Chapter 10. The Bark

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_ CHAPTER X. THE BARK

{170}

1. Philologists are continually collecting instances, like our friend the French critic of Virgil, of the beauty of finished language, or the origin of unfinished, in the imitation of natural sounds. But such collections give an entirely false idea of the real power of language, unless they are balanced by an opponent list of the words which signally fail of any such imitative virtue, and whose sound, if one dwelt upon it, is destructive of their meaning.

2. For instance. Few sounds are more distinct in their kind, or one would think more likely to be vocally reproduced in the word which signified them, than that of a swift rent in strongly woven cloth; and the English word 'rag' and ragged, with the Greek [Greek: rhegnumi], do indeed in a measure recall the tormenting effect upon the ear. But it is curious that the verb which is meant to express the actual origination of rags, should rhyme with two words entirely musical and peaceful--words, indeed, which I always reserve for final resource in passages which I want to be soothing as well as pretty,--'fair,' and {171} 'air;' while, in its orthography, it is identical with the word representing the bodily sign of tenderest passion, and grouped with a multitude of others,[44] in which the mere insertion of a consonant makes such wide difference of sentiment as between 'dear' and 'drear,' or 'pear' and 'spear.' The Greek root, on the other hand, has persisted in retaining some vestige of its excellent dissonance, even where it has parted with the last vestige of the idea it was meant to convey; and when Burns did his best,--and his best was above most men's--to gather pleasant liquid and labial syllabling, round gentle meaning, in

"Bonnie lassie, will ye go,
Will ye go, will ye go,
Bonnie lassie, will ye go,
To the birks of Aberfeldy?"

he certainly had little thought that the delicately crisp final k, in birk, was the remnant of a magnificent Greek effort to express the rending of the earth by earthquake, in the wars of the giants. In the middle of that word 'esmarag[=e]se,' we get our own beggar's 'rag' for a pure root, which afterwards, through the Latin frango, softens into our 'break,' and 'bark,'--the 'broken thing'; that idea of its rending around the tree's stem having been, in the very earliest human efforts at botanical description, {172} attached to it by the pure Aryan race, watching the strips of rosy satin break from the birch stems, in the Aberfeldys of Imaus.

3. That this tree should have been the only one which "the Aryans, coming as conquerors from the North, were able to recognize in Hindustan,"[45] and should therefore also be "the only one whose name is common to Sanskrit, and to the languages of Europe," delighted me greatly, for two reasons: the first, for its proof that in spite of the development of species, the sweet gleaming of birch stem has never changed its argent and sable for any unchequered heraldry; and the second, that it gave proof of a much more important fact, the keenly accurate observation of Aryan foresters at that early date; for the fact is that the breaking of the thin-beaten silver of the birch trunk is so delicate, and its smoothness so graceful, that until I painted it with care, I was not altogether clear-headed myself about the way in which the chequering was done: nor until Fors today brought me to the house of one of my father's friends at Carshalton, and gave me three birch stems to look at just outside the window, did I perceive it to be a primal question about them, what it is that blanches that dainty dress of theirs, or, anticipatorily, weaves. What difference is there between the making of the corky excrescence of other {173} trees, and of this almost transparent fine white linen? I perceive that the older it is, within limits, the finer and whiter; hoary tissue, instead of hoary hair--honouring the tree's aged body; the outer sprays have no silvery light on their youth. Does the membrane thin itself into whiteness merely by stretching, or produce an outer film of new substance?[46]

4. And secondly, this investiture, why is it transverse to the trunk,--swathing it, as it were, in bands? Above all,--when it breaks,--why does it break round the tree instead of down? All other bark breaks as anything would, naturally, round a swelling rod, but this, as if the stem were growing longer; until, indeed, it reaches farthest heroic old age, when the whiteness passes away again, and the rending is like that of other trees, downwards. So that, as it were in a changing language, we have the great botanical fact twice taught us, by this tree of Eden, that the skins of trees differ from the skins of the higher animals in that, for the most part, they won't stretch, and must be worn torn.

So that in fact the most popular arrangement of vegetative adult costume is Irish; a normal investiture in honourable rags; and decorousness of tattering, as of a banner borne in splendid ruin through storms of war.

5. Now therefore, if we think of it, we have five {174} distinct orders of investiture for organic creatures; first, mere secretion of mineral substance, chiefly lime, into a hard shell, which, if broken, can only be mended, like china--by sticking it together; secondly, organic substance of armour which grows into its proper shape at once for good and all, and can't be mended at all, if broken, (as of insects); thirdly, organic substance of skin, which stretches, as the creatures grows, by cracking, over a fresh skin which is supplied beneath it, as in bark of trees; fourthly, organic substance of skin cracked symmetrically into plates or scales which can increase all round their edges, and are connected by softer skin, below, as in fish and reptiles, (divided with exquisite lustre and flexibility, in feathers of birds); and lastly, true elastic skin, extended in soft unison with the creature's growth,--blushing with its blood, fading with its fear; breathing with its breath, and guarding its life with sentinel beneficence of pain.

6. It is notable, in this higher and lower range of organic beauty, that the decoration, by pattern and colour, which is almost universal in the protective coverings of the middle ranks of animals, should be reserved in vegetables for the most living part of them, the flower only; and that among animals, few but the malignant and senseless are permitted, in the corrugation of their armour, to resemble the half-dead trunk of the tree, as they float beside it in the tropical river. I must, however, leave the scale patterns of the palms and other inlaid tropical {175} stems for after-examination,--content, at present, with the general idea of the bark of an outlaid tree as the successive accumulation of the annual protecting film, rent into ravines of slowly increasing depth, and coloured, like the rock, whose stability it begins to emulate, with the grey or gold of clinging lichen and embroidering moss. _

Read next: Chapter 11. Genealogy

Read previous: Chapter 9. Outside And In

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