Folk-lore of Shakespeare - Thomas Firminger Thiselton Dyer (ereader iphone txt) 📗
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Doth all the winter time, at still midnight,
Walk round about an oak, with great ragg’d horns.
*****
Page. ... there want not many, that do fear
In deep of night to walk by this Herne’s oak.”
Herne’s Oak, so long an object of much curiosity and enthusiasm, is now no more. According to one theory, the old tree was blown down August 31, 1863; and a young oak was planted by her Majesty, September 12, 1863, to mark the spot where Herne’s Oak stood.[536] Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps, however, tells us, “the general opinion is that it was accidentally destroyed in the year 1796, through an order of George III. to the bailiff Robinson, that all the unsightly trees in the vicinity of the castle should be removed; an opinion confirmed by a well-established fact, that a person named Grantham, who contracted with the bailiff for the removal of the trees, fell into disgrace with the king for having included the oak in his gatherings.”[537]
Olive. This plant, ever famous from its association with the return of the dove to the ark, has been considered typical of peace. It was as an emblem of peace that a garland of olive was given to Judith when she restored peace to the Israelites by the death of Holofernes (Judith, xv. 13). It was equally honored by Greeks and Romans. It is, too, in this sense that Shakespeare speaks of it when he makes Viola, in “Twelfth Night” (i. 5), say: “I bring no overture of war, no taxation of homage; I hold the olive in my hand, my words are as full of peace as matter.” In Sonnet CVII. occurs the well-known line:[538]
Palm. As the symbol of victory, this was carried before the conqueror in triumphal processions. Its classical use is noticed by Shakespeare in “Coriolanus” (v. 3). Volumnia says:[539]
Thy wife and children’s blood.”
In “Julius Cæsar” (i. 2), Cassius exclaims:
A man of such a feeble temper should
So get the start of the majestic world,
And bear the palm alone.”
Pilgrims were formerly called “palmers,” from the staff or bough of palm they were wont to carry. So, in “All’s Well That Ends Well” (iii. 5), Helena asks:
Pear. In his few notices of the pear Shakespeare only mentions two by name, the warden and the poperin: the former was chiefly used for roasting or baking, and is mentioned by the clown in the “Winter’s Tale” (iv. 3):
Hence Ben Jonson makes a pun upon Church-warden pies. According to some antiquarians, the name warden is from the Anglo-Saxon wearden, to preserve, as it keeps for a long time; but it is more probable that the word had its origin from the horticultural skill of the Cistercian monks of Wardon Abbey, in Bedfordshire, founded in the 12th century. Three warden pears appeared on the armorial bearings of the abbey.[540] It is noticeable that the warden pies of Shakespeare’s day, colored with saffron, have been replaced by stewed pears colored with cochineal.
The poperin pear was probably introduced from Flanders by the antiquary Leland, who was made rector of Popering by Henry VIII. It is alluded to by Mercutio in “Romeo and Juliet” (ii. 1), where he wishes that Romeo were “a poperin pear.” In the old dramas there is much attempt at wit on this pear.
Peas. A practice called “peascod wooing” was formerly a common mode of divination in love affairs. The cook, when shelling green peas, would, if she chanced to find a pod having nine, lay it on the lintel of the kitchen-door, and the first man who entered was supposed to be her future husband. Another way of divination by peascod consisted in the lover selecting one growing on the stem, snatching it away quickly, and if the good omen of the peas remaining in the husk were preserved, in then presenting it to the lady of his choice. Touchstone, in “As You Like It” (ii. 4), alludes to this piece of popular suggestion: “I remember the wooing of a peascod[541] instead of her.” Gay, who has carefully chronicled many a custom of his time, says, in his “Fourth Pastoral:”
One that was closely fill’d with three times three,
Which when I cropp’d I safely home convey’d,
And o’er my door the spell in secret laid.”
We may quote, as a further illustration, the following stanza from Browne’s “Pastorals” (bk. ii. song 3):
He’d seek for in the fattest, fertil’st soile,
And rende it from the stalke to bring it to her,
And in her bosom for acceptance wooe her.”[542]
Plantain. The leaves of this plant were carefully valued by our forefathers for their supposed efficacy in healing wounds, etc. It was also considered as a preventive of poison; and to this supposed virtue we find an allusion in “Romeo and Juliet” (i. 2):
And the rank poison of the old will die.
In the “Two Noble Kinsmen” (i. 2) Palamon says:
Need not a plantain.”
Poppy. The plant referred to by Shakespeare in “Othello” (iii. 3) is the opium poppy, well known in his day for its deadly qualities. It is described by Spenser in the “Fairy Queen” (ii. 7, 52) as the “dead-sleeping poppy,” and Drayton (“Nymphidia,” v.) enumerates it among the flowers that procure “deadly sleeping.”
Potato. It is curious enough, says Nares,[544] to find that excellent root, which now forms a regular portion of the daily nutriment of every individual, and is the chief or entire support of multitudes in Ireland, spoken of continually as having some powerful effect upon the human frame, in exciting the desires and passions; yet this is the case in all the writings contemporary with Shakespeare. Thus Falstaff, in “Merry Wives of Windsor” (v. 5), says: “Let the sky rain potatoes; let it thunder to the tune of ‘Green Sleeves,’ hail kissing comfits,” etc. In “Troilus and Cressida” (v. 2), Thersites adds: “How the devil luxury, with his fat rump and potato finger, tickles these together.”[545] It appears, too, that the medical writers of the times countenanced this fancy. Mr. Ellacombe[546] observes that the above passages are of peculiar interest, inasmuch as they contain almost the earliest notice of potatoes after their introduction into England.
Primrose. Although the early primrose has always been such a popular and favorite flower, yet it seems to have been associated with sadness,[547] or even worse than sadness; for, in the following passages, the “primrose paths” and “primrose way” are meant to be suggestive of sinful pleasures. Thus, in “Hamlet” (i. 3), Ophelia says:
Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads,
And recks not his own rede.”
And in “Macbeth” (ii. 3), the Porter declares: “I had thought to have let in some of all professions, that go the primrose way to the everlasting bonfire.” Curious to say, too, Shakespeare’s only epithets for this fair flower are, “pale,” “faint,” “that die unmarried.” Nearly all the poets of that time spoke of it in the same strain, with the exception of Ben Jonson and the two Fletchers.
Reed. Among the uses to which the reed was formerly applied were the thatching of houses and the making of shepherds’ pipes. The former is alluded to in the “Tempest” (v. 1):
From eaves of reeds;”
and the latter in “Merchant of Venice” (iii. 4), where Portia speaks of “a reed voice.” It has generally been regarded as the emblem of weakness, as in “Antony and Cleopatra” (ii. 7): “a reed that will do me no service.”
Rose. As might be expected, the rose is the flower most frequently mentioned by Shakespeare, a symbol, in many cases, of all that is fair and lovely. Thus, for instance, in “Hamlet” (iii. 4), Hamlet says:
From the fair forehead of an innocent love,
And sets a blister there.”
And Ophelia (iii. 1) describes Hamlet as,
In days gone by the rose entered largely into the customs and superstitions of most nations, and even nowadays there is an extensive folk-lore associated with it.
It appears that, in Shakespeare’s time, one of the fashions of the day was the wearing of enormous roses on the shoes, of which full-length portraits afford striking examples.[548] Hamlet (iii. 2) speaks of “two Provincial roses on my razed shoes;” meaning, no doubt, rosettes of ribbon in the shape of roses of Provins or Provence. Douce favors the former, Warton the latter locality. In either case, it was a large rose. The Provence, or damask rose, was probably the better known. Gerarde, in his “Herbal,” says that the damask rose is called by some Rosa Provincialis.[549] Mr. Fairholt[550] quotes, from “Friar Bacon’s Prophecy” (1604), the following, in allusion to this fashion:
And not in ribbons on a shoe:
Now ribbon roses take such place
That garden roses want their grace.”
Again, in “King John” (i. 1), where the Bastard alludes to the three-farthing silver pieces of Queen Elizabeth, which were extremely thin, and had the profile of the sovereign, with a rose on the back of her head, there doubtless is a fuller reference to the court fashion of sticking roses in the ear:[551]
That in mine ear I durst not stick a rose,
Lest men should say, ‘Look, where three-farthings goes.’”
Shakespeare also mentions the use of the rose in rose-cakes and rose-water, the former in “Romeo and Juliet” (v. 1), where Romeo speaks of “old cakes of roses,” the latter in “Taming of the Shrew” (Induction, 1):
Full of rose-water and bestrew’d with flowers.”
Referring to its historical lore, we may mention its famous connection with the Wars of the Roses. In the fatal dispute in the Temple Gardens, Somerset, on the part of Lancaster, says (“1 Henry VI.” ii. 4):
But dare maintain the party of the truth,
Pluck a red rose from off this thorn with me.”
Warwick, on the part of York, replies:
Of base insinuating flattery,
I pluck this white rose with Plantagenet.”
The trailing white dog-rose is commonly considered to have been the one chosen by the House of York. A writer, however, in the Quarterly Review (vol.
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