angelic beauty, Imperial birth, honour, and dignity."

Volumes have been written, and many more may still be written, on the delights of the Rose, but my present business is only with the Roses of Shakespeare. In many of the above passages the Rose is simply the emblem of all that is loveliest and brightest and most beautiful upon earth, yet always with the underlying sentiment that even the brightest has its dark side, as the Rose has its thorns; that the worthiest objects of our earthly love are at the very best but short-lived; that the most beautiful has on it the doom of decay and death. These were the lessons which even the heathen writers learned from their favourite Roses, and which Christian writers of all ages loved to learn also, not from the heathen writers, but from the beautiful flowers themselves. "The Rose is a beautiful flower," said St. Basil, "but it always fills me with sorrow by reminding me of my sins, for which the earth was doomed to bear thorns." And it would be easy to fill a volume, and it would not be a cheerless volume, with beautiful and expressive passages from poets, preachers, and other authors, who have taken the Rose to point the moral of the fleeting nature of all earthly things. Herrick in four lines tells the whole--

"Gather ye Roses while ye may Old time is still a-flying, And the same flower that smiles to-day, To-morrow will be dying."

But Shakespeare's notices of the Rose are not all emblematical and allegorical. He mentions these distinct sorts of Roses--the Red Rose, the White Rose, the Musk Rose, the Provençal Rose, the Damask Rose, the Variegated Rose, the Canker Rose, and the Sweet Briar.

The Canker Rose is the wild Dog Rose, and the name is sometimes applied to the common Red Poppy.

The Red Rose and the Provençal Rose (No. 13) are no doubt the same, and are what we now call R. centifolia, or the Cabbage Rose; a Rose that has been supposed to be a native of the South of Europe, but Dr. Lindley preferred "to place its native country in Asia, because it has been found wild by Bieberstein with double flowers, on the eastern side of Mount Caucasus, whither it is not likely to have escaped from a garden."[250:1] We do not know when it was introduced into England, but it was familiar to Chaucer--

"The savour of the Roses swote Me smote right to the herté rote, As I hadde alle embawmed be.

* * * * *

Of Roses there were grete wone, So faire were never in Rone."

_i.e._, in Provence, at the mouth of the Rhone. For beauty in shape and exquisite fragrance, I consider this Rose to be still unrivalled; but it is not a fashionable Rose, and is usually found in cottage gardens, or perhaps in some neglected part of gardens of more pretensions. I believe it is considered too loose in shape to satisfy the floral critics of exhibition flowers, and it is only a summer Rose, and so contrasts unfavourably with the Hybrid Perpetuals. Still, it is a delightful Rose, delightful to the eye, delightful for its fragrance, and most delightful from its associations.

The White Rose of York (No. 20) has never been satisfactorily identified. It was clearly a cultivated Rose, and by some is supposed to have been only the wild White Rose (_R. arvensis_) grown in a garden. But it is very likely to have been the Rosa alba, which was a favourite in English gardens in Shakespeare's time, and was very probably introduced long before his time, for it is the double variety of the wild White Rose, and Gerard says of it: "The double White Rose doth grow wilde in many hedges of Lancashire in great abundance, even as Briers do with us in these southerly parts, especially in a place of the countrey called Leyland, and in a place called Roughford, not far from Latham." It was, therefore, not a new gardener's plant in his time, as has been often stated. I have little doubt that this is the White Rose of York; it is not the R. alba of Dr. Lindley's monograph, but the double variety of the British R. arvensis.

The White Rose has a very ancient interest for Englishmen, for "long before the brawl in the Temple Gardens, the flower had been connected with one of the most ancient names of our island. The elder Pliny, in discussing the etymology of the word Albion, suggests that the land may have been so named from the White Roses which abounded in it--'Albion insula sic dicta ab albis rupibus, quas mare alluit, vel ob rosas albas quibus abundat.' Whatever we may think of the etymological skill displayed in the suggestion . . . we look with almost a new pleasure on the Roses of our own hedgerows, when regarding them as descended in a straight line from the 'rosas albas' of those far-off summers."--_Quarterly Review_, vol. cxiv.

The Damask Rose (No. 5) remains to us under the same name, telling its own history. There can be little doubt that the Rose came from Damascus, probably introduced into Europe by the Crusaders or some of the early travellers in the East, who speak in glowing terms of the beauties of the gardens of Damascus. So Sir John Mandeville describes the city--"In that Cytee of Damasce, there is gret plentee of Welles, and with in the Cytee and with oute, ben many fayre Gardynes and of dyverse frutes. Non other Cytee is not lyche in comparison to it, of fayre Gardynes, and of fayre desportes."--_Voiage and Travaile_, cap. xi. And in our own day the author of "Eöthen" described the same gardens as he saw them: "High, high above your head, and on every side all down to the ground, the thicket is hemmed in and choked up by the interlacing boughs that droop with the weight of Roses, and load the slow air with their damask breath. There are no other flowers. The Rose trees which I saw were all of the kind we call 'damask;' they grow to an immense height and size."--_Eöthen_, ch. xxvii. It was not till long after the Crusades that the Damask Rose was introduced into England, for Hakluyt in 1582 says: "In time of memory many things have been brought in that were not here before, as the Damaske Rose by Doctour Linaker, King Henry the Seventh and King Henrie the Eight's Physician."--_Voiages_, vol. ii.[252:1]

As an ornamental Rose the Damask Rose is still a favourite, though probably the real typical Rosa Damascena is very seldom seen--but it has been the parent of a large number of hybrid Roses, which the most critical Rosarian does not reject. The whole family are very sweet-scented, so that "sweet as Damask Roses" was a proverb, and Gerard describes the common Damaske as "in other respects like the White Rose; the especiale difference consisteth in the colour and smell of the floures, for these are of a pale red colour and of a more pleasant smell, and fitter for meate or medicine."

The Musk Roses (No. 1) were great favourites with our forefathers. This Rose (_R. moschata_) is a native of the North of Africa and of Spain, and has been also found in Nepaul. Hakluyt gives the exact date of its introduction. "The turkey cockes and hennes," he says, "were brought about fifty yeres past, the Artichowe in time of King Henry the Eight, and of later times was procured out of Italy the Muske Rose plant, the Plumme called the Perdigwena, and two kindes more by the Lord Cromwell after his travel."--_Voiages_, vol. ii. It is a long straggling Rose, bearing bunches of single flowers, and is very seldom seen except against the walls of some old houses. "You remember the great bush at the corner of the south wall just by the blue drawing-room windows; that is the old Musk Rose, Shakespeare's Musk Rose, which is dying out through the kingdom now."--_My Lady Ludlow_, by Mrs. Gaskell. But wherever it is grown it is highly prized, not so much for the beauty as for the delicate scent of its flowers. The scent is unlike the scent of any other Rose, or of any other flower, but it is very pleasant, and not overpowering; and the plant has the peculiarity that, like the Sweet Briar, but unlike other Roses, it gives out its scent of its own accord and unsought, and chiefly in the evening, so that if the window of a bedroom near which this rose is trained is left open, the scent will soon be perceived in the room. This peculiarity did not escape the notice of Lord Bacon. "Because the breath of flowers," he says, "is far sweeter in the air (when it comes and goes like the warbling of music) than in the hand, therefore nothing is more fit for that delight than to know what be the flowers and plants that do best perfume the air. Roses, damask and red, are fast flowers of their smells, so that you may walk by a whole row of them, and find nothing of their sweetness, yea, though it be in a morning's dew. Bays, likewise, yield no smell as they grow, Rosemary little, nor Sweet Marjoram; that which above all others yields the sweetest smell in the air is the Violet, especially the white double Violet which comes twice a year, about the middle of April, and about Bartholomew-tide; next to that is the Musk-rose."--_Essay of Gardens._

The Roses mentioned in Nos. 34, 51, and 52 as a mixture of red and white must have been the mottled or variegated Roses, commonly called the York and Lancaster Roses;[253:1] these are old Roses, and very probably quite as old as the sixteenth century. There are two varieties: in one each petal is blotched with white and pink; this is the R. versicolor of Parkinson, and is a variety of R. Damascena; in the other most of the petals are white, but with a mixture of pink petals; this is the Rosa mundi or Gloria mundi, and is a variety of R. Gallica.

These, with the addition of the Eglantine or Sweet Brier (_see_ EGLANTINE), are the only Roses that Shakespeare directly names, and they were the chief sorts grown in his time, but not the only sorts; and to what extent Roses were cultivated in Shakespeare's time we have a curious proof in the account of the grant of Ely Place, in Holborn, the property of the Bishops of Ely. "The tenant was Sir Christopher Hatton (Queen Elizabeth's handsome Lord Chancellor) to whom the greater portion of the house was let in 1576 for the term of twenty-one years. The rent was a Red Rose, ten loads of hay, and ten pounds per annum; Bishop Cox, on whom this hard bargain was forced by the Queen, reserving to himself and his successors the right of walking in the gardens, and gathering twenty bushels of Roses yearly."--CUNNINGHAM. We have records also of the garden cultivation of the Rose in London long before Shakespeare's time. "In the Earl of Lincoln's garden in Holborn in 24 Edw. I., the only flowers named are Roses, of which a quantity was sold, producing three shillings and twopence."--HUDSON TURNER.

My space forbids me to enter more largely into any account of these old species, or to say much of the many very interesting points in the history of the Rose, but two or three points connected with Shakespeare's Roses must not be passed over. First, its name. He says through Juliet (No. 36) that the Rose by any other name would smell as sweet. But the whole world is against him. Rose was its old Latin name corrupted from its older Greek name, and the same name, with slight and easily-traced differences, has clung to it in almost all European countries.

Shakespeare also mentions its uses in Rose-water and Rose-cakes, and it was only natural to suppose that a flower so beautiful and so sweet was meant by Nature to be of great use to man. Accordingly we find that wonderful virtues were attributed to it,[255:1] and an especial virtue was attributed to the dewdrops that settled on the full-blown Rose. Shakespeare alludes to these in Nos. 22 and 27; and from these were made cosmetics only suited to the most extravagant.

"The water that did spryng from ground She would not touch at all, But washt her hands with dew of Heaven That on sweet Roses fall."

_The Lamentable Fall of Queen Ellinor._--Roxburghe Ballads.

And as with their uses, so it was also with their history. Such a flower must have a high origin, and what better origin than the pretty mediæval legend told to us by Sir John Mandeville?--"At Betheleim is the Felde _Floridus_, that is to seyne, the _Feld florisched_; for als moche as a fayre mayden was blamed with wrong and sclaundered, for whiche cause sche was demed to the Dethe, and to be brent in that place, to the whiche she was ladd; and as the Fyre began to brent about hire, sche made hire preyeres to oure Lord, that als wissely as sche was not gylty of that Synne, that He wolde helpe hire and make it to be knowen to alle men, of his mercyfulle grace. And when sche hadde thus seyd, sche entered into the Fuyr; and anon was the Fuyr quenched and oute; and the Brondes that weren brennynge becomen red Roseres, and the Brondes that weren not kyndled becomen white Roseres, full of Roses. And these weren the first Roseres and Roses, both white and rede, that evere ony man saughe."--_Voiage and Travaile_, cap. vi.

With this pretty legend I may well conclude the account of Shakespeare's Roses, commending, however, M. Biron's sensible remarks on unseasonable flowers (No. 26) to those who estimate the beauty of a flower or anything else in proportion to its being produced out of its natural season.

FOOTNOTES:

[244:1] This was a familiar idea with the old writers: "Therefore, sister Bud, grow wise by my folly, and know it is far greater happinesse to lose thy virginity in a good hand than to wither on the stalk whereon thou growest."--THOMAS FULLER, _Antheologia_, p. 32. (See also Chester's "Cantoes," No. 13, p. 137, New Shak. Soc.)

[245:1] "Non vivunt contra naturam, qui hieme concupiscunt rosas?"--SENECA, _Ep._ 122.

[250:1] We have an old record of the existence of large double Roses in Asia by Herodotus, who tells us, that in a part of Macedonia were the so-called gardens of Midas, in which grew native Roses, each one having sixty petals, and of a scent surpassing all others ("Hist.," viii. 138).

[252:1] The Damask Rose was imported into England at an earlier date but probably only as a drug. It is mentioned in a "Bill of Medicynes furnished for the use of Edward I., 1306-7: 'Item pro aqua rosata de Damasc,' lb. xl, iiii_li._"--_Archæological Journal_, vol. xiv. 271.

[253:1] The York and Lancaster Roses were a frequent subject for the epigram writers; and gave occasion for one of the happiest of English epigrams. On presenting a White Rose to a Lancastrian lady--

"If this fair Rose offend thy sight, It in thy bosom wear; 'Twill blush to find itself less white, And turn Lancastrian there."

[255:1] "A Rose beside his beauty is a cure."--G. HERBERT, _Providence_.

ROSEMARY.

(1) _Perdita._

Reverend Sirs, For you there's Rosemary and Rue; these keep Seeming and savour all the winter long; Grace and remembrance be to you both.[256:1]

_Winter's Tale_, act iv, sc. 4 (73).

(2) _Bawd._

Marry, come up, my dish of chastity with Rosemary and bays.

_Pericles_, act iv, sc. 6 (159).

(3) _Edgar._

Bedlam beggars, who, with roaring voices Strike in their numb'd and mortified bare arms Pins, wooden pricks, and sprigs of Rosemary.

_Lear_, act ii, sc. 3 (14).

(4) _Ophelia._

There's Rosemary, that's for remembrance; pray, love, remember.

_Hamlet_, act iv, sc. 5 (175).

(5) _Nurse._

Doth not Rosemary and Romeo begin both with a letter?

_Romeo._

Ay, nurse; what of that? both with an R.

_Nurse._

Ah, mocker! that's the dog's name; R is for the ----. No; I know it begins with some other letter:--and she hath the prettiest sententious of it, of you and Rosemary, that it would do you good to hear it.

_Romeo and Juliet_, act ii, sc. 4 (219).

(6) _Friar._

Dry up your tears, and stick your Rosemary On this fair corse.

_Ibid._, act iv, sc. 5 (79).

The Rosemary is not a native of Britain, but of the sea-coast of the South of Europe, where it is very abundant. It was very early introduced into England, and is mentioned in an Anglo-Saxon Herbarium under its Latin name of Ros marinus, and is there translated by Bothen, _i.e._ Thyme; also in an Anglo-Saxon Vocabulary of the eleventh century, where it is translated Feld-madder and Sun-dew. In these places our present plant may or may not be meant, but there is no doubt that it is the one referred to in an ancient English poem of the fourteenth century, on the virtues of herbs, published in Wright and Halliwell's "Reliquiæ Antiquæ." The account of "The Gloriouse Rosemaryne" is long, but the beginning and ending are worth quoting--

"This herbe is callit Rosemaryn Of vertu that is gode and fyne; But alle the vertues tell I ne cane, No I trawe no erthely man.

* * * * *

Of thys herbe telles Galiene That in hys contree was a quene, Gowtus and Crokyt as he hath tolde, And eke sexty yere olde; Sor and febyl, where men hyr sey Scho semyth wel for to dey; Of Rosmaryn scho toke sex po[=w]de, And grownde hyt wel in a stownde, And bathed hir threyes everi day, Nine mowthes, as I herde say, And afterwarde anoynitte wel hyr hede With good bame as I rede; Away fel alle that olde flessche, And yo[=w]ge i-sprong tender and nessche; So fresshe to be scho then began Scho coveytede couplede be to man." (Vol. i, 196).

We can now scarcely understand the high favour in which Rosemary was formerly held; we are accustomed to see it neglected, or only tolerated in some corner of the kitchen garden, and not often tolerated there. But it was very different in Shakespeare's time, when it was in high favour for its evergreen leaves and fine aromatic scent, remaining a long time after picking, so long, indeed, that both leaves and scent were almost considered everlasting. This was its great charm, and so Spenser spoke of it as "the cheerful Rosemarie" and "refreshing Rosemarine," and good Sir Thomas More had a great affection for it. "As for Rosemarine," he said, "I lett it run alle over my garden walls, not onlie because my bees love it, but because tis the herb sacred to remembrance, and therefore to friendship; whence a sprig of it hath a dumb language that maketh it the chosen emblem at our funeral wakes and in our buriall grounds." And Parkinson gives a similar account of its popularity as a garden plant: "Being in every woman's garden, it were sufficient but to name it as an ornament among other sweet herbs and flowers in our gardens. In this our land, where it hath been planted in noblemen's and great men's gardens against brick walls, and there continued long, it riseth up in time unto a very great height, with a great and woody stem of that compasse that, being cloven out into boards, it hath served to make lutes or such like instruments, and here with us carpenters' rules and to divers others purposes." It was the favourite evergreen wherever the occasion required an emblem of constancy and perpetual remembrance, such especially as weddings and funerals, at both of which it was largely used; and so says Herrick of "The Rosemarie Branch"--

"Grow for two ends, it matters not at all, Be't for my bridall or my buriall."

Its use at funerals was very widespread, for Laurembergius records a pretty custom in use in his day, 1631, at Frankfort: "Is mos apud nos retinetur, dum cupresso humile, vel rore marino, non solum coronamus funera jamjam ducenda, sed et iis appendimus ex iisdem herbis litteras collectas, significatrices nominis ejus quæ defuncta est. Nam in puellarum funeribus hæc fere fieri solent" ("Horticulturæ," cap. vj.).

Its use at weddings is pleasantly told in the old ballad of "The Bride's Good-morrow"--

"The house is drest and garnisht for your sake With flowers gallant and green; A solemn feast your comely cooks do ready make, Where all your friends will be seen: Young men and maids do ready stand With sweet Rosemary in their hand-- A perfect token of your virgin's life. To wait upon you they intend Unto the church to make an end: And God make thee a joyfull wedded wife."

_Roxburghe Ballads_, vol. i.

It probably is one of the most lasting of evergreens after being gathered, though we can scarcely credit the statement recorded by Phillips that "it is the custom in France to put a branch of Rosemary in the hands of the dead when in the coffin, and we are told by Valmont Bomare, in his 'Histoire Naturelle,' that when the coffins have been opened after several years, the plant has been found to have vegetated so much that the leaves have covered the corpse." These were the general and popular uses of the Rosemary, but it was of high repute as a medicine, and still holds a place, though not so high as formerly, in the "Pharmacopoeia." "Rosemary," says Parkinson, "is almost of as great use as Bayes, both for inward and outward remedies, and as well for civill as physicall purposes--inwardly for the head and heart, outwardly for the sinews and joynts; for civile uses, as all do know, at weddings, funerals, &c., to bestow among friends; and the physicall are so many that you might as well be tyred in the reading as I in the writing, if I should set down all that might be said of it."

With this high character we may well leave this good, old-fashioned plant, merely noting that the name is popularly but erroneously supposed to mean the Rose of Mary. It has no connection with either Rose or Mary, but is the Ros marinus, or Ros Maris (as in Ovid--

"Ros maris, et laurus, nigraque myrtus olent;"

_De Arte Aman._, iii, 390),

the plant that delights in the sea-spray; and so the old spelling was Rosmarin. Gower says of the Star Alpheta--

"His herbe proper is Rosmarine;"

_Conf. Aman._, lib. sept.

a spelling which Shenstone adopted--

"And here trim Rosmarin that whilom crowned The daintiest garden of the proudest peer."

It was also sometimes called Guardrobe, being "put into chests and presses among clothes, to preserve them from mothes and other vermine."

FOOTNOTES:

[256:1] Grace was symbolized by the Rue, or Herb of Grace, and remembrance by the Rosemary.

RUE.

(1) _Perdita._

For you there's Rosemary and Rue.

_Winter's Tale_, act iv, sc. 4 (74). (_See_ ROSEMARY, No. 1.)

(2) _Gardener._

Here did she fall a tear; here in this place I'll set a bank of Rue, sour Herb of Grace: Rue, even for ruth, here shortly shall beseen, In the remembrance of a weeping queen.

_Richard II_, act iii, sc. 4 (104).

(3) _Antony._

Grace grow where these drops fall.

_Antony and Cleopatra_, act iv, sc. 2 (38).

(4) _Ophelia._

There's Rue for you; and here's some for me: we may call it Herb-grace o' Sundays: O, you must wear your Rue with a difference.

_Hamlet_, act iv, sc. 5 (181).

(5) _Clown._

Indeed, sir, she was the Sweet Marjoram of the salad, or rather the Herb of Grace.

_Lafeu._

They are not salad-herbs, you knave, they are nose-herbs.

_All's Well that Ends Well_, act iv, sc. 5 (17).

Comparing (2) and (3) together, there is little doubt that the same herb is alluded to in both; and it is, perhaps, alluded to, though not exactly named, in the following:

_Friar Laurence._

In man, as well as herbs, grace and rude will.

_Romeo and Juliet_, act ii, sc. 3 (28).

Shakespeare thus gives us the two names for the same plant, Rue and Herb of Grace, and though at first sight there seems to be little or no connection between the two names, yet really they are so closely connected, that the one name was derived from, or rather suggested by, the other. Rue is the English form of the Greek and Latin _ruta_, a word which has never been explained, and in its earlier English form of _rude_ came still nearer to the Latin original. But _ruth_ was the English word for sorrow and remorse, and _to rue_ was to be sorry for anything, or to have pity;[260:1] we still say a man will rue a particular action, _i.e._, be sorry for it; and so it was a natural thing to say that a plant which was so bitter, and had always borne the name _Rue_ or _Ruth_, must be connected with repentance. It was, therefore, the Herb of Repentance, and this was soon transformed into the Herb of Grace (in 1838 Loudon said, "It is to this day called Ave Grace in Sussex"), repentance being the chief sign of grace; and it is not unlikely that this idea was strengthened by the connection of Rue with the bitter herbs of the Bible, though it is only once mentioned, and then with no special remark, except as a tithable garden herb, together with Anise and Cummin.

The Rue, like Lavender and Rosemary, is a native of the more barren parts of the coasts of the Mediterranean, and has been found on Mount Tabor, but it was one of the earliest occupants of the English Herb garden. It is very frequently mentioned in the Saxon Leech Books, and entered so largely into their prescriptions that it must have been very extensively grown. Its strong aromatic smell,[261:1] and bitter taste, with the blistering quality of the leaves, soon established its character as almost a heal-all.

"Rew bitter a worthy gres (herb) Mekyl of myth and vertu is."

_Stockholm MS._, 1305.

Even beasts were supposed to have discovered its virtues, so that weasels were gravely said, and this by such men as Pliny, to eat Rue when they were preparing themselves for a fight with rats and serpents. Its especial virtue was an eye-salve, a use which Milton did not overlook--

"To nobler sights Michael from Adam's eyes the filme removed Which that false fruit which promised clearer sight Had bred; then purged with Euphrasie and Rue The visual nerve, for he had much to see:"

_Paradise Lost_, book xi.;

and which was more fully stated in the old lines of the Schola Salerni--

"Nobilis est Ruta quia lumina reddit acuta; Auxilio rutæ, vir lippe, videbis acute; Cruda comesta recens oculos Caligine purgat; Ruta facit castum, dat lumen, et ingerit astum; Cocta facit Ruta et de pollicibus loca tuta."

After reading this high moral and physical character of the herb, it is rather startling to find that "It is believed that if stolen from a neighbour's garden it would prosper better." It was, however, an old belief--

"They sayen eke stolen sede is butt the bette."

_Palladius on Husbandrie_ (c. 1420) iv, 269.

"It is a common received opinion that Rue will grow the better if it bee filtched out of another man's garden."--HOLLAND'S _Pliny_, xix. 7.

As other medicines were introduced the Rue declined in favour, so that Parkinson spoke of it with qualified praise--"Without doubt it is a most wholesom herb, although bitter and strong. Some do rip up a bead-rowl of the virtues of Rue, . . . but beware of the too-frequent or overmuch use therof." And Dr. Daubeny says of it, "It is a powerful stimulant and narcotic, but not much used in modern practise."

As a garden plant, the Rue forms a pretty shrub for a rock-work, if somewhat attended to, so as to prevent its becoming straggling and untidy. The delicate green and peculiar shape of the leaves give it a distinctive character, which forms a good contrast to other plants.

FOOTNOTES:

[260:1]

"Rewe on my child, that of thyn gentilnesse Rewest on every sinful in destresse."

CHAUCER, _The Man of Lawes Tale_.

[261:1] "Ranke-smelling Rue."--SPENSER, _Muiopotmos_.

RUSH.

(1) _Rosalind._

He taught me how to know a man in love; in which cage of Rushes I am sure you are not prisoner.

_As You Like It_, act iii, sc. 2 (388).

(2) _Phoebe._

Lean but on a Rush, The cicatrice and capable impressure Thy palm some moment keeps.

_Ibid._, act iii, sc. 5 (22).

(3) _Clown._

As fit as Tib's Rush for Tom's forefinger.

_All's Well that Ends Well_, act ii, sc. 2 (24).

(4) _Romeo._

Let wantons light of heart Tickle the senseless Rushes with their heels.

_Romeo and Juliet_, act i, sc. 4 (35).

(5) _Dromio of Syracuse._

Some devils ask but the parings of one's nail, A Rush, a hair, a drop of blood, a pin, A Nut, a Cherry-stone.

_Comedy of Errors_, act iv, sc. 3 (72).

(6) _Bastard._

A Rush will be a beam To hang thee on.

_King John_, act iv, sc. 3 (129).

(7) _1st Groom._

More Rushes, more Rushes.

_2nd Henry IV_, act v, sc. 5 (1).

(8) _Eros._

He's walking in the garden--thus; and spurns The Rush that lies before him.

_Antony and Cleopatra_, act iii, sc. 5 (17).

(9) _Othello._

Man but a Rush against Othello's breast, And he retires.

_Othello_, act v, sc. 2 (270).

(10) _Grumio._

Is supper ready, the house trimmed, Rushes strewed, cobwebs swept?

_Taming of the Shrew_, act iv, sc. 1 (47).

(11) _Katherine._

Be it moon or sun, or what you please, And if you please to call it a Rush-candle, Henceforth I vow it shall be so for me.

_Ibid._, act iv, sc. 5 (13).

(12) _Glendower._

She bids you on the wanton Rushes lay you down, And rest your gentle head upon her lap.

_1st Henry IV_, act iii, sc. 1 (214).

(13) _Marcius._

He that depends Upon your favours swims with fins of lead And hews down Oaks with Rushes.

_Coriolanus_, act i, sc. 1 (183).

(14) _Iachimo._

Our Tarquin thus Did softly press the Rushes.

_Cymbeline_, act ii, sc. 2 (12).

(15) _Senator._ Our gates Which yet seem shut, we have but pinn'd with Rushes! They'll open of themselves.

_Coriolanus_, act i, sc. 4 (16).

(16)

And being lighted, by the light he spies Lucretia's glove, wherein her needle sticks; He takes it from the Rushes where it lies.

_Lucrece_ (316).

(17) _See_ REEDS, No. 7.

(18) _Wooer._

Rings she made Of Rushes that grew by, and to 'em spoke The prettiest posies.

_Two Noble Kinsmen_, act iv, sc. 1 (109).

_See also_ FLAG, REED, _and_ BULRUSH.

Like the Reed, the Rush often stands for any water-loving, grassy plant, and, like the Reed, it was the emblem of yielding weakness and of uselessness.[264:1] The three principal Rushes referred to by Shakespeare are the Common Rush (_Juncus communis_), the Bulrush (_Scirpus lacustris_), and the Sweet Rush (_Acorus calamus_).

The Common Rush, though the mark of badly cultivated ground, and the emblem of uselessness, was not without its uses, some of which are referred to in Nos. 1, 3, and 11. In Nos. 3 and 18 reference is made to the Rush-ring, a ring, no doubt, originally meant and used for the purposes of honest betrothal, but afterwards so vilely used for the purposes of mock marriages, that even as early as 1217 Richard Bishop of Salisbury had to issue his edict against the use of "annulum de junco."

The Rush betrothal ring is mentioned by Spenser--

"O thou great shepheard, Lobbin, how great is thy griefe! Where bene the nosegayes that she dight for thee? The coloured chaplets wrought with a chiefe, The knotted Rush-ringes and gilt Rosemarie."

_Shepherd's Calendar--November._

And by Quarles--

"Love-sick swains Compose Rush-rings, and Myrtle-berry chains, And stuck with glorious King-cups in their bonnets, Adorned with Laurel slip, chant true love sonnets."

But the uses of the Rush were not all bad. Newton, in 1587, said of the Rush--"It is a round smooth shoote without joints or knots, having within it a white substance or pith, which being drawn forth showeth like long white, soft, gentle, and round thread, and serveth for many purposes. Heerewith be made manie pretie imagined devises for Bride-ales and other solemnities, as little baskets, hampers, frames, pitchers, dishes, combs, brushes, stooles, chaires, purses with strings, girdles, and manie such other pretie and curious and artificiall conceits, which at such times many do take the paines to make and hang up in their houses, as tokens of good will to the new married Bride; and after the solemnities ended, to bestow abroad for Bride-gifts or presents." It was this "white substance or pith" from which the Rush candle (No. 11) was and still is made: a candle which in early days was probably the universal candle, which, till within a few years, was the night candle of every sick chamber, in which most of us can recollect it as a most ghastly object as it used to stand, "stationed in a basin on the floor, where it glimmered away like a gigantic lighthouse in a particularly small piece of water" (Pickwick), till expelled by the night-lights, and which is still made by Welsh labourers, and, I suppose, in Shakespeare's time was the only candle used by the poor.

"If your influence be quite damm'd up With black usurping mists, some gentle taper, Though a Rush-candle from the wicker hole Of some clay habitation, visit us With thy long levell'd rule of streaming light."--_Comus._

But the chief use of Rushes in those days was to strew the floors of houses and churches (Nos. 4, 7, 10, 12, and 14). This custom seems to have been universal in all houses of any pretence. "William the son of William of Alesbury holds three roods of land of the Lord the King in Alesbury in Com. Buck by the service of finding straw for the bed of the Lord the King, and to strew his chamber, and also of finding for the King when he comes to Alesbury straw for his bed, and besides this Grass or Rushes to make his chamber pleasant."--BLUNT'S _Tenures_. The custom went on even to our own day in Norwich Cathedral, and the "picturesque custom still lingers in the West of strewing the floors of the churches on Whit Sunday with Rushes freshly pulled from the meadows. This custom attains its highest perfection in the church of St. Mary Redcliffe at Bristol. On 'Rush Sunday' the floor is strewn with Rushes. All the merchants throw open their conservatories for the vicar to take his choice of their flowers, and the pulpit, the lectern, the choir, and the communion rails and table present a scene of great beauty."--_The Garden_, May, 1877.

For this purpose the Sweet-scented Rush was always used where it could be procured, and when first laid down it must have made a pleasant carpet; but it was a sadly dirty arrangement, and gives us a very poor idea of the cleanliness of even the best houses, though it probably was not the custom all through the year, as Newton says, speaking of Sedges, but evidently confusing the Sedge with the Sweet-scented Rush, "with the which many in this countrie do use in sommer time to straw their parlours and churches, as well for cooleness as for pleasant smell."[266:1] This Rush (_Acorus calamus_) is a British plant, with broad leaves, which have a strong cinnamon-like smell, which obtained for the plant the old Saxon name of Beewort. Another (so-called) Rush, the Flowering Rush (_Butomus umbellatus_), is one of the very handsomest of the British plants, bearing on a long straight stem a large umbel of very handsome pink flowers. Wherever there is a pond in a garden, these fine Rushes should have a place, though they may be grown in the open border where the ground is not too dry.

There is a story told by Sir John Mandeville in connection with Rushes which is not easy to understand. According to his account, our Saviour's crown of thorns was made of Rushes! "And zif alle it be so that men seyn that this Croune is of Thornes, zee shall undirstande that it was of Jonkes of the See, that is to sey, Russhes of the See, that prykken als scharpely as Thornes. For I have seen and beholden many times that of Parys and that of Constantynoble, for thei were bothe on, made of Russches of the See. But men have departed hem in two parties, of the which on part is at Parys, and the other part is at Constantynoble--and I have on of the precyouse Thornes, that semethe licke a white Thorn, and that was zoven to me for great specyaltee. . . . The Jewes setten him in a chayere and clad him in a mantelle, and then made thei the Croune of Jonkes of the See."--_Voiage and Travaile,_ c. 2.

I have no certainty to what Rush the pleasant old traveller can here refer. I can only guess that as Rushes and Sedges were almost interchangeable names, he may have meant the Sea Holly, formerly called the Holly-sedge, of which there is a very appropriate account given in an old Saxon runelay thus translated by Cockayne: "Hollysedge hath its dwelling oftenest in a marsh, it waxeth in water, woundeth fearfully, burneth with blood (_i.e._, draws blood and pains) every one of men who to it offers any handling."[267:1]

FOOTNOTES:

[264:1]

"Around the islet at its lowest edge, Lo, there beneath, where breaks th' encircling wave, The yielding mud is thick with Rushes crowned. No other flower with frond or leafy growth Or hardened fibre there can life sustain, For none bend safely to the watery shock."

DANTE, _Purgatorio_, canto i. (Johnston).

[266:1] "In the South of Europe Juniper branches were used for this purpose, as they still are in Sweden."--_Flora Domestica_, p. 213.

"As I have seen upon a bridal day, Full many maids clad in their best array, In honour of the bride, come with their flaskets Filled full of flowers, other in wicker baskets Bring from the Marish Rushes, to overspread The ground whereon to Church the lovers tread."

BROWNE'S _Brit. Past._, i, 2.

[267:1] I leave this as I first wrote it, but I have to thank Mr. Britten for the very probable suggestion that Sir John Mandeville was right. Not only does the _Juncus acutus_ "prykken als scharpely as Thornes," but "what is shown in Paris at the present day as the crown of Thorns is certainly, as Sir John says, made of rushes; the curious may consult M. Rohault de Fleury's sumptuous 'Mémoire sur les Instruments de la Passion,' for a full description of it."

RYE.

(1) _Iris._

Ceres, most bounteous lady, thy rich leas Of Wheat, Rye, Barley, Vetches, Oats, and Pease.

_Tempest_, act iv, sc. 1 (60).

(2) _Iris._

You sunburnt sicklemen, of August weary, Come hither from the furrow and be merry; Make holiday; your Rye-straw hats put on.

_Ibid._, act iv, sc. 1 (135).

(3) _Song._

Between the acres of the Rye These pretty country folks would lye.

_As You Like It_, act v, sc. 3 (23).

The Rye of Shakespeare's time was identical with our own (_Secale cereale_). It is not a British plant, and its native country is not exactly known; but it seems probable that both the plant and the name came from the region of the Caucasus.

As a food-plant Rye was not in good repute in Shakespeare's time. Gerard said of it, "It is harder to digest than Wheat, yet to rusticke bodies that can well digest it, it yields good nourishment." But "recent investigations by Professor Wanklyn and Mr. Cooper appear to give the first place to Rye as the most nutritious of all our cereals. Rye contains more gluten, and is pronounced by them one-third richer than Wheat. Rye, moreover, is capable of thriving in almost any soil."--_Gardener's Chronicle_, 1877.

SAFFRON.

(1) _Ceres._

Who (_i.e._, Iris), with thy Saffron wings upon my flowers, Diffusest honeydrops, refreshing showers.

_Tempest_, act iv, sc. 1 (78).

(2) _Antipholus of Ephesus._

Did this companion with the Saffron face Revel and feast it at my house to day?

_Comedy of Errors_, act iv, sc. 4 (64).

(3) _Clown._

I must have Saffron to colour the Warden pies.

_Winter's Tale_, act iv, sc. 3 (48).

(4) _Lafeu._

No, no, no, your son was misled with a snipt-taffeta fellow there, whose villanous Saffron would have made all the unbaked and doughy youth of a nation in his colour.

_All's Well that Ends Well_, act iv, sc. 5 (1).

Saffron (from its Arabic name, _al zahafaran_) was not, in Shakespeare's time, limited to the drug or to the Saffron-bearing Crocus (_C. sativus_), but it was the general name for all the Croci, and was even extended to the Colchicums, which were called Meadow Saffrons.[268:1] We have no Crocus really a native of Britain, but a few species (C. vernus, C. nudiflorus, C. aureus, and C. biflorus) have been so naturalized in certain parts as to be admitted, though very doubtfully, into the British flora; but the Saffron Crocus can in no way be considered a native, and the history of its introduction into England is very obscure. It is mentioned several times in the Anglo-Saxon Leech Books: "When he bathes, let him smear himself with oil; mingle it with Saffron."--_Tenth Century Leech Book_, ii. 37. "For dimness of eyes, thus one must heal it: take Celandine one spoonful, and Aloes, and Crocus (Saffron in French)."--_Schools of Medicine_, tenth century, c. 22. In these instances it may be only the imported drug; but the name occurs in an English Vocabulary among the Nomina herbarum: "Hic Crocus, A{e} Safurroun;" and in a Pictorial Vocabulary of the fourteenth century, "Hic Crocus, An{ce} Safryn;" so that I think the plant must have been in cultivation in England at that time. The usual statement, made by one writer after another, is that it was introduced by Sir Thomas Smith into the neighbourhood of Walden in the time of Edward III., but the original authority for this statement is unknown. The most authentic account is that by Hakluyt in 1582, and though it is rather long, it is worth extracting in full. It occurs in some instructions in "Remembrances for Master S.," who was going into Turkey, giving him hints what to observe in his travels: "Saffron, the best of the universall world, groweth in this realme. . . . It is a spice that is cordiall, and may be used in meats, and that is excellent in dying of yellow silks. This commodity of Saffron groweth fifty miles from Tripoli, in Syria, on an high hyll, called in those parts Gasian, so as there you may learn at that part of Tripoli the value of the pound, the goodnesse of it, and the places of the vent. But it is said that from that hyll there passeth yerely of that commodity fifteen moiles laden, and that those regions notwithstanding lacke sufficiency of that commodity. But if a vent might be found, men would in Essex (about Saffron Walden), and in Cambridgeshire, revive the trade for the benefit of the setting of the poore on worke. So would they do in Herefordshire by Wales, where the best of all England is, in which place the soil yields the wilde Saffron commonly, which showeth the natural inclination of the same soile to the bearing of the right Saffron, if the soile be manured and that way employed. . . It is reported at Saffron Walden that a pilgrim, proposing to do good to his countrey, stole a head of Saffron, and hid the same in his Palmer's staffe, which he had made hollow before of purpose, and so he brought the root into this realme with venture of his life, for if he had bene taken, by the law of the countrey from whence it came, he had died for the fact."--_English Voiages, &c._, vol. ii. From this account it seems clear that even in Hakluyt's time Saffron had been so long introduced that the history of its introduction was lost; and I think it very probable that, as was suggested by Coles in his "Adam in Eden" (1657), we are indebted to the Romans for this, as for so many of our useful plants. But it is not a Roman or Italian plant. Spenser wrote of it as--

"Saffron sought for in Cilician soyle--"[270:1]

and Browne--

"Saffron confected in Cilicia"--_Brit. Past._, i, 2;

which information they derived from Pliny. It is supposed to be a native of Asia Minor, but so altered by long cultivation that it never produces seed either in England or in other parts of Europe.[270:2] This fact led M. Chappellier, of Paris, who has for many years studied the history of the plant, to the belief that it was a hybrid; but finding that when fertilized with the pollen of a Crocus found wild in Greece, and known as C. sativus var. Græcus (_Orphanidis_), it produces seed abundantly, he concludes that it is a variety of that species, which it very much resembles, but altered and rendered sterile by cultivation. It is not now much cultivated in England, but we have abundant authority from Tusser, Gerard, Parkinson, Camden, and many other writers, that it was largely cultivated before and after Shakespeare's time, and that the quality of the English Saffron was very superior.[271:1] The importance of the crop is shown by its giving its name to Saffron Walden in Essex,[271:2] and to Saffron Hill in London, which "was formerly a part of Ely Gardens" (of which we shall hear again when we come to speak of Strawberries), "and derives its name from the crops of Saffron which it bore."--CUNNINGHAM. The plant has in the same way given its name to Zaffarano, a village in Sicily, near Mount Etna, and to Zafaranboly, "ville située près Inobole en Anatolie, au sud-est de l'ancienne Héraclée."--CHAPPELLIER. The plant is largely cultivated in many parts of Europe, but the chief centres of cultivation are in the arrondissement of Pithiviers in France, and the province of Arragon in Spain; and the chief consumers are the Germans. It has also been largely cultivated in China for a great many years, and the bulbs now imported from China are found to be, in many points, superior to the European--"l'invasion Tartare aurait porté le Safran en Chine, et de leur côté les croisés l'auraient importé en Europe."--CHAPPELLIER.

I need scarcely say that the parts of the plant that produce the Saffron are the sweet-scented stigmata, the "Crocei odores" of Virgil; but the use of Saffron has now so gone out of fashion, that it may be well to say something of its uses in the time of Shakespeare, as a medicine, a dye, and a confection. On all three points its virtues were so many that there is a complete literature on Crocus. I need not name all the books on the subject, but the title page of one (a duodecimo of nearly three hundred pages) may be quoted as an example: "Crocologia seu curiosa Croci Regis Vegetabilium enucleatio continens Illius etymologiam, differencias, tempus quo viret et floret, culturam, collectionem, usum mechanicum, Pharmaceuticum, Chemico medicum, omnibus pene humani corporis partibus destinatum additis diversis observationibus et questionibus Crocum concernentibus ad normam et formam S. R. I. Academiæ Naturæ curiosorum congesta a Dan: Ferdinando Hertodt, Phys. et Med. Doc., &c., &c. Jenæ. 1671." After this we may content ourselves with Gerard's summary of its virtues: "The moderate use of it is good for the head, and maketh sences more quicke and lively, shaketh off heavy and drowsie sleep and maketh a man mery." For its use in confections this will suffice from the "Apparatus Plantarum" of Laurembergius, 1632: "In re familiari vix ullus est telluris habitatus angulus ubi non sit Croci quotodiana usurpatio, aspersi vel incocti cibis." And as to its uses as a dye, its penetrating powers were proverbial, of which Luther's Sermons will supply an instance: "As the Saffron bag that hath bene ful of Saffron, or hath had Saffron in it, doth ever after savour and smel of the swete Saffron that it contayneth; so our blessed Ladye which conceived and bare Christe in her wombe, dyd ever after resemble the maners and vertues of that precious babe which she bare" ("Fourth Sermon," 1548). One of the uses to which Saffron was applied in the Middle Ages was for the manufacture of the beautiful gold colour used in the illumination of missals, &c., where the actual gold was not used. This is the recipe from the work of Theophilus in the eleventh century: "If ye wish to decorate your work in some manner take tin pure and finely scraped; melt it and wash it like gold, and apply it with the same glue upon letters or other places which you wish to ornament with gold or silver; and when you have polished it with a tooth, take Saffron with which silk is colored, moistening it with clear of egg without water, and when it has stood a night, on the following day cover with a pencil the places which you wish to gild, the rest holding the place of silver" (Book i, c. 23, Hendrie's translation).

Though the chief fame of the Saffron Crocus is as a field plant, yet it is also a very handsome flower; but it is a most capricious one, which may account for the area of cultivation being so limited. In some places it entirely refuses to flower, as it does in my own garden, where I have cultivated it for many years but never saw a flower, while in a neighbour's garden, under apparently the very same conditions of soil and climate, it flowers every autumn. But if we cannot succeed with the Saffron Crocus, there are many other Croci which were known in the time of Shakespeare, and grown not "for any other use than in regard of their beautiful flowers of several varieties, as they have been carefully sought out and preserved by divers to furnish a garden of dainty curiosity." Gerard had in his garden only six species; Parkinson had or described thirty-one different sorts, and after his time new kinds were not so much sought after till Dean Herbert collected and studied them. His monograph of the Crocus, in 1847, contained the account of forty-one species, besides many varieties. The latest arrangement of the family by Mr. George Maw, of Broseley, contains sixty-eight species, besides varieties; of these all are not yet in cultivation, but every year sees some fresh addition to the number, chiefly by the unwearied exertions in finding them in their native habitats, and the liberal distribution of them when found, of Mr. Maw, to whom all the lovers of the Crocus are deeply indebted. And the Croci are so beautiful that we cannot have too many of them; they are, for the most part, perfectly hardy, though some few require a little protection in winter; they are of an infinite variety of colour, and some flower in the spring and some in the autumn. Most of us call the Crocus a spring flower, yet there are more autumnal than vernal species, but it is as a spring flower that we most value it. The common yellow Crocus is almost as much "the first-born of the year's delight" as the Snowdrop. No one can tell its native country, but it has been the brightest ornament of our gardens, not only in spring, but even in winter, for many years. It was probably first introduced during Shakespeare's life. "It hath floures," says Gerard, "of a most perfect shining yellow colour, seeming afar off to be a hot glowing coal of fire. That pleasant plant was sent unto me from Robinus, of Paris, that painful and most curious searcher of simples." From that beginning perhaps it has found its way into every garden, for it increases rapidly, is very hardy, and its brightness commends it to all. It is the "most gladsome of the early flowers. None gives more glowing welcome to the season, or strikes on our first glance with a ray of keener pleasure, when, with some bright morning's warmth, the solitary golden fringes have kindled into knots of thick-clustered yellow bloom on the borders of the cottage garden. At a distance the eye is caught by that glowing patch, its warm heart open to the sun, and dear to the honey-gathering bees which hum around the chalices."--FORBES WATSON.

With this pretty picture I may well close the account of the Crocus, but not because the subject is exhausted, for it is very tempting to go much further, and to speak of the beauties of the many species, and of the endless forms and colours of the grand Dutch varieties; and whatever admiration may be expressed for the common yellow Dutch Crocus, the same I would also give to almost every member of this lovely and cheerful family.

FOOTNOTES:

[268:1] Fuller says of the crocodile--"He hath his name of +chrocho-deilos+, or the Saffron-fearer, knowing himself to be all poison, and it all antidote."--_Worthies of England_, i, 336, ed. 1811.

[270:1] "Cilician," or "Corycean," were the established classical epithets to use when speaking of the Saffron. Cowley quotes--

"Corycii pressura Croci"--LUCAN;

"Ultima Corycio quæ cadit aura Croco"--MARTIAL;

and adds the note--"Omnes Poetæ hoc quasi solenni quodam Epitheto utuntur. Corycus nomen urbis et montis in Cilicia, ubi laudatissimus Crocus nascebatur."--_Plantarum_, lib. i, 49.

[270:2] "Saffron is . . . a native of Cashmere, . . . and the . . . Saffron Crocus and the Hemp plant have followed their (the Aryans) migrations together throughout the temperate zone of the globe."--BIRDWOOD, _Handbook to the Indian Court_, p. 23.

[271:1] "Our English hony and Safron is better than any that commeth from any strange or foregn land."--BULLEIN, _Government of Health_, 1588.

[271:2] The arms of the borough of Saffron Walden are "three Saffron flowers walled in."

SAMPHIRE.

_Edgar._

Half-way down Hangs one that gathers Samphire, dreadful trade! Methinks he seems no bigger than his head.

_King Lear_, act iv, sc. 6 (14).

Being found only on rocks, the Samphire was naturally associated with St. Peter, and so it was called in Italian Herba di San Pietro, in English Sampire and Rock Sampier[274:1]--in other words, Samphire is simply a corruption of Saint Peter. The plant grows round all the coasts of Great Britain and Ireland, wherever there are suitable rocks on which it can grow, and on all the coasts of Europe, except the northern coasts; and it is a plant very easily recognized, if not by its pale-green, fleshy leaves, yet certainly by its taste, or its "smell delightful and pleasant." The leaves form the pickle, "the pleasantest sauce, most familiar, and best agreeing with man's body," but now much out of fashion. In Shakespeare's time the gathering of Samphire was a regular trade, and Steevens quotes from Smith's "History of Waterford" to show the danger attending the trade: "It is terrible to see how people gather it, hanging by a rope several fathoms from the top of the impending rocks, as it were in the air." In our own time the quantity required could be easily got without much danger, for it grows in places perfectly accessible in sufficient quantity for the present requirements, for in some parts it grows away from the cliffs, so that "the fields about Porth Gwylan, in Carnarvonshire, are covered with it." It may even be grown in the garden, especially in gardens near the sea, and makes a pretty plant for rockwork.

There is a story connected with the Samphire which shows how botanical knowledge, like all other knowledge, may be of great service, even where least expected. Many years ago a ship was wrecked on the Sussex coast, and a small party were left on a rock not far from land. To their horror they found the sea rising higher and higher, and threatening before long to cover their place of refuge. Some of them proposed to try and swim for land, and would have done so, but just as they were preparing for it an officer saw a plant of Samphire growing on the rock, and told them they might stay and trust to that little plant that the sea would rise no further, for that the Samphire, though always growing within the spray of the sea, never grows where the sea could actually touch it. They believed him and were saved.

FOOTNOTES:

[274:1] Dr. Prior.

SAVORY.

_Perdita._

Here's flowers for you; Hot Lavender, Mints, Savory, Marjoram.

_Winter's Tale_, act iv, sc. 4. (103).

Savory might be supposed to get its name as being a plant of special savour, but the name comes from its Latin name _Saturcia_, through the Italian _Savoreggia_. It is a native of the South of Europe, probably introduced into England by the Romans, for it is mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon recipes under the imported name of Savorie. It was a very favourite plant in the old herb gardens, and both kinds, the Winter and Summer Savory, were reckoned "among the farsing or farseting herbes, as they call them" (Parkinson), _i.e._, herbs used for stuffing.[275:1] Both kinds are still grown in herb gardens, but are very little used.

FOOTNOTES:

[275:1]

"His typet was ay farsud ful of knyfes And pynnes, for to give fair wyves."

_Canterbury Tale_, Prologue.

"The farced title running before the King."

_Henry V_, act iv, sc. 1 (431).

The word still exists as "forced;" _e.g._, "a forced leg of mutton," "forced meat balls."

SEDGE.

(1) _2nd Servant._

And Cytherea all in Sedges hid, Which seem to move and wanton with her breath, Even as the waving Sedges play with wind.

_Taming of the Shrew_, Induction, sc. 2. (53).

(2) _Iris._

You nymphs, called Naiads, of the winding brooks, With your Sedged crowns and ever-harmless looks.

_Tempest_, act iv, sc. 1 (128).

(3) _Julia._

The current that with gentle murmur glides, Thou knowest, being stopped, impatiently doth rage; But when his fair course is not hindered, He makes sweet music with the enamell'd stones, Giving a gentle kiss to every Sedge He overtaketh in his pilgrimage; And so by many winding nooks he strays With willing sport to the wild ocean.

_Two Gentlemen of Verona_, act ii, sc. 7 (25).

(4) _Benedick._

Alas, poor hurt fowl! now will he creep into Sedges.

_Much Ado About Nothing_, act ii, sc. 1 (209).

(5) _Hotspur._

The gentle Severn's Sedgy bank.

_1st Henry IV_, act i, sc. 3 (98).

(6) _See_ REEDS, No. 7.

Sedge is from the Anglo-Saxon Secg, and meant almost any waterside plant. Thus we read of the Moor Secg, and the Red Secg, and the Sea Holly (_Eryngium maritimum_) is called the Holly Sedge. And so it was doubtless used by Shakespeare. In our day Sedge is confined to the genus Carex, a family growing in almost all parts of the world, and containing about 1000 species, of which we have fifty-eight in Great Britain; they are most graceful ornaments both of our brooks and ditches; and some of them will make handsome garden plants. One very handsome species--perhaps the handsomest--is C. pendula, with long tassel-like flower-spikes hanging down in a very beautiful form, which is not uncommon as a wild plant, and can easily be grown in the garden, and the flower-spikes will be found very handsome additions to tall nosegays. There is another North American species, C. Fraseri, which is a good plant for the north side of a rock-work: it is a small plant, but the flower is a spike of the purest white, and is very curious, and unlike any other flower.

SENNA.

_Macbeth._

What Rhubarb, Senna, or what purgative drug Would scour these English hence?[277:1]

_Macbeth_, act v, sc. 3 (55).

Even in the time of Shakespeare several attempts were made to grow the Senna in England, but without success; so that he probably only knew it as an important "purgative drug." The Senna of commerce is made from the leaves of Cassia lanceolata and Cassia Senna, both natives of Africa, and so unfitted for open-air cultivation in England. The Cassias are a large family, mostly with handsome yellow flowers, some of which are very ornamental greenhouse plants; and one from North America, Cassia Marylandica, may be considered hardy in the South of England.

FOOTNOTES:

[277:1] In this passage the old reading for "Senna" is "Cyme," and this is the reading of the Globe Shakespeare; but I quote the passage with "Senna" because it is so printed in many editions.

SPEARGRASS.

_Peto._

He persuaded us to do the like.

_Bardolph._

Yea, and to tickle our noses with Speargrass to make them bleed, and then to beslubber our garments with it and swear it was the blood of true men.

_1st Henry IV_, act ii, sc. 4 (339).

Except in this passage I can only find Speargrass mentioned in Lupton's "Notable Things," and there without any description, only as part of a medical recipe: "Whosoever is tormented with sciatica or the hip gout, let them take an herb called Speargrass, and stamp it and lay a little thereof upon the grief." The plant is not mentioned by Lyte, Gerard, Parkinson, or the other old herbalists, and so it is somewhat of a puzzle. Steevens quotes from an old play, "Victories of Henry the Fifth": "Every day I went into the field, I would take a straw and thrust it into my nose, and make my nose bleed;" but a straw was never called Speargrass. Asparagus was called Speerage, and the young shoots might have been used for the purpose, but I have never heard of such a use; Ranunculus flammula was called Spearwort, from its lanceolate leaves, and so (according to Cockayne) was Carex acuta, still called Spiesgrass in German. Mr. Beisly suggests the Yarrow or Millfoil; and we know from several authorities (Lyte, Hollybush, Gerard, Phillip, Cole, Skinner, and Lindley) that the Yarrow was called Nosebleed; but there seems no reason to suppose that it was ever called Speargrass, or could have been called a Grass at all, though the term Grass was often used in the most general way. Dr. Prior suggests the Common Reed, which is probable. I have been rather inclined to suppose it to be one of the Horse-tails (Equiseta).[278:1] They are very sharp and spearlike, and their rough surfaces would soon draw blood; and as a decoction of Horse-tail was a remedy for stopping bleeding of the nose, I have thought it very probable that such a supposed virtue could only have arisen when remedies were sought for on the principle of "similia similibus curantur;" so that a plant, which in one form produced nose-bleeding, would, when otherwise administered, be the natural remedy. But I now think that all these suggested plants must give way in favour of the common Couch-grass (_Triticum repens_). In the eastern counties, this is still called Speargrass; and the sharp underground stolons might easily draw blood, when the nose is tickled with them. The old emigrants from the eastern counties took the name with them to America, but applied it to a Poa (Webster's "Dictionary," s.v. Speargrass).

FOOTNOTES:

[278:1] "Hippurus Anglice dicitur sharynge gyrs."--TURNER'S _Libellus_, 1538.

SQUASH, _see_ PEAS.

STOVER.

_Iris._

Thy turfy mountains, where live nibbling sheep, And flat meads thatch'd with Stover, them to keep.

_Tempest_, act iv, sc. 1 (62).

In this passage, Stover is probably the bent or dried Grass still remaining on the land, but it is the common word for hay or straw, or for "fodder and provision for all sorts of cattle; from _Estovers_, law term, which is so explained in the law dictionaries. Both are derived from _Estouvier_ in the old French, defined by Roquefort--'Convenance, nécessité, provision de tout ce qui est nécessaire.'"--NARES. The word is of frequent occurrence in the writers of the time of Shakespeare. One quotation from Tusser will be sufficient--

"Keepe dry thy straw--

"If house-roome will serve thee, lay Stover up drie, And everie sort by it selfe for to lie. Or stack it for litter if roome be too poore, And thatch out the residue, noieng thy door."

_November's Husbandry._

STRAWBERRY.

(1) _Iago._

Have you not sometimes seen a handkerchief Spotted with Strawberries in your wife's hand?[279:1]

_Othello_, act iii, sc. 3 (434).

(2) _Ely._

The Strawberry grows underneath the Nettle, And wholesome berries thrive and ripen best Neighbour'd by fruit of baser quality; And so the prince obscured his contemplation Under the veil of wildness.

_Henry V_, act i, sc. 1 (60).

(3) _Gloster._

My Lord of Ely, when I was last in Holborn, I saw good Strawberries in your garden there; I do beseech you send for some of them.

_Ely._

Marry, and will, my Lord, with all my heart.

* * * * *

Where is my lord Protector? I have sent For these Strawberries.

_King Richard III_, act iii, sc. 4 (32).

The Bishop of Ely's garden in Holborn must have been one of the chief gardens of England in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, for this is the third time it has been brought under our notice. It was celebrated for its Roses (_see_ ROSE); it was so celebrated for its Saffron Crocuses that part of it acquired the name which it still keeps, Saffron Hill; and now we hear of its "good Strawberries;" while the remembrance of "the ample garden," and of the handsome Lord Chancellor to whom it was given when taken from the bishopric, is still kept alive in its name of Hatton Garden. How very good our forefathers' Strawberries were, we have a strong proof in old Isaak Walton's happy words: "Indeed, my good scholar, we may say of angling as Dr. Boteler said of Strawberries: 'Doubtless God could have made a better berry, but doubtless God never did;' and so, if I might be judge, God never did make a more calm, quiet, innocent recreation than angling." I doubt whether, with our present experience of good Strawberries, we should join in this high praise of the Strawberries of Shakespeare's or Isaak Walton's day, for their varieties of Strawberry must have been very limited in comparison to ours. Their chief Strawberry was the Wild Strawberry brought straight from the woods, and no doubt much improved in time by cultivation. Yet we learn from Spenser and from Tusser that it was the custom to grow it just as it came from the woods.

Spenser says--

"One day as they all three together went Into the wood to gather Strawberries."--_F. Q._, vi. 34;

and Tusser--

"Wife, into thy garden, and set me a plot With Strawbery rootes of the best to be got: Such growing abroade, among Thornes in the wood, Wel chosen and picked, prove excellent good.

* * * * *

The Gooseberry, Respis, and Roses al three With Strawberies under them trimly agree."

_September's Husbandry._

And even in the next century, Sir Hugh Plat said--

"Strawberries which grow in woods prosper best in gardens."

_Garden of Eden_, i, 20.[281:1]

Besides the wild one (_Fragaria vesca_), they had the Virginian (_F. Virginiana_), a native of North America, and the parent of our scarlets; but they do not seem to have had the Hautbois (_F. elatior_), or the Chilian, or the Carolinas, from which most of our good varieties have descended.

The Strawberry is among fruits what the Primrose and Snowdrop are among flowers, the harbinger of other good fruits to follow. It is the earliest of the summer fruits, and there is no need to dwell on its delicate, sweet-scented freshness, so acceptable to all; but it has also a charm in autumn, known, however, but to few, and sometimes said to be only discernible by few. Among "the flowers that yield sweetest smell in the air," Lord Bacon reckoned Violets, and "next to that is the Musk Rose, then the Strawberry leaves dying, with a most excellent cordial smell." In Mrs. Gaskell's pretty tale, "My Lady Ludlow," the dying Strawberry leaves act an important part. "The great hereditary faculty on which my lady piqued herself, and with reason, for I never met with any other person who possessed it, was the power she had of perceiving the delicious odour arising from a bed of Strawberry leaves in the late autumn, when the leaves were all fading and dying." The old lady quotes Lord Bacon, and then says: "'Now the Hanburys can always smell the excellent cordial odour, and very delicious and refreshing it is. In the time of Queen Elizabeth the great old families of England were a distinct race, just as a cart-horse is one creature and very useful in its place, and Childers or Eclipse is another creature, though both are of the same species. So the old families have gifts and powers of a different and higher class to what the other orders have. My dear, remember that you try and smell the scent of dying Strawberry leaves in this next autumn, you have some of Ursula Hanbury's blood in you, and that gives you a chance.' 'But when October came I sniffed, and sniffed, and all to no purpose; and my lady, who had watched the little experiment rather anxiously, had to give me up as a hybrid'" ("Household Words," vol. xviii.). On this I can only say in the words of an old writer, "A rare and notable thing, if it be true, for I never proved it, and never tried it; therefore, as it proves so, praise it."[282:1] Spenser also mentions the scent, but not of the leaves or fruit, but of the flowers--

"Comming to kisse her lyps (such grace I found), Me seem'd I smelt a garden of sweet flowres That dainty odours from them threw around:

* * * * *

Her goodly bosome, lyke a Strawberry bed,

* * * * *

Such fragrant flowres doe give most odorous smell."[282:2]

_Sonnet_ lxiv.

There is a considerable interest connected with the name of the plant, and much popular error. It is supposed to be called Strawberry because the berries have straw laid under them, or from an old custom of selling the wild ones strung on straws.[282:3] In Shakespeare's time straw was used for the protection of Strawberries, but not in the present fashion--

"If frost doe continue, take this for a lawe, The Strawberies look to be covered with strawe. Laid ouerly trim upon crotchis and bows, And after uncovered as weather allows."

TUSSER, _December's Husbandry_.

But the name is much more ancient than either of these customs. Strawberry in different forms, as Strea-berige, Streaberie-wisan, Streaw-berige, Streaw-berian wisan, Streberilef, Strabery, Strebere-wise, is its name in the old English Vocabularies, while it appears first in its present form in a Pictorial Vocabulary of the fifteenth century, "Hoc ffragrum, A{ce} a Strawbery." What the word really means is pleasantly told by a writer in Seeman's "Journal of Botany," 1869: "How well this name indicates the now prevailing practice of English gardeners laying straw under the berry in order to bring it to perfection, and prevent it from touching the earth, which without that precaution it naturally does, and to which it owes its German _Erdbeere_, making us almost forget that in this instance 'straw' has nothing to do with the practice alluded to, but is an obsolete past-participle of 'to strew,' in allusion to the habit of the plant." This obsolete word is preserved in our English Bibles, "gathering where thou hast not strawed," "he strawed it upon the water," "straw me with apples;" and in Shakespeare--

The bottom poison, and the top o'erstrawed With sweets.--_Venus and Adonis._

From another point of view there is almost as great a mistake in the second half of the name, for in strict botanical language the fruit of the Strawberry is not a berry; it is not even "exactly a fruit, but is merely a fleshy receptacle bearing fruit, the true fruit being the ripe carpels, which are scattered over its surface in the form of minute grains looking like seeds, for which they are usually mistaken, the seed lying inside of the shell of the carpel." It is exactly the contrary to the Raspberry, a fruit not named by Shakespeare, though common in his time under the name of Rasps. "When you gather the Raspberry you throw away the receptacle under the name of core, never suspecting that it is the very part you had just before been feasting upon in the Strawberry. In the one case, the receptacle robs the carpels of all their juice in order to become gorged and bloated at their expense; in the other case, the carpels act in the same selfish manner upon the receptacles."--LINDLEY, _Ladies' Botany_.

Shakespeare's mention of the Strawberry and the Nettle (No. 2) deserves a passing note. It was the common opinion in his day that plants were affected by the neighbourhood of other plants to such an extent that they imbibed each other's virtues and faults. Thus sweet flowers were planted near fruit trees, with the idea of improving the flavour of the fruit, and evil-smelling trees, like the Elder, were carefully cleared away from fruit trees, lest they should be tainted. But the Strawberry was supposed to be an exception to the rule, and was supposed to thrive in the midst of "evil communications" without being corrupted. Preachers and emblem-writers naturally seized upon this: "In tilling our gardens we cannot but admire the fresh innocence and purity of the Strawberry, because although it creeps along the ground, and is continually crushed by serpents, lizards, and other venomous reptiles, yet it does not imbibe the slightest impression of poison, or the smallest malignant quality, a true sign that it has no affinity with poison. And so it is with human virtues," &c. "In conversation take everything peacefully, no matter what is said or done. In this manner you may remain innocent amidst the hissing of serpents, and, as a little Strawberry, you will not suffer contamination from slimy things creeping near you."--ST. FRANCIS DE SALES.

I need only add that the Strawberry need not be confined to the kitchen garden, as there are some varieties which make very good carpet plants, such as the variegated Strawberry, which, however, is very capricious in its variegation; the double Strawberry, which bears pretty white button-like flowers; and the Fragaria lucida from California, which has very bright shining leaves, and was, when first introduced, supposed to be useful in crossing with other species; but I have not heard that this has been successfully effected.

FOOTNOTES:

[279:1] "Mrs. Somerville made for me a delicate outline sketch of what is called Othello's house in Venice, and a beautifully coloured copy of his shield surmounted by the Doge's cap, and bearing three Mulberries for device--proving the truth of the assertion that the _Otelli del Moro_ were a noble Venetian folk, who came originally from the Morea, whose device was the Mulberry, the growth of that country, and showing how curious a jumble Shakespeare has made both of name and device in calling him a _Moor_, and embroidering his arms on his handkerchief as _Strawberries_."--F. KEMBLE'S _Records_, vol. i. 145.

[281:1] It seems probable that the Romans only knew of the Wild Strawberry, of which both Virgil and Ovid speak--

"Qui legitis flores et humi nascentia fraga."--_Ecl._, ii.

"Contentique cibis nullo cogente creatis Arbuteos foetus montanaque fraga legebant."--_Metam._, i, 105.

[282:1] "Quæ neque confirmare argumentis neque refellere in animo est; ex ingenio suo quisque demat vel addat fidem."--TACITUS.

[282:2] The flowers of Fragaria lucida are slightly violet-scented, but I know of no Strawberry flower that can be said to "give most odorous smell."

[282:3]

"The wood nymphs oftentimes would busied be, And pluck for him the blushing Strawberry, Making from them a bracelet on a bent, Which for a favour to this swain they sent."

BROWNE'S _Brit. Past._, i, 2.

SUGAR.

(1) _Prince Henry._

But, sweet Ned--to sweeten which name of Ned, I give thee this pennyworth of Sugar, clapped even now into my hand by an under-skinker.

* * * * *

To drive away the time till Falstaff comes, I prithee, do thou stand in some by-room, while I question my puny drawer to what end he gave me the Sugar.

* * * * *

Nay, but hark you, Francis; for the Sugar thou gavest me, 'twas a pennyworth, was't not?

_1st Henry IV_, act ii, sc. 4 (23, 31, 64).

(2) _Biron._

White-handed mistress, one sweet word with thee.

_Princess._

Honey, and Milk, and Sugar, there is three.

_Love's Labour's Lost_, act v, sc. 2 (230).

(3) _Quickly._

And in such wine and Sugar of the best and the fairest, that would have won any woman's heart.

_Merry Wives_, act ii, sc. 2 (70).

(4) _Bassanio._

Here are sever'd lips Parted with Sugar breath; so sweet a bar Should sunder such sweet friends.

_Merchant of Venice_, act iii, sc. 2 (118).

(5) _Touchstone._

Honesty coupled to beauty is to have honey a sauce to Sugar.

_As You Like It_, act iii, sc. 2 (30).

(6) _Northumberland._

Your fair discourse hath been as Sugar, Making the hard way sweet and delectable.

_Richard II_, act ii, sc. 3 (6).

(7) _Clown._

Let me see,--what am I to buy for our sheep-shearing feast? Three pound of Sugar, five pound of Currants.

_Winter's Tale_, act iv, sc. 3 (39).

(8) _K. Henry._

You have witchcraft in your lips, Kate: there is more eloquence in a Sugar touch of them than in the tongues of the French council.

_Henry V_, act v, sc. 2 (401).

(9) _Queen Margaret._

Poor painted Queen, vain flourish of my fortune! Why strew'st thou Sugar on that bottled spider, Whose deadly web ensnareth thee about?

_Richard III_, act i, sc. 3 (241).

(10) _Gloucester._

Your grace attended to their Sugar'd words, But look'd not on the poison of their hearts.

_Richard III_, act iii, sc. 1 (13).

(11) _Polonius._

We are oft to blame in this-- Tis too much proved--that with devotion's visage And pious actions we do Sugar o'er The devil himself.

_Hamlet_, act iii, sc. 1 (46).

(12) _Brabantio._

These sentences, to Sugar, or to gall, Being strong on both sides, are equivocal.

_Othello_, act i, sc. 3 (216).

(13) _Timon._

And never learn'd The icy precepts of respect, but follow'd The Sugar'd game before thee.

_Timon of Athens_, act iv, sc. 3 (257).

(14) _Pucelle._

By fair persuasion mix'd with Sugar'd words We will entice the Duke of Burgundy.

_1st Henry VI_, act iii, sc. 3 (18).

(15) _K. Henry._

Hide not thy poison with such Sugar'd words.

_2nd Henry VI_, act iii, sc. 2 (45).

(16) _Prince Henry._

One poor pennyworth of Sugar-candy, to make thee long-winded.

_1st Henry IV_, act iii, sc. 3 (180).

(17)

Thy Sugar'd tongue to bitter Wormwood taste.

_Lucrece_ (893).

As a pure vegetable product, though manufactured, Sugar cannot be passed over in an account of the plants of Shakespeare; but it will not be necessary to say much about it. Yet the history of the migrations of the Sugar-plant is sufficiently interesting to call for a short notice.

Its original home seems to have been in the East Indies, whence it was imported in very early times. It is probably the "sweet cane" of the Bible; and among classical writers it is named by Strabo, Lucan, Varro, Seneca, Dioscorides, and Pliny. The plant is said to have been introduced into Europe during the Crusades, and to have been cultivated in the Morea, Rhodes, Malta, Sicily, and Spain.[286:1] By the Spaniards it was taken first to Madeira and the Cape de Verd Islands, and, very soon after the discovery of America, to the West Indies. There it soon grew rapidly, and increased enormously, and became a chief article of commerce, so that though we now almost look upon it as entirely a New World plant, it is in fact but a stranger there, that has found a most congenial home.

In 1468 the price of Sugar was sixpence a pound, equal to six shillings of our money,[287:1] but in Shakespeare's time it must have been very common,[287:2] or it could not so largely have worked its way into the common English language and proverbial expressions; and it must also have been very cheap, or it could not so entirely have superseded the use of honey, which in earlier times was the only sweetening material.

Shakespeare may have seen the living plant, for it was grown as a curiosity in his day, though Gerard could not succeed with it: "Myself did plant some shootes thereof in my garden, and some in Flanders did the like, but the coldness of our clymate made an end of myne, and I think the Flemmings will have the like profit of their labour." But he bears testimony to the large use of Sugar in his day; "of the juice of the reede is made the most pleasant and profitable sweet called Sugar, whereof is made infinite confections, sirupes, and such like, as also preserving and conserving of sundrie fruits, herbes and flowers, as roses, violets, rosemary flowers and such like."

FOOTNOTES:

[286:1] "It is the juice of certain canes or reedes whiche growe most plentifully in the Ilandes of Madera, Sicilia, Cyprus, Rhodus and Candy. It is made by art in boyling of the Canes, much like as they make their white salt in the Witches in Cheshire."--COGHAN, _Haven of Health_, 1596, p. 110.

[287:1] "Babee's Book," xxx.

[287:2] It is mentioned by Chaucer--

"Gyngerbred that was so fyn. And licorys and eek comyn With Sugre that is trye."--_Tale of Sir Thopas._

SWEET MARJORAM, _see_ MARJORAM.

SYCAMORE.

(1) _Desdemona_ (singing).

The poor soul sat sighing by a Sycamore tree.

_Othello_, act iv, sc. 3 (41).

(2) _Benvolio._

Underneath the grove of Sycamore That westward rooteth from the city's side, So early walking did I see your son.

_Romeo and Juliet_, act i, sc. 1 (130).

(3) _Boyet._

Under the cool shade of a Sycamore I thought to close mine eyes some half an hour.

_Love's Labour's Lost_, act v, sc. 2 (89).

In its botanical relationship, the Sycamore is closely allied to the Maple, and was often called the Great Maple, and is still so called in Scotland. It is not indigenous in Great Britain, but it has long been naturalized among us, and has taken so kindly to our soil and climate that it is one of our commonest trees. It is one of the best of forest trees for resisting wind; it "scorns to be biassed in its mode of growth even by the prevailing wind, but shooting its branches with equal boldness in every direction, shows no weatherside to the storm, and may be broken, but never can be bended."-_Old Mortality_, c. i.

The history of the name is curious. The Sycomore, or Zicamine tree of the Bible and of Theophrastus and Dioscorides, is the Fig-mulberry, a large handsome tree indigenous in Africa and Syria, and largely planted, partly for the sake of its fruit, and especially for the delicious shade it gives. With this tree the early English writers were not acquainted, but they found the name in the Bible, and applied it to any shade-giving tree. Thus in Ælfric's Vocabulary in the tenth century it is given to the Aspen--"Sicomorus vel celsa æps." Chaucer gives the name to some hedge shrub, but he probably used it for any thick shrub, without any very special distinction--

"The hedge also that yedde in compas And closed in all the greene herbere With Sicamour was set and Eglateere, Wrethen in fere so well and cunningly That every branch and leafe grew by measure Plaine as a bord, of an height by and by."

_The Flower and the Leaf._

Our Sycamore would be very ill suited to make the sides and roof of an arbour, but before the time of Shakespeare it seems certain that the name was attached to our present tree, and it is so called by Gerard and Parkinson.

The Sycamore is chiefly planted for its rapid growth rather than for its beauty. It becomes a handsome tree when fully grown, but as a young tree it is stiff and heavy, and at all times it is so infested with honeydew as to make it unfit for planting on lawns or near paths. It grows well in the north, where other trees will not well flourish, and "we frequently meet with the tree apart in the fields, or unawares in remote localities amidst the Lammermuirs and the Cheviots, where it is the surviving witness of the former existence of a hamlet there. Hence to the botanical rambler it has a more melancholy character than the Yew. It throws him back on past days, when he who planted the tree was the owner of the land and of the Hall, and whose name and race are forgotten even by tradition. . . . And there is reasonable pride in the ancestry when a grove of old gentlemanly Sycamores still shadows the Hall."--JOHNSTON. But these old Sycamores were not planted only for beauty: they were sometimes planted for a very unpleasant use. "They were used by the most powerful barons in the West of Scotland for hanging their enemies and refractory vassals on, and for this reason were called _dool_ or grief trees. Of these there are three yet standing, the most memorable being one near the fine old castle of Cassilis, one of the seats of the Marquis of Ailsa, on the banks of the River Doon. It was used by the family of Kennedy, who were the most powerful barons of the West of Scotland, for the purpose above mentioned."--JOHNS.

The wood of the Sycamore is useful for turning and a few other purposes, but is not very durable. The sap, as in all the Maples, is full of sugar, and the pollen is very curious; "it appears globular in the microscope, but if it be touched with anything moist, the globules burst open with four valves, and then they appear in the form of a cross."--MILLER.

THISTLE (_see also_ HOLY THISTLE).

(1) _Burgundy._

And nothing teems But hateful Docks, rough Thistles, Kecksies, Burs.

_Henry V_, act v, sc. 2 (51).

(2) _Bottom._

Mounsieur Cobweb, good mounsieur, get you your weapons ready in your hand, and kill me a red-hipped humble bee on the top of a Thistle; and, good mounsieur, bring me the honey-bag.

_Midsummer Night's Dream_, act iv, sc. 1 (10).

Thistle is the old English name for a large family of plants occurring chiefly in Europe and Asia, of which we have fourteen species in Great Britain, arranged under the botanical families of Carlina, Carduus, and Onopordon. It is the recognized symbol of untidiness and carelessness, being found not so much in barren ground as in good ground not properly cared for. So good a proof of a rich soil does the Thistle give, that a saying is attributed to a blind man who was choosing a piece of land--"Take me to a Thistle;" and Tusser says--

"Much wetnes, hog-rooting, and land out of hart makes Thistles a number foorthwith to upstart. If Thistles so growing proove lustie and long, It signifieth land to be hartie and strong."

_October's Husbandry_ (13).

If the Thistles were not so common, and if we could get rid of the associations they suggest, there are probably few of our wild plants that we should more admire: they are stately in their foliage and habit, and some of their flowers are rich in colour, and the Thistledown, which carries the seed far and wide, is very beautiful, and was once considered useful as a sign of rain, for "if the down flyeth off Coltsfoot, Dandelyon, or Thistles when there is no winde, it is a signe of rain."--COLES.

It had still another use in rustic divination--

"Upon the various earth's embroidered gown, There is a weed upon whose head grows down, Sow Thistle 'tis y'clept, whose downy wreath If anyone can blow off at a breath We deem her for a maid."--BROWNE'S _Brit. Past._, i, 4.

But it is owing to these pretty Thistledowns that the plant becomes a most undesirable neighbour, for they carry the seed everywhere, and wherever it is carried, it soon vegetates, and a fine crop of Thistles very quickly follows. In this way, if left to themselves, the Thistles will soon monopolize a large extent of country, to the extinction of other plants, as they have done in parts of the American prairies, and as they did in Australia, till a most stringent Act of Parliament was passed about twenty years ago, imposing heavy penalties upon all who neglected to destroy the Thistles on their land. For these reasons we cannot admit the Thistle into the garden, at least not our native Thistles; but there are some foreigners which may well be admitted. There are the handsome yellow Thistles of the South of Europe (_Scolymus_), which besides their beauty have a classical interest. "Hesiod elegantly describing the time of year, says,

+êmos de skolymos t'anthei+,

when the Scolymus flowers, _i.e._, in hot weather or summer ("Op. et dies," 582). This plant crowned with its golden flowers is abundant throughout Sicily."--HOGG'S _Classical Plants of Sicily_. There is the Fish-bone Thistle (_Chamæpeuce diacantha_) from Syria, a very handsome plant, and, like most of the Thistles, a biennial; but if allowed to flower and go to seed, it will produce plenty of seedlings for a succession of years. And there is a grand scarlet Thistle from Mexico, the Erythrolena conspicua ("Sweet," vol. ii. p. 134), which must be almost the handsomest of the family, and which was grown in England fifty years ago, but has been long lost. There are many others that may deserve a place as ornamental plants, but they find little favour, for "they are only Thistles."

Any notice of the Thistle would be imperfect without some mention of the Scotch Thistle. It is the one point in the history of the plant that protects it from contempt. We dare not despise a plant which is the honoured badge of our neighbours and relations, the Scotch; which is ennobled as the symbol of the Order of the Thistle, that claims to be the most ancient of all our Orders of high honour; and which defies you to insult it or despise it by its proud mottoes, "Nemo me impune lacessit," "Ce que Dieu garde, est bien gardé." What is the true Scotch Thistle even the Scotch antiquarians cannot decide, and in the uncertainty it is perhaps safest to say that no Thistle in particular can claim the sole honour, but that it extends to every member of the family that can be found in Scotland.[292:1]

Shakespeare has noticed the love of the bee for the Thistle, and it seems that it is for other purposes than honey gathering that he finds the Thistle useful. For "a beauty has the Thistle, when every delicate hair arrests a dew-drop on a showery April morning, and when the purple blossom of a roadside Thistle turns its face to Heaven and welcomes the wild bee, who lies close upon its flowerets on the approach of some storm cloud until its shadow be past away. For with unerring instinct the bee well knows that the darkness is but for a moment, and that the sun will shine out again ere long."--LADY WILKINSON.

FOOTNOTES:

[292:1] See an interesting and fanciful account of the fitness of the Thistle as the emblem of Scotland in Ruskin's "Proserpina," pp. 135-139.

THORNS.

(1) _Ariel._

Tooth'd Briers, sharp Furzes, pricking Goss, and Thorns, Which entered their frail skins.

_Tempest_, act iv, sc. 1 (180).

(2) _Quince._

One must come in with a bush of Thorns and a lanthorn, and say he comes in to disfigure, or to present, the person of Moonshine.

_Midsummer Night's Dream_, act iii, sc. 1 (60).

(3) _Puck._

For Briers and Thorns at their apparel snatch.

_Ibid._, act iii, sc. 2 (29).

(4) _Prologue._

This man with lanthorn, dog, and bush of Thorn, Presenteth Moonshine.

_Ibid._, act v, sc. 1 (136).

(5) _Moonshine._

All that I have to say, is to tell you that the lanthorn is the moon; I, the man in the moon; this Thorn-bush, my Thorn-bush; and this dog, my dog.

_Ibid._ (261).

(6) _Dumain._

But, alack, my hand is sworn Ne'er to pluck thee from thy Thorn.

_Love's Labour's Lost_, act iv, sc. 3 (111).

(7) _Carlisle._

The woe's to come; the children yet unborn Shall feel this day as sharp to them as Thorn.

_Richard II_, act iv, sc. 1 (322).

(8) _King Henry._

The care you have of us, To mow down Thorns that would annoy our foot, Is worthy praise.

_2nd Henry VI_, act iii, sc. 1 (66).

(9) _Gloucester._

And I--like one lost in a Thorny wood, That rends the Thorns and is rent with the Thorns, Seeking a way, and straying from the way.

_3rd Henry VI_, act iii, sc. 2 (174).

(10) _K. Edward._

Brave followers, yonder stands the Thorny wood.

_Ibid._, act v, sc. 4 (67).

(11) _K. Edward._

What! can so young a Thorn begin to prick.

_Ibid._, act v, sc. 4 (13).

(12) _Romeo._

Is love a tender thing? It is too rough, Too rude, too boisterous, and it pricks like Thorn.

_Romeo and Juliet_, act i, sc. 4 (25).

(13) _Boult._

A Thornier piece of ground.

_Pericles_, act iv, sc. 6 (153).

(14) _Leontes._

Which being spotted Is goads, Thorns, Nettles, tails of wasps.

_Winter's Tale_, act i, sc. 2 (328).

(15) _Florizel._

But O, the Thorns we stand upon!

_Ibid._, act iv, sc. 4 (596).

(16) _Ophelia._

Do not, as some ungracious pastors do, Shew me the steep and Thorny path to Heaven.

_Hamlet_, act i, sc. 3 (47).

(17) _Ghost._

Leave her to Heaven, And to those Thorns that in her bosom lodge, To prick and sting her.

_Ibid._, act i, sc. 5 (86).

(18) _Bastard._

I am amazed, methinks, and lose my way Among the Thorns and dangers of this world.

_King John_, act iv, sc. 3 (40).

_See also_ ROSE, Nos. 7, 18, 22, 30, the scene in the Temple gardens; and BRIER, No. 11.

Thorns and Thistles are the typical emblems of desolation and trouble, and so Shakespeare uses them; and had he spoken of Thorns in this sense only, I should have been doubtful as to admitting them among his other plants, but as in some of the passages they stand for the Hawthorn tree and the Rose bush, I could not pass them by altogether. They might need no further comment beyond referring for further information about them to Hawthorn, Briar, Rose, and Bramble; but in speaking of the Bramble I mentioned the curious legend which tells why the Bramble employs itself in collecting wool from every stray sheep, and there is another very curious instance in Blount's "Antient Tenures" of a connection between Thorns and wool. The original document is given in Latin, and is dated 39th Henry III. It may be thus translated: "Peter de Baldwyn holds in Combes, in the county of Surrey, by the service to go a wool gathering for our Lady the Queen among the White Thorns, and if he refuses to gather it he shall pay into the Treasury of our Lord the King xxs. per annum." I should almost suspect a false reading, as the editor is inclined to do, but that many other services, equally curious and improbable, may easily be found.

THYME.

(1) _Oberon._

I know a bank where the wild Thyme blows.

_Midsummer Night's Dream_, act ii, sc. 1 (249).

(2) _Iago._

We will plant Nettles or sow Lettuce, set Hyssop and weed up Thyme.

_Othello_, act i, sc. 3 (324). (_See_ HYSSOP.)

(3) And sweet Time true.

_Two Noble Kinsmen_, Introd. song.

It is one of the most curious of the curiosities of English plant names that the Wild Thyme--a plant so common and so widely distributed, and that makes itself so easily known by its fine aromatic, pungent scent, that it is almost impossible to pass it by without notice--has yet no English name, and seems never to have had one. Thyme is the Anglicised form of the Greek and Latin _Thymum_, which name it probably got from its use for incense in sacrifices, while its other name of _serpyllum_ pointed out its creeping habit. I do not know when the word Thyme was first introduced into the English language, for it is another curious point connected with the name, that _thymum_ does not occur in the old English vocabularies. We have in Ælfric's "Vocabulary," "Pollegia, hyl-wyrt," which may perhaps be the Thyme, though it is generally supposed to be the Pennyroyal; we have in a Vocabulary of thirteenth century, "Epitime, epithimum, fordboh," which also may be the Wild Thyme; we have in a Vocabulary of the fifteenth century, "Hoc sirpillum, A{ce} petergrys;" and in a Pictorial Vocabulary of the same date, "Hoc cirpillum, A{ce} a pellek" (which word is probably a misprint, for in the "Promptorium Parvulorum," c. 1440, it is "Peletyr, herbe, _serpillum piretrum_"), both of which are almost certainly the Wild Thyme; while in an Anglo-Saxon Vocabulary of the tenth or eleventh century we have "serpulum, crop-leac," _i.e._, the Onion, which must certainly be a mistake of the compiler. So that not even in its Latin form does the name occur, except in the "Promptorium Parvulorum," where it is "Tyme, herbe, _Tima_, _Timum_--Tyme, floure, _Timus_;" and in the "Catholicon Anglicum," when it is "Tyme; _timum epitimum; flos ejus est_." It is thus a puzzle how it can have got naturalized among us, for in Shakespeare's time it was completely naturalized.

I have already quoted Lord Bacon's account of it under BURNET, but I must quote it again here: "Those flowers which perfume the air most delightfully, not passed by as the rest, but being trodden upon and crushed, are three--that is Burnet, Wild Thyme, and Water mints; therefore you are to set whole alleys of them, to have the pleasure when you walk or tread;" and again in his pleasant description of the heath or wild garden, which he would have in every "prince-like garden," and "framed as much as may be to a natural wildness," he says, "I like also little heaps, in the nature of mole-hills (such as are in wild heaths) to be set some with Wild Thyme, some with Pinks, some with Germander." Yet the name may have been used sometimes as a general name for any wild, strong-scented plant. It can only be in this sense that Milton used it--

"Thee, shepherd! thee the woods and desert caves, With Wild Thyme and the gadding Vine o'ergrown, And all their echoes mourn."

_Lycidas._

for certainly a desert cave is almost the last place in which we should look for the true Wild Thyme.

It is as a bee-plant especially that the Thyme has always been celebrated. Spenser speaks of it as "the bees alluring Tyme," and Ovid says of it, speaking of Chloris or Flora--

"Mella meum munus; volucres ego mella daturos Ad violam et cytisos, et Thyma cana voco."

_Fasti_, v.

so that the Thyme became proverbial as the symbol of sweetness. It was the highest compliment that the shepherd could pay to his mistress--

"Nerine Galatea, Thymo mihi dulcior Hyblæ."

VIRGIL, _Ecl._ vii.

And it was because of its wild Thyme that Mount Hymettus became so celebrated for its honey--"Mella Thymi redolentia flore" (Ovid). "Thyme, for the time it lasteth, yeeldeth most and best honni, and therefore in old time was accounted chief (Thymus aptissimus ad mellificum--Pastus gratissimus apibus Thymum est--Plinii, 'His. Nat.')

'Dum thymo pascentur apes, dum rore cicadæ.'

VIRGIL, _Georg._

Hymettus in Greece and Hybla in Sicily were so famous for Bees and Honni, because there grew such store of Tyme; propter hoc Siculum mel fert palmam, quod ibi Thymum bonum et frequens est."--VARRO, _The Feminine Monarchie_, 1634.

The Wild Thyme can scarcely be considered a garden plant, except in its variegated and golden varieties, which are very handsome, but if it should ever come naturally in the turf, it should be welcomed and cherished for its sweet scent. The garden Thyme (_T. vulgaris_) must of course be in every herb garden; and there are a few species which make good plants for the rockwork, such as T. lanceolatus from Greece, a very low-growing shrub, with narrow, pointed leaves; T. carnosus, which makes a pretty little shrub, and others; while the Corsican Thyme (_Mentha Requieni_) is perhaps the lowest and closest-growing of all herbs, making a dark-green covering to the soil, and having a very strong scent, though more resembling Peppermint than Thyme.

TOADSTOOLS, _see_ MUSHROOMS.

TURNIPS.

_Anne._

Alas! I had rather be set quick i' the earth And boul'd to death with Turnips.

_Merry Wives of Windsor_, act iii, sc. 4 (89).

The Turnips of Shakespeare's time were like ours, and probably as good, though their cultivation seems to have been chiefly confined to gardens. It is not very certain whether the cultivated Turnip is the wild Turnip improved in England by cultivation, or whether we are indebted for it to the Romans, and that the wild one is only the degenerate form of the cultivated plant; for though the wild Turnip is admitted into the English flora, yet its right to the admission is very doubtful. But if we did not get the vegetable from the Romans we got its name. The old name for it was _noep_, _nep_, or _neps_, which was only the English form of the Latin _napus_, while Turnip is the corruption of _terræ napus_, but when the first syllable was added I do not know. There is a curious perversion in the name, for our Turnip is botanically Brassica rapa, while the Rape is Brassica napus, so that the English and Latin have changed places, the Napus becoming a Rape and the Rapa a Nep.

The present large field cultivation of Turnips is of comparatively a modern date, though the field Turnip and garden Turnip are only varieties of the same species, while there are also many varieties both of the field and garden Turnip. "One field proclaims the Scotch variety, while the bluer cast tells its hardy Swedish origin; the tankard proclaims a deep soil, and the lover of boiled mutton, rejoicing, sees the yellower tint of the Dutch or Stone Turnip, which he desires to meet with again in the market."--PHILLIPS.

It is not very easy to speak of the moral qualities of Turnips, or to make them the symbols of much virtue, yet Gwillim did so: "He beareth sable, a Turnip proper, a chief or gutte de Larmes. This is a wholesome root, and yieldeth great relief to the poor, and prospereth best in a hot sandy ground, and may signifie a person of good disposition, whose vertuous demeanour flourisheth most prosperously, even in that soil, where the searching heat of envy most aboundeth. This differeth much in nature from that whereof it is said, 'And that there should not be among you any root that bringeth forth gall and wormwood.'"--GWILLIM'S _Heraldry_, sec. iii. c. 11.

VETCHES.

_Iris._

Ceres, most bounteous lady, thy rich leas, Of Wheat, Rye, Barley, Vetches, Oats, and Pease.

_Tempest_, act iv, sc. 1 (60).

The cultivated Vetch (_Vicia sativa_) is probably not a British plant, and it is not very certain to what country it rightly belongs; but it was very probably introduced into England by the Romans as an excellent and easily-grown fodder-plant. There are several Vetches that are true British plants, and they are among the most beautiful ornaments of our lanes and hedges. Two especially deserve to take a place in the garden for their beauty; but they require watching, or they will scramble into parts where their presence is not desirable; these are V. cracca and V. sylvatica. V. cracca has a very bright pure blue flower, and may be allowed to scramble over low bushes; V. sylvatica is a tall climber, and may be seen in copses and high hedges climbing to the tops of the Hazels and other tall bushes. It is one of the most graceful of our British plants, and perhaps quite the most graceful of our climbers; it bears an abundance of flowers, which are pure white streaked and spotted with pale blue; it is not a very common plant, but I have often seen it in Gloucestershire and Somersetshire, and wherever it is found it is generally in abundance.

The other name for the Vetch is Tares, which is, no doubt, an old English word that has never been satisfactorily explained. The word has an interest from its biblical associations, though modern scholars decide that the Zizania is wrongly translated Tares, and that it is rather a bastard Wheat or Darnel.

VINES.

(1) _Titania._

Feed him with Apricocks and Dewberries, With purple Grapes, green Figs, and Mulberries.

_Midsummer Night's Dream_, act iii, sc. 1 (169).

(2) _Menenius._

The tartness of his face sours ripe Grapes.

_Coriolanus_, act v, sc. 4 (18).

(3) _Song._

Come, thou monarch of the Vine, Plumpy Bacchus, with pink eyne! In thy fats our cares be drown'd, With thy Grapes our hairs be crown'd.

_Antony and Cleopatra_, act ii, sc. 7 (120).

(4) _Cleopatra._

Now no more The juice of Egypt's Grape shall moist this lip.

_Ibid._, act v, sc. 2 (284).

(5) _Timon._

Dry up thy Marrows, Vines, and plough-torn leas.

_Timon of Athens_, act iv, sc. 3 (193).

(6) _Timon._

Go, suck the subtle blood o' the Grape, Till the high fever seethe your blood to froth.

_Ibid._ (432).

(7) _Touchstone._

The heathen philosopher, when he had a desire to eat a Grape, would open his lips when he put it into his mouth; meaning thereby that Grapes were made to eat and lips to open.

_As You Like It_, act v, sc. 1 (36).

(8) _Iago._

Blessed Fig's end! the wine she drinks is made of Grapes.

_Othello_, act ii, sc 1 (250).

(9) _Lafeu._

O, will you eat no Grapes, my royal fox? Yes, but you will my noble Grapes, an if My royal fox could reach them.

_All's Well that Ends Well_, act ii, sc. 1 (73).

(10) _Lafeu._

There's one Grape yet.

_Ibid._, act ii, sc. 1 (105).

(11) _Pompey._

'Twas in "The Bunch of Grapes," where, indeed, you have a delight to sit.

_Measure for Measure_, act ii, sc. 1 (133).

(12) _Constable._

Let us quit all And give our Vineyards to a barbarous people.

_Henry V_, act iii, sc. 5 (3).

(13) _Burgundy._

Her Vine, the merry cheerer of the heart, Unpruned, dies. . . . . . . . . . Our Vineyards, fallows, meads, and hedges, Defective in their natures, grow to wildness.

_Ibid._, act v, sc. 2 (41, 54).

(14) _Mortimer._

And pithless arms, like to a wither'd Vine That droops his sapless branches to the ground.

_1st Henry VI_, act ii, sc. 5 (11).

(15) _Cranmer._

In her days every man shall eat in safety, Under his own Vine, what he plants; and sing The merry songs of peace to all his neighbours.

_Henry VIII_, act v, sc. 5 (34).

(16) _Cranmer._

Peace, plenty, love, truth, terror, That were the servants to this chosen infant, Shall then be his, and like a Vine grow to him.

_Ibid._ (48).

(17) _Lear._

Now, our joy, Although the last, not least; to whose young love The Vines of France and milk of Burgundy Strive to be interess'd.

_King Lear_, act i, sc. 1 (84).

(18) _Arviragus._

And let the stinking Elder, grief, untwine His perishing root with the increasing Vine!

_Cymbeline_, act iv, sc. 2 (59).

(19) _Adriana._

Thou art an Elm, my husband, I a Vine, Whose weakness married to thy stronger state Makes me with thy strength to communicate.

_Comedy of Errors_, act ii, sc. 2 (176).

(20) _Gonzalo._

Bound of land, tilth, Vineyard, none.

_Tempest_, act ii, sc. 1 (152).

(21) _Iris._

Thy pole-clipt Vineyard.

_Ibid._, act iv, sc. 1 (68).

(22) _Ceres._

Vines with clustering bunches growing, Plants with goodly burthen bowing.

_Ibid._ (112).

(23) _Richmond._

The usurping boar, That spoil'd your summer fields and fruitful Vines.

_Richard III_, act v, sc. 2 (7).

(24) _Isabella._

He hath a garden circummured with brick, Whose western side is with a Vineyard back'd; And to that Vineyard is a planched gate, That makes his opening with this bigger key: This other doth command a little door, Which from the Vineyard to the garden leads.

_Measure for Measure_, act iv, sc. 1 (28).

(25)

The Vine shall grow, but we shall never see it.

_Two Noble Kinsmen_, act ii, sc. 2 (47).

(26)

Even as poor birds, deceived with painted Grapes, Do forfeit by the eye and pine the maw.

_Venus and Adonis_ (601).

(27)

For one sweet Grape, who will the Vine destroy?

_Lucrece_ (215).

Besides these different references to the Grape Vine, some of its various products are mentioned, as Raisins, wine, aquavitæ or brandy, claret (the "thin potations" forsworn by Falstaff), sherris-sack or sherry, and malmsey. But none of these passages gives us much insight into the culture of the Vine in England, the whole history of which is curious and interesting.

The Vine is not even a native of Europe, but of the East, whence it was very early introduced into Europe; so early, indeed, that it has recently been found "fossil in a tufaceous deposit in the South of France."--DARWIN. It was no doubt brought into England by the Romans. Tacitus, describing England in the first century after Christ, says expressly that the Vine did not, and, as he evidently thought, could not grow there. "Solum, præter oleam vitemque et cætera calidioribus terris oriri sueta, patiens frugum, fæcundum." Yet Bede, writing in the eighth century, describes England as "opima frugibus atque arboribus insula, et alendis apta pecoribus et jumentis Vineas etiam quibusdam in locis germinans."[301:1]

From that time till the time of Shakespeare there is abundant proof not only of the growth of the Vine as we now grow it in gardens, but in large Vineyards. In Anglo-Saxon times "a Vineyard" is not unfrequently mentioned in various documents. "Edgar gives the Vineyard situated at Wecet, with the Vine-dressers."--TURNER'S _Anglo-Saxons_. "'Domesday Book' contained thirty-eight entries of valuable Vineyards; one in Essex consisted of six acres, and yielded twenty hogsheads of wine in a good year. There was another of the same extent at Ware."--H. EVERSHED, in _Gardener's Chronicle_. So in the Norman times, "Giraldus Cambrensis, speaking of the Castle of Manorbeer (his birthplace), near Pembroke, said that it had under its walls, besides a fishpond, a beautiful garden, enclosed on one side by a Vineyard and on the other by a wood, remarkable for the projection of its rocks and the height of its Hazel trees. In the twelfth century Vineyards were not uncommon in England."--WRIGHT. Neckam, writing in that century, refers to the usefulness of the Vine when trained against the wall-front: "Pampinus latitudine suâ excipit æris insultus, cum res ita desiderat, et fenestra clementiam caloris solaris admittat."--HUDSON TURNER.

In the time of Shakespeare I suppose that most of the Vines in England were grown in Vineyards of more or less extent, trained to poles. These formed the "pole-clipt Vineyards" of No. 21, and are thus described by Gerard: "The Vine is held up with poles and frames of wood, and by that means it spreadeth all about and climbeth aloft; it joyneth itselfe unto trees, or whatsoever standeth next unto it"--in other words, the Vine was then chiefly grown as a standard in the open ground.

There are numberless notices in the records and chronicles of extensive vineyards in England, which it is needless to quote; but it is worth noticing that the memory of these Vineyards remains not only in the chronicles and in the treatises which teach of Vine-culture, but also in the names of streets, &c., which are occasionally met with. There is "Vineyard Holm," in the Hampshire Downs, and many other places in Hampshire; the "Vineyard Hills," at Godalming; the "Vines," at Rochester and Sevenoaks; the "Vineyards," at Bath and Ludlow; the "Vine Fields," near the Abbey at Bury St. Edmunds;[302:1] the "Vineyard Walk" in Clerkenwell; and "near Basingstoke the 'Vine' or 'Vine House,' in a richly wooded spot, where, as is said, the Romans grew the first Vine in Britain, the memory of which now only survives in the Vine Hounds;"[303:1] and probably a closer search among the names of fields in other parts would bring to light many similar instances.[303:2]

Among the English Vineyards those of Gloucestershire stood pre-eminent. William of Malmesbury, writing of Gloucestershire in the twelfth century, says: "This county is planted thicker with Vineyards than any other in England, more plentiful in crops, and more pleasant in flavour. For the wines do not offend the mouth with sharpness, since they do not yield to the French in sweetness" ("De Gestis Pontif.," book iv.) Of these Vineyards the tradition still remains in the county. The Cotswold Hills are in many places curiously marked with a succession of steps or narrow terraces, called "litchets" or "lynches;" these are traditionally the sites of the old Vineyards, but the tradition cannot be fully depended on, and the formation of the terraces has been variously accounted for. By some they are supposed to be natural formations, but wherever I have seen them they appear to me too regular and artificial; nor, as far as I am aware, does the oolite, on which formation these terraces mostly occur, take the form of a succession of narrow terraces. It seems certain that the ground was artificially formed into these terraces with very little labour, and that they were utilized for some special cultivation, and as likely for Vines as for any other.[303:3] It is also certain that as the Gloucestershire Vineyards were among the most ancient and the best in England, so they held their ground till within a very recent period. I cannot find the exact date, but some time during the last century there is "satisfactory testimony of the full success of a plantation in Cromhall Park, from which ten hogsheads of wine were made in the year. The Vine plantation was discontinued or destroyed in consequence of a dispute with the Rector on a claim of the tythes."--RUDGE'S _History of Gloucestershire_. This, however, is not quite the latest notice I have met with, for Phillips, writing in 1820, says: "There are several flourishing Vineyards at this time in Somersetshire; the late Sir William Basset, in that county, annually made some hogsheads of wine, which was palatable and well-bodied. The idea that we cannot make good wine from our own Grapes is erroneous; I have tasted it quite equal to the Grave wines, and in some instances, when kept for eight or ten years, it has been drunk as hock by the nicest judges."--_Pomarium Britannicum._ It would have been more satisfactory if Mr. Phillips had told us the exact locality of any of these "flourishing Vineyards," for I can nowhere else find any account of them, except that in a map of five miles round Bath in 1801 a Vineyard is marked at Claverton, formerly in the possession of the Bassets, and the Vines are distinctly shown.[304:1] At present the experiment is again being tried by the Marquis of Bute, at Castle Coch, near Cardiff, to establish a Vineyard, not to produce fruit for the market, but to produce wine; and as both soil and climate seem very suitable, there can be little doubt that wine will be produced of a very fair character. Whether it will be a commercial success is more doubtful, but probably that is not of much consequence.

I have dwelt at some length on the subject of the English Vineyards, because the cultivation of the Vine in Vineyards, like the cultivation of the Saffron, is a curious instance of an industry foreign to the soil introduced, and apparently for many years successful,[304:2] and then entirely, or almost, given up. The reasons for the cessation of the English Vineyards are not far to seek. Some have attributed it to a change in the seasons, and have supposed that our summers were formerly hotter than they are now, bringing as a proof the Vineyards and English-made wine of other days. This was Parkinson's idea. "Our yeares in these times do not fall out to be so kindly and hot to ripen the Grape to make any good wine as formerly they have done." But this is a mere assertion, and I believe it not to be true. I have little doubt that quite as good wine could now be made in England as ever was made, and wine is still made every year in many old-fashioned farmhouses. But foreign wines can now be produced much better and much cheaper, and that has caused the cessation of the English Vineyards. It is true that French and Spanish wines were introduced into England very early, but it must have been in limited quantities, and at a high price. When the quantities increased and the price was lowered, it was well to give up the cultivation of the Vine for some more certain crop better suited to the soil and the climate, for it must always have been a capricious and uncertain crop. Hakluyt was one who was very anxious that England should supply herself with all the necessaries of life without dependence on foreign countries, yet, writing in Shakespeare's time, he says: "It is sayd that since we traded to Zante, that the plant that beareth the Coren is also broughte into this realme from thence, and although it bring not fruit to perfection, yet it may serve for pleasure, and for some use, like as our Vines doe which we cannot well spare, although the climat so colde will not permit us to have good wines of them" ("Voiages, &c.," vol. ii. p. 166). Parkinson says to the same effect: "Many have adventured to make Vineyards in England, not only in these later days but in ancient times, as may well witness the sundry places in this land, entituled by the name of Vineyards, and I have read that many monasteries in this kingdom having Vineyards had as much wine made therefrom as sufficed their convents year by year, but long since they have been destroyed, and the knowledge how to order a Vineyard is also utterly perished with them. For although divers both nobles and gentlemen have in these later times endeavoured to plant and make Vineyards, and to that purpose have caused Frenchmen, being skilfull in keeping and dressing Vines, to be brought over to perform it, yet either their skill faileth them or their Vines were not good, or (the most likely) the soil was not fitting, for they could never make any wine that was worth the drinking, being so small and heartlesse, that they soon gave over their practise."

There is no need to say anything of the modern culture of the Vine, or its many excellent varieties. Even in Virgil's time the varieties cultivated were so many that he said--

"Sed neque quam multæ species, nec nomina quæ sint Est numerus; neque enim numero comprendere refert; Quem qui scire velit, Lybici velit æquoris idem Discere quam multæ Zephyro turbentur arenæ; Aut ubi navigiis violentior incidit Eurus Nosse quot Ionii veniant ad littora fluctus."

_Georgica_, ii, 103.

And now the number must far exceed those of Virgil's time. "The cultivated varieties are extremely numerous; Count Odart says that he will not deny that there may exist throughout the world 700 or 800, perhaps even 1,000 varieties; but not a third of these have any value."--DARWIN. These are the Grapes that are grown in our hothouses; some also of a fine quality are produced in favourable years out-of-doors. There are also a few which are grown as ornamental shrubs. The Parsley-leaved Vine (_Vitis laciniosa_) is one that has been grown in England, certainly since the time of Shakespeare, for its pretty foliage, its fruit being small and few; but it makes a pretty covering to a wall or trellis. The small Variegated Vine (_Vitis_ or _Cissus heterophyllus variegatus_) is another very pretty Vine, forming a small bush that may be either trained to a wall or grown as a low rockwork bush; it bears a few Grapes of no value, and is perfectly hardy. Besides these there are several North American species, which have handsome foliage, and are very hardy, of which the Vitis riparia or Vigne des Battures is a desirable tree, as "the flowers have an exquisitely fine smell, somewhat resembling that of Mignonnette."--DON. I mention this particularly, because in all the old authors great stress is laid on the sweetness of the Vine in all its parts, a point of excellence in it which is now generally overlooked. Lord Bacon reckons "Vine flowers" among the "things of beauty in season" in May and June, and reckons among the most sweet-scented flowers, next to Musk Roses and Strawberry leaves dying, "the flower of the Vines; it is a little dust, like the dust of a bent, which grows among the duster in the first coming forth." And Chaucer says: "Scorners faren like the foul toode, that may noughte endure the soote smel of the Vine roote when it flourisheth."--_The Persones Tale._

Nor must we dismiss the Vine without a few words respecting its sacred associations, for it is very much owing to these associations that it has been so endeared to our forefathers and ourselves. Having its native home in the East, it enters largely into the history and imagery of the Bible. There is no plant so often mentioned in the Bible, and always with honour, till the honour culminates in the great similitude, in which our Lord chose the Vine as the one only plant to which He condescended to compare Himself--"I am the true Vine!" No wonder that a plant so honoured should ever have been the symbol of joy and plenty, of national peace and domestic happiness.

FOOTNOTES:

[301:1] According to Vopiscus, England is indebted to the Emperor Probus (A.D. 276-282) for the Vine: "Gallis omnibus et Britannis et Hispanis hinc permisit ut vites haberent, et Vinum conficerent."

[302:1] At Stonehouse "there are two arpens of Vineyard."--_Domesday Book_, quoted by Rudder. Also "the Vineyard" was the residence of the Abbots of Gloucester. It was at St. Mary de Lode near Gloucester, and "the Vineyard and Park were given to the Bishopric of Gloucester at its foundation and again confirmed 6th Edward VI."--RUDDER.

[303:1] "Edinburgh Review," April, 1860.

[303:2] See Preface to "Palladius on Husbandrie," p. viii. (Early English Text Society), for a further account of old English Vineyards.

[303:3] For a very interesting account of the formation of lynches, and their connection with the ancient communal cultivation of the soil see Seebohm's "English Village Community," p. 5.

[304:1] On this Vineyard Mr. Skrine, the present owner of Claverton, has kindly informed me that it was sold in 1701 by Mr. Richard Holder for £21,367, of which £28 was for "four hogsheads of wine of the Vineyards of Claverton."

[304:2] Andrew Boorde was evidently a lover of good wine, and his account is: "This I do say that all the kingdoms of the world have not so many sundry kindes of wine as we in England, and yet _there is nothing to make of_."--_Breviary of Health_, 1598.

VIOLETS.

(1) _Queen._

The Violets, Cowslips, and the Primroses, Bear to my closet.

_Cymbeline_, act i, sc. 5 (83).

(2) _Angelo._

It is I, That, lying by the Violet in the sun, Do as the carrion does, not as the flower, Corrupt with virtuous season.

_Measure for Measure_, act ii, sc. 2 (165).

(3) _Oberon._

Where Oxlips and the nodding Violet grows.

_Midsummer Night's Dream_, act ii, sc. 1 (250).

(4) _Salisbury._

To gild refined gold, to paint the Lily, To throw a perfume on the Violet, To smooth the ice, or add another hue Unto the rainbow, or with taper-light To seek the beauteous eye of Heaven to garnish, Is wasteful and ridiculous excess.

_King John_, act iv, sc. 2 (11).

(5) _K. Henry._

I think the king is but a man, as I am; the Violet smells to him as it doth to me.

_Henry V_, act iv, sc. 1 (105).

(6) _Laertes._

A Violet in the youth of primy nature, Forward, not permanent; sweet, not lasting. The perfume and suppliance of a minute; No more.

_Hamlet_, act i, sc. 3 (7).

(7) _Ophelia._

I would give you some Violets, but they withered all when my father died.

_Ibid._, act iv, sc. 5 (184).

(8) _Laertes._

Lay her i' the earth, And from her fair and unpolluted flesh May Violets spring!

_Ibid._, act v, sc. 1 (261).

(9) _Belarius._

They are as gentle As zephyrs blowing below the Violet, Not wagging his sweet head.

_Cymbeline_, act iv, sc. 2 (171).

(10) _Duke._

That strain again! It had a dying fall: O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet sound, That breathes upon a bank of Violets, Stealing and giving odour!

_Twelfth Night_, act i, sc. 1 (4).

(11) _Song of Spring._

When Daisies pied, and Violets blue, &c.

_Love's Labour's Lost_, act v, sc. 2 (904). (_See_ CUCKOO-BUDS.)

(12) _Perdita._

Violets dim, But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes Or Cytherea's breath.

_Winter's Tale_, act iv, sc. 4 (120).

(13) _Duchess._

Welcome, my son; Who are the Violets now, That strew the green lap of the new-come spring?

_Richard II_, act v, sc. 2 (46).

(14) _Marina._

The yellows, blues, The purple Violets and Marigolds, Shall as a carpet hang upon thy grave While summer-days do last.

_Pericles_, act iv, sc. 1 (16).

(15)

These blue-veined Violets whereon we lean Never can blab, nor know not what we mean.

_Venus and Adonis_ (125).

(16)

Who when he lived, his breath and beauty set Gloss on the Rose, smell to the Violet.

_Ibid._ (936).

(17)

When I behold the Violet past prime, And sable curls all silver'd o'er with white,

* * * * *

Then of thy beauty do I question make, That thou among the wastes of time must go, Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake And die as fast as they see others grow.

_Sonnet_ xii.

(18)

The forward Violet thus did I chide: "Sweet thief, whence didst thou steal thy sweet that smells, If not from my love's breath? The purple pride Which on thy soft cheek for complexion dwells In my love's veins thou hast too grossly died."

_Ibid._ xcix.

There are about a hundred different species of Violets, of which there are five species in England, and a few sub-species. One of these is the Viola tricolor, from which is descended the Pansy, or Love-in-Idleness (_see_ PANSY). But in all the passages in which Shakespeare names the Violet, he alludes to the purple sweet-scented Violet, of which he was evidently very fond, and which is said to be very abundant in the neighbourhood of Stratford-on-Avon. For all the eighteen passages tell of some point of beauty or sweetness that attracted him. And so it is with all the poets from Chaucer downwards--the Violet is noticed by all, and by all with affectation. I need only mention two of the greatest. Milton gave the Violet a chief place in the beauties of the "Blissful Bower" of our first parents in Paradise--

"Each beauteous flower, Iris all hues, Roses, and Jessamin Rear'd high their flourish't heads between, and wrought Mosaic; underfoot the Violet, Crocus and Hyacinth with rich inlay Broidered the ground, more coloured than with stone Of costliest emblem;"

_Paradise Lost_, book iv.

and Sir Walter Scott crowns it as the queen of wild flowers--

"The Violet in her greenwood bower, Where Birchen boughs with Hazels mingle, May boast itself the fairest flower In glen, in copse, or forest dingle."

Yet favourite though it ever has been, it has no English name. Violet is the diminutive form of the Latin Viola, which again is the Latin form of the Greek +ion+. In the old Vocabularies Viola frequently occurs, and with the following various translations:--"Ban-wyrt," _i.e._, Bone-wort (eleventh century Vocabulary); "Cloefre," _i.e._, Clover (eleventh century Vocabulary); "Violé, Appel-leaf" (thirteenth century Vocabulary);[310:1] "Wyolet" (fourteenth century Vocabulary); "Vyolytte" (fifteenth century Nominale); "Violetta, A{ce}, a Violet" (fifteenth century Pictorial Vocabulary); and "Viola Cleafre, Ban-vyrt" (Durham Glossary). It is also mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon translation of the Herbarium of Apuleius in the tenth century as "the Herb Viola purpurea; (1) for new wounds and eke for old; (2) for hardness of the maw" (Cockayne's translation). In this last example it is most probable that our sweet-scented Violet is the plant meant, but in some of the other cases it is quite certain that some other plant is meant, and perhaps in all. For Violet was a name given very loosely to many plants, so that Laurembergius says: "Vox Violæ distinctissimis floribus communis est. Videntur mihi antiqui suaveolentes quosque flores generatim Violas appellasse, cujuscunque etiam forent generis quasi vi oleant."--_Apparat. Plant._, 1632. This confusion seems to have arisen in a very simple way. Theophrastus described the Leucojum, which was either the Snowdrop or the spring Snowflake, as the earliest-flowering plant; Pliny literally translated Leucojum into Alba Viola. All the earlier writers on natural history were in the habit of taking Pliny for their guide, and so they translated his Viola by any early-flowering plant that most took their fancy. Even as late as 1693, Samuel Gilbert, in "The Florists' Vade Mecum," under the head of Violets, only describes "the lesser early bulbous Violet, a common flower yet not to be wasted, because when none other appears that does, though in the snow, whence called Snowflower or Snowdrop;" and I think that even later instances may be found.

When I say that there is no genuine English name for the Violet, I ought, perhaps, to mention that one name has been attributed to it, but I do not think that it is more than a clever guess. "The commentators on Shakespeare have been much puzzled by the epithet 'happy lowlie down,' applied to the man of humble station in "Henry IV.," and have proposed to read 'lowly clown,' or to divide the phrase into 'low lie down,' but the following lines from Browne clearly prove 'lowly down' to be the correct term, for he uses it in precisely the same sense--

'The humble Violet that lowly down Salutes the gay nymphs as they trimly pass.'

_Poet's Pleasaunce._"

This may prove that Browne called the Violet a Lowly-down, but it certainly does not prove that name to have been a common name for the Violet. It was, however, the character of lowliness combined with sweetness that gave the charm to the Violet in the eyes of the emblem writers: it was for them the readiest symbol of the meekness of humility. "Humilitas dat gratiam" is the motto that Camerarius places over a clump of Violets. "A true widow is, in the church, as a little March Violet shedding around an exquisite perfume by the fragrance of her devotion, and always hidden under the ample leaves of her lowliness, and by her subdued colouring showing the spirit of her mortification, she seeks untrodden and solitary places," &c.--ST. FRANCIS DE SALES. And the poets could nowhere find a fitter similitude for a modest maiden than

"A Violet by a mossy stone Half hidden from the eye."

Violets, like Primroses, must always have had their joyful associations as coming to tell that the winter is passing away and brighter days are near, for they are among

"The first to rise And smile beneath spring's wakening skies, The courier of a band Of coming flowers."

Yet it is curious to note how, like Primroses, they have been ever associated with death, especially with the death of the young. I suppose these ideas must have arisen from a sort of pity for flowers that were only allowed to see the opening year, and were cut off before the full beauty of summer had come. This was prettily expressed by H. Vaughan, the Silurist:

"So violets, so doth the primrose fall At once the spring's pride and its funeral, Such early sweets get off in their still prime, And stay not here to wear the foil of time; While coarser flowers, which none would miss, if past, To scorching summers and cold winters last."

_Daphnis_, 1678.

It was from this association that they were looked on as apt emblems of those who enjoyed the bright springtide of life and no more. This feeling was constantly expressed, and from very ancient times. We find it in some pretty lines by Prudentius--

"Nos tecta fovebimus ossa Violis et fronde frequente, Titulumque et frigida saxa Liquido spargemus odore."

Shakespeare expresses the same feeling in the collection of "purple Violets and Marigolds" which Marina carries to hang "as a carpet on the grave" (No. 14), and again in Laertes' wish that Violets may spring from the grave of Ophelia (No. 8), on which Steevens very aptly quotes from Persius Satires--

"e tumulo fortunataque favillâ. Nascentur Violæ."

In the same spirit Milton, gathering for the grave of Lycidas--

"Every flower that sad embroidery wears,"

gathers among others "the glowing Violet;" and the same thought is repeated by many other writers.

There is a remarkable botanical curiosity in the structure of the Violet which is worth notice: it produces flowers both in spring and autumn, but the flowers are very different. In spring they are fully formed and sweet-scented, but they are mostly barren and produce no seed, while in autumn they are very small, they have no petals and, I believe, no scent, but they produce abundance of seed.[313:1]

I need say nothing to recommend the Violet in all its varieties as a garden plant. As a useful medicinal plant it was formerly in high repute--

"Vyolet an erbe cowth Is knowyn in ilke manys mowthe, As bokys seyn in here language, It is good to don in potage, In playstrys to wondrys it is comfortyf, W{h} oyer erbys sanatyf:"

_Stockholm MS._

and it still holds a place in the Pharmacopoeia, while the chemist finds the pretty flowers one of the most delicate tests for detecting the presence of acids and alkalies; but as to the many other virtues of the Violet I cannot do better than quote Gerard's pleasant and quaint words: "The Blacke or Purple Violets, or March Violets of the garden, have a great prerogative above others, not only because the minde conceiveth a certain pleasure and recreation by smelling and handling of those most odoriferous flowres, but also for that very many by these Violets receive ornament and comely grace; for there be made of them garlands for the head, nosegaies, and poesies, which are delightfull to looke on and pleasant to smell to, speaking nothing of their appropriate vertues; yea, gardens themselves receive by these the greatest ornament of all chiefest beautie and most gallant grace, and the recreation of the minde which is taken thereby cannot but be very good and honest; for they admonish and stir up a man to that which is comely and honest, for flowres through their beautie, variety of colour, and exquisite forme, do bring to a liberall and greatte many minde the remembrance of honestie, comelinesse, and all kindes of vertues. For it would be an unseemely and filthie thing (as a certain wise man saith) for him that doth looke upon and handle faire and beautifull things, and who frequenteth and is conversant in faire and beautifull places, to have his minde not faire but filthie and deformed." With these brave words of the old gardener I might well close my account of this favourite flower, but I must add George Herbert's lines penned in the same spirit--

"Farewell, dear flowers, sweetly your time ye spent, Fit, while ye lived, for smell or ornament, And after death for cures; I follow straight without complaint or grief, Since if my scent be good, I care not if It be as short as yours."

_Poems on Life._

FOOTNOTES:

[310:1] Appel-leaf is given as the English name for Viola in two other MS. Glossaries quoted by Cockayne, vol. iii. p. 312.

[313:1] This peculiarity is not confined to the Violet. It is found in some species of Oxalis, Impatiens, Campanula, Eranthemum, Amphicarpea, Leeisia, &c. Such plants are technically called Cleistogamous, and are all self-fertilizing.

WALNUT.

(1) _Petruchio._

Why, 'tis a cockle or a Walnut-shell, A knack, a toy, a trick, a baby's cap.

_Taming of the Shrew_, act iv, sc. 3 (66).

(2) _Ford._

Let them say of me, "As jealous as Ford that searched a hollow Walnut for his wife's leman."

_Merry Wives of Windsor_, act iv, sc. 2 (170).

The Walnut is a native of Persia and China, and its foreign origin is told in all its names. The Greeks called it Persicon, _i.e._, the Persian tree, and Basilikon, _i.e._, the Royal tree; the Latins gave it a still higher rank, naming it Juglans, _i.e._, Jove's Nut. "Hæc glans, optima et maxima, ab Jove et glande juglans appellata est."--VARRO. The English names tell the same story. It was first simply called Nut, as the Nut _par excellence_. "_Juglantis vel nux_, knutu."--ÆLFRIC'S _Vocabulary_. But in the fourteenth century it had obtained the name of "Ban-nut," from its hardness. So it is named in a metrical Vocabulary of the fourteenth century--

Pomus Pirus Corulus nux Avelanaque Ficus Appul-tre Peere-tre Hasyl Note Bannenote-tre Fygge;

and this name it still holds in the West of England. But at the same time it had also acquired the name of Walnut. "_Hec avelana_, A{ce} Walnot-tree" (Vocabulary fourteenth century). "_Hec avelana_, a Walnutte and the Nutte" (Nominate fifteenth century). This name is commonly supposed to have reference to the hard shell, but it only means that the nut is of foreign origin. "Wal" is another form of Walshe or Welch, and so Lyte says that the tree is called "in English the Walnut and Walshe Nut tree." "The word Welsh (_wilisc_, _woelisc_) meant simply a foreigner, one who was not of Teutonic race, and was (by the Saxons) applied especially to nations using the Latin language. In the Middle Ages the French language, and in fact all those derived from Latin, and called on that account _linguæ Romanæ_, were called in German _Welsch_. France was called by the mediæval German writers _daz Welsche lant_, and when they wished to express 'in the whole world,' they said, _in allen Welschen und in Tiutschen richen_, 'in all Welsh and Teutonic kingdoms.' In modern German the name _Wälsch_ is used more especially for Italian."--WRIGHT'S _Celt, Roman, and Saxon_.[315:1] This will at once explain that Walnut simply means the foreign or non-English Nut.

It must have been a well-established and common tree in Shakespeare's time, for all the writers of his day speak of it as a high and large tree, and I should think it very likely that Walnut trees were even more extensively planted in his day than in our own. There are many noble specimens to be seen in different parts of England, especially in the chalk districts, for "it delights," says Evelyn, "in a dry, sound, rich land, especially if it incline to a feeding chalk or marl; and where it may be protected from the cold (though it affects cold rather than extreme heat), as in great pits, valleys, and highway sides; also in stony ground, if loamy, and on hills, especially chalky; likewise in cornfields." The grand specimens that may be seen in the sheltered villages lying under the chalk downs of Wiltshire and Berkshire bear witness to the truth of Evelyn's remarks. But the finest English specimens can bear no comparison with the size of the Walnut trees in warmer countries, and especially where they are indigenous. There they "sometimes attain prodigious size and great age. An Italian architect mentions having seen at St. Nicholas, in Lorraine, a single plank of the wood of the Walnut, 25ft. wide, upon which the Emperor Frederick III. had given a sumptuous banquet. In the Baidar Valley, near Balaclava, in the Crimea, stands a Walnut tree at least 1000 years old. It yields annually from 80,000 to 100,000 Nuts, and belongs to five Tartar families, who share its produce equally."--_Gardener's Chronicle._

The economic uses of the Walnut are now chiefly confined to the timber, which is highly prized both for furniture and gun-stocks, and to the production of oil, which is not much used in Europe, but is highly valued in the East. "It dries much more slowly than any other distilled oil, and hence its great value, as it allows the artist as much time as he requires in order to blend his colours and finish his work. In conjunction with amber varnish it forms a vehicle which leaves nothing to be desired, and which doubtless was the vehicle of Van Eyck, and in many instances of the Venetian masters, and of Correggio."--_Arts of the Middle Ages_, preface. In mediæval times a high medicinal value was attached to the fruit, for the celebrated antidote against poison which was so firmly believed in, and which was attributed to Mithridates, King of Pontus, was chiefly composed of Walnuts. "Two Nuttes (he is speaking of Walnuts) and two Figges, and twenty Rewe leaves, stamped together with a little salt, and eaten fasting, doth defende a man from poison and pestilence that day."--BULLEIN, _Governmente of Health_, 1558.

The Walnut holds an honoured place in heraldry. Two large Walnut trees overshadow the tomb of the poet Waller in Beaconsfield churchyard, and "these are connected with a curious piece of family history. The tree was chosen as the Waller crest after Agincourt, where the head of the family took the Duke of Orleans prisoner, and took afterwards as his crest the arms of Orleans hanging by a label in a Walnut tree with this motto for the device: _Hæc fructus virtutis._"--_Gardener's Chronicle_, Aug., 1878.

Walnuts are still very popular, but not as poison antidotes; their popularity now rests on their use as pickles, their excellence as autumn and winter dessert fruits, and with pseudo-gipsies for the rich olive hue that the juice will give to the skin. These uses, together with the beauty in the landscape that is given by an old Walnut tree, will always secure for it a place among English trees; yet there can be little doubt that the Walnut is a bad neighbour to other crops, and for that reason its numbers in England have been much diminished. Phillips said there was a decided antipathy between Apples and Walnuts, and spoke of the Apple tree as--

"Uneasy, seated by funereal Yew Or Walnut (whose malignant touch impairs All generous fruits), or near the bitter dews Of Cherries."

And in this he was probably right, though the mischief caused to the Apple tree more probably arises from the dense shade thrown by the Walnut tree than by any malarious exhalation emitted from it.

FOOTNOTES:

[315:1] See Earle's "Philology of the English Tongue," p. 23.

WARDEN, _see_ PEARS.

WHEAT.

(1) _Iris._

Ceres, most bounteous lady, thy rich leas Of Wheat, Rye, Barley, Vetches, Oats, and Pease.

_Tempest_, act iv, sc. 1 (60).

(2) _Helena._

More tuneable than lark to shepherd's ear, When Wheat is green, when Hawthorn-buds appear.

_Midsummer Night's Dream_, act i, sc. 1 (184).

(3) _Bassanio._

His reasons are as two grains of Wheat hid in two bushels of chaff; you shall seek all day ere you find them, and when you have them, they are not worth the search.

_Merchant of Venice_, act i, sc. 1 (114).

(4) _Hamlet._

As peace should still her Wheaten garland wear.

_Hamlet_, act v, sc. 2 (41).

(5) _Pompey._

To send measures of Wheat to Rome.

_Antony and Cleopatra_, act ii, sc. 6 (36).

(6) _Edgar._

This is the foul fiend Flibbertigibbet. . . . He mildews the white Wheat, and hurts the poor creatures of earth.

_King Lear_, act iii, sc. 4 (120).

(7) _Pandarus._

He that will have a cake out of the Wheat, must needs tarry the grinding.

_Troilus and Cressida_, act i, sc. 1 (15).

(8) _Davy._

And again, sir, shall we sow the headland with Wheat?

_Shallow._

With red Wheat, Davy.

_2nd Henry IV_, act v, sc. 1 (15).

(9) _Theseus._

Your Wheaten wreathe Was then nor threashed nor blasted.

_Two Noble Kinsmen_, act i, sc. 1 (68).

I might perhaps content myself with marking these passages only, and dismiss Shakespeare's Wheat without further comment, for the Wheat of his day was identical with our own; but there are a few points in connection with English Wheat which may be interesting. Wheat is not an English plant, nor is it a European plant; its original home is in Northern Asia, whence it has spread into all civilized countries.[318:1] For the cultivation of Wheat is one of the first signs of civilized life; it marks the end of nomadic life, and implies more or less a settled habitation. When it reached England, and to what country we are indebted for it, we do not know; but we know that while we are indebted to the Romans for so many of our useful trees, and fruits, and vegetables, we are not indebted to them for the introduction of Wheat. This we might be almost sure of from the very name, which has no connection with the Latin names, _triticum_ or _frumentum_, but is a pure old English word, signifying originally _white_, and so distinguishing it as the white grain in opposition to the darker grains of Oats and Rye. But besides the etymological evidence, we have good historical evidence that Cæsar found Wheat growing in England when he first landed on the shores of Kent. He daily victualled his camp with British Wheat ("frumentum ex agris quotidie in castra conferebat"); and it was while his soldiers were reaping the Wheat in the Kentish fields that they were surrounded and successfully attacked by the British. He tells us, however, that the cultivation of Wheat was chiefly confined to Kent, and was not much known inland: "interiores plerique frumenta non serunt, sed lacte et carne vivunt."--_De Bello Gallico_, v, 14. Roman Wheat has frequently been found in graves, and strange stories have been told of the plants that have been raised from these old seeds; but a more scientific inquiry has proved that there have been mistakes or deceits, more or less intentional, for "Wheat is said to keep for seven years at the longest. The statements as to mummy Wheat are wholly devoid of authenticity, as are those of the Raspberry seeds taken from a Roman tomb."--HOOKER, "Botany" in _Science Primers_. The oft-repeated stories about the vitality of mummy Wheat were effectually disposed of when it was discovered that much of the so-called Wheat was South American Maize.

FOOTNOTES:

[318:1] Yet Homer considered it to be indigenous in Sicily--Odyss: ix, 109--and Cicero, perhaps on the authority of Homer, says the same: "Insula Cereris . . . ubi primum fruges inventæ esse dicuntur."--_In Verrem_, v, 38.

WILLOW.

(1) _Viola._

Make me a Willow cabin at your gate.

_Twelfth Night_, act i, sc. 5 (287).

(2) _Benedick._

Come, will you go with me?

_Claudio._

Whither?

_Benedick._

Even to the next Willow, about your own business.

_Much Ado About Nothing_, act ii, sc. 1 (192).

_Benedick._

I offered him my company to a Willow tree, either to make him a garland, as being forsaken, or to bind him up a rod, as being worthy to be whipped.

_Ibid._ (223).

(3) _Nathaniel._

These thoughts to me were Oaks, to thee like Osiers bow'd.

_Love's Labour's Lost_, act iv, sc. 2 (112).

(4) _Lorenzo._

In such a night Stood Dido, with a Willow in her hand, Upon the wild sea-banks.

_Merchant of Venice_, act v, sc. 1 (9).

(5) _Bona._

Tell him, in hope he'll prove a widower shortly, I'll wear the Willow garland for his sake.

_3d Henry VI_, act iii, sc. 3 (227).

_Post._

[The same words repeated.]

_Ibid._, act iv, sc. 1 (99).

(6) _Queen._

There is a Willow grows aslant a brook, That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream. There on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke.

_Hamlet_, act iv, sc. 7 (167).

(7) _Desdemona_ (singing)--

The poor soul sat sighing by a Sycamore tree. Sing all a green Willow; Her hand on her bosom, her head on her knee, Sing Willow, Willow, Willow. The fresh streams ran by her, and murmur'd her moans; Sing Willow, Willow, Willow. Her salt tears fell from her and soften'd the stones, Sing Willow, Willow, Willow. Sing all a green Willow must be my garland.

_Othello_, act iv, sc. 3 (41).

(8) _Emilia._

I will play the swan, And die in music. [_Singing_] Willow, Willow, Willow.

_Ibid._, act v, sc. 2 (247).

(9) _Wooer._

Then she sang Nothing but Willow, Willow, Willow.

_Two Noble Kinsmen_, act iv, sc. 1 (100).

(10) _Friar._

I must up-fill this Willow cage of ours With baleful Weeds and precious juiced Flowers.

_Romeo and Juliet_, act ii, sc. 3 (7).

(11) _Celia._

West of this place, down in the neighbour bottom; The rank of Osiers by the murmuring stream Left on your right hand, brings you to the place.

_As You Like It_, act iv, sc. 3 (79).

(12)

When Cytherea all in love forlorn A longing tarriance for Adonis made Under an Osier growing by a brook.

_Passionate Pilgrim_ vi.

(13)

Though to myself forsworn, to thee I'll constant prove; Those thoughts, to me like Oaks, to thee like Osiers bow'd.

_Ibid._ v.

_See also_ PALM TREE, No. 1, p. 192.

Willow is an old English word, but the more common and perhaps the older name for the Willow is Withy, a name which is still in constant use, but more generally applied to the twigs when cut for basket-making than to the living tree. "Withe" is found in the oldest vocabularies, but we do not find "Willow" till we come to the vocabularies of the fifteenth century, when it occurs as "Hæc Salex, A{e} Wyllo-tre;" "Hæc Salix-icis, a Welogh;" "Salix, Welig." Both the names probably referred to the pliability of the tree, and there was another name for it, the Sallow, which was either a corruption of the Latin Salix, or was derived from a common root. It was also called Osier.

The Willow is a native of Britain. It belongs to a large family (_Salix_), numbering 160 species, of which we have seventeen distinct species in Great Britain, besides many sub-species and varieties. So common a plant, with the peculiar pliability of the shoots that distinguishes all the family, was sure to be made much use of. Its more common uses were for basket-making, for coracles, and huts, or "Willow-cabins" (No. 1), but it had other uses in the elegancies and even in the romance of life. The flowers of the early Willow (_S. caprea_) did duty for and were called Palms on Palm Sunday (_see_ PALM), and not only the flowers but the branches also seem to have been used in decoration, a use which is now extinct. "The Willow is called _Salix_, and hath his name _à saliendo_, for that it quicklie groweth up, and soon becommeth a tree. Heerewith do they in some countries trim up their parlours and dining roomes in sommer, and sticke fresh greene leaves thereof about their beds for coolness."--NEWTON'S _Herball for the Bible_.[321:1]

But if we only look at the poetry of the time of Shakespeare, and much of the poetry before and after him, we should almost conclude that the sole use of the Willow was to weave garlands for jilted lovers, male and female. It was probably with reference to this that Shakespeare represented poor mad Ophelia hanging her flowers on the "Willow tree aslant the brook" (No. 6), and it is more pointedly referred to in Nos. 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, and 9. The feeling was expressed in a melancholy ditty, which must have been very popular in the sixteenth century, of which Desdemona says a few of the first verses (No. 7), and which concludes thus--

"Come all you forsaken and sit down by me, He that plaineth of his false love, mine's falser than she; The Willow wreath weare I, since my love did fleet, A garland for lovers forsaken most meet."

The ballad is entitled "The Complaint of a Lover Forsaken of His Love--To a Pleasant New Tune," and is printed in the "Roxburghe Ballads." This curious connection of the Willow with forsaken or disappointed lovers stood its ground for a long time. Spenser spoke of the "Willow worne of forlorne paramoures." Drayton says that--

"In love the sad forsaken wight The Willow garland weareth"--

_Muse's Elysium._

and though we have long given up the custom of wearing garlands of any sort, yet many of us can recollect one of the most popular street songs, that was heard everywhere, and at last passed into a proverb, and which began--

"All round my hat I vears a green Willow In token," &c.

It has been suggested by many that this melancholy association with the Willow arose from its Biblical associations; and this may be so, though all the references to the Willow that occur in the Bible are, with one notable exception, connected with joyfulness and fertility. The one exception is the plaintive wail in the 137th Psalm--

"By the streams of Babel, there we sat down, And we wept when we remembered Zion. On the Willows among the rivers we hung our harps."

And this one record has been sufficient to alter the emblematic character of the Willow--"this one incident has made the Willow an emblem of the deepest of sorrows, namely, sorrow for sin found out, and visited with its due punishment. From that time the Willow appears never again to have been associated with feelings of gladness. Even among heathen nations, for what reason we know not, it was a tree of evil omen, and was employed to make the torches carried at funerals. Our own poets made the Willow the symbol of despairing woe."--JOHNS. This is the more remarkable because the tree referred to in the Psalms, the Weeping Willow (_Salix Babylonica_), which by its habit of growth is to us so suggestive of crushing sorrow, was quite unknown in Europe till a very recent period. "It grows abundantly on the banks of the Euphrates, and other parts of Asia, as in Palestine, and also in North Africa;" but it is said to have been introduced into England during the last century, and then in a curious way. "Many years ago, the well-known poet, Alexander Pope, who resided at Twickenham, received a basket of Figs as a present from Turkey. The basket was made of the supple branches of the Weeping Willow, the very same species under which the captive Jews sat when they wept by the waters of Babylon. The poet valued highly the small and tender twigs associated with so much that was interesting, and he untwisted the basket, and planted one of the branches in the ground. It had some tiny buds upon it, and he hoped he might be able to rear it, as none of this species of Willow was known in England. Happily the Willow is very quick to take root and grow. The little branch soon became a tree, and drooped gracefully over the river, in the same manner that its race had done over the waters of Babylon. From that one branch all the Weeping Willows in England are descended."--KIRBY'S _Trees_.[323:1]

There is probably no tree that contributes so largely to the conveniences of English life as the Willow. Putting aside its uses in the manufacture of gunpowder and cricket bats, we may safely say that the most scantily-furnished house can boast of some article of Willow manufacture in the shape of baskets. British basket-making is, as far as we know, the oldest national manufacture; it is the manufacture in connection with which we have the earliest record of the value placed on British work. British baskets were exported to Rome, and it would almost seem as if baskets were unknown in Rome until they were introduced from Britain, for with the article of import came the name also, and the British "basket" became the Latin "bascauda." We have curious evidence of the high value attached to these baskets. Juvenal describes Catullus in fear of shipwreck throwing overboard his most precious treasures: "precipitare volens etiam pulcherrima," and among these "pulcherrima" he mentions "bascaudas." Martial bears a still higher testimony to the value set on "British baskets," reckoning them among the many rich gifts distributed at the Saturnalia--

"Barbara de pictis veni bascauda Britannis Sed me jam vult dicere Roma suam."--Book xiv, 99.

Many of the Willows make handsome shrubs for the garden, for besides those that grow into large trees, there are many that are low shrubs, and some so low as to be fairly called carpet plants. Salix Reginæ is one of the most silvery shrubs we have, with very narrow leaves; S. lanata is almost as silvery, but with larger and woolly leaves, and makes a very pretty object when grown on rockwork near water; S. rosmarinifolia is another desirable shrub; and among the lower-growing species, the following will grow well on rockwork, and completely clothe the surface: S. alpina, S. Grahami, S. retusa, S. serpyllifolia, and S. reticulata. They are all easily cultivated and are quite hardy.

FOOTNOTES:

[321:1] In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the Willow does not appear to have had any value for its medical uses. In the present day salicine and salicylic acid are produced from the bark, and have a high reputation as antiseptics and in rheumatic cases.

[323:1] This is the traditional history of the introduction of the Weeping Willow into England, but it is very doubtful.

WOODBINE, _see_ HONEYSUCKLE.

WORMWOOD.

(1) _Rosaline._

To weed this Wormwood from your fruitful brain.

_Love's Labour's Lost_, act v, sc. 2 (857).

(2) _Nurse._

For I had then laid Wormwood to my dug.

* * * * *

When it did taste the Wormwood on the nipple Of my dug, and felt it bitter, pretty fool.

_Romeo and Juliet_, act i, sc. 3 (26).

(3) _Hamlet_ (aside).

Wormwood, Wormwood.

_Hamlet_, act iii, sc. 2 (191).

(4)

Thy secret pleasure turns to open shame, Thy private feasting to a public fast, Thy smoothing titles to a ragged name, Thy sugar'd tongue to bitter Wormwood taste.

_Lucrece_ (890).

_See also_ DIAN'S BUD.

Wormwood is the product of many species of Artemisia, a family consisting of 180 species, of which we have four in England. The whole family is remarkable for the extreme bitterness of all parts of the plant, so that "as bitter as Wormwood" is one of the oldest proverbs. The plant was named Artemisia from Artemis, the Greek name of Diana, and for this reason: "Verily of these three Worts which we named Artemisia, it is said that Diana should find them, and delivered their powers and leechdom to Chiron the Centaur, who first from these Worts set forth a leechdom, and he named these Worts from the name of Diana, Artemis, that is, Artemisias."--_Herbarium Apulæi_, Cockayne's translation. The Wormwood was of very high reputation in medicine, and is thus recommended in the Stockholm MS.:

"Lif man or woman, more or lesse In his head have gret sicknesse Or gruiance or any werking Awoyne he take wt. owte lettyng It is called Sowthernwode also And hony eteys et spurge stamp yer to And late hy yis drunk, fastined drinky And his hed werk away schall synkyn."[325:1]

But even in Shakespeare's time this high character had somewhat abated, though it was still used for all medicines in which a strong bitter was recommended. But its chief use seems to have been as a protection against insects of all kinds, who might very reasonably be supposed to avoid such a bitter food. This is Tusser's advice about the plant--

"While Wormwood hath seed get a handful or twaine To save against March, to make flea to refraine: Where chamber is sweeped and Wormwood is strowne, No flea, for his life, dare abide to be knowne. What saver is better (if physick be true), For places infected than Wormwood and Rue? It is as a comfort for hart and the braine, And therefore to have it, it is not in vaine."

_July's Husbandry._

This quality was the origin of the names of Mugwort[326:1] and Wormwood. Its other name (in the Stockholm MS. referred to), Avoyne or Averoyne is a corruption of the specific name of one of the species, A. Abrotanum. Southernwood is the southern Wormwood, _i.e._, the foreign, as distinguished from the native plant. The modern name for the same species is Boy's Love, or Old Man. The last name may have come from its hoary leaves, though different explanations are given: the other name is given to it, according to Dr. Prior, "from an ointment made with its ashes being used by young men to promote the growth of a beard." There is good authority for this derivation, but I think the name may have been given for other reasons. "Boy's Love" is one of the most favourite cottage-garden plants, and it enters largely into the rustic language of flowers. No posy presented by a young man to his lass is complete without Boy's Love; and it is an emblem of fidelity, at least it was so once. It is, in fact, a Forget-me-Not, from its strong abiding smell; so St. Francis de Sales applied it: "To love in the midst of sweets, little children could do that; but to love in the bitterness of Wormwood is a sure sign of our affectionate fidelity." Not that the Wormwood was ever named Forget-me-Not, for that name was given to the Ground Pine (_Ajuga chamæpitys_) on account of its unpleasant and long-enduring smell, until it was transferred to the Myosotis (which then lost its old name of Mouse-ear), and the pretty legend was manufactured to account for the name.

In England Wormwood has almost fallen into complete disuse; but in France it is largely used in the shape of Absinthe. As a garden plant, Tarragon, which is a species of Wormwood, will claim a place in every herb garden, and there are a few, such as A. sericea, A. cana, and A. alpina, which make pretty shrubs for the rockwork.

FOOTNOTES:

[325:1] Wormwood had a still higher reputation among the ancients, as the following extract shows:

+Artemisia monoklônos.+

+Auei gar kopon audros hodoiporou, hos k'eni chersin tên monoklônon echê; peri d' au posin herpeta panta pheugei, hên tis echê en hodô, kai phasmata deina.+

_Anonymi Carmen de Herbis, in "Poetæ Bucolici."_

[326:1] In connection with Mugwort there is a most curious account of the formation of a plant name given in a note in the "Promptorium Parvulorum," s.v. Mugworte: "Mugwort, al on as seyn some, Modirwort; lewed folk that in manye wordes conne no rygt sownyge, but ofte shortyn wordys, and changyn lettrys and silablys, they coruptyn the _o_ in to _a_ and _d_ in to _g_, and syncopyn _i_ smytyn a-wey _i_ and _r_ and seyn mugwort."--_Arundel MS._, 42, f. 35 v.

YEW.

(1) _Song._

My shroud of white, stuck all with Yew, Oh! prepare it.

_Twelfth Night_, act ii, sc. 4 (56).

_(2) 3rd Witch._

Gall of goat, and slips of Yew Sliver'd in the moon's eclipse.

_Macbeth_, act iv, sc. 1 (27).

(3) _Scroop._

Thy very beadsmen learn to bend their bows Of double-fatal Yew against thy state.

_Richard II_, act iii, sc. 2 (116).

(4) _Tamora._

But straight they told me they would bind me here Unto the body of a dismal Yew.

_Titus Andronicus_, act ii, sc. 3 (106).

(5) _Paris._

Under yond Yew-trees lay thee all along, Holding thine ear close to the hollow ground; So shall no foot upon the churchyard tread (Being loose, unfirm, with digging up of graves) But thou shalt hear it.

_Romeo and Juliet_, act v, sc. 3 (3).

(6) _Balthasar._

As I did sleep under this Yew tree here,[327:1] I dreamt my master and another fought, And that my master slew him.

_Ibid._ (137).

_See also_ HEBENON, p. 118.

The Yew, though undoubtedly an indigenous British plant, has not a British name. The name is derived from the Latin _Iva_, and "under this name we find the _Yew_ so inextricably mixed up with the _Ivy_ that, as dissimilar as are the two trees, there can be no doubt that these names are in their origin identical." So says Dr. Prior, and he proceeds to give a long and very interesting account of the origin of the name. The connection of Yew with _iva_ and _Ivy_ is still shown in the French _if_, the German _eibe_, and the Portuguese _iva_. _Yew_ seems to be quite a modern form; in the old vocabularies the word is variously spelt iw, ewe,[328:1] eugh-tre,[328:2] haw-tre, new-tre, ew, uhe, and iw.

The connection of the Yew with churchyards and funerals is noticed by Shakespeare in Nos. 1, 5, and 6, and its celebrated connection with English bow-making in No. 3, where "double-fatal" may probably refer to its noxious qualities when living and its use for deadly weapons afterwards. These noxious qualities, joined to its dismal colour, and to its constant use in churchyards, caused it to enter into the supposed charms and incantations of the quacks of the Middle Ages. Yet Gerard entirely denies its noxious qualities: "They say that the fruit thereof being eaten is not onely dangerous and deadly unto man, but if birds do eat thereof it causeth them to cast their feathers and many times to die--all which I dare boldly affirme is altogether untrue; for when I was yong and went to schoole, divers of my schoolfellowes, and likewise my selfe, did eat our fils of the berries of this tree, and have not only slept under the shadow thereof, but among the branches also, without any hurt at all, and that not at one time but many times." Browne says the same in his "Vulgar Errors:" "That Yew and the berries thereof are harmlesse, we know" (book ii. c. 7). There is no doubt that the Yew berries are almost if not quite harmless,[328:3] and I find them forming an element in an Anglo-Saxon recipe, which may be worth quoting as an example of the medicines to which our forefathers submitted. It is given in a Leech Book of the tenth century or earlier, and is thus translated by Cockayne: "If a man is in the water elf disease, then are the nails of his hand livid, and the eyes tearful, and he will look downwards. Give him this for a leechdom: Everthroat, cassuck, the netherward part of fane, a yew berry, lupin, helenium, a head of marsh mallow, fen, mint, dill, lily, attorlothe, pulegium, marrubium, dock, elder, fel terræ, wormwood, strawberry leaves, consolida; pour them over with ale, add holy water, sing this charm over them thrice [here follow some long charms which I need not extract]; these charms a man may sing over a wound" ("Leech Book," iii. 63).

I need say little of the uses of the Yew wood in furniture, nor of the many grand specimens of the tree which are scattered throughout the churchyards of England, except to say that "the origin of planting Yew trees in churchyards is still a subject of considerable perplexity. As the Yew was of such great importance in war and field sports before the use of gunpowder was known, perhaps the parsons of parishes were required to see that the churchyard was capable of supplying bows to the males of each parish of proper age; but in this case we should scarcely have been left without some evidence on the matter. Others again state that the trees in question were intended solely to furnish branches for use on Palm Sunday"[329:1] (_see_ PALM, p. 195), "while many suppose that the Yew was naturally selected for planting around churches on account of its emblematic character, as expressive of the solemnity of death, while, from its perennial verdure and long duration, it might be regarded as a pattern of immortality."--_Penny Magazine_, 1843.

A good list of the largest and oldest Yews in England will be found in Loudon's "Arboretum."

* * * * *

The "dismal Yew" concludes the list of Shakespeare's plants and the first part of my proposed subject; and while I hope that those readers who may have gone with me so far have met with some things to interest them, I hope also they will agree with me that gardening and the love of flowers is not altogether the modern accomplishment that many of our gardeners now fancy it to be. Here are two hundred names of plants in one writer, and that writer not at all writing on horticulture, but only mentioning plants and flowers in the most incidental manner as they happened naturally to fall in his way. I should doubt if there is any similar instance in any modern English writer, and feel very sure that there is no such instance in any modern English dramatist. It shows how familiar gardens and flowers were to Shakespeare, and that he must have had frequent opportunities for observing his favourites (for most surely he was fond of flowers), not only in their wild and native homes, but in the gardens of farmhouses and parsonages, country houses, and noblemen's stately pleasaunces. The quotations that I have been able to make from the early writers in the ninth and tenth centuries, down to gossiping old Gerard, the learned Lord Chancellor Bacon, and that excellent old gardiner Parkinson, all show the same thing, that the love of flowers is no new thing in England, still less a foreign fashion, but that it is innate in us, a real instinct, that showed itself as strongly in our forefathers as in ourselves; and when we find that such men as Shakespeare and Lord Bacon (to mention no others) were almost proud to show their knowledge of plants and love of flowers, we can say that such love and knowledge is thoroughly manly and English.

In the inquiry into Shakespeare's plants I have entered somewhat largely into the etymological history of the names. I have been tempted into this by the personal interest I feel in the history of plant names, and I hope it may not have been uninteresting to my readers; but I do not think this part of the subject could have been passed by, for I agree with Johnston: "That there is more interest and as much utility in settling the nomenclature of our pastoral bards as that of all herbalists and dry-as-dust botanists" ("Botany of the Eastern Border"). I have also at times entered into the botany and physiology of the plants; this may have seemed needless to some, but I have thought that such notices were often necessary to the right understanding of the plants named, and again I shelter myself under the authority of a favourite old author: "Consider (gentle readers) what shiftes he shall be put unto, and how rawe he must needs be in explanation of metaphors, resemblances, and comparisons, that is ignorant of the nature of herbs and plants from whence their similitudes be taken, for the inlightening and garnishing of sentences."--NEWTON'S _Herball for the Bible_.

I have said that my subject naturally divides itself into two parts, first, The Plants and Flowers named by Shakespeare; second, His Knowledge of Gardens and Gardening. The first part is now concluded, and I go to the second part, which will be very much shorter, and which may be entitled "The Garden-craft of Shakespeare."

FOOTNOTES:

[327:1] The reading of the folio is "young tree," for "Yew tree."

[328:1]

"An Eu tre (Ewetre); taxus, taximus."--_Catholicon Anglicum._

[328:2]

"The eugh obedient to the bender's will."--SPENSER, _F. Q._, i. 9.

"So far as eughen bow a shaft may send."--_F. Q._, ii. 11-19.

[328:3] There are, however, well-recorded instances of death from Yew berries. The poisonous quality, such as it is, resides in the hard seed, and not in the red mucilaginous skin, which is the part eaten by children. (_See_ HEBENON.)

[329:1] "For eucheson we have non Olyfe that bereth grene leves we takon in stede of hit Hew and Palmes wyth, and beroth abowte in procession and so this day we callyn palme sonnenday."--_Sermon for "Dominica in ramis palmarum," Cotton MSS._