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The Plant-Lore & Garden-Craft of Shakespeare, a non-fiction book by Henry Nicholson Ellacombe |
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Part 1. The Plant-Lore Of Shakespeare - Thistle, Thorns, Thyme, Turnips |
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_ PART I. THE PLANT-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE THISTLE, THORNS, THYME, TURNIPS
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--
--- October's Husbandry (13).
It had still another use in rustic divination--
+emos 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 (Chamaepeuce 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 garde." 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.
[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.
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.
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 AElfric'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--
--- Lycidas.
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 --- Fasti, v.
--- VIRGIL, Ecl. vii.
---VIRGIL, Georg.
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.
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 terrae 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. _ |
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