The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare
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