bookssland.com » Nature » The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespear - Henry Nicholson Ellacombe (color ebook reader txt) 📗

Book online «The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespear - Henry Nicholson Ellacombe (color ebook reader txt) 📗». Author Henry Nicholson Ellacombe



1 ... 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 ... 75
Go to page:
by which we can determine when the Olive tree was first introduced into England. Miller gives 1648 as the earliest date he could discover, at which time it was grown in the Oxford Botanic Garden. But I have no doubt it was cultivated long before that. Parkinson knew it as an English tree in 1640, for he says: "It flowereth in the beginning of summer in the warmer countries, but very late with us; the fruite ripeneth in autumne in Spain, &c., but seldome with us" ("Herball," 1640). Gerard had an Oleaster in his garden in 1596, which Mr. Jackson considers to have been the Olea Europea, and with good reason, as in his account of the Olive in the "Herbal" he gives Oleaster as one of the synonyms of Olea sylvestris, the wild Olive tree. But I think its introduction is of a still earlier date. In the Anglo-Saxon "Leech Book," of the tenth century, published under the direction of the Master of the Rolls, I find this prescription: "Pound Lovage and Elder rind and Oleaster, that is, wild Olive tree, mix them with some clear ale and give to drink" (book i. c. 37, Cockayne's translation). As I have never heard that the bark of the Olive tree was imported, it is only reasonable to suppose that the leeches of the day had access to the living tree. If this be so, the tree was probably imported by the Romans, which they are very likely to have done. But it seems very certain that it was in cultivation in England in Shakespeare's time and he may have seen it growing.

But in most of the eight passages in which he names the Olive, the reference to it is mainly as the recognized emblem of peace; and it is in that aspect, and with thoughts of its touching Biblical associations that we must always think of the Olive. It is the special plant of honour in the Bible, by "whose fatness they honour God and man," linked with the rescue of the one family in the ark, and with the rescue of the whole family of man in the Mount of Olives. Every passage in which it is named in the Bible tells the uniform tale of its usefulness, and the emblematical lessons it was employed to teach; but I must not dwell on them. Nor need I say how it was equally honoured by Greeks and Romans. As a plant which produced an abundant and necessary crop of fruit with little or no labour (φύτευμ' ἀχείρωτον ἀυτόποιον, Sophocles; "non ulla est oleis cultura," Virgil), it was looked upon with special pride, as one of the most blessed gifts of the gods, and under the constant protection of Minerva, to whom it was thankfully dedicated.[186:1]

We seldom see the Olive in English gardens, yet it is a good evergreen tree to cover a south wall, and having grown it for many years, I can say that there is no plant—except, perhaps, the Christ's Thorn—which gives such universal interest to all who see it. It is quite hardy, though the winter will often destroy the young shoots; but not even the winter of 1860 did any serious mischief, and fine old trees may occasionally be seen which attest its hardiness. There is one at Hanham Hall, near Bristol, which must be of great age. It is at least 30ft. high, against a south wall, and has a trunk of large girth; but I never saw it fruit or flower in England until this year (1877), when the Olive in my own garden flowered, but did not bear fruit. Miller records trees at Campden House, Kensington, which, in 1719, produced a good number of fruit large enough for pickling, and other instances have been recorded lately. Perhaps if more attention were paid to the grafting, fruit would follow. The Olive has the curious property that it seems to be a matter of indifference whether, as with other fruit, the cultivated sort is grafted on the wild one, or the wild on the cultivated one; the latter plan was certainly sometimes the custom among the Greeks and Romans, as we know from St. Paul (Romans xi. 16-25) and other writers, and it is sometimes the custom now. There are a great number of varieties of the cultivated Olive, as of other cultivated fruit.

One reason why the Olive is not more grown as a garden tree is that it is a tree very little admired by most travellers. Yet this is entirely a matter of taste, and some of the greatest authorities are loud in its praises as a picturesque tree. One short extract from Ruskin's account of the tree will suffice, though the whole description is well worth reading. "The Olive," he says, "is one of the most characteristic and beautiful features of all southern scenery. . . . What the Elm and the Oak are to England, the Olive is to Italy. . . . It had been well for painters to have felt and seen the Olive tree, to have loved it for Christ's sake; . . . to have loved it even to the hoary dimness of its delicate foliage, subdued and faint of hue, as if the ashes of the Gethsemane agony had been cast upon it for ever; and to have traced line by line the gnarled writhing of its intricate branches, and the pointed fretwork of its light and narrow leaves, inlaid on the blue field of the sky, and the small, rosy-white stars of its spring blossoming, and the heads of sable fruit scattered by autumn along its topmost boughs—the right, in Israel, of the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow—and, more than all, the softness of the mantle, silver-grey, and tender, like the down on a bird's breast, with which far away it veils the undulation of the mountains."—Stones of Venice, vol. iii. p. 176.

FOOTNOTES:

[186:1] See Spenser's account of the first introduction of the Olive in "Muiopotmos."

ONIONS. (1) Bottom. And, most dear actors, eat no Onions nor Garlic, for we are to utter sweet breath. Midsummer Night's Dream, act iv, sc. 2 (42).   (2) Lafeu. Mine eyes smell Onions, I shall weep anon:
Good Tom Drum, lend me a handkercher. All's Well that Ends Well, act v, sc. 3 (321).   (3) Enobarbus. Indeed the tears live in Onion that should water this Sorrow. Antony and Cleopatra, act i, sc. 2 (176).   (4) Enobarbus. Look, they weep,
And I, an ass, am Onion-eyed. Ibid., act iv, sc. 2 (34).   (5) Lord. And if the boy have not a woman's gift
To rain a shower of commanded tears,
An Onion will do well for such a shift,
Which in a napkin being close conveyed
Shall in despite enforce a watery eye. Taming of the Shrew, Induction, sc. 1 (124).

There is no need to say much of the Onion in addition to what I have already said on the Garlick and Leek, except to note that Onions seem always to have been considered more refined food than Leek and Garlick. Homer makes Onions an important part of the elegant little repast which Hecamede set before Nestor and Machaon—

"Before them first a table fair she spread,
Well polished and with feet of solid bronze;
On this a brazen canister she placed,
And Onions as a relish to the wine,
And pale clear honey and pure Barley meal."

Iliad, book xi. (Lord Derby's translation).

But in the time of Shakespeare they were not held in such esteem. Coghan, writing in 1596, says of them: "Being eaten raw, they engender all humourous and corruptible putrifactions in the stomacke, and cause fearful dreames, and if they be much used they snarre the memory and trouble the understanding" ("Haven of Health," p. 58).

The name comes directly from the French oignon, a bulb, being the bulb par excellence, the French name coming from the Latin unio, which was the name given to some species of Onion, probably from the bulb growing singly. It may be noted, however, that the older English name for the Onion was Ine, of which we may perhaps still have the remembrance in the common "Inions." The use of the Onion to promote artificial crying is of very old date, Columella speaking of "lacrymosa cæpe," and Pliny of "cæpis odor lacrymosus." There are frequent references to the same use in the old English writers.

The Onion has been for so many centuries in cultivation that its native home has been much disputed, but it has now "according to Dr. Regel ('Gartenflora,' 1877, p. 264) been definitely determined to be the mountains of Central Asia. It has also been found in a wild state in the Himalaya Mountains."—Gardener's Chronicle.

ORANGE. (1) Beatrice. The count is neither sad nor sick, nor merry nor well; but civil count, civil as an Orange, and something of that jealous complexion. Much Ado About Nothing, act ii, sc. 1 (303).   (2) Claudio. Give not this rotten Orange to your friend. Much Ado About Nothing, act iv, sc. 1 (33).   (3) Bottom. I will discharge it either in your straw-coloured beard, your Orange-tawny beard. Midsummer Night's Dream, act i, sc. 2 (95).   (4) Bottom. The ousel cock so black of hue
With Orange-tawny bill. Ibid., act iii, sc. 1 (128).   (5) Menenius. You wear out a good wholesome forenoon in hearing a cause between an Orange-wife and a fosset-seller. Coriolanus, act ii, sc. 1 (77).

I should think it very probable that Shakespeare may have seen both Orange and Lemon trees growing in England. The Orange is a native of the East Indies, and no certain date can be given for its introduction into Europe. Under the name of the Median Apple a tree is described first by Theophrastus, and then by Virgil and Palladius, which is supposed by some to be the Orange; but as they all describe it as unfit for food, it is with good reason supposed that the tree referred to is either the Lemon or Citron. Virgil describes it very exactly—

"Ipsa ingens arbor, faciemque simillima lauro
Et si non alium late jactaret odorem
Laurus erat; folia hand ullis labentia ventis
Flos ad prima tenax."—Georgic ii, 131.

Dr. Daubeny, who very carefully studied the plants of classical writers, decides that the fruit here named is the Lemon, and says that it "is noticed only as a foreign fruit, nor does it appear that it was cultivated at that time in Italy, for Pliny says it will only grow in Media and Assyria, though Palladius in the fourth century seems to have been familiar with it, and it was known in Greece at the time of Theophrastus." But if Oranges were grown in Italy or Greece in the time of Pliny and Palladius, they did not continue in cultivation. Europe owes the introduction or reintroduction to the Portuguese, who brought them from the East, and they were grown in Spain in the eleventh century. The first notice of them in Italy was in the year 1200, when a tree was planted by St. Dominic at Rome. The first grown in France is said to have been the old tree which lived at the Orangery at Versailles till November, 1876, and was called the Grand Bourbon. "In 1421 the Queen of Navarre gave the gardener the seed from Pampeluna; hence sprang the plant, which was subsequently transported to Chantilly. In 1532 the Orange tree was sent to Fontainebleau, whence, in 1684, Louis XIV. transferred it to Versailles, where it remained the largest, finest, and most fertile member of

1 ... 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 ... 75
Go to page:

Free e-book «The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespear - Henry Nicholson Ellacombe (color ebook reader txt) 📗» - read online now

Comments (0)

There are no comments yet. You can be the first!
Add a comment