The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespear - Henry Nicholson Ellacombe (color ebook reader txt) 📗
- Author: Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
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My dark tall Pines, that plumed the craggy ledge—
High o'er the blue gorge, and all between
The snowy peak and snow-white cataract
Fostered the callow eaglet; from beneath
Whose thick mysterious boughs in the dark morn
The panther's roar came muffled while I sat
Down in the valley."
Sir Walter Scott similarly describes the tree in the pretty and well-known lines—
Cast anchor in the rifted rock;
And higher yet the Pine tree hung
His shattered trunk, and frequent flung,
Where seemed the cliffs to meet on high,
His boughs athwart the narrow sky."
Yet the Pine which was best known to Shakespeare, and perhaps the only Pine he knew, was the Pinus sylvestris, or Scotch fir, and this, though flourishing on the highest hills where nothing else will flourish, certainly attains its fullest beauty in sheltered lowland districts. There are probably much finer Scotch firs in Devonshire than can be found in Scotland. This is the only indigenous Fir, though the Pinus pinaster claims to be a native of Ireland, some cones having been supposed to be found in the bogs, but the claim is not generally allowed (there is no proof of the discovery of the cones); and yet it has become so completely naturalized on the coast of Dorsetshire, especially about Bournemouth, that it has been admitted into the last edition of Sowerby's "English Botany."
But though the Scotch Fir is a true native, and was probably much more abundant in England formerly than it is now, the tree has no genuine English name, and apparently never had. Pine comes directly and without change from the Latin, Pinus, as one of the chief products, pitch, comes directly from the Latin, pix. In the early vocabularies it is called "Pin-treow," and the cones are "Pin-nuttes." They were also called "Pine apples," and the tree was called the Pine-Apple Tree.[208:1] This name was transferred to the rich West Indian fruit[208:2] from its similarity to a fir-cone, and so was lost to the fruit of the fir-tree, which had to borrow a new name from the Greek; but it was still in use in Shakespeare's day—
And Pine Apples from whence sweet juyce doth come."
And Gerard describing the fruit of the Pine Tree, says: "This Apple is called in . . . Low Dutch, Pyn Appel, and in English, Pine-apple, clog, and cones." We also find "Fyre-tree," which is a true English word meaning the "fire-tree;" but I believe that "Fir" was originally confined to the timber, from its large use for torches, and was not till later years applied to the living tree.
The sweetness of the Pine seeds, joined to the difficulty of extracting them, and the length of time necessary for their ripening, did not escape the notice of the emblem-writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. With them it was the favourite emblem of the happy results of persevering labour. Camerarius, a contemporary of Shakespeare and a great botanist, gives a pretty plate of a man holding a Fir-cone, with this moral: "Sic ad virtutem et honestatem et laudabiles actiones non nisi per labores ac varias difficultates perveniri potest, at postea sequuntur suavissimi fructus." He acknowledges his obligation for this moral to the proverb of Plautus: "Qui e nuce nucleum esse vult, frangat nucem" ("Symbolorum," &c., 1590).
In Shakespeare's time a few of the European Conifers were grown in England, including the Larch, but only as curiosities. The very large number of species which now ornament our gardens and Pineta from America and Japan were quite unknown. The many uses of the Pine—for its timber, production of pitch, tar, resin, and turpentine—were well known and valued. Shakespeare mentions both pitch and tar.
FOOTNOTES:[208:1] For many examples see "Catholicon Anglicum," s.v. Pyne-Tree, with note.
[208:2] The West Indian Pine Apple is described by Gerard as "Ananas, the Pinea, or Pine Thistle."
PINKS. (1) Romeo. A most courteous exposition. Mercutio. Nay, I am the very Pink of courtesy. Romeo. Pink for flower. Mercutio. Right. Romeo. Why, then is my pump well flowered. Romeo and Juliet, act ii, sc. 4 (60). (2) Maiden. Pinks of odour faint. Two Noble Kinsmen, Introd. song.To these may perhaps be added the following, from the second verse sung by Mariana in "Measure for Measure," act iv, sc. 1 (337)—
Which thy frozen bosom bears!
On whose tops the Pinks that grow
Are of those that April wears.
The authority is doubtful, but it is attributed to Shakespeare in some editions of his poems.
The Pink or Pincke was, as now, the name of the smaller sorts of Carnations, and was generally applied to the single sorts. It must have been a very favourite flower, as we may gather from the phrase "Pink of courtesy," which means courtesy carried to its highest point; and from Spenser's pretty comparison—
The name has a curious history. It is not, as most of us would suppose, derived from the colour, but the colour gets its name from the plant. The name (according to Dr. Prior) comes through Pinksten (German), from Pentecost, and so was originally applied to one species—the Whitsuntide Gilliflower. From this it was applied to other species of the same family. It is certainly "a curious accident," as Dr. Prior observes, "that a word that originally meant 'fiftieth' should come to be successively the name of a festival of the Church, of a flower, of an ornament in muslin called pinking, of a colour, and of a sword stab." Shakespeare uses the word in three of its senses. First, as applied to a colour—
Plumpy Bacchus with Pink eyne.
Second, as applied to an ornament of dress in Romeo's person—
i.e., well pinked. And in Grumio's excuses to Petruchio for the non-attendance of the servants—
And Gabriel's pumps were all unpinked
I' the heel.
And thirdly, as the pinked ornament in muslin—
There's a haberdasher's wife of small wit near him, that railed upon me till her Pink'd porringer fell off her head.
And as applied to the flower in the passage quoted above. He also uses it in another sense—
Clap on more sail—pursue!
where pink means a small country vessel often mentioned under that name by writers of the sixteenth century.
FOOTNOTES:[210:1] It is very probable that this does not refer to the colour—"Pink = winking, half-shut."—Schmidt. And see Nares, s.v. Pinke eyne.
PIONY. Iris. Thy banks with Pioned and twilled brims,Which spongy April at thy best betrims,
To make cold nymphs chaste crowns. Tempest, act iv, sc. 1 (65).
There is much dispute about this passage, the dispute turning on the question whether "Pioned" has reference to the Peony flower or not. The word by some is supposed to mean only "digged," and it doubtless often had this meaning,[211:1] though the word is now obsolete, and only survives with us in "pioneer," which, in Shakespeare's time, meant "digger" only, and not as now, "one who goes before to prepare the way"—thus Hamlet—
A worthy pioner?
and again—
Begrim'd with sweat, and smeared all with dust.
But this reading seems very tame, tame in itself, and doubly tame when taken in connection with the context, and "Certainly savours more of the commentators' prose than of Shakespeare's poetry" ("Edinburgh Review," 1872, p. 363). I shall assume, therefore, that the flower is meant, spelt in the form of "Piony," instead of Peony or Pæony.[211:2]
The Pæony (P. corallina) is sometimes allowed a place in the British flora, having been found apparently wild at the Steep Holmes in the Bristol Channel and a few other places, but it is now considered certain that in all these places it is a garden escape. Gerard gave one such habitat: "The male Peionie groweth wilde upon a Coneyberry in Betsome, being in the parish of Southfleet, in Kent, two miles from Gravesend, and in the ground sometimes belonging to a farmer there, called John Bradley;" but on this his editor adds the damaging note: "I have been told that our author himselfe planted that Peionee there, and afterwards seemed to find it there by accident; and I do believe it was so, because none before or since have ever seen or heard of it growing wild since in any part of this kingdome."
But though not a native plant, it had been cultivated in England long before Shakespeare's and Gerard's time. It occurs in most of the old vocabularies from the tenth century downwards, and in Shakespeare's time the English gardens had most of the European species that are now grown, including also the handsome double-red and white varieties. Since his time the number of species and varieties has been largely increased by the addition of the Chinese and Japanese species, and by the labours of the French nurserymen, who have paid more attention to the flower than the English.
In the hardy flower garden there is no more showy family than the Pæony. They have flowers of many colours, from almost pure white and pale yellow to the richest crimson; and they vary very much in their foliage, most of them having large fleshy leaves, "not much unlike the leaves of the Walnut tree," but some of them having their leaves finely cut and divided almost like the leaves of Fennel (P. tenuifolia). They further vary in that some are herbaceous, disappearing entirely in winter, while others, Moutan or Tree Pæonies, are shrubs; and in favourable seasons, when the shrub is not injured by spring frosts, there is no grander shrub than an old Tree Pæony in full flower.
Of the many different species the best are the Moutans, which, according to Chinese tradition, have been grown in China for 1500 years, and which are now produced in great variety of colour; P. corallina, for the beauty of its coral-like seeds; P. Cretica, for its earliness in flowering; P. tenuifolia, single and double, for its elegant foliage; P. Whitmaniana, for its pale yellow but very fleeting flowers, which, before they are fully expanded, have all the appearance of immense Globe-flowers (trollius); P. lobata, for the wonderful richness of its bright crimson flowers; and P. Whitleji, a very old and very double form of P. edulis, of great size, and most delicate pink and white colour.
FOOTNOTES:[211:1]
From sea to sea, he heapt a
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