The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespear - Henry Nicholson Ellacombe (color ebook reader txt) 📗
- Author: Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
- Performer: -
Book online «The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespear - Henry Nicholson Ellacombe (color ebook reader txt) 📗». Author Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
Spenser associates it with death in some beautiful lines, in which a husband laments the loss of a young and beautiful wife—
And through untimely tempest fade away."
In another place he speaks of it as "the Primrose trew"—Prothalamion; but in another place his only epithet for it is "green," which quite ignores its brightness—
Embellish the sweete Violet."
Shakespeare has no more pleasant epithets for our favourite flower than "pale," "faint," "that die unmarried;" and Milton follows in the same strain yet sadder. Once, indeed, he speaks of youth as "Brisk as the April buds in Primrose season" ("Comus"); but only in three passages does he speak of the Primrose itself, and in two of these he connects it with death—
Soft silken Primrose fading timelesslie;
Summer's chief honour, if thou hadst outlasted
Bleak winter's force that made thy blossoms drie."
His third account is a little more joyous—
Comes dancing from the East, and leads with her
The flowery May, who from her green lap throws
The yellow Cowslip and the pale Primrose."
And nearly all the poets of that time spoke in the same strain, with the exception of Ben Jonson and the two Fletchers. Jonson spoke of it as "the glory of the spring" and as "the spring's own spouse." Giles Fletcher says—
With Violets; the wood's late wintry head,
Wide flaming Primroses set all on fire."
And Phineas Fletcher—
And frights the neighbour hedge with fiery rays.
And here and there sweet Primrose scattered.
A little heaven or earth in narrow space she drew."
I can only refer very shortly to the botanical interest of the Primula, and that only to direct attention to Mr. Darwin's paper in the "Journal of the Linnæan Society," 1862, in which he records his very curious and painstaking inquiries into the dimorphism of the Primula, a peculiarity in the Primula that gardeners had long recognized in their arrangement of Primroses as "pin-eyed" and "thrum-eyed." It is perhaps owing to this dimorphism that the family is able to show a very large number of natural hybrids. These have been carefully studied by Professor Kerner, of Innspruck, and it seems not unlikely that a further study will show 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 πεπονος μαλακωτερος, softer than a Pumpion; and even one of Homer's heroes, incensed at the timidity of his soldiers, exclaims ὠ πεπονες, 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—
Repente exortus sum, repente occidi."
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"—
That Peches, Coynes, and Apples bere,
Medlers, Plommes, Perys, Chesteyns,
Cherys, of which many oon fayne is."
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—
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
Comments (0)