Folk-lore of Shakespeare - Thomas Firminger Thiselton Dyer (ereader iphone txt) 📗
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It fell upon a little western flower,
Before milk-white, now purple with love’s wound,
And maidens call it love-in-idleness.”
The phrase literally signifies love in vain, or to no purpose, as Taylor alludes to it in the following couplet:
Then precious time is turned to love and idle.”
That flowers, and pansies especially, were used as love-philters,[523] or for the object of casting a spell over people, in Shakespeare’s day, is shown in the passage already quoted. where Puck and Oberon amuse themselves at Titania’s expense. Again, a further reference occurs (iv. 1), where the fairy king removes the spell:
Be as thou wast wont to be:
See as thou wast wont to see:
Dian’s bud[524] o’er Cupid’s flower[525]
Hath such force and blessed power.
Now, my Titania; wake you, my sweet queen.”
“It has been suggested,” says Mr. Aldis Wright,[526] “that the device employed by Oberon to enchant Titania by anointing her eyelids with the juice of a flower, may have been borrowed by Shakespeare from the Spanish romance of ‘Diana’ by George of Montemayor. But apart from the difficulty which arises from the fact that no English translation of this romance is known before that published by Young in 1598, there is no necessity to suppose that Shakespeare was indebted to any one for what must have been a familiar element in all incantations at a time when a belief in witchcraft was common.” Percy (“Reliques,” vol. iii. bk. 2) quotes a receipt by the celebrated astrologer, Dr. Dee, for “an ungent to anoynt under the eyelids, and upon the eyelids eveninge and morninge, but especially when you call,” that is, upon the fairies. It consisted of a decoction of various flowers.
Mandragora or Mandrake. No plant, perhaps, has had, at different times, a greater share of folk-lore attributed to it than the mandrake; partly owing, probably, to the fancied resemblance of its root to the human figure, and the accidental circumstance of man being the first syllable of the word. An inferior degree of animal life was assigned to it; and it was commonly supposed that, when torn from the ground, it uttered groans of so pernicious a character, that the person who committed the violence either went mad or died. In “2 Henry VI.” (iii. 2) Suffolk says:
I would invent,” etc.
And Juliet (“Romeo and Juliet,” iv. 3) speaks of
That living mortals, hearing them, run mad.”
To escape this danger, it was recommended to tie one end of a string to the plant and the other to a dog, upon whom the fatal groan would discharge its whole malignity. The ancients, it appears, were equally superstitious with regard to this mysterious plant, and Columella, in his directions for the site of gardens, says they may be formed where
Produce, whose root shows half a man, whose juice
With madness strikes.”
Pliny[527] informs us that those who dug up this plant paid particular attention to stand so that the wind was at their back; and, before they began to dig, they made three circles round the plant with the point of the sword, and then, proceeding to the west, commenced digging it up. It seems to have been well known as an opiate in the time of Shakespeare, who makes Iago say in “Othello” (iii. 3):
Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world,
Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep
Which thou ow’dst yesterday.”
In “Antony and Cleopatra” (i. 5), the queen pathetically says:
My Antony is away.”
Lyte, in his translation of “Dodoens” (1578), p. 438, tells us that “the leaves and fruit be also dangerous, for they cause deadly sleepe, and peevish drowsiness, like opium.” It was sometimes regarded as an emblem of incontinence, as in “2 Henry IV.” (iii. 2): “yet lecherous as a monkey, and the whores called him—mandrake.” A very diminutive figure was, too, often compared to a mandrake. In “2 Henry IV.” (i. 2), Falstaff says: “Thou whoreson mandrake, thou art fitter to be worn in my cap, than to wait at my heels.” Tracing back the history of this plant into far-distant times, it is generally believed that it is the same as that which the ancient Hebrews called Dudain.[528] That these people held it in the highest esteem in the days of Jacob is evident from its having been found by Reuben, who carried the plant to his mother; and the inducement which tempted Leah to part with it proves the value then set upon this celebrated plant. According to a curious superstition, this plant was thought to possess the properties of making childless wives become mothers, and hence, some suppose, Rachel became so desirous of possessing the mandrakes which Reuben had found. Among the many other items of folk-lore associated with the mandrake, there is one which informs us that “it is perpetually watched over by Satan, and if it be pulled up at certain holy times, and with certain invocations, the evil spirit will appear to do the bidding of the practitioner.”[529] In comparatively recent times, quacks and impostors counterfeited with the root briony figures resembling parts of the human body, which were sold to the credulous as endued with specific virtues.[530] The Germans, too, equally superstitious, formed little idols of the roots of the mandrake, which were regularly dressed every day, and consulted as oracles—their repute being such that they were manufactured in great numbers, and sold in cases. They were, also, imported into this country during the time of Henry VIII., it being pretended that they would, with the assistance of some mystic words, increase whatever money was placed near them. In order, too, to enhance the value of these so-called miracle-workers, it was said that the roots of this plant were produced from the flesh of criminals which fell from the gibbet, and that it only grew in such a situation.[531]
Marigold. This flower was a great favorite with our old writers, from a curious notion that it always opened or shut its flowers at the sun’s bidding; in allusion to which Perdita remarks, in “Winter’s Tale” (iv. 3):
And with him rises weeping.”
It was also said, but erroneously, to turn its flowers to the sun, a quality attributed to the sunflower (Helianthus annuus), and thus described by Moore:
The same look which she turn’d when he rose.”
A popular name for the marigold was “mary-bud,” mention of which we find in “Cymbeline” (ii. 3):
To ope their golden eyes.”
Medlar. This fruit, which Shakespeare describes as only fit to be eaten when rotten, is applied by Lucio to a woman of loose character, as in “Measure for Measure” (iv. 3): “they would else have married me to the rotten medlar.”
Chaucer, in the “Reeve’s Prologue,” applies the same name to it:
Till it be roten in mullok, or in stre.
We olde men, I drede, so faren we,
Till we be roten can we not be ripe.”
Mistletoe. This plant, which, from the earliest times, has been an object of interest to naturalists, on account of its curious growth, deriving its subsistence entirely from the branch to which it annexes itself, has been the subject of widespread superstition. In “Titus Andronicus” (ii. 3), Tamora describes it in the graphic passage below as the “baleful mistletoe,” an epithet which, as Mr. Douce observes, is extremely appropriate, either conformably to an ancient, but erroneous, opinion, that the berries of the mistletoe were poisonous, or on account of the use made of this plant by the Druids during their detestable human sacrifices.[532]
Why doth your highness look so pale and wan?
These two have ’tic’d me hither to this place:—
A barren detested vale, you see, it is;
The trees, though summer, yet forlorn and lean,
O’ercome with moss and baleful mistletoe:
Here never shines the sun; here nothing breeds,
Unless the nightly owl, or fatal raven.”
Mushroom. Besides his notice of the mushroom in the following passages, Shakespeare alludes to the fairy rings[533] which are formed by fungi, though, as Mr. Ellacombe[534] points out, he probably knew little of this. In “The Tempest” (v. 1), Prospero says of the fairies:
By moonshine do the green-sour ringlets make,
Whereof the ewe not bites; and you, whose pastime
Is to make midnight mushrooms;”
the allusion in this passage being to the superstition that sheep will not eat the grass that grows on fairy rings.
Mustard. Tewksbury mustard, to which reference is made in “2 Henry IV.” (ii. 4), where Falstaff speaks of “wit as thick as Tewksbury mustard,” was formerly very famous. Shakespeare speaks only of its thickness, but others have celebrated its pungency. Coles, writing in 1657, says: “In Gloucestershire, about Teuxbury, they grind mustard and make it into balls, which are brought to London, and other remote places, as being the best that the world affords.”
Narcissus. The old legend attached to this flower is mentioned by Emilia in “The Two Noble Kinsmen” (ii. 1):
To love himself; were there not maids enough?”
Nutmeg. A gilt nutmeg was formerly a common gift at Christmas and on other festive occasions, a notice of which occurs in “Love’s Labour’s Lost” (v. 2), in the following dialogue:[535]
Gave Hector a gift,—’
Oak. A crown of oak was considered by the Romans worthy of the highest emulation of statesmen and warriors. To him who had saved the life of a Roman soldier was given a crown of oak-leaves; one, indeed, which was accounted more honorable than any other. In “Coriolanus” (ii. 1), Volumnia says: “he comes the third time home with the oaken garland.” And again (i. 3): “To a cruel war I sent him; from whence he returned, his brows bound with oak.” Montesquieu, indeed, said that it was with two or three hundred crowns of oak that Rome conquered the world. Although so much historical and legendary lore have clustered round the oak, yet scarcely any mention is made of this by Shakespeare. The legend of Herne the Hunter, which seems to have been current at Windsor, is several times alluded to, as, for instance, in “Merry Wives of Windsor” (iv. 4):
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