The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare
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