Folk-lore of Shakespeare - Thomas Firminger Thiselton Dyer (ereader iphone txt) 📗
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Apricot. This word, which is spelled by Shakespeare “apricock,” occurs in “Richard II.” (iii. 4), where the gardener says:
Which, like unruly children, make their sire
Stoop with oppression of their prodigal weight.”
And in “A Midsummer-Night’s Dream” (iii. 1) Titania gives directions:
*****
Feed him with apricocks, and dewberries.”
The spelling “apricock”[473] is derived from the Latin præcox, or præcoquus; and it was called “the precocious tree,” because it flowered and fruited earlier than the peach. The term “apricock” is still in use in Northamptonshire.
Aspen. According to a mediæval legend, the perpetual motion of this tree dates from its having supplied the wood of the Cross, and that its leaves have trembled ever since at the recollection of their guilt. De Quincey, in his essay on “Modern Superstition,” says that this belief is coextensive with Christendom. The following verses,[474] after telling how other trees were passed by in the choice of wood for the Cross, describe the hewing down of the aspen, and the dragging of it from the forest to Calvary:
At the awful weight she bore,
When the sun in midnight blackness
Darkened on Judea’s shore.
When the mist sleeps on the hill,
And all other trees are moveless,
Stands the aspen, trembling still.”
The Germans, says Mr. Henderson, have a theory of their own, embodied in a little poem, which may be thus translated:
His path of mercy through a forest lay;
And mark how all the drooping branches show,
What homage best a silent tree may pay.
Scorning to join that voiceless worship pure;
But see! He casts one look upon the tree,
Struck to the heart she trembles evermore!”
Another legend tells us[475] that the aspen was said to have been the tree on which Judas hanged himself after the betrayal of his Master, and ever since its leaves have trembled with shame. Shakespeare twice alludes to the trembling of the aspen. In “Titus Andronicus” (ii. 4) Marcus exclaims:
Tremble, like aspen leaves, upon a lute;”
and in “2 Henry IV.” (ii. 4) the hostess says: “Feel, masters, how I shake. Yea, in very truth, do I, an ’twere an aspen leaf.”
Bachelor’s Buttons. This was a name given to several flowers, and perhaps in Shakespeare’s time was more loosely applied to any flower in bud. It is now usually understood to be a double variety of ranunculus; according to others, the Lychnis sylvestris; and in some counties it is applied to the Scabiosa succisa.[476] According to Gerarde, this plant was so called from the similitude of its flowers “to the jagged cloathe buttons, anciently worne in this kingdome.” It was formerly supposed, by country people, to have some magical effect upon the fortunes of lovers. Hence it was customary for young people to carry its flowers in their pockets, judging of their good or bad success in proportion as these retained or lost their freshness. It is to this sort of divination that Shakespeare probably refers in “Merry Wives of Windsor” (iii. 2), where he makes the hostess say, “What say you to young Master Fenton? he capers, he dances, he has eyes of youth, he writes verses, he speaks holiday, he smells April and May; he will carry ’t, he will carry ’t; ’tis in his buttons; he will carry ’t.” Mr. Warter, in one of his notes in Southey’s “Commonplace Book” (1851, 4th series, p. 244), says that this practice was common in his time, in Shropshire and Staffordshire. The term “to wear bachelor’s buttons” seems to have grown into a phrase for being unmarried.[477]
Balm. From very early times the balm, or balsam, has been valued for its curative properties, and, as such, is alluded to in “Troilus and Cressida” (i. 1):
Thou lay’st in every gash that love hath given me
The knife that made it.”
In “3 Henry VI.” (iv. 8) King Henry says:[478]
Alcibiades, in “Timon of Athens” (iii. 5), says:
Pours into captains’ wounds? Banishment!”
Macbeth, too, in the well-known passage ii. 2, introduces it:
The death of each day’s life, sore labour’s bath,
Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course,
Chief nourisher in life’s feast.”
As the oil of consecration[479] it is spoken of by King Richard (“Richard II.,” iii. 2):
Can wash the balm from an anointed king.”
And again, in “3 Henry VI.” (iii. 1), King Henry, when in disguise, speaks thus:
Thy balm wash’d off wherewith thou wast anointed:
No bending knee will call thee Cæsar now.”
The origin of balsam, says Mr. Ellacombe,[480] “was for a long time a secret, but it is now known to have been the produce of several gum-bearing trees, especially the Pistacia lentiscus and the Balsamodendron Gileadense, and now, as then, the name is not strictly confined to the produce of any one plant.”
Barley. The barley broth, of which the Constable, in “Henry V.” (iii. 5), spoke so contemptuously as the food of English soldiers, was probably beer,[481] which long before the time of Henry was so celebrated that it gave its name to the plant (barley being simply the beer-plant):
A drench for sur-rein’d jades, their barley broth,
Decoct their cold blood to such valiant heat?”
Bay-tree. The withering and death of this tree were reckoned a prognostic of evil, both in ancient and modern times, a notion[482] to which Shakespeare refers in “Richard II.” (ii. 4):
The bay-trees in our country are all wither’d”
—having obtained it probably from Holinshed, who says: “In this yeare, in a manner throughout all the realme of Englande, old baie trees withered.” Lupton, in his “Syxt Booke of Notable Things,” mentions this as a bad omen: “Neyther falling-sickness, neyther devyll, wyll infest or hurt one in that place whereas a bay-tree is. The Romaynes call it the plant of the good angel.”[483]
Camomile. It was formerly imagined that this plant grew the more luxuriantly for being frequently trodden or pressed down; a notion alluded to in “1 Henry IV.” (ii. 4) by Falstaff: “For though the camomile, the more it is trodden on the faster it grows, yet youth, the more it is wasted, the sooner it wears.” Nares[484] considers that the above was evidently written in ridicule of the following passage, in a book very fashionable in Shakespeare’s day, Lyly’s “Euphues,” of which it is a parody: “Though the camomile, the more it is trodden and pressed down, the more it spreadeth; yet the violet, the oftener it is handled and touched, the sooner it withereth and decayeth,” etc.
Clover. According to Johnson, the “honey-stalks” in the following passage (“Titus Andronicus,” iv. 4) are “clover-flowers, which contain a sweet juice.” It is not uncommon for cattle to overcharge themselves with clover, and die, hence the allusion by Tamora:
With words more sweet, and yet more dangerous,
Than baits to fish, or honey-stalks to sheep.”
Columbine. This was anciently termed “a thankless flower,” and was also emblematical of forsaken lovers. It is somewhat doubtful to what Ophelia alludes in “Hamlet” (iv. 5), where she seems to address the king: “There’s fennel for you, and columbines.” Perhaps she regarded it as symbolical of ingratitude.
Crow-flowers. This name, which in Shakespeare’s time was applied to the “ragged robin,” is now used for the buttercup. It was one of the flowers that poor Ophelia wove into her garland (“Hamlet,” iv. 7):
Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples.”
Cuckoo-buds. Commentators are uncertain to what flower Shakespeare refers in “Love’s Labour’s Lost” (v. 2):
And lady-smocks all silver-white,
And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue
Do paint the meadows with delight.”
Mr. Miller, in his “Gardener’s Dictionary,” says that the flower here alluded to is the Ranunculus bulbosus; but Mr. Beisly, in his “Shakespeare’s Garden,” considers it to be the Ranunculus ficaria (lesser celandine), or pile-wort, as this flower appears earlier in spring, and is in bloom at the same time as the other flowers named in the song. Mr. Swinfen Jervis, however, in his “Dictionary of the Language of Shakespeare” (1868), decides in favor of cowslips:[485] and Dr. Prior suggests the buds of the crowfoot. At the present day the nickname cuckoo-bud is assigned to the meadow cress (Cardamine pratensis).
Cuckoo-flowers. By this flower, Mr. Beisly[486] says, the ragged robin is meant, a well-known meadow and marsh plant, with rose-colored flowers and deeply-cut, narrow segments. It blossoms at the time the cuckoo comes, hence one of its names. In “King Lear” (iv. 4) Cordelia narrates how
As mad as the vex’d sea; singing aloud;
Crown’d with rank fumiter, and furrow weeds,
With burdocks, hemlock, nettles, cuckoo-flowers,
Darnel, and all the idle weeds that grow
In our sustaining corn.”
Cypress. From the earliest times the cypress has had a mournful history, being associated with funerals and churchyards, and as such is styled by Spenser “cypress funereal.”
In Quarles’s “Argalus and Parthenia” (1726, bk. iii.) a knight is introduced, whose
His furniture was round about beset
With branches slipt from the sad cypress tree.”
Formerly coffins were frequently made of cypress wood, a practice to which Shakespeare probably alludes in “Twelfth Night” (ii. 4), where the Clown says: “In sad cypress let me be laid.” Some, however, prefer[487] understanding cypress to mean “a shroud of cyprus
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