The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespear - Henry Nicholson Ellacombe (color ebook reader txt) 📗
- Author: Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
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Half hidden from the eye."
Violets, like Primroses, must always have had their joyful associations as coming to tell that the winter is passing away and brighter days are near, for they are among
And smile beneath spring's wakening skies,
The courier of a band
Of coming flowers."
Yet it is curious to note how, like Primroses, they have been ever associated with death, especially with the death of the young. I suppose these ideas must have arisen from a sort of pity for flowers that were only allowed to see the opening year, and were cut off before the full beauty of summer had come. This was prettily expressed by H. Vaughan, the Silurist:
At once the spring's pride and its funeral,
Such early sweets get off in their still prime,
And stay not here to wear the foil of time;
While coarser flowers, which none would miss, if past,
To scorching summers and cold winters last."
It was from this association that they were looked on as apt emblems of those who enjoyed the bright springtide of life and no more. This feeling was constantly expressed, and from very ancient times. We find it in some pretty lines by Prudentius—
Violis et fronde frequente,
Titulumque et frigida saxa
Liquido spargemus odore."
Shakespeare expresses the same feeling in the collection of "purple Violets and Marigolds" which Marina carries to hang "as a carpet on the grave" (No. 14), and again in Laertes' wish that Violets may spring from the grave of Ophelia (No. 8), on which Steevens very aptly quotes from Persius Satires—
Nascentur Violæ."
In the same spirit Milton, gathering for the grave of Lycidas—
gathers among others "the glowing Violet;" and the same thought is repeated by many other writers.
There is a remarkable botanical curiosity in the structure of the Violet which is worth notice: it produces flowers both in spring and autumn, but the flowers are very different. In spring they are fully formed and sweet-scented, but they are mostly barren and produce no seed, while in autumn they are very small, they have no petals and, I believe, no scent, but they produce abundance of seed.[313:1]
I need say nothing to recommend the Violet in all its varieties as a garden plant. As a useful medicinal plant it was formerly in high repute—
Is knowyn in ilke manys mowthe,
As bokys seyn in here language,
It is good to don in potage,
In playstrys to wondrys it is comfortyf,
Wh oyer erbys sanatyf:"
and it still holds a place in the Pharmacopœia, while the chemist finds the pretty flowers one of the most delicate tests for detecting the presence of acids and alkalies; but as to the many other virtues of the Violet I cannot do better than quote Gerard's pleasant and quaint words: "The Blacke or Purple Violets, or March Violets of the garden, have a great prerogative above others, not only because the minde conceiveth a certain pleasure and recreation by smelling and handling of those most odoriferous flowres, but also for that very many by these Violets receive ornament and comely grace; for there be made of them garlands for the head, nosegaies, and poesies, which are delightfull to looke on and pleasant to smell to, speaking nothing of their appropriate vertues; yea, gardens themselves receive by these the greatest ornament of all chiefest beautie and most gallant grace, and the recreation of the minde which is taken thereby cannot but be very good and honest; for they admonish and stir up a man to that which is comely and honest, for flowres through their beautie, variety of colour, and exquisite forme, do bring to a liberall and greatte many minde the remembrance of honestie, comelinesse, and all kindes of vertues. For it would be an unseemely and filthie thing (as a certain wise man saith) for him that doth looke upon and handle faire and beautifull things, and who frequenteth and is conversant in faire and beautifull places, to have his minde not faire but filthie and deformed." With these brave words of the old gardener I might well close my account of this favourite flower, but I must add George Herbert's lines penned in the same spirit—
Fit, while ye lived, for smell or ornament,
And after death for cures;
I follow straight without complaint or grief,
Since if my scent be good, I care not if
It be as short as yours."
FOOTNOTES:
[310:1] Appel-leaf is given as the English name for Viola in two other MS. Glossaries quoted by Cockayne, vol. iii. p. 312.
[313:1] This peculiarity is not confined to the Violet. It is found in some species of Oxalis, Impatiens, Campanula, Eranthemum, Amphicarpea, Leeisia, &c. Such plants are technically called Cleistogamous, and are all self-fertilizing.
WALNUT. (1) Petruchio. Why, 'tis a cockle or a Walnut-shell,A knack, a toy, a trick, a baby's cap. Taming of the Shrew, act iv, sc. 3 (66). (2) Ford. Let them say of me, "As jealous as Ford that searched a hollow Walnut for his wife's leman." Merry Wives of Windsor, act iv, sc. 2 (170).
The Walnut is a native of Persia and China, and its foreign origin is told in all its names. The Greeks called it Persicon, i.e., the Persian tree, and Basilikon, i.e., the Royal tree; the Latins gave it a still higher rank, naming it Juglans, i.e., Jove's Nut. "Hæc glans, optima et maxima, ab Jove et glande juglans appellata est."—Varro. The English names tell the same story. It was first simply called Nut, as the Nut par excellence. "Juglantis vel nux, knutu."—Ælfric's Vocabulary. But in the fourteenth century it had obtained the name of "Ban-nut," from its hardness. So it is named in a metrical Vocabulary of the fourteenth century—
Appul-tre Pirus
Peere-tre Corulus nux
Hasyl Note Avelanaque
Bannenote-tre Ficus
Fygge;
and this name it still holds in the West of England. But at the same time it had also acquired the name of Walnut. "Hec avelana, Ace Walnot-tree" (Vocabulary fourteenth century). "Hec avelana, a Walnutte and the Nutte" (Nominate fifteenth century). This name is commonly supposed to have reference to the hard shell, but it only means that the nut is of foreign origin. "Wal" is another form of Walshe or Welch, and so Lyte says that the tree is called "in English the Walnut and Walshe Nut tree." "The word Welsh (wilisc, woelisc) meant simply a foreigner, one who was not of Teutonic race, and was (by the Saxons) applied especially to nations using the Latin language. In the Middle Ages the French language, and in fact all those derived from Latin, and called on that account linguæ Romanæ, were called in German Welsch. France was called by the mediæval German writers daz Welsche lant, and when they wished to express 'in the whole world,' they said, in allen Welschen und in Tiutschen richen, 'in all Welsh and Teutonic kingdoms.' In modern German the name Wälsch is used more especially for Italian."—Wright's Celt, Roman, and Saxon.[315:1] This will at once explain that Walnut simply means the foreign or non-English Nut.
It must have been a well-established and common tree in Shakespeare's time, for all the writers of his day speak of it as a high and large tree, and I should think it very likely that Walnut trees were even more extensively planted in his day than in our own. There are many noble specimens to be seen in different parts of England, especially in the chalk districts, for "it delights," says Evelyn, "in a dry, sound, rich land, especially if it incline to a feeding chalk or marl; and where it may be protected from the cold (though it affects cold rather than extreme heat), as in great pits, valleys, and highway sides; also in stony ground, if loamy, and on hills, especially chalky; likewise in cornfields." The grand specimens that may be seen in the sheltered villages lying under the chalk downs of Wiltshire and Berkshire bear witness to the truth of Evelyn's remarks. But the finest English specimens can bear no comparison with the size of the Walnut trees in warmer countries, and especially where they are indigenous. There they "sometimes attain prodigious size and great age. An Italian architect mentions having seen at St. Nicholas, in Lorraine, a single plank of the wood of the Walnut, 25ft. wide, upon which the Emperor Frederick III. had given a sumptuous banquet. In the Baidar Valley, near Balaclava, in the Crimea, stands a Walnut tree at least 1000 years old. It yields annually from 80,000 to 100,000 Nuts, and belongs to five Tartar families, who share its produce equally."—Gardener's Chronicle.
The economic uses of the Walnut are now chiefly confined to the timber, which is highly prized both for furniture and gun-stocks, and to the production of oil, which is not much used in Europe, but is highly valued in the East. "It dries much more slowly than any other distilled oil, and hence its great value, as it allows the artist as much time as he requires in order to blend his colours and finish his work. In conjunction with amber varnish it forms a vehicle which leaves nothing to be desired, and which doubtless was the vehicle of Van Eyck, and in many instances of the Venetian masters, and of Correggio."—Arts of the Middle Ages, preface. In mediæval times a high medicinal value was attached to the fruit, for the celebrated antidote against poison which was so firmly believed in, and which was attributed to Mithridates, King of Pontus, was chiefly composed of Walnuts. "Two Nuttes (he is speaking of Walnuts) and two Figges, and twenty Rewe leaves, stamped together with a little salt, and eaten fasting, doth defende a man from poison and pestilence that day."—Bullein, Governmente of Health, 1558.
The Walnut holds an honoured place in heraldry. Two large Walnut trees overshadow the tomb of the poet Waller in Beaconsfield churchyard, and "these are connected with a curious piece of family history. The tree was chosen as the Waller crest after Agincourt, where the head of the family took the Duke of Orleans prisoner, and took afterwards as his crest the arms of Orleans hanging by a label in a Walnut tree with this motto for the device: Hæc fructus virtutis."—Gardener's Chronicle, Aug., 1878.
Walnuts are still very popular, but not as poison antidotes; their popularity now rests on their use as pickles, their excellence as autumn and winter dessert fruits, and with
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