Part Two

THE FLOWERS OF SHAKESPEARE

Spring

"THE SWEET O' THE YEAR"

Primroses, Cowslips, and Oxlips

PRIMROSE (Primula vulgaris). English poets have always regarded the primrose as the first flower of spring--the true Flor di prima vera. This name calls to mind Botticelli's enchanting Primevera that hangs in the Uffizi, in which the sward is dotted with spring flowers that seem to have burst into blossom beneath the footsteps of Venus and her three Graces--those lovely ladies of the Italian Renaissance, clad in light, fluttering draperies. This decorative picture expresses not only the joy and beauty of newly-awakened spring, but something much deeper, something that the painter did not realize himself; and this was what the Italian Renaissance was destined to mean to all the world: a New Birth of beauty in the arts and a new era of human sympathy for mankind.

Sandro Botticelli, whom we may appropriately call Flor di prima vera among painters, was as unaware of his mission in art as the primroses that come into being at the call of a new day of spring sunshine from a long dark winter's sleep in a soil of frozen stiffness. Something of the tender and wistful beauty of early spring--her faint dreams and soft twilights, her languid afternoons and her veiled nights, when pale stars tremble through gray mists and when warm rains softly kiss the drowsy earth--Botticelli has put into his enchanting spring idyl; and this same wistful, half-drowsy, and evanescent beauty is characteristic of the primrose.

Primrose, first born child of Ver, Merry Springtime's harbinger, With her bells dim

is a perfect and sympathetic description of the flower in "The Two Noble Kinsmen."

Act I, Scene I.

Observe that the bells of the primrose are "dim"--pale in hue--because the earth is not sufficiently awake for bright colors or for joyful chimes--so the color is faint and the sound is delicate. Trees are now timidly putting forth tender leaves, buds peer cautiously from the soil, and few birds sing; for leaves, buds, and birds know full well that winter is lurking in the distance and that rough winds occasionally issue from the bag of Boreas. The time has not yet come for "lisp of leaves and ripple of rain" and for choirs of feathered songsters. Yet all the more, because of its bold daring and its modest demeanor, the primrose deserves the enthusiastic welcome it has always received from poets and flower lovers.

"The primrose," writes Dr. Forbes Watson, "seems the very flower of delicacy and refinement; not that it shrinks from our notice, for few plants are more easily seen, coming as it does when there is a dearth of flowers, when the first birds are singing and the first bees humming and the earliest green putting forth in the March and April woods. And it is one of those plants which dislikes to be looking cheerless, but keeps up a smouldering fire of blossom from the very opening of the year, if the weather will permit.

"The flower is of a most unusual color, a pale, delicate yellow, slightly tinged with green. And the better flowers impress us by a peculiar paleness, not dependent upon any feebleness of hue, which we always find unpleasing, but rather upon the exquisite softness of their tone. And we must not overlook the little round stigma, that green and translucent gem, which forms the pupil of the eye, and is surrounded by a deeper circle of orange which helps it to shine forth more clearly. Many flowers have a somewhat pensive look; but in the pensiveness of the primrose there is a shade of melancholy--a melancholy which awakens no thought of sadness and does but give interest to the pale, sweet, inquiring faces which the plant upturns towards us.

"In the primrose, as a whole, we cannot help being struck by an exceeding softness and delicacy; there is nothing sharp, strong, or incisive; the smell is 'the faintest and most ethereal perfume,' as Mrs. Stowe has called it in her 'Sunny Memories,' though she was mistaken in saying that it disappears when we pluck the flower. It is meant to impress us as altogether soft and yielding. One of the most beautiful points in the primrose is the manner in which the paleness of the flowers is taken up by the herbage. This paleness seems to hang about the plant like a mystery, for though the leaves of the primrose may at times show a trace of the steady paleness of the cowslip, it is more usually confined to their undersurfaces and the white flower-stalks with their clothing of down. And when we are looking at the primrose one or other of these downy, changeful portions is continually coming into view, so that we get a feeling as if there hung about the whole plant a clothing of soft, evanescent mist, thickening about the center of the plant and the undersurfaces of the leaves which are less exposed to the sun. And then we reach one of the main expressions of the primrose. When we look at the pale, sweet flowers, and the soft-toned green of the herbage, softened further here and there by that uncertain mist of down, the dryness of the leaf and fur enters forcibly into our impression of the plant, giving a sense of extreme delicacy and need of shelter, as if it were some gentle creature which shrinks from exposure to the weather."

The Greeks associated the idea of melancholy with this flower. They had a story of a handsome youth, son of Flora and Priapus, whose betrothed bride died. His grief was so excessive that he died, too, and the gods than changed his body into a primrose.

In Shakespeare's time, the primrose was also associated with early death; and it is one of the flowers thrown upon the corse of Fidele, whose lovely, wistful face is compared to the "pale primrose." Thus Arviragus exclaims as he gazes on the beautiful youth, Fidele, the assumed name of Imogen in disguise:

I'll sweeten thy sad grave: thou shalt not lack The flower that's like thy face, pale primrose.

Perdita, in "The Winter's Tale," mentions

Pale primroses that die unmarried Ere they can behold bright Phœbus in his strength.

Shakespeare appreciated the delicate hue and perfume of this flower. He seems to be alluding to both qualities when he makes Hermia touch Helena's memory by the following words:

And in the wood, where often you and I Upon faint primrose beds were wont to lie.

Other English poets speak of the flower as "the pale," or "the dim." Milton writes:

Now the bright star, day's harbinger Comes dancing from the East and leads with her The flow'ry May, who, from her green lap, throws The yellow cowslip and the pale primrose.

And again, Thomas Carew:

Ask me why I send you here The firstling of the infant year? Ask me why I send to you This Primrose, all bepearled with dew? I straight whisper in your ears: The sweets of Love are wash'd with tears

Ask me why this flower doth show So yellow, green and sickly, too? Ask me why the stalk is weak And, bending, yet it doth not break? I will answer: these discover What doubts and fears are in a lover.

"Cymbeline"; Act IV, Scene II.

Act IV, Scene III.

"A Midsummer Night's Dream"; Act I, Scene I.

The English primrose is one of a large family of more than fifty species, represented by the primrose, the cowslip, and the oxlip. All members of this family are noted for their simple beauty and their peculiar charm.

Parkinson writes:

"We have so great variety of Primroses and Cowslips in our country breeding that strangers, being much delighted with them, have often furnished into divers countries to their good content.

"All Primroses bear their long and large, broad yellowish-green leaves without stalks most usually, and all the Cowslips have small stalks under the leaves, which are smaller and of a darker green. The name of Primula veris, or Primrose, is indifferently conferred on those that I distinguish for Paralyses, or Cowslips. All these plants are called most usually in Latin Primulæ veris, Primulæ pretenses and Primulæ silvarum, because they shew by their flowering the new Spring to be coming on, they being, as it were, the first Embassadors thereof. They have also divers other names, as Herba Paralysis, Arthritica, Herba Sancti Petri, Claues Sancti Petri, Verbasculum odoratum, Lunaria arthritica, Phlomis, Alisma silvarum and Alismatis alterum genus. Some have distinguished them by calling the Cowslips Primula Veris Elatior, that is the Taller Primrose, and the other Humilis, Low, or Dwarf, Primrose.

"Primroses and Cowslips are in a manner wholly used in Cephalicall diseases to ease pains in the head. They are profitable both for the Palsy and pains of the joints, even as the Bears' Ears are, which hath caused the names of Arthritica Paralysis and Paralytica to be given them."

Auriculas.

Tusser in his "Husbandry" includes the primrose among the seeds and herbs of the kitchen; and Lyte says that "the cowslips, primroses and oxlips are now used daily amongst other pot-herbs, but in physic there is no great account made of them." "The old name was Primerolles," Dr. Prior notes in his quaint book on flowers. "Primerole as an outlandish, unintelligible word was soon familiarized into Primerolles and this into Primrose." The name was also written primrolles and finally settled down into primrose. Chaucer wrote primerole, a name derived from the French Primeverole, meaning, like the Italian Flor di prima vera, the first spring flower.

COWSLIP (Paralysis vulgaris pratensis). The cowslip is an ingratiating little flower, not so aloof as its cousin the primrose, and not at all melancholy. In the popular lore of Shakespeare's time the cowslip was associated with fairies. In many places it was known as "fairy cups." For this reason Shakespeare makes Ariel lie in a cowslip's bell when the fay is frightened by the hooting of owls, or tired of swinging merrily in "the blossom that hangs on the bough." One of the duties of Titania's little maid of honor was "to hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear"; and this gay little fairy informs Puck of the important place cowslips hold in the court of the tiny Queen Titania:

The cowslips tall her pensioners be, In their gold coats spots you see: These be rubies, fairy favors, In these freckles live their savors.

"A Midsummer Night's Dream"; Act II, Scene I.

To appreciate the meaning of this comparison, it must be remembered that the "pensioners" of Queen Elizabeth's court were a guard of the tallest and handsomest men to be found in the whole kingdom, men, moreover, who were in the pride of youth, and scions of the most distinguished families. Their dress was of extraordinary elegance and enriched heavily with gold embroidery. Hence, "gold coats" for the cowslips. Here and there jewels sparkled and glistened on the pensioners' coats. Hence rubies--fairy favors--favors from the Queen! The pensioners also wore pearls in their ears, like Raleigh and Leicester and other noblemen. Hence the fairy had to "hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear." An idea, too, of the size of Titania and her elves is given when the cowslips are considered "tall," and tall enough to be the body-guard of Queen Titania. This was a pretty little allusion to Queen Elizabeth and her court, which the audience that gathered to see the first representation of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" did not fail to catch.

We get a sidelight on the importance of the pensioners in "The Merry Wives of Windsor" when Dame Quickly tells Falstaff a great cock-and-bull story about the visitors who have called on Mistress Ford. "There have been knights and lords and gentlemen with their coaches, letter after letter, gift after gift; smelling so sweetly (all musk) and so rushling, I warrant you in silk and gold; and yet there has been earls, and, what is more, pensioners!" Shakespeare also speaks of "the freckled cowslip" in "Henry V," when the Duke of Burgundy refers to

The even mead, that erst brought sweetly forth The freckled cowslip.

All poets love the flower.

In the language wherewith spring Letters cowslips on the hill,

writes Tennyson--a charming fancy!

Sydney Dobell has a quaint flower song containing this verse:

Then came the cowslip Like a dancer in the fair, She spread her little mat of green And on it dancèd she, With a fillet bound about her brow, A fillet round her happy brow, A golden fillet round her brow, And rubies in her hair.

Act II, Scene II.

Act V, Scene II.

Never mind if country dancers rarely wear rubies; the idea is pretty and on Shakespeare's authority we know that rubies do gleam in the cup of the cowslip, as he has told us through the lips of the fairy.

With great appreciation of the beauty of the flower he has Jachimo's description:

Cinque-spotted like the crimson drops In the bottom of a cowslip.

"Cymbeline"; Act II, Scene II.

Most sympathetically did Dr. Forbes Watson, when lying on a bed of fatal illness, put into words what many persons have felt regarding this flower:

"Few of our wild flowers give intenser pleasure than the cowslip, yet perhaps there is scarcely any whose peculiar beauty depends so much upon locality and surroundings. There is a homely simplicity about the cowslip, much like that of the daisy, though more pensive,--the quiet, sober look of an unpretending country girl, not strikingly beautiful in feature or attire, but clean and fresh as if new bathed in milk and carrying us away to thoughts of daisies, flocks and pasturage and the manners of a simple, primitive time, some golden age of shepherd-life long since gone by. And more; in looking at the cowslip we are always most forcibly struck by its apparent wholesomeness and health. This wholesomeness is quite unmistakable. It belongs even to the smell so widely different from the often oppressive perfume of other plants, as lilies, narcissuses, or violets. Now just such a healthy milk-fed look, just such a sweet, healthy odor is what we find in cows--an odor which breathes around them as they sit at rest in the pasture. The 'lips,' of course, is but a general resemblance to the shape of the petals and suggests the source of the fragrance. The cowslip, as we have said, is a singularly healthy-looking plant, indeed, nothing about it is more remarkable. It has none of the delicacy and timidity of the primrose. All its characters are well and healthily pronounced. The paleness is uniform, steady, and rather impresses us as whiteness; and the yellow of the cup is as rich as gold. The odor is not faint, but saccharine and luscious. It does not shrink into the sheltered covert, but courts the free air and sunshine of the open fields; and instead of its flowers peeping timidly from behind surrounding leaves, it raises them boldly on a stout, sufficient stalk, the most conspicuous object in the meadow. Its poetry is the poetry of common life, but of the most delicious common life that can exist. The plant is in some respects careless to the verge of disorder; and you should note that carelessness well, till you feel the force of it, as especially in the lame imperfection of the flower buds, only, perhaps half of them well developed and the rest dangling all of unequal lengths. Essentially the cowslip and the primrose are only the same plant in two different forms, the one being convertible into the other. The primrose is the cowslip of the woods and sheltered lanes; the cowslip is the primrose of the fields."

The name cowslip is not derived from the lips of the cow, but, according to Skeat, the great Anglo-Saxon authority, it comes from an Anglo-Saxon word meaning dung and was given to the plant because it springs up in meadows where cows are pastured.

"The common field Cowslip," says Parkinson, "I might well forbear to set down, being so plentiful in the fields; but because many take delight in it and plant it in their gardens, I will give you the description of it here. It hath divers green leaves, very like unto the wild Primrose, but shorter, rounder, stiffer, rougher, more crumpled about the edges and of a sadder green color, every one standing upon his stalk which is an inch or two long. Among the leaves rise up divers long stalks, a foot or more high, bearing at the top many fair, yellow, single flowers with spots of a deep yellow at the bottom of each leaf, smelling very sweet.

"In England they have divers names according to several countries, as Primroses, Cowslips, Oxlips, Palsieworts and Petty Mullins. The Frantic Fantastic, or Foolish, Cowslip in some places is called by country people Jack-an-Apes-on-Horseback, which is a usual name given by them to many other plants, as Daisies, Marigolds, etc., if they be strange or fantastical, differing in form from the ordinary kind of the single ones. The smallest are usually called through all the North Country Birds' Eyen, because of the small yellow circle in the bottoms of the flowers resembling the eye of a bird."

OXLIP (Primula eliator). The oxlip combines the qualities of primrose and cowslip. "These two plants," writes a botanist, "appear as divergent expressions of a simple type, the cowslip being a contracted form of primrose, the sulphur yellow and the fine tawny, watery rays of the latter brightened into well defined orange spots. In the oxlip these characters anastomose."

Thus, partaking of the character of primrose and cowslip, the oxlip is considered by some authorities a hybrid. "The oxlip and the polyanthus," says Dr. Forbes Watson, "with its tortoiseshell blossoms, are two of the immediate forms; the polyanthus being a great triumph of the gardener's art, a delightful flower, quite a new creation and originally produced by cultivation of the primrose." In England the oxlip is found in woods, fields, meadows, and under hedges. Though a spring flower it lingers into summer and is found in company with the nodding violet, wild thyme, and luscious eglantine on the bank where Titania loved to sleep lulled to rest by song. Perdita speaks of "bold oxlips" ("The Winter's Tale," Act iv, Scene iii); and compared With the primrose and cowslip the flower deserves the adjective.

"Oxlips in their cradles growing," in the song in "The Two Noble Kinsmen," which Shakespeare wrote with John Fletcher, shows great knowledge of the plant, for the root-leaves of the oxlip are shaped like a cradle.

Parkinson writes: "Those are usually called oxlips whose flowers are naked, or bare, without husks to contain them, being not so sweet as the cowslip, yet have they some little scent, although the Latin name doth make them to have none."

"A Midsummer Night's Dream"; Act II, Scene II.

Act I, Scene I.

"Daffodils that Come Before the Swallow Dares"

DAFFODIL (Narcissus pseudo-narcissus).

When daffodils begin to peer, With heigh! the doxy over the dale, Why then comes in the sweet o' the year; For the red blood reigns in the winter's pale.

Is the opening verse that Autolycus sings so gaily in "The Winter's Tale." The daffodil was "carefully nourished up" in Elizabethan gardens, as the saying went. Before Shakespeare's time a great number of daffodils had been introduced into England from various parts of the Continent. Gerard describes twenty-four different species, "all and every one of them in great abundance in our London gardens."

Act IV, Scene II.

There were many varieties both rare and ordinary. Parkinson particularly distinguishes the true daffodils, or narcissus, from the "Bastard Daffodils," or pseudo narcissus; and he gives their differences as follows:

"It consisteth only in the flower and chiefly in the middle cup, or chalice; for that we do, in a manner only, account those to be Pseudo Narcissus, Bastard Daffodils, whose middle cup is altogether as long, and sometimes a little longer than, the outer leaves that do encompass it, so that it seemeth rather like a trunk, or a long nose, than a cup or chalice, such as almost all the Narcissi, or true Daffodils, have. Of the Bastard tribe Parkinson gives the great yellow Spanish Daffodil; the Mountain Bastard of divers kinds; the early straw-colored; the great white Spanish; the greatest Spanish white; the two lesser White Spanish; our common English wild Bastard Daffodil; the six-cornered; the great double yellow, or John Tradescant's great Rose Daffodil; Mr. Wilmer's great double Daffodil; the great double yellow Spanish, or Parkinson's Daffodil; the great double French Bastard; the double English Bastard, or Gerard's double Daffodil; the great white Bastard Rush Daffodil, or Junquilia; the greater yellow Junquilia; and many others."

Then he adds:

"The Pseudo narcissus Angliens vulgaris is so common in all England, both in copses, woods and orchards, that I might well forbear the description thereof. It hath three, or four, grayish leaves, long and somewhat narrow, among which riseth up the stalk about a span high, or little higher, bearing at the top, out of a skinny husk (as all other Daffodils have), one flower, somewhat large, having the six leaves that stand like wings, of a pale yellow color, and the long trunk in the middle of a faire yellow with the edges, or brims, a little crumpled, or uneven. After the flower is past, it beareth a round head, seeming three square, containing round black seed."

Shakespeare knew all of these varieties very well and had many of them in mind when he wrote the beautiful lines for Perdita, who exclaims:

O Proserpina! For the flowers now that, frighted, thou lettst fall From Dis's wagon. Daffodils That come before the swallow dares, and take The winds of March with beauty.

"The Winter's Tale"; Act IV, Scene III.

Much has been written about this description of the daffodils; and it is generally thought that "to take the winds of March with beauty" means to charm, or captivate, the wild winds with their loveliness. I do not agree with this idea, and venture to suggest that as the daffodils sway and swing in the boisterous March winds with such infinite grace and beauty, bending this way and that, they "take the winds with beauty," just as a graceful dancer is said to take the rhythmic steps of the dance with charming manner.

We get a hint for this also in Wordsworth's poem:

I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o'er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host of yellow daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine And twinkle on the Milky-Way They stretched in never-ending line Along the margin of the bay: Ten thousand saw I at a glance, Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced, but they Outdid the sparkling waves in glee; A poet would not be but gay In such a jocund company: I gazed--and gazed--but little thought What wealth the show to me had brought

For oft when on my couch I lie In vacant, or in pensive, mood, They flash upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude; And then my heart with pleasure fills And dances with the daffodils.

No one can read this poem without feeling that the dancing daffodils "take the winds of March with beauty." The very name of the daffodil touches our imagination. It carries us to the Elysian Fields, for the ancient Greeks pictured the meads of the blessed as beautifully golden and deliciously fragrant with asphodels. The changes ring through asphodel, affodile, affodyl, finally reaching daffodil. Then there is one more quaint and familiar name and personification,

Daffy-down-dilly that came up to town In a white petticoat and a green gown.

The idea of daffodil as a rustic maiden was popular in folk-lore and poetry. The feeling is so well expressed in Michael Drayton's sprightly eclogue called "Daffodil" that it forms a natural complement to the happy song of care-free Autolycus just quoted. This Pastoral captured popular fancy; and it is just as fresh and buoyant as it was when it was written three hundred years ago. Two shepherds, Batte and Gorbo, meet:

BATTE

Gorbo, as thou camst this way, By yonder little hill, Or, as thou through the fields didst stray, Sawst thou my Daffodil?

She's in a frock of Lincoln green, Which color likes the sight; And never hath her beauty seen But through a veil of white.

GORBO

Thou well describst the daffodil; It is not full an hour Since by the spring, near yonder hill, I saw that lovely flower.

BATTE

Yet my fair flower thou didst not meet, No news of her didst bring; And yet my Daffodil's more sweet Than that by yonder spring.

GORBO

I saw a shepherd that doth keep In yonder field of lilies Was making (as he fed his sheep) A wreath of daffodillies.

BATTE

Yet, Gorbo, thou deludst me still, My flower thou didst not see; For know my pretty Daffodil Is worn of none but me.

To show itself but near her feet No lily is so bold, Except to shade her from the heat, Or keep her from the cold.

GORBO

Through yonder vale as I did pass Descending from the hill, I met a smirking bonny lass; They call her Daffodil,

Whose presence as along she went The pretty flowers did greet, As though their heads they downward bent With homage to her feet,

And all the shepherds that were nigh From top of every hill Unto the valleys loud did cry: There goes sweet Daffodil!

BATTE

Ay, gentle shepherd, now with joy Thou see my flocks doth fill; That's she alone, kind shepherd boy, Let's us to Daffodil!

The flower was also called jonquil, saffron lily, Lent lily and narcissus. It was the large yellow narcissus, known as the Rose of Sharon, so common in Palestine, of which Mohammed said: "He that hath two cakes of bread, let him sell one of them for a flower of the narcissus; for bread is the food of the body, but narcissus is the food of the soul."

Narcissus, the most beautiful youth of Bœotia, was told that he would live happily until he saw his own face. Loved by the nymphs, and particularly Echo, he rejected their advances for he was immune to love and admiration. One day, however, he beheld himself in a stream and became so fascinated with his reflection that he pined to death gazing at his own image.

For him the Naiads and the Dryads mourn, Whom the sad Echo answers in her turn, And now the sister nymphs prepare his urn; When looking for his corpse, they only found A rising stalk with yellow blossoms crowned.

In the center of the cup are to be found the tears of Narcissus!

Because the flower was consecrated to Ceres and to the Underworld and to the Elysian Fields, the daffodil was one of the flowers that Proserpine was gathering when "dusky Dis" carried her off--and the myth also hints that the Earth purposely brought the asphodel forth from the Underworld to entice the unsuspecting daughter of Ceres. Sophocles associates the daffodil with the garlands of great goddesses: "And ever, day by day, the narcissus with its beauteous clusters, the ancient coronet of the mighty goddesses, bursts into bloom by heaven's dew."

Œdipus Coloneus.

The delightful Dr. Forbes Watson writes of the daffodil like a painter, with accurate observation and bright palette:

"In the daffodil the leaves and stems are of a full glaucous green, a color not only cool and refreshing in itself, but strongly suggestive of water, the most apparent source of freshness and constituting a most delicious groundwork for the bright, lively yellow of the blossoms. Now what sort of spathe would be likely to contribute best to this remarkable effect of the flower? Should the colors be unusually striking or the size increased, or what? Strange to say, in both Daffodil and Pheasant's Eye (Poet's Narcissus) we find the spathe dry and withered, shrivelled up like a bit of thin brown paper and clinging round the base of the flowers. We cannot overlook it, and most assuredly we were never meant to do so. Nothing could have been more beautifully ordered than this contrast, there being just sufficient to make us appreciate more fully that abounding freshness of life.

"It is a plant which affords a most beautiful contrast, a cool, watery sheet of leaves with bright, warm flowers, yellow and orange, dancing over the leaves like meteors over a marsh. The leaves look full of watery sap, which is the life blood of plants and prime source of all their freshness, just as the tissues of a healthy child look plump and rosy from the warm blood circulating within.

"In its general expression the Poet's Narcissus seems a type of maiden purity and beauty, yet warmed by a love-breathing fragrance; and yet what innocence in the large soft eye which few can rival among the whole tribe of flowers. The narrow, yet vivid fringe of red so clearly seen amidst the whiteness suggests again the idea of purity and gushing passion--purity with a heart which can kindle into fire."

III

"Daisies Pied and Violets Blue"

DAISY (Bellis perennis). Shakespeare often mentions the daisy. With "violets blue" "lady-smocks all silver-white," and "cuckoo-buds of every hue," it "paints the meadows with delight" in that delightful spring-song in "Love's Labour's Lost." Shakespeare also uses this flower as a beautiful comparison for the delicate hand of Lucrece in "The Rape of Lucrece":

Without the bed her other fair hand was On the green coverlet; whose perfect white Showed like an April daisy on the grass.

The daisy is among the flowers in the fantastic garlands that poor Ophelia wove before her death.

Act V, Scene II.

Stanza 57.

"Hamlet"; Act IV, Scene VII.

The botanical name Bellis shows the origin of the flower. Belides, a beautiful Dryad, trying to escape the pursuit of Vertumnus, god of gardens and orchards, prayed to the gods for help; and they changed her into the tiny flower. In allusion to this Rapin wrote:

When the bright Ram, bedecked with stars of gold, Displays his fleece the Daisy will unfold, To nymphs a chaplet and to beds a grace, Who once herself had borne a virgin's face.

The daisy was under the care of Venus. It has been beloved by English poets ever since Chaucer sang the praises of the day's eye--daisy. Chaucer tells us, in what is perhaps the most worshipful poem ever addressed to a flower, that he always rose early and went out to the fields, or meadows, to pay his devotions to this "flower of flowers," whose praises he intended to sing while ever his life lasted, and he bemoaned the fact, moreover, that he had not words at his command to do it proper reverence.

Next to Chaucer in paying homage to the daisy comes Wordsworth with his

A nun demure, of lowly port; Or sprightly maiden, of Love's court; In thy simplicity the sport Of all temptations; Queen in crown of rubies drest, A starveling in a scanty vest, Are all, as seems to suit the best My appellations.

A little cyclops with one eye Staring to threaten and defy That thought comes next--and instantly The freak is over, The shape will vanish--and behold, A silver shield with boss of gold That spreads itself some fairy bold In fight to cover.

Bright flower! for by that name at last When all my reveries are past I call thee, and to that cleave fast, Sweet, silent creature That breathst with me the sun and air, Do thou as thou art wont repair My heart with gladness and a share Of thy meek nature.

"Daisies smell-less yet most quaint" is a line from the flower-song in "The Two Noble Kinsmen," written by John Fletcher and Shakespeare.

Act I, Scene I.

Milton speaks of

Meadows trim with daisies pied

and Dryden pays a tribute to which even Chaucer would approve:

And then a band of flutes began to play, To which a lady sang a tirelay; And still at every close she would repeat The burden of the song--"The Daisy is so sweet! The Daisy is so sweet!"--when she began The troops of Knights and dames continued on.

The English daisy is "The wee, modest crimson-tipped flower," as Burns has described it, and must not be confused with the daisy that powders the fields and meadows in our Southern States with a snow of white blossoms supported on tall stems. This daisy, called sometimes the moon-daisy (Chrysanthemum Leucanthemum), is known in England as the midsummer daisy and ox-eye. In France it is called marguerite and paquerette. Being a midsummer flower, it is dedicated to St. John the Baptist. It is also associated with St. Margaret and Mary Magdalen, and from the latter it derives the names of maudlin and maudelyne. As Ophelia drowned herself in midsummer the daisies that are described in her wreath are most probably marguerites and not the "day's eye" of Chaucer.

Parkinson does not separate daisies very particularly. "They are usually called in Latin," he tells us, "Bellides and in English Daisies. Some of them Herba Margarita and Primula veris, as is likely after the Italian names of Marguerita and Flor di prima vera gentile. The French call them Paquerettes and Marguerites; and the fruitful sort, or those that have small flowers about the middle one, Margueritons. Our English women call them Jack-an-Apes-on-Horseback."

The daisy that an Elizabethan poet quaintly describes as a Tudor princess resembles the midsummer daisy rather than the "wee, modest, crimson-tipped flower" of Burns:

About her neck she wears a rich wrought ruff With double sets most brave and broad bespread Resembling lovely lawn, or cambric stuff Pinned up and prickt upon her yellow head.

Also Browne in his "Pastorals" seems to be thinking of this flower:

The Daisy scattered on each mead and down, A golden tuft within a silver crown.

VIOLET (Viola odorata). The violet was considered "a choice flower of delight" in English gardens. Shakespeare speaks of the violet on many occasions and always with tenderness and deep appreciation of its qualities. Violets are among the flowers that the frightened Proserpine dropped from Pluto's ebon car--

Violets dim And sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes, Or Cytherea's breath.

Thus in Shakespeare's opinion the violet out-sweetened both Juno, majestic queen of heaven, and Venus, goddess of love and beauty.

How could he praise the violet more?

To throw a perfume on the violet Is wasteful and ridiculous excess.

Shakespeare informs us in "King John." With the utmost delicacy of perfection he describes Titania's favorite haunt as

a bank where the wild thyme blows, Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows.

In truth, the tiny flower seems to nod among its leaves.

Shakespeare makes the elegant Duke in "Twelfth Night," who is lounging nonchalantly on his divan, compare the music he hears to the breeze blowing upon a bank of violets (see page 44).

"The Winter's Tale"; Act IV, Scene III.

Act IV, Scene II.

"A Midsummer Night's Dream"; Act II, Scene II.

Act I, Scene I.

Shelley held the same idea that the delicious perfume of flowers is like the softest melody:

The snowdrop and then the violet Arose from the ground with warm rain wet; And there was mixed with fresh color, sent From the turf like the voice and the instrument.

And the hyacinth, purple and white and blue, Which flung from its bells a sweet peal anew Of music, so delicate, soft and intense It was felt like an odor within the sense.

Ophelia laments that she has no violets to give to the court ladies and lords, for "they withered" when her father died, she tells us. Shakespeare also associates violets with melancholy occasions. Marina enters in "Pericles" with a basket of flowers on her arm, saying:

The yellows, blues, The purple violets and marigolds Shall as a carpet hang upon thy grave While summer days do last.

Act IV, Scene II.

On another occasion, with a broad sweeping gesture, Shakespeare mentions

The violets that strew The green lap of the new-come Spring.

In "Sonnet XCIX" he writes:

The forward violet thus did I chide: Sweet thief, whence didst thou steal the sweet that smells If not from my love's breath? The purple pride Which on thy soft cheek for complexion dwells In my love's veins thou hast too grossly dyed.

Bacon deemed it most necessary "to know what flowers and plants do best perfume the air," and he thought "that which above all others yields the sweetest smell is the violet, and next to that the musk-rose." (See page 44.)

"Perhaps of all Warwickshire flowers," writes a native of Shakespeare's country, "none are so plentiful as violets; our own little churchyard of Whitechurch is sheeted with them. They grow in every hedgebank until the whole air is filled with their fragrance. The wastes near Stratford are sometimes purple as far as the eyes can see with the flowers of viola canina. Our English violets are twelve in number. The plant is still used in medicine and acquired of late a notoriety as a suggested cancer cure; and in Shakespeare's time was eaten raw with onions and lettuces and also mingled in broth and used to garnish dishes, while crystallized violets are not unknown in the present day."

For the beauty of its form, for the depth and richness of its color, for the graceful drooping of its stalk and the nodding of its head, for its lovely heart-shaped leaf and above all for its delicious perfume, the violet is admired. Then when we gaze into its tiny face and note the delicacy of its veins, which Shakespeare so often mentions, we gain a sense of its deeper beauty and significance.

Dr. Forbes Watson observed:

"I give one instance of Nature's care for the look of the stamens and pistils of a flower. In the blossom of the Scented Violet the stamens form, by their convergence, a little orange beak. At the end of this beak is the summit of the pistil, a tiny speck of green, but barely visible to the naked eye. Yet small as it is, it completes the color of the flower, by softening the orange, and we can distinctly see that if this mere point were removed, there would be imperfection for the want of it."

St. Francis de Sales, a contemporary of Shakespeare, gave a lovely description of the flower when he said:

"A true widow is in the Church as a March Violet, shedding around an exquisite perfume by the fragrance of her devotion and always hidden under the ample leaves of her lowliness and by her subdued coloring, showing the spirit of her mortification. She seeks untrodden and solitary places."

The violet's qualities of lowliness, humility, and sweetness have always appealed to poets. The violet is also beloved because it is one of the earliest spring flowers. Violets are, like primroses and cowslips,

The first to rise And smile beneath Spring's wakening skies, The courier of a band of coming flowers.

The violet was also an emblem of constancy. At the floral games, instituted by Clemence Isaure at Toulouse in the Fourteenth Century, the prize was a golden violet, because the poetess had once sent a violet to her Knight as a token of faithfulness. With the Troubadours the violet was a symbol of constancy. In "A Handful of Pleasant Delights," a popular song-book published in Elizabeth's reign in 1566, there is a poem called "A Nosegay always Sweet for Lovers to send Tokens of Love at New Year's tide, or for Fairings, as they in their minds shall be disposed to write." This poem contains a verse to the violet:

Violet is for faithfulness Which in me shall abide; Hoping likewise that from your heart You will not let it slide,

And will continue in the same, As you have now begun; And then forever to abide Then you my heart have won.

The violet has always held a loved place in the English garden. Gerard writes quaintly in his "Herbal":

"The Black, or Purple Violets, or March Violets, of the garden have a great prerogative above all others, not only because the mind conceiveth a certain pleasure and recreation by smelling and handling of those most odoriferous flowers, but also for the very many by these Violets receive ornament and comely grace; for there be made of them garlands for the head, nosegays and poesies, which are delightful to look on and pleasant to smell to, speaking nothing of their appropriate virtues; yea, gardens themselves receive by these the greatest ornament of all chiefest beauty and most gallant grace; and the recreation of the mind, 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 flowers through their beauty, variety of color and exquisite form do bring to a liberal and great mind the remembrance of honesty, comeliness and all kinds of virtue."

Proserpine was gathering violets among other flowers in the fields of Enna in Sicily when Pluto carried her off. Shakespeare touched upon the story most exquisitely, through the lips of Perdita, as quoted above.

Another Greek myth accounts for the Greek word for the violet, which is ion. It seems when, in order to protect her from the persecutions of Juno, Jove transformed lovely Europa into a white heifer whom he named Io, he caused sweet violets to spring up from the earth wherever the white cow placed her lips; and from her name, Io, the flower acquired the name ion.

The Athenians adored the flower. Tablets were engraved with the word ion and set up everywhere in Athens; and of all sobriquets the citizens preferred that of "Athenian crowned with violets."

The Persians also loved the violet and made a delicious wine from it. A sherbet flavored with violet blossoms is served in Persia and Arabia to-day at feasts; and Mohammedans say: "The excellence of the violet is as the excellence of El Islam above all other religions."

"Lady-smocks all Silver White" and "Cuckoo Buds of Yellow Hue"

LADY-SMOCK (Cardamine pratensis). The lovely little spring song in "Love's Labour's Lost" with the line,

Lady-smocks all silver white,

has immortalized this little flower of the English meadows, but little known in our country. The lady-smock is very common in England in early spring. Properly speaking it should be Our Lady's-smock, as it is one of the many plants dedicated to the Virgin Mary and bearing her name. The list is a long one, including Lady's-slippers, Lady's-bower, Lady's-cushion, Lady's-mantle, Lady's-laces, Lady's-looking-glass, Lady's-garters, Lady's-thimble, Lady's-hair (maidenhair fern), Lady's-seal, Lady's-thistle, Lady's-bedstraw, Lady's-fingers, Lady's-gloves, and so on. These flowers, originally dedicated to Venus, Juno, and Diana in Greek and Roman mythology and to Freya and Bertha in Northern lore and legend, were gradually transferred to the Virgin with the spread of Christianity. The Lady's-smock takes its name from the fancied, but far-fetched, resemblance to a smock. It is said, by way of explanation, that when these flowers are seen in great quantity they suggest the comparison of linen smocks bleaching on the green meadow. Other names for the plant are Cuckoo-flower, Meadow-cress, Spinks, and Mayflower; and in Norfolk the Cardamine pratensis is called Canterbury-bells. The petals have a peculiarly soft and translucent quality with a faint lilac tinge. Shakespeare describes the flower as "silver white," an epithet that has puzzled many persons. However, one ardent Shakespeare lover has made a discovery:

"Gather a lady-smock as you tread the rising grass in fragrant May, and although in individuals the petals are sometimes cream color, as a rule the flower viewed in the hand is lilac--pale, but purely and indisputably lilac. Where then is the silver-whiteness? It is the meadows, remember, that are painted, when, as often happens, the flower is so plentiful as to hide the turf, and most particularly if the ground be a slope and the sun be shining from behind us, all is changed; the flowers are lilac no longer; the meadow is literally 'silver-white.' So it is always--Shakespeare's epithets are like prisms. Let them tremble in the sunshine and we discover that it is he who knows best."

The beautiful song begins:

When daisies pied and violets blue, And lady-smocks all silver white, And cuckoo buds of yellow hue, Do paint the meadows with delight, The cuckoo then, on every tree, Mocks married men, for thus sings he: Cuckoo, Cuckoo, Cuckoo--or word of fear, Unpleasing to a married ear.

Act V, Scene II.

CUCKOO BUDS (Ranunculus). It is quite possible that in "cuckoo buds of yellow hue" Shakespeare meant the blossoms of the buttercup or kingcup (called by the country people of Warwickshire horse-blobs). Some authorities claim that cuckoo-buds is intended to represent the lesser celandine, of which Wordsworth was so fond that he wrote three poems to it. Others call cuckoo-buds carmine pratensis; but that could hardly be possible because Shakespeare speaks of "lady-smocks all silver white" in one line and "cuckoo buds of yellow hue" in the succeeding line.

There is much confusion in the identification of lady-smocks, cuckoo-buds, cuckoo-flowers, and crow-flowers, for they are more or less related.

Gerard says: "Our Lady-Smock is also called the cuckoo-flower because it flowers in April and May when the cuckoo doth begin to sing her pleasant notes without stammering."

Anemones and "Azured Harebells"

ANEMONE (Anemone purpurea striata stellata). The anemone is described in "Venus and Adonis" very minutely:

By this, the boy that by her side lay kill'd, Was melted like a vapor from her sight, And in his blood that on the ground lay spill'd, A purple flower sprung up chequer'd with white. Resembling well his pale cheeks, and the blood, Which in round drops upon their whiteness stood.

Verse 195.

Adonis, the beautiful youth, beloved of Venus, was wounded by a boar, to which he had given chase. Venus found him as he lay dying on the grass. To make him immortal she changed him into an anemone, or windflower. Naturally the flower was dedicated to Venus.

Bion sang:

Alas! the Paphian! fair Adonis slain! Tears plenteous as his blood she pours amain, But gentle flowers are born and bloom around From every drop that falls upon the ground. Where streams his blood, there blushing springs a Rose And where a tear has dropped a windflower blows.

Pliny asserted the anemone only blooms when the wind blows.

The flower was associated with illness in the days of the Egyptians and also during the Middle Ages, when there was also a superstition that the first anemone gathered would prove a charm against disease. The first spring blossom was, therefore, eagerly searched for, delightedly plucked, and carefully guarded. No token of affection was more prized by a loved one going off on a journey than the gift of an anemone. An old ballad has the lines:

The first Spring-blown Anemone she in his doublet wove, To keep him safe from pestilence wherever he should rove.

Anemones were greatly valued in Elizabethan gardens. Indeed it was a fad to grow them. Parkinson distinguishes the family of anemones as "the wild and the tame, or manured, both of them nourished up in gardens." He classifies them still further as "those that have broader leaves and those that have thinner, or more jagged, leaves"; and then again into those "that bear single flowers and those that bear double flowers." The wild kinds included "all the Pulsatillas, or Pasque (Easter) flowers." Parkinson mentions many varieties. He describes the "tame" anemones as white, yellow, purple, crimson, scarlet, blush gredeline (between peach color and violet), orange-tawny, apple-blossom, rose-color, and many others. From his list we can have no doubt that Shakespeare's flower was one of the purple star anemones--the Anemone purpurea striata stellata, "whose flowers have many white lines and stripes through the leaves." Parkinson's name is "the purple-striped Anemone."

Of recent years anemones have again become the fashion.

"How gorgeous are these flowers to behold," exclaims Ryder Haggard, "with their hues of vivid scarlet and purple! To be really appreciated, however, they should, I think, be seen in their native home, the East. In the neighborhood of Mount Tabor in Palestine, I have met with them in such millions that for miles the whole plain is stained red, blue and white, growing so thickly indeed that to walk across it without setting foot on a flower at every step would be difficult. I believe, and I think that this view is very generally accepted, that these are the same lilies of the field that 'toil not neither do they spin,' which Our Lord used to illustrate His immortal lesson. Truly Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these."

The Adonis flower (Flos Adonis) spoken of by Ben Jonson and others has nothing to do with the anemone. It is a kind of camomile. "Some have taken the red kind to be a kind of Anemone," says Parkinson. "The most usual name now with us is Flos Adonis. In English it is also called the Mayweed and Rosarubie and Adonis Flower."

HAREBELL (Scilla nutans). The "azured harebell," which Shakespeare uses in "Cymbeline" for comparison with the delicate veins of Fidele (Imogen), has been identified as the English jacinth, blue harebell, or hare's-bell. Browne's "Pastorals" show that this flower was only worn by faithful lovers; and, therefore, the flower is most appropriately selected for association with Imogen. Browne says:

The Harebell, for her stainless, azured hue Claims to be worn of none but who are true.

See p. 207.

This flower is also called the "wild hyacinth." Blossoming in May and June, it is one of the precious ornaments of English woods. "Dust of sapphire," its jewel-like flowers have been called.

"Our English jacinth, or harebells," writes Parkinson, "is so common everywhere that it scarce needeth any description. It beareth divers long narrow green leaves, not standing upright, not yet fully lying on the ground, among which springeth up the stalk, bearing at the top many long and hollow flowers, hanging down their heads, all forwards, for the most part, parted at the brims into six parts, turning up their points a little again, of a sweetish, but heady, scent, like unto the Grapeflower. The heads for seed are long and square, wherein is much black seed. The color of the flowers is in some of a deep blue tending to purple, in others of a paler blue, or of a bleak blue tending to an ash color. Some are pure white and some are parti-colored blue and white; and some are of a fine delayed purplish red, or bluish color, which some call a pearl color."

Columbine and Broom-flower

COLUMBINE (Aquilegia vulgaris). "There's fennel for you, and columbines," says Ophelia, as she hands the flowers to the courtiers. Shakespeare also mentions the columbine in "Love's Labour's Lost" where Don Armado, the "fantastical Spaniard" (a caricature of a real person at Queen Elizabeth's court), exclaims, "I am that flower," to which Dumain and Longueville reply in derision, "That mint! That columbine!" Of the columbine of Shakespeare's time, Parkinson says:

"Hamlet"; Act IV, Scene V.

Act V, Scene II.

"There be many sorts of Columbines as well differing in form as color of the flowers, and of them, both single and double, carefully nursed up in our gardens for the delight both of their forms and colors. The variety of the colors of these flowers are very much, for some are wholly white, some of a blue, or violet, color, others of a bluish, or flesh, color, or deep, or pale, red, or of a dead purple, or dead murrey color, as Nature listeth to show."

The generic name is derived from the word aquila, an eagle, because of the fancied resemblance of some parts of the flower to the talons of an eagle. The English name comes from the Latin columba, a dove, from the likeness of its nectaries to the heads of doves in a ring around a dish, or to the figure of a dove hovering with expanded wings discovered by pulling off one petal with its detached sepals. Hence this was called the dove plant. From the belief that it was the favorite plant of the lion it was called Herba leonis.

The columbine was valued for many medicinal virtues.

"The scarlet and yellow columbine," writes Matthew, "is one of our most beautiful wild flowers. It is my experience that certain flowers have certain favorite haunts, which are exclusively held by them year after year. This flower is in its prime about the first of June, and is nearly always found beside some lichen-covered rock."

The English and American flowers differ, although the early colonists brought the English flower with them. Grant Allen tells us:

"The English columbine is a more developed type than the American scarlet, is never yellow in the wild state, but often purple, and, sometimes, blue. Larkspur, ranking still higher in the floral scale, in virtue of its singular bilateral blossoms, is usually blue, though it sometimes reverts to reddish-purple, or white; while monkshood, the very top of the tree on this line of development, is usually deep ultramarine, only a few species being prettily variegated with pale blue and white. As a rule, blue flowers are the very highest; and the reason seems to lie in the strange fact, first discovered by Sir John Lubbock, that bees are fonder of blue than of any other color. Still, they are fond enough even of red; and one may be sure that the change from yellow to scarlet in the petals of the American columbine is due in one way or another to the selective tastes and preferences of the higher insects."

The colors of the American columbine are dark opaque blues, smoky purples, dull pinks, pale blues, lavenders, reds and yellows--an infinite variety!

"The flowering of the 'Columbine Commendable,' as Skelton called it four hundred years ago," says Harriet L. Keeler, "marks the beginning of summer. The reign of the bulbs is over;

The windflower and the violet They perished long ago;

the petals of the early roses are falling; the elder-blossoms show white along the fence rows; and the season waxes to its prime.

"A wild flower of English fields, the columbine was early transferred into English gardens and has held its place securely there for at least five hundred years. Its seeds were among the treasures borne over the sea to the New World and it early bloomed in Pilgrim gardens. This primitive stock still persists in cultivation.

"The flower of the columbine is a unique and interesting form. The sepals look like petals and the petals are veritable horns of plenty filled with nectar at the closed ends for the swarms of bees which gather about. The sweets are produced by the blossoms on a generous scale, and to a columbine bed in full bloom the bees come, big and little, noisy and silent--all giddy with the feast. There is no use trying to drive them away for they will not go. Clumsy bumble bees with tongues long enough to reach the honey by the open door, wise honey bees who have learned to take the short road to the nectar by biting through the spur, quiet brown bees, little green carpenters--all are there, 'vehement, voluble, velvety,' in a glorious riot of happiness and honey.

"The doubling occurs chiefly with the petals; the sepals, as a rule, hold true to the five, but the petals sometimes double in number, becoming ten spurs in place of five, and each spur becomes a nest of spurs like a set of Chinese cups, though the innermost are frequently imperfect."

The columbine frequently appears in the paintings of the Great Masters. Luini has immortalized it in his picture of this title now in the gallery of the Hermitage at Petrograd. A fascinating woman with a smile as enchanting--if not so famous--as Leonardo da Vinci's "Mona Lisa" holds an exquisitely painted columbine in her left hand and gazes at it with tender, loving emotion.

The early Italian and Flemish painters include the columbine with the rose, lily, pink, violet, strawberry, and clover in the gardens where the Madonna sits with the Holy Child. The reason that the columbine was chosen as a flower of religious symbolism was because of the little doves formed by the five petals. The columbine signified the "Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit," and the Flemish painters in their zeal for accuracy corrected the number of petals to seven to make the flower agree with the teaching of the Church.

Yet although the columbine has these religious associations, we always think of it as an airy, piquant flower, the gay and irresponsible dancer of the rocks and dells, clad, as it were, in fantastic and parti-colored dress. Graceful in form and charming in color, put together with extreme delicacy on slender, flexible, fragile stems and adorned with a leaf approaching that of the fern in delicacy and lace-like beauty, the columbine is one of the most delightful of flowers. Always associated with folly, we love it none the less for that, for there are times when we enjoy Harlequin and Columbine among our flowers,--and these fantastic and frivolous columbines dancing so gaily in the breeze always fill us with delight.

BROOM (Cytisus scoparius). Although the broom was a popular plant in Elizabethan days it is only mentioned once by Shakespeare. In "The Tempest," where Iris in the mask in her apostrophe to "Ceres, most bounteous lady," speaks of

thy broom-groves Whose shadow the dismissed bachelor loves, Being lass-lorn ... ... the queen o' the sky ... Bids thee leave these.

Act IV, Scene I.

When in blossom the broom is lovely to look upon. The large yellow flowers are gracefully arranged on the branches, and its perfume is delightful.

"Sweet is the Broome-flower!" exclaims Spenser. The broom is the Planta genesta, from which the Plantagenets took their name. The flower, having become heraldic during that dynasty, was embroidered on the clothes of the Plantagenet family and imitated in their jewels. When they died it was carved on their monuments. The story goes that Geoffrey, Earl of Anjou, father of Henry II of England, once on his way to a field of battle, had to climb a rocky path, and he noticed as he went along the bushes of yellow broom clinging to the rocks. Breaking off a branch he, placed it in his helmet with the words: "This golden plant shall be my emblem henceforth. Rooted firmly among rocks and upholding that which is ready to fall." His son, Henry, was called "the royal sprig of Genesta." The golden plume of broom-flowers was worn by the Plantagenets until the last one of the line, Richard III, lost the Crown of England to Henry VII, the first of the Tudors.

In 1264 the Planta genesta was honored by St. Louis, who instituted the Order of Genest on his marriage with Marguerite. The Knights of the Genest wore chains made of the broom-flower alternating with the fleur-de-lis. Shakespeare speaks of a "broom-staff" and sends Puck

with broom before To sweep the dust behind the door.

Whether Puck's broom was made from the Genesta or not we do not know; but we do know that the broom, in common with other briars, was used to make besoms for sweeping and also for staffs to walk with and to lean upon.

Summer

"SWEET SUMMER BUDS"

"Morning Roses Newly Washed with Dew"

THE ROSE (Rosa). Shakespeare speaks of the rose more frequently than any other flower. Sixty references to the rose are scattered through his works. Sometimes he talks of the rose itself and sometimes he uses the word to make a striking comparison, or analogy. With magical touch he gives us the bold picture of a

Red rose on triumphant briar,

then he brings before us a delicious whiff of the

Perfumèd tincture of the roses,

or the luscious fragrance of

Morning roses newly washed with dew.

With equal delicacy of perception he tells us

So sweet a kiss the golden sun gives not To those fresh morning drops upon the rose.

Shakespeare's special roses are the Red, the White, the Musk, the Eglantine (sweetbrier), the Provençal, or Provins, the Damask, the Canker, and the Variegated.

"Love's Labour's Lost"; Act IV, Scene III.

THE RED ROSE (Rose Anglica rubra), the English red, is thus described by Parkinson:

"The Red Rose, which I call English because this rose is more frequent and used in England than in other places, never groweth so high as the Damask Rose-bush, but more usually abideth low and shooteth forth many branches from the Rose-bush (and is but seldom suffered to grow up as the Damask Rose into standards) with a green bark thinner set with prickles and longer and greener leaves on the upper side than in the white, yet with an eye of white upon them, five likewise most usually set upon a stalk and grayish, or whitish, underneath. The Roses, or flowers, do very much vary according to their site and abiding, for some are of an orient red, or deep crimson, color and very double (although never so double as the White), which, when it is full blown, hath the largest leaves of any other Rose; some of them again are paler, tending somewhat to a Damask; and some are of so pale a red as that it is rather of the color of a Canker Rose, yet all for the most part with larger leaves than the Damask, and with many more yellow threads in the middle. The scent hereof is much better than in the White, but not comparable to the excellency of the Damask Rose, yet this Rose, being well dried and well kept, will hold both color and scent longer than the Damask."

THE WHITE ROSE (Rosa Anglica alba).

"The White Rose is of two kinds," says Parkinson, "the one more thick and double than the other. The one riseth up in some shadowy places unto eight or ten foot high, with a stock of great bigness for a rose. The other growing seldom higher than a Damask Rose. Both these Roses have somewhat smaller and whiter green leaves than in many other Roses, five most usually set on a stock and more white underneath, as also a whiter green bark, armed with sharp thorns, or prickles. The flowers in the one are whitish with an eye, or shew, of a blush, especially towards the ground, or bottom, of the flower, very thick, double and close set together; and, for the most part, not opening itself so largely and fully as either the Red, or Damask Rose. The other more white, less thick and double and opening itself more, and some so little double (as but of two or three rows) that they might be held to be single, yet all of little or no smell at all."

From this Rosa alba, Pliny says, the isle of Albion derived its name--a happy thought when we remember that the rose is still the national emblem of England.

MUSK-ROSE (Rosa moschata). Musk-roses and eglantine mingled with honeysuckle formed the canopy beneath which Titania slumbered on a bank made soft and lovely with wild thyme, oxlips and nodding violets. And in the "coronet of fresh and fragrant flowers" that the dainty little fairy queen placed upon the hairy temples of Bottom the Weaver, musk-roses were conspicuous; and the sweetness of these was intensified by "the round and Orient pearls of dew" that swelled upon the petals, as the "pretty flowerets bewailed their own disgrace."

It is this delicious rose which Keats, when listening to the nightingale, sensed rather than visualized in the twilight dimness:

The coming musk-rose full of dewy wine, The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

The musk-rose was adored by the Elizabethans. Lord Bacon considered its scent to come next to that of the violet, and before all other flowers.

"You remember the great bush at the corner of the south wall just by the Blue Drawing-room window?" writes Mrs. Gaskell in "My Lady Ludlow." "That is the old musk-rose, Shakespeare's musk-rose, which is dying out through the kingdom now. The scent is unlike the scent of any other rose, or of any other flower."

The musk-rose is a native of North Africa, Spain, and India (Nepal). Hakluyt in 1582 gave the date of its introduction into England. "The turkey-cocks and hens," he says, "were brought in about fifty years past; the Artichoke in the time of Henry the Eighth; and of later times was procured out of Italy the Musk Rose plant and the Plum called Perdigwena."

Turning now to Parkinson and opening his big volume at the page "Rosa Moschata, simple and multiplex," we read:

"The Musk Rose, both single and double, rises up oftentimes to a very great height that it overgroweth any arbor in a Garden, or being set by a house side to be ten or twelve foot high, or more, but especially the single kind with many green far spread branches armed with a few sharp great thorns, as the wilder sorts of Roses are, whereof these are accounted to be kinds, having small dark green leaves on them, not much bigger than the leaves of Eglantines. The Flowers come forth at the tops of the branches, many together as it were in an umbel, or tuft, which, for the most part, do flower all at a time, or not long one after another, every one standing on a pretty long stalk and are of a pale whitish, or cream color, both the single and the double, the single being small flowers consisting of five leaves with many yellow threads in the middle; and the double bearing more double flowers, as if they were once or twice more double than the single, with yellow thrums also in the middle, both of them of a very sweet and pleasing smell, resembling musk. Some there be that have avouched that the chief scent of these Roses consisteth not in the leaves but in the threads of the Flowers."

The color of the musk-rose is white, slightly tinged with pink.

EGLANTINE; ALSO SWEETBRIER (Rosa eglanteria). This is a conspicuous adornment of Titania's bower, and is as remarkable for its beauty as for its scent. The pink flowers with their golden threads in the center are familiar to every one.

"The Sweet Briar, or Eglantine," Parkinson writes, "is not only planted in Gardens for the sweetness of its leaves, but growing wild in many woods and hedges, hath exceeding long green shoots armed with the cruellest sharp and strong thorns and thicker set than is in any Rose, either Wild or tame. The leaves are smaller than in most of those that are nourished up in Gardens, seven or nine, most usually set together on a rib, or stalk, very green and sweeter in smell about the leaves of any other kind of Rose. The flowers are small, single, blush Roses."

PROVENÇAL, OR PROVINS (Centifolia). This old-fashioned cabbage-rose of globular flowers, massive foliage, hard knob of leaves in the center, and sweet perfume is affectionately known as the "Hundred Leaf," or rose à cent feuilles. Parkinson gives two varieties: the incarnate, or flesh-color; and the red.

In our country the light pink, or incarnate, is the more familiar. What associations does it not conjure up? To many of us Dean Hole's words make a touching appeal:

"The blushing, fresh, fragrant Provence! It was to many of us the Rose of our childhood and its delicious perfume passes through the outer sense into our hearts gladdening them with bright and happy dreams, saddening them with love and child awakenings. It brings more to us than the fairness and sweet smell of a Rose. We passed in our play to gaze on it with the touch of a vanished hand in ours, with a father's blessing on our heads and a mother's prayer that we might never lose our love of the beautiful. Happy they who return, or regain, that love."

THE DAMASK ROSE (Rosa damascena) is a native of Syria, whence it was brought to Europe about 1270 by Thibault IV, Comte de Brie, returning from the Holy Land. We know exactly when it was introduced into England because Hakluyt, writing in 1582, says: "In time of memory many things have been brought in that were not here before, as the Damask Rose by Doctor Liniker, King Henry the Seventh and King Henry the Eighth's physician."

"Gloves as sweet as Damask Roses" Autolycus carries in his peddler's pack for "lads to give their dears," along with masks for their faces, perfume, necklace-amber, pins, quoifs, and "lawn as white as driven snow."

"The Winter's Tale"; Act IV, Scene III.

Parkinson informs us:

"The Damask Rose-bush is more usually nourished up to a competent height to stand alone (which we call Standards), than any other Rose. The bark, both of the stock and branches, is not fully so green as the Red or White Rose. The leaves are green with an eye of white upon them. The flowers are of a fine deep blush color, as all know, with some pale yellow threads in the middle, and are not so thick and double as the White, not being blown with so large and great leaves as the Red, but of the most excellent sweet pleasant scent, far surpassing all other Roses or Flowers, being neither heady, nor too strong, nor stuffing or unpleasant sweet, as many other flowers.

"The Rose is of exceeding great use with us, for the Damask Rose (besides the superexcellent sweet water it yieldeth, being distilled, or the perfume of its leaves, being dried, serving to fill sweet bags) serveth to cause solubleness of the body, made into a syrup, or preserved with sugar, moist or candied." The name is obviously from Damascus.

CANKER (Rosa canina). This is the wild dog-rose common to many countries. The name dog-rose was given to it by the Romans, because the root was said to cure the bite of a mad dog. Pliny says the remedy was discovered in a dream by the mother of a soldier who had been bitten by a mad dog. Don Juan's remark in "Much Ado About Nothing."

I had rather be a canker in the hedge Than a rose in his garden,

refers, of course, to the canker-rose. According to legend, the Crown of Thorns was made from the briers of this variety of rose.

Act I, Scene III.

VARIEGATED ROSE (Rosa versicolor) of Shakespeare's plays is the curious bush which produces at the same time red roses, white roses, and roses of red mottled with white and of white mottled with red. The growth of the tree is stiff and erect and the flowers have a sweet scent. The rose is often called the "York and Lancaster." Parkinson says:

"This Rose in the form and order of the growing is nearest unto the ordinary Damask Rose both for stem, branch, leaf and flower, the difference consisting in this--that the flower (being of the same largeness and doubleness as the Damask Rose) hath the one half of it sometimes of a pale whitish color and the other half of a paler damask color than the ordinary. This happeneth so many times, and sometimes also the flower hath divers stripes and marks on it, one leaf white, or striped with white, and the other half blush, or striped with blush, sometimes all striped, or spotted over, and at other times little or no stripes, or marks, at all, as Nature listeth to play with varieties in this as in other flowers. Yet this I have observed, that the longer it abideth blown open to the sun, the paler and the fewer stripes, marks, or spots will be seen in it. The smell is of a weak Damask Rose scent."

This rose recalls the old song of a "Lover to His Lancastrian Mistress," on handing her a white rose:

If this fair rose offend thy sight, Placed in thy bosom bare, 'T will blush to find itself less white, And turn Lancastrian there,

But if thy ruby lip it spy, As kiss it thou mayst deign, With envy pale 'twill lose its dye, And Yorkish turn again.

In his play of "King Henry VI," which passes during the Wars of the Roses, Shakespeare introduces the noted scene in the Temple Garden, London, where the emblem of the Yorkists (a white rose) and that of the Lancastrians (a red rose) is chosen. Richard Plantagenet plucks a white rose and the Earl of Somerset a red rose from rose-bushes that are still growing and blooming in the same spot, as they did when Shakespeare imagined the scene in "King Henry VI."

Part I, Act II, Scene IV.

In Shakespeare's day the rose was enormously cultivated. In the gardens of Ely Place, the home of Queen Elizabeth's dashing lord chancellor, twenty bushels of roses were gathered annually--a good deal for the time.

"About thirty species of roses," writes Edmund Gosse, "were known to the Elizabethan gardeners, and most of them did particularly well in London until in the reign of James I, when the increasing smoke of coal-fires exterminated the most lovely and the most delicate species, the double yellow rose. Things grew rapidly worse in this respect, until Parkinson in despair, cried out: 'Neither herb, nor tree, will prosper since the use of sea-coal.' Up to that time in London, and afterwards in country-places, the rose preserved its vogue. It was not usually grown for pleasure, since the petals had a great commercial value; there was a brisk trade in dried roses and a precious sweet water was distilled from the damask rose. The red varieties of the rose were considered the best medicinally, and they produced that rose syrup which was so widely used both as a cordial and as an aperient. The fashion for keeping potpourri in dwelling-rooms became so prevalent that the native gardens could not supply enough, and dried yellow roses became a recognized import from Constantinople. We must think of the parlors of the ladies who saw Shakespeare's plays performed for the first time as all redolent with the perfume of dried, spiced and powdered rose-leaves." In "Sonnet LIV" Shakespeare says:

The rose looks fair, but fairer it we deem For that sweet odor which doth in it live. The canker-blooms have full as deep a dye As the perfumèd tincture of the roses, Hang on such thorns and play as wantonly When summer's breath their maskèd buds discloses. But, for their virtue only is their show, They live unwoo'd, and unrespected fade; Die to themselves. Sweet roses do not so; Of their sweet deaths are sweetest odors made.

For twenty-seven centuries--and more--the rose has been considered queen of flowers. Her perfume, her color, her elegance, and her mystic fascination have won all hearts. Shakespeare says: "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet." In one sense that is true; but we would not be willing to try another title, for the very word rose is a beautiful one and conjures up a particular and very special vision of sweetness and beauty.

Thousands and thousands of poems have been written in praise of this flower, ever since Sappho sang to her lyre the words "Ho! the rose! Ho! the rose!"

Sir Henry Wotton wrote:

You Violets that first appear, By your pure purple mantles known, Like the proud virgins of the year, As if the Spring were all your own, What are you when the Rose is blown?

And Hood sang:

The Cowslip is a country wench; The Violet is a nun; But I will woo the dainty Rose The queen of every one.

And Shelley:

And the rose, like a nymph to the bath addrest, Which unveiled the depths of her glowing breast, Till, fold after fold, to the fainting air, The soul of her beauty and love laid bare.

Shelley's "fold after fold" reminds us that Ruskin points out that one of the rose's beauties is that her petals make shadows over and over again of their own loveliness.

Dr. Forbes Watson has, perhaps, been the most successful of all writers in putting into words the reasons why the rose has such power over mankind:

"The flower has something almost human about it--warm, breathing, soft as the fairest cheek; of white, no longer snowy like the narcissus, but flushed with hues of animating pink; either flower, white or red, being alike symbolical of glowing, youthful passion."

In the East the rose gardens have been famed for centuries. The flower is said to burst into bloom at the voice of the nightingale. The poet Jami says: "You may place a handful of fragrant herbs of flowers before the nightingale, yet he wishes not in his constant heart for more than the sweet breath of his beloved rose." It is said that an Arabian doctor discovered the recipe for rose-water in the Tenth Century; but the perfume may be older than that. The Rosa centifolia is the blossom used. The Indians and Persians have known how to make their attar of rose for centuries.

A large volume would be required to chronicle the romance of the rose, for it is the flower of love, beauty, and poetry. It is dedicated to Venus, and Venus is frequently represented as wearing a crown of roses. Her son, Eros or Cupid, is also wreathed and garlanded with roses. Cupid gave a rose to Harpocrates, god of silence--hence the rose is also the symbol of silence. "Under the rose," a saying that expresses silence and secrecy, is derived from this legend. A siren holding a rose stands among the sculptured ruins of Pæstum. Roses and myrtle adorned the brides of Greece and Rome. The profusion of roses used for decorations at feasts astounds us even to-day. No epicure was satisfied with the cup of Falernian wine unless it were perfumed with roses; and the Spartan soldiers at the Battle of Cirrha actually refused wine because it was not perfumed with roses. This makes us wonder if those Spartan mothers, of whom we hear so much, were really as severe as they are reputed to have been. Red roses were dedicated to Jupiter; damask roses to Venus; and white roses to Diana or the moon. The rose was given to the Virgin Mary as her particular flower; and many Italian painters as well as Flemish, Spanish, and German, have painted the Madonna of the Rose, the Madonna of the Rose-hedge, the Madonna of the Rose-bush, and the Madonna of the Rose-garden. The rosary, introduced by St. Dominick in commemoration of his having been shown a Chaplet of roses by the Virgin, originally consisted of rose-leaves pressed into balls.

"Lilies of All Kinds"

THE LILY (Lilium candidum). The fact that Perdita calls for "lilies of all kinds" shows that Shakespeare loved one of the most beautiful families of flowers that grace the earth, and knew the many varieties that grew in the English gardens of his day, which include the Lily-of-the-Valley (in his time called Lily Conally); the splendid yellow lilies; the red martagon and spotted martagon (tiger-lilies); as well as the pure white lily. Parkinson, who writes so beautifully of plants and blossoms, did not neglect the lily. He says: "The lily is the most stately flower among many," and he directs attention "to the wonderful variety of lilies known to us in these days, much more so than in former times."

First on the list comes the white lily, which has always been regarded from time immemorial as the most beautiful member of this most beautiful family, a picture of purity with its white silken petals exquisitely set off by the yellow anthers and breathing such delicious fragrance. This is the lily of which Shelley sings:

And the wand-like lily, which lifteth up As a Mænad, its moonlight colored cup, Till the fiery star which is its eye Gazed through clear dew on the tender sky.

"The ordinary White Lily, Lilium candidum," writes Parkinson, "scarce needeth any description, it is so well known and so frequent in every garden. The stalk is of a blackish green color, having many fair broad and long green leaves. The flower stands upon long green footstalks, of a fair white color, with a long pointell in the middle and white chives tipt with yellow pendants about it. The smell is something heady and strong. It is called Lilium album, the White Lily, by most writers; but by poets, Rosa Junonis, Juno's Rose."

How perfect is this flower! Texture, form, hue, sheen, perfume--all express exquisite loveliness. The lily refreshes us with its cool beauty and its purity and lifts our thoughts upward to heaven.

Gerard describes eight lilies in his "Herbal" (1597), all of which were known to Shakespeare. Certainly among Perdita's flowers was the martagon, which takes its name from the Italian martagone, meaning a Turk's turban. This lily is also called "Chalcedonian" and "Scarlet martagon" and "Turk's Cap," by Parkinson, who tells us that the "Lilium rubrum Byzantinum Martagon Constantinopolitanum, or the red martagon of Constantinople, is become so common everywhere and so well known to all lovers of these delights that I shall seem unto them to lose time to bestow many lines upon it; yet because it is so fair a flower and was at the first so highly esteemed, it deserveth its place and commendations. It riseth out of the ground bearing a round, brownish stalk, beset with many fair green leaves confusedly thereon, but not so broad as the common White Lily, upon the top whereof stand one, two, or three, or more, flowers upon long footstalks, which hang down their heads and turn up their leaves again, of an excellent red crimson color and sometimes paler, having a long pointell in the middle compassed with whitish chives, tipt with loose yellow pendants, of a reasonable good scent, but somewhat faint. We have another of this kind, the Red Spotted Martagon of Constantinople, that groweth somewhat greater and higher with a larger flower, and of a deeper color, spotted with divers black spots, or streaks, and lines, as is to be seen in Mountain Lilies."

The martagon belongs to the tiger-lily class, whose characteristics have been so imaginatively brought out by Thomas Bailey Aldrich:

I like the chaliced lilies, The heavy Eastern lilies, The gorgeous tiger-lilies, That in our garden grow.

For they are tall and slender; Their mouths are dashed with carmine, And when the wind sweeps by them, On their emerald stalks They bend so proud and graceful,-- They are Circassian women, The favorites of the Sultan, Adown our garden walks.

And when the rain is falling, I sit beside the window And watch them glow and glisten,-- How they burn and glow! O for the burning lilies, The tender Eastern lilies The gorgeous tiger-lilies, That in our garden grow.

Shakespeare has many beautiful passages concerning the lily. He often refers to its whiteness. He considers it as impossible a task "to paint the lily" as it is "to gild refined gold," or "to throw a perfume on the violet."

How the lily was loved by the ancients! The Egyptians adored it; the Persians named cities for it; the Hebrews worshiped it. The Greeks and Romans called the lily Juno's flower, and fancied that the flower owed its very existence to drops of milk spilled on earth from Juno's white breast when she was nursing the infant Hercules.

The church consecrated the lily to the Virgin Mary. It was her flower as Queen of Heaven. In many old religious paintings of the Annunciation, the Angel Gabriel, appearing before the Virgin, usually holds the "Annunciation Lily," or "Madonna Lily" in his hand. Joseph's staff was said to have blossomed into lilies, and it is the white lily that is usually represented in this connection.

Wonderful family this lily tribe, flowers of the grand style and haughty demeanor! Ruskin enlightens us as to why it is every one loves them and why they are entwined with many of our thoughts of art and life:

"Under the name of Drosidæ come plants delighting in interrupted moisture--moisture which comes either partially, or at certain seasons--into dry ground. They are not water-plants, but the signs of water resting among dry places. In the Drosidæ the floral spirit passes into the calix also, and the entire flower becomes a six-rayed star, bursting out of the stem laterally, as if it were the first of flowers and had made its way to the light by force through the unwilling green. They are often required to retain moisture, or nourishment, for the future blossom through long times of drought; and this they do in bulbs underground, of which some become a rude and simple, but most wholesome food for man.

"Then the Drosidæ are divided into five great orders--lilies, asphodels, amaryllis, irids and rushes. No tribes of flowers have had so great, so varied, or so healthy an influence on man as this great group of Drosidæ, depending not so much on the whiteness of some of their blossoms, or the radiance of others, as on the strength and delicacy of the substance of their petals; enabling them to take forms of faultless, elastic curvature, either in cups, as the Crocus, or expanding bells, as the true Lily, or heath-like bells, as the Hyacinth, or bright and perfect stars, like the Star of Bethlehem, or, when they are affected by the strange reflex of the serpent nature which forms the labiate group of all flowers, closing into forms of exquisitely fantastic symmetry as the Gladiolus. Put by their side their Nereid sisters, the Water-lilies, and you have in them the origin of the loveliest forms of ornamental design and the most powerful floral myths yet recognized among human spirits, born by the streams of the Ganges, Nile, Arno and Avon.

"For consider a little what each of those five tribes has been to the spirit of man. First, in their nobleness; the Lilies gave the Lily of the Annunciation; the Asphodels, the flower of the Elysian Fields; the Irids, the fleur-de-lys of chivalry; and the Amaryllis, Christ's lily of the fields; while the Rush, trodden always under foot, became the emblem of humility. Then take each of the tribes and consider the extent of their lower influence. Perdita's 'the Crown Imperial, lilies of all kinds,' are the first tribe, which, giving the type of perfect purity in the Madonna's Lily, have, by their lovely form, influenced the entire decorative design of Italian sacred art; while ornament of war was continually enriched by the curves of the triple petals of the Florentine 'giglio' and the French fleur-de-lys; so that it is impossible to count their influence for good in the Middle Ages, partly as a symbol of womanly character and partly of the utmost brightness and refinement in the city which was the 'flower of cities.'"

Astrologers placed the lily under the moon; and the flower is certainly dreamy enough and celestial enough to be under the rule of Diana, or Astarte.

III

Crown-Imperial and Flower-de-luce

THE CROWN-IMPERIAL (Fritillaria imperalis) is mentioned by Perdita. A native of Persia, Afghanistan, and Kashmir, it was taken to Constantinople, and thence to Vienna in 1576. Finally it came to England with other luxuries of the Renaissance. Gerard had it in his garden, and describes it as follows:

"Out of a tuft of narrow leaves the stem rises and terminates in a second tuft immediately below which is a ring of large tulip-like flowers, pendulous and golden yellow. Looking into the bells at the base of every petal is a white and concave nectary from which hangs a drop of honey that shines like a pearl. In the bottom of each of the bells there is placed six drops of most clear shining water, in taste like sugar resembling in shew fair Orient pearls, the which drops if you take away there do immediately appear the like. Notwithstanding if they may be suffered to stand still in the flower according to his own nature, they will never fall away, no, not if you strike the plant until it be broken."

The Crown-Imperial was, perhaps, of all choice "outlandish flowers" the choicest. Parkinson gives it the first place in the Garden of Delight, opening his great book, "Paradisus Terrestris," with an account of it:

"The Crown Imperial," he writes, "for his stately beautifulness deserveth the first place in this our Garden of Delight. The stalk riseth up three, or four, foot high, being great, round and of a purplish color at the bottom, but green above, beset from thence to the middle thereof with many long and broad green leaves of our ordinary white lily, but somewhat shorter and narrower, confusedly without order, and from the middle is bare, or naked, without leaves for a certain space upwards, and then beareth four, six, or ten flowers, more or less, according to the age of the plant and the fertility of the soil where it groweth. The buds at the first appearing are whitish, standing upright among a bush, or tuft, of green leaves, smaller than those below and standing above the flowers. After a while they turn themselves and hang downward every one upon his own footstalk, round about the great stem, or stalk, sometimes of an even depth and other while one lower, or higher, than another, which flowers are near the form of an ordinary Lily, yet somewhat lesser and closer, consisting of six leaves of an orange-color striped with purplish lines and veins, which add a great grace to the flowers. At the bottom of the flower, next unto the stalk, every leaf thereof hath on the outside a certain bunch, or eminence, of a dark purplish color, and on the inside there lieth in those hollow bunched places certain clear drops of water like unto pearls, of a very sweet taste, almost like sugar. In the midst of each flower is a long white stile, or pointell, forked, or divided, at the end and six white chives, tipt with yellowish pendants, standing close above it. After the flowers are past, appear six square seed vessels, standing upright, winged as it were, or weltered on the edges, yet seeming but three-square, because each couple of those welted edges are joined closer together, wherein are contained broad, flat and thin seeds of a pale brownish color, like unto other lilies, but much greater and thicker also.

"This plant was first brought from Constantinople into these Christian countries, and, by relation of some that sent it, groweth naturally in Persia. It flowereth most commonly in the end of March, if the weather be mild, and springeth not out of the ground until the end of February, or beginning of March, so quick it is in the springing. The head with seeds are ripe in the end of May. It is of some called Lilium Perticum, or Persian Lily; but because we have another, which is more usually called by that name, I had rather, with Alphonsus Pancius, the Duke of Florence, his physician (who first sent the figure thereof unto Mr. John de Brancion) call it Corona Imperialis, the Crown Imperial."

There is a legend that the Crown-Imperial grew in the garden of Gethsemane, where it was often admired by Jesus Christ. At that time, according to the story, the flowers were white and erect on the stalk. During the night of the agony when Our Lord passed through the garden, this flower was the only one that did not bow its head. Later the proud flower bent its head and tears of sorrow filled its cup. Ever since that time the plant has continued to bow in sorrow and its tears flow forever.

Dr. Forbes Watson loves the flower with its "bold, decided outlines." His description is all too short. "The tall stem," he says, "rises like a mast through the lower leaves, is thence for a short space bare till it is topped by the crowning sheaf of leaf-swords, out of which droop so gracefully the large yellow wax-like bells. Here every line seems to pierce like an arrow, the composition is so clear and masterly."

The Crown-Imperial appears in the celebrated book called "Guirlande de Julie," which the Duc de Montausier gave on New Year's Day, 1634, to his bride, Julie de Rambouillet. This was a magnificent album: every leaf bore a beautifully painted flower and a verse descriptive of it or in praise of it contributed by different artists and poets. Chapelain chose the Crown-Imperial for his theme, pretending that it sprang from the blood of Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, who, not being able to offer his hand to Julie, came to her in the guise of this flower.

FLOWER-DE-LUCE (Iris pseudacorus). Perdita's mention of "lilies of all kinds, the flower-de-luce being one," shows that Shakespeare classed this flower among the lilies. So did the botanists of his time. Symbol of eloquence and power, the Egyptians placed the purple iris upon the brow of the Sphinx. The scepter of their monarchs was adorned with this flower, its three petals representing faith, wisdom, and valor. The kings of Babylon and Assyria also bore it on their scepters. The Greeks laid the iris on the tombs of women because they believed that Iris guided dead women to the Elysian Fields. Although the iris was also dedicated to Juno, it is more particularly the flower of Iris, lovely Iris, one of the beautiful Oceanides, daughters of Ocean, and messenger of the gods, who whenever she wished to descend upon the earth threw her rainbow scarf across the sky and with all its prismatic colors glistening in her perfumed wings descended from heaven to earth upon the graceful bow that joins the seen and the unseen worlds. The purple, yellow, orange, and blue tints of the rainbow live again in the petals and drooping lips called "falls." What a flower of charm, mystery, and majesty! Sphinx of the flower world! The iris was extremely popular in Shakespeare's day. Parkinson gives a great many "Flower-de-luces, or Iris" in his monumental work. We find "the Purple, the Blue, the Purple-striped, the Peach-colored, the White, the White-striped, the Parti-colored, the Milk-White, the Silver color, the White with Yellow Falls, the Straw color, the Spanish Yellow, the Purple and Yellow, the Purple or Murrey, the Great Turkie, the Common Purple, the Great Dalmatian, the Yellow of Tripoli, the Double Blew, the Double Purple, the Purple Dwarf," and many others which prove how popular this flower was in Tudor and Stuart gardens, and what splendid specimens were known to the people of Shakespearian times. Parkinson also adds: "The dried root called Orris is of much use to make sweet powders, or other things, to perfume apparel or linen."

The fleur-de-lis early became the symbol of France. At the proclamation of a new king the Franks always placed a living flower, or flag, as it was called, in his hand as the symbol of power. Because his wife, St. Clotilde, had a vision of the iris, Clovis erased the three frogs on his shield and substituted the iris. In consequence also of a dream, Louis VII took the iris for his device in 1137, from which it became known as the fleur de Louis, later contracted into fleur-de-lys and fleur-de-lis. When Edward III claimed the crown of France in 1340, he quartered the Old French shield bearing the fleur-de-lis with his English lion. The iris, or flower-de-luce (as the English wrote it), did not disappear from the English coat of arms until 1801.

Shakespeare speaks of the fleur-de-lis in the Messenger's speech in "King Henry VI":

Awake, awake, English nobility! Let not sloth dim your honors new begot: Cropp'd are the flower-de-luces in your arms; Of England's coat one half is cut away.

And again in the same play:

LA PUCELLE. I am prepared: here is my keen-edged sword, Deck'd with fine flower-de-luces on each side.

In "The Merry Wives of Windsor" there is a humorous play upon words regarding the heraldic use of "the flower-de-luce."

Part I, Act I, Scene I.

Part I, Act I, Scene II.

Act I, Scene I.

Fern and Honeysuckle

THE FERN (Pteris aquilina), with its graceful and beautifully indented leaves and its peculiar acrid scent, delicious to many persons, would be admitted into the Shakespeare garden because of its fantastic qualities, even if its beauty did not sue for recognition. The fern is a fairy plant. According to folk-lore it always blossomed at twelve o'clock on St. John's eve (June 21), Midsummer night. The flower is described as a wonderful globe of sapphire blue (according to other stories a ruby/red); and in a few moments after its blossoming the seed appeared. Oberon, the fairy king, was supposed to watch for the precious seed so that he might prevent mortals from obtaining it; but any one fortunate enough to gather fern-seed would be under the protection of spirits, and would be enabled to realize all his fondest desires. Furthermore, any one who wore the fern-seed about him would be invisible. Shakespeare was familiar with this superstition, for he makes Gadshill exclaim in "King Henry IV": "We steal as in a castle, cock-sure: we have the receipt of fern-seed, we walk invisible."

Part I, Act II, Scene I.

An old account tells us:

The fern flowers on Midsummer night at twelve o'clock, and drives away all unclean spirits. First of all it puts forth buds, which afterwards expand, then open, and finally change into flowers of a dark red hue. At midnight the flower opens to its fullest extent and illuminates everything around. But at that precise moment a demon plucks it from its stalk. Whoever wishes to procure this flower must be in the forest before midnight, locate himself near the fern and trace a circle around it. When the Devil approaches and calls, feigning the voice of a parent, sweetheart, etc., no attention must be paid, nor must the head be turned; for if it is, it will remain so. Whoever becomes the happy possessor of the flower has nothing to fear; by its means he can recover lost treasure, become invisible, rule on earth and under water and defy the Devil.

Because the fern was so powerful against evil and because it was sacred to St. John the Baptist, witches detested it.

Pliny stated that the fern had neither flower nor seed; and some of the old English writers believed this. William Turner, however, went to work to investigate matters. In his famous "Herbal," published in 1562, he says:

See p. 34.

"Not only the common people say that the fern hath seed, but that was also the opinion of a Christian physician named Hieronymus Tragus, who doth not only say that the fern hath seed, but writeth that he found upon Midsummer Even seed upon brakes. Although all they that have written of herbs have affirmed and holden that the brake doth neither seed nor fruit, yet have I divers times proved the contrary, which thing I will testify here in this place for their sakes that be students of herbs. I have, four years together, one after another, upon the Vigil of St. John the Baptist, which we call in English Midsummer Even, sought for this seed of brakes upon the night; and, indeed, I found it early in the morning before day-break. The seed was small, black, and like unto poppy. I went about this business all figures, conjurings, saunters, charms, witchcraft, sorceries, taking with me two or three honest men. When I sought this seed all the village about did shine with bonfires that the people made there; and sometime when I sought the seed I found it, and sometimes I found it not. Sometime I found much and sometime I found little; but what should be the cause of this diversitie, or what Nature meaneth in this thing, surely I cannot tell."

Brake, or bracken, fern.

HONEYSUCKLE (Lonicera perfolium). Delicious name--honeysuckle! And truly this is one of "the sweetest flowers for scent that blows." It takes its name because of the honey dew found on it, so old writers say. Romantic is its other name, "woodbine," suggesting sylvan spots and mossy beds, where cool-rooted flowers grow, such as the "nodding violet." Shakespeare knew what he was about when he enwreathed and entwined Titania's canopy with "luscious woodbine" in loving union with the equally delicious eglantine. The honeysuckle is a flower that belongs particularly to moonlight and to fairy-time.

In "Much Ado About Nothing" Hero gives the command:

Good Margaret, run into the parlor and whisper to Beatrice And bid her steal into the pleachèd bower, Where honeysuckles ripened by the sun, Forbid the sun to enter.

Act III, Scene I.

A bower covered with the intense, yet subtle, perfume of the honeysuckle, doubly sweet in the hot sun that had ripened the blossoms and drawn out their inmost sweetness, was just the place to send "saucy Beatrice" for the purpose of lighting the flame of love for Benedick, and just the place to send, a little later, the cynical Benedick for the purpose of awakening his interest in the "Lady Disdain." Shakespeare evidently knew that the honeysuckle is the flower of ardent lovers, and so he framed his pleachèd bower with these sweet-scented blossoms. The French have a tender name for the flower, cher feu (dear flame), because it is given by lovers to one another. The other French name, chèvre feuille, is derived from the Latin caprifolium (goat-leaf), which may have been given to it because the plant leaps over high rocks and precipices, where only goats and others of the cloven-footed tribe dare venture. The honeysuckle in Shakespeare's day was a favorite remedy for wounds in the head. Witches also valued it for their sorcery. According to sorcerers and astrologers this plant was under the rule of Mercury.

It is hard to decide when the honeysuckle is at its best. Whether at hot noontide when the clusters of pale buff and white horns of plenty tipped with their long, feathery threads pour their incense into the golden sunlight, or when the less pungent, but equally intoxicating, perfume floats upon the silvery blue air of a moonlit night.

"How sweetly smells the Honeysuckle, in the hush'd night as if the world were one of utter peace and love and gentleness."

Landor has thus expressed what the delicious honeysuckle makes us feel.

"The monthly honeysuckle," writes Celia Thaxter, "is most divine. Such vigor of growth I have never seen in any other plant. It climbs the trellis on my piazza and spreads its superb clusters of flowers from time to time all summer. Each cluster is a triumph of beauty, flat in the center and curving out to the blossoming edge in joyous lines of loveliness, most like a wreath of heavenly trumpets breathing melodies of perfume to the air. Each trumpet of lustrous white deepens to a yellower tint in the center where the small ends meet; each blossom where it opens at the lips is tipped with fresh pink; each sends out a group of long stamens from its slender throat like rays of light; and the whole circle of radiant flowers has an effect of gladness and glory indescribable: the very sight of it lifts and refreshes the human heart. And for its odor, it is like the spirit of romance, sweet as youth's tender dreams. It is summer's very soul."

Enchanting season of fern and honeysuckle, perfumed stars that shine through green leaves and bells that send forth peals of incense instead of sound!

She show'd me her ferns and woodbine sprays Fox-glove and jasmine stars, A mist of blue in the beds, a blaze Of red in the celadon jars, And velvety bees in convolvulus beds And roses of bountiful June-- Oh, who would think that the summer spells Could die so soon?

Locker-Lampson.

Carnations and Gilliflowers

CARNATIONS (Dianthus caryophyllus). Perdita calls carnations and streak'd gilliflowers "the fairest flowers o' the season." Carnation was originally spelled coronation, because the flower was used to make crowns, garlands, and wreaths. In the days of Pliny it was called dianthus, or flower of Jove, and was also worn in wreaths and crowns. From Chaucer we know that it was cultivated as the "Clove Gilliflower" in English gardens; and because it was used to add a spicy flavor to wine and ale, it acquired the popular name of "sops in wine." Hence Spenser in his "Shepherd's Calendar" sings:

Bring hither the pink and purple Columbine With Gillyflowers; Bring Coronations and Sops-in-wine Worn of paramours.

And again:

Youth's folk now flocken everywhere To gather May baskets and smelling Brere, And home they hasten the posts to dight And all the kirk pillars in daylight With Hawthorn budes and sweet Eglantine And garlands of Roses and Sops-in-wine.

Brier.

"Its second specific name," writes Ellacombe, "Caryophyllus, i.e., nut-leaved, seems at first very inappropriate for a grassy-leaved plant; but the name was first given to the Indian Clove tree and from it transferred to the Carnation on account of its fine clove scent. Its popularity as an English plant is shown by its many names--Pink, Carnation, Gilliflower (an easily-traced and well-ascertained corruption, from Caryophyllus), Clove Picotee and Sops-in-wine from the flowers being used to flavor wine and beer.

From the French picot, a pinked edge. We still use the word "pinked" for a cut edge, and "pinking-iron" is the word for that with which the edge is cut.

"There is an historical interest also in the flowers. All our Carnations, Picotees and Cloves came originally from the single Dianthus caryophyllus. This is not a true British plant; but it holds a place in the English flora, being naturalized on Rochester and other castles. It is abundant in Normandy; and I found it in 1874 covering the old castle of Falaise, in which William the Conqueror was born. I have found that it grows on the old castles of Dover, Deal and Cardiff, all of them of Norman construction, as was Rochester, which was built by Gandulf, the special friend of William. Its occurrence on these several Norman castles makes it very possible that it was introduced by the Norman builders, perhaps as a pleasant memory of their Norman homes, though it may have been incidentally introduced with the Norman (Caen) stone, of which parts of the castles are built. How soon it became a florist's flower we do not know; but it must have been early, for in Shakespeare's time the sorts of Cloves, Carnations and Pinks were so many that Gerard says: 'A great and large volume would not suffice to write of every one at large in particular, considering how infinite they are, and how every year, every climate and country bringeth forth new sorts and such as have not heretofore been written of.'"

Parkinson speaks of "Carnations, Pinks and Gilloflowers." "The number of them is so great," he says, "that to give several descriptions to them were endless." He therefore mentions a few favorites. Among the Carnations we find the Great Harwich, or old English Carnation; the Red, or Clove Gilloflower; the Yellow, or Orange Tawny Gilloflower; the Gray Hulo; the Red Hulo; the Blue Hulo; the Grimelo, or Prince; the White Carnation, or Delicate; the French Carnation; the Crystal, or Chrystalline; the Fragrant; the Striped Savage; the Oxford Carnation; the King's Carnation; the Granado; the Grand Père; and the Great Lombard. His Gilliflowers include the Lustie Gallant, or Westminster; the Bristow Blue; the Bristow Blush; the Red Dover; the Fair Maid of Kent, or Ruffling Robin; the Queen's Gilloflower; the Dainty; the Brassill Gilloflower; the Turkie Gilloflower; the Pale Pageant; the Sad Pageant; Master Bradshawe his Dainty Lady; John Witte his great Tawny Gilloflower; the Striped Tawny; the Marbled Tawny; Master Tuggie his Princess; the Feathered Tawny; and Master Tuggie his Rose Gilloflower. The Tuggies had a superb garden at Westminster in which they made a specialty of Carnations, Gilliflowers, and Pinks. The flower upon which Parkinson spends his most loving description is the Great Harwich. The enthusiasm of this old flower-fancier, who writes so delightfully, makes us feel that the Great Harwich is an English institution, just as important as the Roast Beef of Old England or the English Plum Pudding.

"I take this goodly great old English Carnation," he writes, "as a precedent for the description of all the rest, which for his beauty and stateliness is worthy of a prime place. It riseth up with a great thick, round stalk divided into several branches somewhat thickly set with joints, and at every joint two long green (rather than whitish) leaves, turning, or winding, two or three times round. The flowers stand at the tops of the stalks in long great and round green husks, which are divided into five points, out of which rise many long and broad pointed leaves, deeply jagged at the ends, set in order, round and comely, making a gallant, great double Flower of a deep Carnation color, almost red, spotted with many blush spots and streaks, some greater and some lesser, of an excellent soft, sweet scent, neither too quick, as many others of these kinds are, nor yet too dull; and with two whitish crooked threads, like horns, in the middle. This kind never beareth many flowers; but as it is slow in growing, so in bearing, not to be often handled, which showeth a kind of stateliness fit to preserve the opinion of magnificence."

What a delightful idea Parkinson gives of the conscious dignity of the flower! How vividly he brings the Great Harwich before us and makes us love its green husk, its mottled leaves, its rich scent, and its curling horns!

"Gilloflowers," Parkinson continues, "grow like unto Carnations, but not so thick set with joints and leaves. The stalks are more, the leaves are narrower and whiter, for the most part, and in some, do as well a little turn. The flowers are smaller, yet very thick and double in most; and the green husks in which they stand are smaller likewise. The ends of the leaves are dented and jagged. Some also have two small white threads, crooked at the ends like horns in the middle of the flower; others have none.

"Do a little turn" is charming, suggesting a quaint little waltz.

"Most of our later writers do call them by one general name, Caryophyllus sativus and Flos Caryophyllus, adding thereto maximus when we mean Carnations, and major when we would express Gilloflowers, which name is taken from Cloves in that the scent of the ordinary red Gilloflower especially doth resemble them. Divers other several names have been formerly given them, as Vetonica, or Betonia altera or Vetonica altibus and coronaria, Herba Tunica, Viola Damascena, Ocellus Damascenus and Barbarieus. Of some Cantabrica Pliny. Some think they were unknown to the Ancients and some would have them be Iphium of Theophrastus, whereof he maketh mention in his sixth and seventh chapters of his sixth book among garland and summer flowers; others to be his Dios anthos or Louis flos. We call them in English, the greatest kinds, Carnations, and the other Gilloflowers (quasi July Flowers). The Red, or Clove, Gilloflower is most used in physic in our apothecaries' shops (none of the others being accepted, or used) and is accounted to be a very cordial."

Some writers say that the gilliflower was a cure for pestilential fevers. Gerard writes: "Conserve made of the flowers of the Clove Gilloflower and sugar is exceeding cordial and wonderfully above measure, doth comfort the heart, being eaten now and then."

The Italian painter, Benvenuto Tisio, always painted a gilliflower in the corner of his pictures as his emblem, from which he is always called Il Garofalo.

The word "pink" is derived from the Dutch word Pinkster (Whitsuntide), the season a certain "Whitsuntide Gilliflower" was in bloom. The pink was regarded as an antidote for epilepsy; and a vinegar made of pinks was used as a valued remedy for the plague. The Elizabethans also thought "if a conserve be composed of it, it is the life and delight of the human race."

Our old friend Parkinson describes Pinks as "wild, or small, Gilloflowers, some bearing single and some double flowers, some smooth, almost without any deep dents on the edges, and some jagged, or, as it were, feathered. Some growing upright, like unto Gilloflowers, others creeping, or spreading, some of one color, some of another, and many of divers colors."

He gives Double and Single Pinks, Feathered or Jagged Pinks, Star Pinks, Great Sea Gilloflower, or Great Thrift, "often used in gardens to empale or border a knot, because it abideth green in Winter and Summer and that by cutting it may grow thick and be kept in what form one list." We also find Single Red Sweet John, Single White Sweet John; Double Sweet John; Single Red Sweet William; Double Red Sweet William; Speckled Sweet William, or London Pride; Deep Red, or Murrey Color, Sweet William; and Single White Sweet William.

"These," he adds, "are all generally called Armerius or Armeria, yet some have called them, Vetonica agrestis and others Herba Tunica, Scarlatea and Carophyllus silvestris. We do in English, in most places call the first, or narrower-leaved kinds, Sweet Johns and all the rest Sweet Williams; yet in some places they call the broader-leaved kinds that are not spotted Tolmeiners and London Tufts; but the speckled kind is termed by our English Gentlewomen, for the most part, London Pride. We have not known of any of these used in physic."

These spicy pinks and luscious July flowers and the simple Sweet-Johns and Sweet-Williams as well recall the lovely lines of Matthew Arnold:

Soon will the high midsummer pomp come on. Soon will the musk carnations break and swell, Soon shall we have gold-dusted Snapdragon, Sweet-william with his homely cottage smell, And stocks in fragrant blow; Roses that down the alleys shine afar, And open jasmine in muffled lattices And groups under the dreaming garden trees And the pale moon and the white dreaming star.

Marigold and Larkspur

MARIGOLD (Calendula officinalis). Shakespeare was devoted to the marigold. He always speaks of it with poetic rapture.

The marigold that goes to bed with the sun And with him rises, weeping,

is Perdita's idea of the shining flower, which in these few words she tells us closes its petals in the evening and at dawn awakens wet with dew.

"The Winter's Tale"; Act IV, Scene III.

Then in the beautiful dawn-song in "Cymbeline" "winking Mary-buds" remind us that the gold-flower is consecrated to the Virgin Mary. This song, so full of the freshness of early morning and the sweet perfume of flowers holding in their deep cups sufficient dew to water the horses of the sun just appearing above the horizon, is one of the loveliest of lyrics:

Hark! Hark! the lark at heaven's gate sings, And Phœbus 'gins arise, His steeds to water at those springs On chaliced flowers that lies; And winking Mary-buds begin to ope their golden eyes; With everything that pretty is--My lady, sweet, arise: Arise, arise.

Act II, Scene III.

"The Marygold," says Lyte, "hath pleasant, bright and shining yellow flowers, the which do close at the setting down of the Sun and do spread and open again at the Sun rising."

And Lupton writes: "Some do call it Spousa Solis, the Spowse of the Sun, because it sleeps and is awakened with him."

In "The Rape of Lucrece" Shakespeare also mentions the flower:

Her eyes, like marigolds, hath sheathed their light And canopied in darkness sweetly lay Till they might open to adorn the day.

Very prettily the flower is introduced in Middleton and Rowley's "Spanish Gipsy":

You the Sun to her must play, She to you the Marigold, To none but you her leaves unfold.

Another old English name for the marigold was ruddes and a prettier one was the gold-flower, often called simply the gold or goold. Chaucer talks of "yellow Goldes." The name was still used in Elizabeth's day. "Colin Clout" has:

But if I her like ought on earth might read, I would her liken to a crown of lilies, Upon a Virgin bride's adorned head, With roses dight and goolds and daffodillies.

In Medieval times the monks gave to the gold-flower the prefix Mary, with the legend that the Virgin Mary loved to wear the flower in her bosom. Hence Shakespeare calls it "Mary-buds." Of Shakespeare's Marigolds Parkinson writes:

"They are called Caltha of divers and taken to be that Caltha whereof both Virgil and Columella have written. Others do call them Calendula of the Kalends, that is the first day of the months, wherein they are thought chiefly to flower. And thereupon the Italians call them Fiori di ogni mese, that is the Flowers of Every Month. We call them in English generally Golds, or Marigolds.

"The herb and flowers are of great use with us among other pot-herbs, and the flowers, either green or dyed, are often used in possets, broths and drinks; as a comforter of the heart and spirits; and to expel any malignant, or pestilential quality, gathered near thereunto. The Syrup and Conserve made of the fresh flowers are used for the same purpose to good effect."

Parkinson divides marigolds unto two classes: single and double.

"The garden Marigold," he says, "hath round green stalks, branching out from the ground into many parts, whereon are set long, flat green leaves, broader and rounder at the point than anywhere else. The flowers are sometimes very thick and double (breaking out of a scaly, clammy green head), composed of many rows of leaves, set so close together, one within another, that no middle thrum can be seen; and sometimes less double, having a small brown spot of a thrum in the middle; and sometimes but of two or three rows of leaves with a large brown thrum in the middle: every one whereof is somewhat broader at the point and nicked in two or three corners, of an excellent fair, deep, gold-yellow color in some, and paler in others, and of a pretty strong and resinous sweet scent.

"There is no difference between this and the single Marigold but that the flowers are single, consisting of one row of leaves of the same color; either paler or deeper yellow, standing about a great brown thrum in the middle. Our gardens are the chief places for the double flowers to grow in."

Another description is contained in the famous "Gardener's Labyrinth" by Didymus Mountain (Thomas Hill):

"The Marigold, named of the herbarians Calendula, is so properly termed for that in every Calend and in each month this reneweth of the own accord and is found to bear flowers as well in Winter as Summer, for which cause the Italians name the same the flower of every month. But some term it the Sun's Spowse, or the follower of the Sun; and is of some named the Husbandman's Dial, in that the same showeth to them both the morning and evening tide. Others name it the Sun's Bride and Sun's Herb, in that the flowers of the same follow the Sun as from the rising by the South into the West; and by a notable turning obeying to the Sun, in such manner that what part of Heaven he possesseth they unto the same turned behold, and that in a cloudy and thick air like directed, as if they should be revived, quickened and moved with the spirit of him. Such is the love of it knowen to be toward that royal Star, being in the night time for desire of him as pensive and sad, they be shut or closed together; but at the noontime of the day fully spread abroad as if they with spread arms longed, or diligently attended, to embrace their Bridegroom. This Marigold is a singular kind of herb, sown in gardens as well for the pot as for the decking of garlands, beautifying of Nosegays and to be worn in the bosom."

See p. 68.

The Marigold is supposed to be the Chrysanthemum or gold-flower of the Greeks, the Heliotrope-solsequium; and the story goes that the flower was originally the nymph Clytie, who gazed all day upon the Sun with whom she had fallen in love. At length she was turned into the flower. "All yellow flowers," said St. Francis de Sales, "and above all those that the Greeks call Heliotrope and we call Sunflower, not only rejoice at the sight of the sun, but follow with loving fidelity the attraction of its rays, gazing at the Sun and turning towards it from its rising to its setting."

Very charmingly does George Wither, a contemporary of Shakespeare, refer to this:

When with a serious musing I behold The grateful and obsequious Marigold, How duly every morning she displays Her open breast when Phœbus spreads his rays; How she observes him in his daily walk, Still bending towards him her small slender stalk; How when he down declines she droops and mourns, Bedewed, as 'twere, with tears till he returns; And how she veils her flowers when he is gone. When this I meditate methinks the flowers Have spirits far more generous than ours.

Margaret of Orleans, grandmother of Henri IV, knowing well the legend of the flower, chose for her device a marigold with the motto, je ne veux suivre que lui seul.

In the reign of Henry VIII the marigold was often called "Souvenir" and sentimental ladies wore wreaths of marigolds mixed with the heartsease. To dream of marigolds denoted prosperity, riches, success, and a happy and a wealthy marriage. As the marigold was a solar flower, the astrologers placed it under the sign and care of Leo.

In a wholly Elizabethan spirit Keats sang:

Open afresh your round of starry folds, Ye ardent Marigolds! Dry up the moisture from your golden lids, For great Apollo bids That in these days your praises should be sung On many harps, which he has lately strung; And when again your dewyness he kisses Tell him I have you in my world of blisses! So happly when I rove in some far vale His mighty voice may come upon the gale.

The Shakespearian marigold must not be confused with the French marigold (Flos Africanus), called also Indian gilliflower, flower of Africa, and flower of Tunis. A long chapter on this marigold appears in Parkinson's book. This is the tightly rolled up little flower of irregular ragged petals, but of a rich, deep golden hue.

Parkinson also speaks of the great Peruvian sunflower, which he admires greatly and describes with enthusiasm. We know it well as our common sunflower with its dark center and yellow rays--a magnificent specimen of the floral world, worthy of the adoration of the Incas and of more than we usually accord to it.

LARKSPUR (Delphinium). "Lark's-heels trim," one of the flowers in the introductory song of "The Two Noble Kinsmen," is the Delphinium, also called larkspur, lark's-claw, lark's-toes, and knight's-spur. The generic name is derived from the Greek delphinium, because the buds were thought to resemble the form of a dolphin.

As with many other plants, there were two kinds, the "wild" and the "tame"; and it was the wild kind that was "nourished up in gardens," according to Parkinson, who describes the plant as having "small, long, green leaves, finely cut, almost like fennel and the branches ending in a long spike of hollow flowers with a long spur behind them. They are of several colors: bluish purple, or white, or ash color, or red, paler or deeper, and parti-colored of two colors in a flower.

"They are called diversely by divers writers as Consolida regulis, Calearis flos, Flos regius, Buccinum Romanorum, and Cuminum silvestre alterum Dioscoridis; but the most usual name with us is Delphinium. But whether it be the true Delphinium of Dioscorides, or the Poet's Hyacinth, or the Flower of Ajax, another place is fitter to discuss than this. We call them in English Larks-heels, Larkspurs, Larkstoes, or claws, and Monks-hoods. There is no use of any of these in Physicke in these days that I know, but are wholly spent for their flowers sake."

A modern botanist remarks:

"The gardener's ideal has been the full-flowered spike with a goodly range of colors on the chord of blue. We think of larkspur as blue. Some of these blues are pale as the sky, some pure cobalt, others indigo and still others are a strange broken blue, gorgeous and intense, yet impure, glittering on the surface as if it were strewn with broken glass, and sometimes darkened into red. The center of a larkspur is often grotesque; the hairy petals suggest a bee at the heart of a flower, and the flower itself looks like a little creature poised for flight. In structure the garden race has changed very little from the primitive type, though that type has wandered far from the simplicity of the buttercup, which names the Ranunculacæ. Whatever path of evolution the larkspur has trod, it is very clear that the goal at which it has arrived is cross-fertilization by means of the bee. At some time along the path the calix took on the duties of the corolla, became highly colored, developed a spur, while at the same time the corolla lessened both in size and in importance. The stamens mature before the pistil and are so placed that the bee cannot get at the honey without covering its head with pollen which it then bears to another flower."

The name of Monk's-hood is also given to the Blue Helmet-flower, or aconite.

See p. 248.

Yellow Lark's-heels is a name our Elizabethan forefathers gave to the Nasturtium Indicum, a plant found in the West Indies and taken by the early Spanish explorers to Spain, whence it traveled to all parts of Europe.

"It is now very familiar in most gardens of any curiosity," says Parkinson. "The likeness of this flower, having spurs, or heels, is of so great beauty and sweetness withall that my Garden of Delight cannot be unfurnished of it. The flowers are of an excellent gold yellow color and grow all along the stalks. In the middle of each of the three lower leaves there is a little long spot, or streak, of an excellent crimson color, with a long heel, or spur, behind, hanging down. The whole flower hath a fine small scent, very pleasing, which, being placed in the middle of some Carnations, or Gilloflowers (for they are in flower at the same time), make a delicious Tussiemussie, as they call it, or Nosegay, both for sight and scent. Monardus and others call it Flos sanguineus of the red spots in the flower, as also Nastnerzo de las Indias, which is Nasturtium Indicum; and we thereafter in English, Indian Cresses. Yet it may be called from the form of the flowers Yellow Lark's heels."

This flower is phosphorescent and is said to emit sparks, which are visible in the dark.

VII

Pansies for Thoughts and Poppies for Dreams

PANSY (Viola tricolor). "Pansies--that's for thoughts," exclaims Ophelia, as she holds out the flower that the French call pensée (thought). And it is the pansy that is "the little western flower" upon which "the bolt of Cupid fell" and made "purple with love's wound" and which "maidens call Love in Idleness,"--the flower that Oberon thus described to Puck when he sent him to gather it. The juice of it squeezed by Oberon upon Titania's eyelids and by Puck upon the Athenian youths and maidens, who were also sleeping in the enchanted wood on that midsummer night, occasioned so many fantastic happenings.

The pansy in those days was the small Johnny-Jump-Up, a variety of the violet, according to the old writers, "a little violet of three colors, blue, white and yellow." Milton noted that it was "freaked with jet." Michael Drayton showed its close relationship to the violet in the lines:

The pansy and the violet here As seeming to descend Both from one root and very fair For sweetness yet contend.

Gerard wrote in 1587:

"The stalks are weak and tender, whereupon grow flowers in form and figure like the Violet and for the most part of the same bigness, of three sundry colors, whereof it took the surname Tricolor, that is to say purple, yellow and white, or blue; by reason of the beauty and bravery of which colors they are very pleasing to the eye, for smell they have little, or none at all."

The pansy was beloved of Elizabethans: the great number of popular names it had proves this. In addition to Pansy and Johnny-Jump-Up, it was called Herb Trinity, because of the three distinct petals, which made it a flower of peculiar religious significance. Another name was Three-Faces-under-a-Hood because it had such a coquettish air. Another name was Fancy Flamey, because its amethystine colors are like those seen in the flames of burning wood; and because lovers gave it to one another it had the pet names of Meet-me-at-the-Garden-Gate, Kiss-me-at-the-Garden-Gate, Kiss-me-quick, Kiss-me, Call-me-to-you, Cuddle-me-to you, Kiss-me-ere-I-rise, Pink-of-my-John, Cupid's-flower, Love-in-Idleness, and Heartsease.

There were no "wine dark pansies" in Shakespeare's time to charm the lover of flowers and none of the splendid deep purple velvets and mauves and pale amethysts and burnt orange and lemon and claret and sherry and canary hues that delight us to-day, and which are, to use the quaint old expression, "nourished up in our gardens." The modern beauties began to be developed about 1875, chiefly by the French specialists, and, as a modern writer remarks:

"Such sizes, such combinations, such weirdness of expression in quaint faces painted upon the petals were never known before. The colors now run a marvellous range; pure-white, pure yellow, deepening to orange, and darkening to brown, as well as a bewildering variety of blues and purples and violets. The lowest note is a rich and velvety shade that we speak of as black; but there is no black in flowers.

"The pansy is the flower for all. It is cheap; it is hardy; it is beautiful; and its beauty is of an unusual and personal kind. The bright, cheerful, wistful or roguish faces look up to you with so much apparent intelligence that it is hard to believe it is all a pathetic fallacy and there is nothing there."

Whether the modern pansies should be included in a Shakespeare garden is a question for each owner of a garden to decide; but there should certainly be a goodly number of the little "Johnny-Jump-Ups."

POPPY (Papaver somniferum). Shakespeare introduces the poppy only indirectly when he speaks of the "drowsy syrup" in "Othello." The white poppy is the flower from which the sleeping potion was made. "Of Poppies," says Parkinson, "there are a great many sorts, both wild and tame; but our garden doth entertain none but those of beauty and respect. The general known name to all is Papaver, Poppie. Yet our English gentlewomen in some places call it by name Joan's Silver Pin. It is not unknown, I suppose, to any that Poppies procureth sleep." Other old names for the poppy were Corn Rose and Cheese Bowl.

Scarlet poppies in the wreath of Ceres among the wheat-ears, scarlet poppies mingled with large white-petaled daisies, and Ragged Robins belong to everybody's mental picture of midsummer days.

"We usually think of the Poppy as a coarse flower," says Ruskin, "but it is the most transparent and delicate of all the blossoms of the field. The rest, nearly all of them, depend on the texture of their surface for color. But the Poppy is painted glass; it never glows so brightly as when the sun shines through it. Whenever it is seen against the light, or with the light, always it is a flame and warms in the wind like a blown ruby."

"Gather a green Poppy bud, just when it shows the scarlet line at its side, break it open and unpack the Poppy. The whole flower is there compact in size and color, its stamens full grown, but all packed so closely that the fine silk of the petals is crushed into a million of wrinkles. When the flower opens, it seems a relief from torture; the two imprisoning green leaves are shaken to the ground, the aggrieved corolla smooths itself in the sun and comforts itself as best it can, but remains crushed and hurt to the end of its days."

Delicate and fine as is the above description, the sympathetic tribute to the poppy by Celia Thaxter does not suffer in proximity. She says:

"I know of no flower that has so many charming tricks and manners, none with a method of growth more picturesque and fascinating. The stalks often take a curve, a twist from some current of air, or some impediment, and the fine stems will turn and bend in all sorts of graceful ways, but the bud is always held erect when the time comes for it to blossom. Ruskin quotes Lindley's definition of what constitutes a poppy, which he thinks 'might stand.' This is it: 'A Poppy is a flower which has either four or six petals and two or more treasuries united in one, containing a milky stupefying fluid in its stalks and leaves and always throwing away its calix when it blossoms.'

"I muse over their seed-pods, those supremely graceful urns that are wrought with such matchless elegance of shape and think what strange power they hold within. Sleep is there and Death, his brother, imprisoned in those mystic sealed cups. There is a hint of their mystery in their shape of somber beauty, but never a suggestion in the fluttering blossom: it is the gayest flower that blows. In the more delicate varieties the stalks are so slender, yet so strong, like fine grass stems. When you examine them, you wonder how they hold even the light weight of the flower so firmly and proudly erect; and they are clothed with the finest of fine hairs up and down the stalks and over the green calix.

"It is plain to see, as one gazes over the poppy-beds on some sweet evening at sunset, what buds will bloom in the joy of next morning's first sunbeams, for these will be lifting themselves heavenward, slowly and silently, but surely. To stand by the beds at sunrise and see the flowers awake is a heavenly delight. As the first long, low rays of the sun strike the buds, you know they feel the signal! A light air stirs among them; you lift your eyes, perhaps to look at a rosy cloud, or follow the flight of a carolling bird, and when you look back again, lo! the calix has fallen from the largest bud and lies on the ground, two half-transparent light green shells, leaving the flower-petal wrinked in a thousand folds, just released from their close pressure. A moment more and they are unclosing before your eyes. They flutter out on the gentle breeze like silken banners to the sun."

It would be tempting in a Shakespeare garden to include many kinds of this joyous, yet solemn, flower; and certainly as many were common in Elizabethan gardens it would not be an anachronism to have them. However, if the space be restricted and the garden lover a purist then the white poppy only should be planted.

VIII

Crow-flowers and Long Purples

CROW-FLOWERS (Scilla nutans). These are among the flowers Ophelia wove into a wreath. The queen tells the court:

There is a willow grove ascaunt the brook, That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream. There, with fantastic garlands did she come Of crow flowers, nettles, daisies and long purples That liberal shepherds give a grosser name But our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them.

"Hamlet"; Act IV, Scene VII.

Shakespeare did not select Ophelia's flowers at random. They typified the sorrows of the gentle victim of disappointed love whose end was first madness, then suicide. The crow-flowers signified "fair maiden"; the nettles, "stung to the quick"; the daisies, "her virgin bloom"; and the long purples, "under the cold hand of Death." Thus what Shakespeare intended to convey by this code of flowers was, "A fair maiden, stung to the quick, her virgin bloom in the cold hand of Death."

It is generally supposed that the wild blue hyacinth, or harebell (Scilla nutans), a flower associated with pure and faithful love, is the crow-flower; and authority is given to this theory in the old ballad, which, of course, Shakespeare knew, called "The Deceased Maiden Lover":

Then round the meddowes did she walk Catching each flower by the stalk, Such as within the meddowes grew, As dead man's thumb and harebell blue, And as she pluckt them still cried she, "Alas! there's none ere loved like me."

Some critics have objected to the blue harebell because it is a spring flower, and it is midsummer when Ophelia drowns herself. These authorities suggest the Ragged Robin for Ophelia's crow-flower, and others again the buttercup, also called creeping crowfoot (Ranunculus repens). Bloom writes:

"It is generally assumed that the flowers are those of the meadow and that a moist one. Why? It is equally probable they are those of the shady hedge bank and that the crow-flowers are the poisonous rank Ranunculus reptans and its allies; that the nettles are the ordinary Urtica dioica not necessarily in flower, or if this be objected to on account of the stinging qualities which the distraught Ophelia might not be insensible to, its place could be taken by the white dead nettle Lamium album L. The daisies may be moon-daisies and the long purples Arum masculatum, another plant of baleful influence, with its mysterious dead white spadix bearing no very far fetched resemblance to a dead man's finger wrapped in its green winding-sheet and whose grosser name, cuckoo-pint, is ready at hand. With this selection we have plants of the same situation flowering at the same time and all more or less baneful in their influence."

The crow has given its name to many flowers. There are, indeed, more plants named for the crow than for any other bird: crowfoot, crow-toes, crow-bells (for daffodil and bluebells) crow-berry, crow-garlick, crow-leeks, crow-needles, and many others.

LONG PURPLE (Arum masculatam or Orchis mascula) is very closely related to our woodland Jack-in-the-Pulpit. It has many names: Arum; Cookoo-pint, Cookoo-pintle, Wake-Robin, Friar's-cowl, Lords-and-Ladies, Cow-and-Calves, Ramp, Starchwort, Bloody-men's-finger, and Gethsemane, as the plant is said to have been growing at the Cross and to have received some drops of the Savior's blood. This flower is mentioned in Tennyson's "A Dirge":

Round thee blow, self-pleached deep, Bramble roses, faint and pale, And long purples of the dale.

Dr. Forbes Watson writes:

"I use the old name Wake Robin because it is so full of poetry--to think of the bird aroused from sleep by the soundless ringing of the bell. Arum, or Lords and Ladies, is the more usual name."

The plant is under the dominion of Mars, so the astrologers said.

Saffron Crocus and Cuckoo-flowers

SAFFRON CROCUS (Crocus verus sativus Autumnalis). Shakespeare speaks of saffron as a color--"the saffron Wings of Iris" and "saffron to color the Warden pies." He never mentions the crocus from which the saffron was obtained, yet a Shakespeare garden should have this plant represented. Saffron had long been known in England; for in the time of Edward III a pilgrim from the East had brought, concealed in his staff, a root of the precious Arabic al zahafaran. In Shakespeare's time saffron was used for soups and sauces and to color and flavor pies, cakes, and pastry-confection. Saffron was also important medicinally, and for dyeing silks and other materials. The beautiful orange-red stigmas, the crocei odores of Virgil, were dried and the powder pressed into cakes and sold in the shops.

"The true saffron," writes Parkinson, "that is used in meats and medicines, shooteth out his narrow long green leaves first, and, after a while, the flowers, in the middle of them, appear about the end of August, in September and October, according to the soil and climate where they grow. These flowers are composed of six leaves apiece, of a murrey, or reddish purple color, having a show of blue in them. In the middle of these flowers there are some small yellow chives standing upright, which are unprofitable; but, besides these, each flower hath two, three, or four greater and longer chives hanging down, upon, or between, the leaves, which are of a fiery red color and are the true blades of saffron which are used physically, or otherwise, and no other."

The raising of saffron was a great industry. Old Tusser gave the good advice to

Pare saffron plot, Forget it not. His dwelling made trim, Look shortly for him! When harvest is gone, Then Saffron comes on; A little of ground Brings Saffron a pound.

Saffron Walden in Essex and Saffron Hill in London received their names because of the quantity of saffron crocus grown in those places.

The saffron crocus is a handsome flower, but somewhat capricious. Dr. Forbes Watson writes:

"We look at the few well selected flowers in our hand and let our mind wander in the depths of those fair-striped cups, their color so fresh, so cool, so delicate, and yet not too cool, with that central yellow stamen-column and the stigma emerging from it like a fiery orange lump. The Purple Crocus, partly from the full materials for color-contrast afforded by its interior, partly from the exceeding delicacy of tint, the lilac stripes and markings, the transparent veins and the pale watery lake which lies at the bottom of the cup, seem to bear us away to some enchanted spot, a fairy-land of color where no shadow ever falls--a land of dim eternal twilight and never fading flowers. Note, too, the differences between the Crocuses with regard to the stigma. In the Purple Crocus, where it is needed to complete the harmony of the flower, it rises long and flame-tipped out of the tall bundle of yellow stamens. Notice also the curve of the outside of the Purple Crocus cup in a well-selected flower, and observe how quiet and solemnly beautiful it is in perfect harmony with the general expression."

According to legend, the flower derived its name from a beautiful youth, Crocus, who was transformed into the flower. His love, Smilax, was changed at the same time into the delicate vine of that name. Another legend says that the flower sprang from the blood of the infant Crocus, who was accidentally killed by a disk thrown by the god Mercury. The Egyptians encircled their wine-cups with the saffron crocus; the Greeks and Romans adorned the nuptial couch with the saffron crocus; the robes of Hymen, god of marriage, were saffron-hued; and poets called the dawn saffron, or crocus-colored. Shakespeare, therefore, had authority for "the saffron wings of Iris."

Saffron is an herb of the sun and is under the rule of Leo.

CUCKOO-FLOWER (Lychnis Flos cuculi): Shakespeare mentions "cuckoo-flowers" in "King Lear," in company with troublesome weeds. Cordelia remarks:

Crown'd with rank fumiter and furrow-weeds, With burdocks, hemlocks, nettles, cuckoo-flowers, Darnel, and all the idle weeds that grow On our sustaining corn.

Act IV, Scene IV.

Shakespeare's cuckoo-flower is identified as the Ragged Robin, so called from its finely cut blue petals which have a ragged appearance. It is also known as the meadow campion, or Meadow Pink. Parkinson says: "Feathered Campions are called Armoraria pratensis and Flos cuculi. Some call them in English Crow-flowers and Cuckowe Flowers, and some call the double hereof The Fair Maid of France."

From the above we see why it is that the Ragged Robin has been identified by some authorities as Ophelia's crow-flower; for even Parkinson seems to consider the crow-flower and cuckoo-flower as identical. Some of the old herbalists give the name cuckoo-flower to the lady-smock, which is called cuckoo-buds. The cuckoo's name is given to many flowers: we have the cuckoo-flower, cuckoo-buds, cuckoo's-bread (wood-sorrel), cuckoo's-meat, cuckoo-pint (Arum maculatum), cuckoo-grass; cuckoo-hood (blue corn-flower), etc. The cuckoo-flower (Ragged Robin) is dedicated to St. Barnabas.

Pomegranate and Myrtle

THE POMEGRANATE (Punica) is a regal flower. Its burning beauty appeals to every one who loves color, for the scarlet of the pomegranate has a depth and a quality that is all its own. The crinkled silken petals, rising from a thick, red calix and set off by bright green leaves of wondrous glossy luster and prickly thorns, delight those who love beauty. Moreover, there is something luscious and strange about the pomegranate that makes us think of Oriental queens and the splendors of Babylon and Persia, ancient Egypt and Carthage. It is a flower that Dido might have worn in her hair, or Semiramis in garlands around her neck!

Shakespeare knew perfectly well what he was doing when he placed a pomegranate beneath Juliet's window, amid whose leaves and flowers the nightingale sang so beautifully. The pomegranate was exactly the flower to typify the glowing passion of the youthful lovers.

"There are two kinds of pomegranate trees," writes Parkinson, "the one tame or manured, bearing fruit; the other wild, which beareth no fruit, because it beareth double flowers, like as the Cherry, Apple and Peach-tree with double blossoms.

"The wild Pomegranate (Balustium maius sive Malus Punica) is like unto the tame in the number of purplish branches, having thorns and shining fair green leaves, somewhat larger than the former. From the branches likewise shoot forth flowers far more beautiful than those of the tame, or manured, sort, because they are double, and as large as a double Province Rose, or rather more double, of an excellent bright crimson color, tending to a silken carnation, standing in brownish cups or husks, divided at the brims usually into four, or five, several points like unto the former, but that in this kind there never followeth any fruit, no not in the country where it is naturally wild. The wild, I think, was never seen in England before John Tradescant, my very loving good friend, brought it from the parts beyond the seas and planted it in his Lord's Garden at Canterbury. The rind of the Pomegranate is used to make the best sort of writing Ink, which is durable to the world's end."

The pomegranate was from the dawn of history a favorite with Eastern peoples. It is represented in ancient Assyrian and Egyptian sculpture and had a religious significance in connection with several Oriental cults.

The tree was abundant in ancient Egypt and the fruit was such a favorite of the Israelites that one complaint against the desert into which Moses led them was the charge that it was "no place of pomegranates," and Moses had to soothe the malcontents by promising that the pomegranate would be among the delights of Canaan, "a land of wheat and barley, vines and fig-trees and pomegranates, a land of olive oil and honey." The pomegranate was one of the commonest fruits of Canaan, and several places were named after it--Rimmon. The Jews employed the pomegranate in their religious ceremonies. On the hem of Aaron's sacred robe pomegranates were embroidered in blue and purple and scarlet alternating with golden bells,--an adornment that was copied from the ancient kings of Persia. The pomegranate was also carved on the capitals of the pillars of the Temple of Jerusalem. Solomon said to his bride, "I will cause thee to drink of spiced wine of the juice of my pomegranates." There is a tradition that the pomegranate was the fruit of the Tree of Life and that it was the pomegranate that Eve gave to Adam.

The Romans called it the Carthaginian apple. The pomegranate abounded in Carthage and derives its botanical name, Punica, from this place. Pliny says that the pomegranate came to Rome from Carthage; but its original home was probably Persia or Babylon. It was early introduced into Southern Europe and was taken to Spain from Africa. Granada took its name from the fruits and the Arms of the province display a split pomegranate. Around Genoa and Nice there are whole hedges of it--rising to the height sometimes of twenty feet. It was introduced into England in Henry VIII's time, carried there among others by Katharine of Aragon, who used it for her device. Gerard grew pomegranates in his garden. Many legends are connected with the pomegranate, not the least being that of Proserpine. When the distracted Ceres found her daughter had been carried off by Pluto, she begged Jupiter to restore her. Jupiter replied that he would do so if she had eaten nothing in the realms of the Underworld. Unfortunately, Pluto had given her a pomegranate and Proserpine had eaten some of the seeds. She could not return. The sorrow of Ceres was so great that a compromise was made and the beautiful maiden thereafter spent six months in the Underworld with her husband and six months with her mother above ground--a beautiful story of the life of the seed!

In nearly all the legends of the East in which the word "apple" is mentioned it is the pomegranate that is intended. It is said to have been the fruit presented by Paris to Venus, and it is always associated with love and marriage.

In Christian art the pomegranate is depicted as bursting open and showing the seeds. This is interpreted as both a promise and an emblem of hope in immortality. St. Catharine, the mystical bride of Christ, is sometimes represented with a pomegranate in her hand. The infant Savior is also often represented as holding the fruit and offering it to the Virgin: Botticelli's "Madonna of the Melagrana" is a famous example.

There is also a legend that because the pomegranate was planted on the grave of King Eteocles, the fruit has exuded blood ever since. The number of seeds has caused it to become the symbol of fecundity, generation, and wealth.

MYRTLE (Myrtus latifolia) was looked upon in Shakespeare's time as a delicate and refined rarity, emblem of charming beauty and denoting peacefulness, plenty, repose, and love. Shakespeare makes Venus and Adonis meet under a myrtle shade; he speaks of "the soft myrtle" in "Measure for Measure"; and he alludes "to the moon-dew on the myrtle leaf," which is as delicate a suggestion of the evening perfume as the "morning roses newly washed with dew" is of the scents at dawn.

"We nourish Myrtles with great care," says Parkinson, "for the beautiful aspect, sweet scent and rarity, as delights and ornaments for a garden of pleasure, wherein nothing should be wanting that art, care and cost might produce and preserve.

"The broad-leafed Myrtle riseth up to the height of four or five foot at the most with us, full of branches and leaves, growing like a small bush, the stem and elder branches whereof are covered with a dark colored bark, but the young with a green and some with a red, especially upon the first shooting forth, whereon are set many fresh green leaves very sweet in smell and very pleasant to behold, so near resembling the leaves of the Pomegranate tree that groweth with us that they soon deceive many that are not expert therein, being somewhat broad and long and pointed at the ends, abiding always green. At the joints of the branches, where the leaves stand, come forth the flowers upon small footstalks, every one by itself, consisting of five small white leaves, with white threads in the middle, smelling also very sweet."

According to the Greeks, Myrtle was a priestess of Venus and an especial favorite of the goddess, who, wishing to preserve her from a too ardent suitor, turned her into this plant, which continues odorous and green throughout the year. Having the virtue of creating and preserving love and being consecrated to Venus, the myrtle was symbolic of love. Consequently it was used for the wreaths of brides, as the orange-blossom is to-day. Venus wore a wreath of myrtle when Paris awarded her the Golden Apple for beauty,--perhaps in memory of the day when she sprang from the foam of the sea and, wafted ashore by Zephyrus, was crowned with myrtle by the Morning Hours! Myrtle was always planted around the temples dedicated to Venus.

Rapin writes:

When once, as Fame reports, the Queen of Love In Ida's valley raised a Myrtle grove, Young wanton Cupids danced a summer's night Round the sweet place by Cynthia's silver light. Venus this charming green alone prefers, And this of all the verdant kind is hers: Hence the bride's brow with Myrtle wreath is graced, Hence in Elysian Fields are myrtles said To favor lovers with their friendly shade, There Phædra, Procris (ancient poets feign) And Eriphyle still of love complain Whose unextinguished flames e'en after death remain.

The Romans always displayed myrtle lavishly at weddings, feasts, and on all days celebrating victories. With the Hebrews the myrtle was the symbol of peace; and among many Oriental races there is a tradition that Adam brought a slip of myrtle from the Garden of Eden because he considered it the choicest of fragrant flowers.

The myrtle was early loved in England. In one of the old Roxburgh Ballads of the Fifteenth Century a lover presses his suit by promising:

And I will make the beds of Roses, And a thousand fragrant posies; A cap of flowers and a kirtle Embroidered with leaves of myrtle.

In those days and long afterward there was a saying that "if you want to be sure of your myrtle taking root, then you must spread out your dress grandly and look proud" when you are planting your slip. We can imagine one of the Fifteenth Century ladies spreading her voluminous and flowing robes with majestic grace and holding her head adorned with the tall pointed cap, or hennin, with veil fluttering from its peak as she planted the little flower in her tiny walled Garden of Delight!

There is a saying, too, that one must never pass a sweet myrtle bush without picking a spray. The flowering myrtle is considered the luckiest of all plants to have in the window, but it must be watered every day.

Autumn

"HERBS OF GRACE" AND "DRAMS OF POISON"

Rosemary and Rue

ROSEMARY (Rosmarinus officinalis). Rosemary "delights in sea-spray," whence its name. "The cheerful Rosemary," as Spenser calls it, was in high favor in Shakespeare's day. The plant was not only allowed a corner in the kitchen-garden; but it was trained over arbors and allowed to run over the mounds and banks pretty much at its own sweet will. "As for Rosemarie," said Sir Thomas More, "I let it run all over my garden walls, not only because my bees love it, but because it is the herb sacred to remembrance, and, therefore, to friendship; whence a spray of it hath a dumb language that maketh it the chosen emblem at our funeral-wakes and in our burial-grounds."

Ophelia handed a sprig of rosemary to her brother with the words: "There's rosemary; That's for remembrance; pray you, love, remember." Probably she knew the old song in the "Handful of Pleasant Delights" where occurs the verse:

Rosemary is for remembrance Between us day and night, Wishing that I might always have You present in my sight.

See p. 127.

Rosemary was used profusely at weddings among the decorations and the strewings on the floor. A sprig of it was always placed in the wine to insure the bride's happiness.

The herb was also conspicuous at funerals, naturally enough as the herb was emblematic of remembrance. The Friar in "Romeo and Juliet" exclaims:

Dry up your tears and stick your rosemary On this fair corse.

Act IV, Scene V.

Sometimes the plant was associated with rue as when in "The Winter's Tale" Perdita says,

Give me those flowers, Dorcas:--reverend sirs, For you there's rosemary and rue; these keep Seeming and savour the whole winter through.

Act IV, Scene III.

Most important was rosemary at Christmas-tide. It had a place among the holly, bay, ivy, and mistletoe to which it added its peculiar and delicious perfume. Moreover, it was said that rosemary brought happiness to those who used it among the Christmas decorations.

Rosemary also garlanded that most important dish of ceremony--the boar's head, which the butler (or sewer) bore into the hall of great houses and famous institutions, like the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge and the City Companies, on a silver dish, preceded by a flourish of trumpets. The carol he sung began:

The boar's head in hand bring I, With garland gay and rosemary.

Lyte said: "Rosemary comforteth the brain and restoreth speech, especially the conserve made of the flowers thereof with sugar." Worn on the person it was thought to strengthen the memory and to make the wearer successful in everything. The famous Hungary-water, so favorite a perfume in the days of Elizabeth and after, was distilled from rosemary. The leaves were used as a flavor in cooking (just as the Italians use it to-day). Placed in chests and wardrobes, rosemary preserved clothing from insidious moth. According to astrologers, rosemary was an herb of the sun.

"The common Rosemary (Libanotis Coronaria sive Rosmarinum vulgare) is so well known," says Parkinson, "through all our land, being in every woman's garden, that it were sufficient to name it as an ornament among other sweet herbs and flowers in our gardens, seeing every one can describe it; but that I may say something of it, it is well observed, as well in this our Land (where it hath been planted in Noblemen's and great men's gardens against brick walls) as beyond the Seas in the natural places where it groweth, that it riseth up unto a very great height, with a great and woody stem of that compass that, being cloven out into thin boards, it hath served to make lutes, or such-like instruments, and here with carpenter's rules and to divers other purposes, branching out into divers and sundry arms that extend a great way and from them again into many other smaller branches whereon are set at several distances at the joints, many very narrow long leaves, green above and whitish underneath, among which come forth toward the tops of the stalks, divers sweet gaping flowers, of a pale or bleak bluish color, many set together, standing in whitish husks. The whole plant as well, leaves as flowers, smelleth exceeding sweet.

"Rosemary is called by the ancient writers Libanotis, but with this difference, Stephanomatica, that is Coronararia, because there were other plants called Libanotis, that were for other uses, as this for garlands, where flowers and sweet herbs were put together. The Latins called it Rosmarinum. Some would make it to be Cueorum nigrum of Theophrastus, as they would make Lavender to be his Cueorum album, but Matthiolus hath sufficiently confuted that error.

"Rosemary is almost of as great use as Bays or any other herb, both for inward and outward remedies and as well for civil as physical purposes. Inwardly for the head and heart; outwardly for the sinews and joints. For civil uses, as all do know, at weddings, funerals, etc., to bestow among friends; and the physical are so many that you might be as well tired in the reading as I in the writing, if I should set down all that might be said of it."

RUE (Ruta graveolus). Rue was a much valued plant in Shakespeare's time. There were many superstitions about it which seem to have been survivals from ancient days, for rue is supposed to have been the moly which Homer says Mercury gave to Ulysses to withstand the enchantments of Circe. Miraculous powers were attributed to rue: it was said to quicken the sight, to stir up the spirits, to sharpen the wit, to cure madness, and to cause the dumb to speak. It was also an excellent antidote against poison and the very smell of it insured preservation against the plague. Rue was, therefore, very popular and was much used as a disinfectant.

Parkinson tells us:

Garden Rue (Ruta), or Herbe Grace, groweth up with hard whitish woody stalks whereon are set divers branches of leaves being divided into many small ones, which are somewhat thick and round pointed, of a bluish-green color. The flowers stand at the tops of the stalks, consisting of four small yellow leaves, with a green button in the middle, and divers small yellow threads about it, which growing ripe, contain within them small black seeds.

"The many good properties whereunto Rue serveth hath, I think, in former times caused the English name of Herbe Grace to be given unto it. For without doubt it is a most wholesome herb, although bitter and strong. Some do wrap up a bead roll of the virtues of Rue, as Macer the poet and others, in whom you shall find them set down to be good for the head, eyes, breast, liver, heart, spleen, etc."

Gerard quaintly said:

"It is reported that if a man be anointed with the juice of rue, the bitings of serpents, scorpions, wasps, etc., will not hurt him. When the weasel is to fight with the serpent, she armeth herself by eating rue against the might of the serpent."

Another quaint idea was that rue throve best if a clipping from the plant was stolen from a neighbor's garden. Like rosemary, rue was considered by the astrologers as an herb of the sun and was placed under the sign of Leo.

Rue was also called the herb of grace and the "serving man's joy." Shakespeare frequently refers to the herb o' grace: once in connection with salad in "All 's Well That Ends Well."

See p. 237.

Ophelia has rue among her flowers when she distributes appropriate blossoms to the courtiers. She says:

There's rue for you; and some for me; We may call it herb of grace o' Sundays. Oh, you must wear your rue with a difference.

Again we find rue in the Duke of York's garden in "King Richard II." After the sad queen and her ladies have departed, bewailing the news of the king's deposition, the gardener, looking after them, exclaims:

Poor queen! So that thy state might be no worse, I would my skill were subject to thy curse.-- Here did she fall a tear; here, in this place, I'll set a bank of rue, sour herb of grace: Rue, even for ruth, here shortly shall be seen, In the remembrance of a weeping queen.

Act III, Scene IV.

Lavender, Mints, and Fennel

LAVENDER (Lavendula Spica). "Hot lavender," Perdita calls it. Why is this? Turning to Gerard for an explanation, we find he says: "Lavender is hot and dry in the third degree and of a substance consisting of many airy and spiritual parts." Gerard had lavender in his garden and so did Parkinson, who says:

"It is called of some Nardus Italica and Lavendula, the greater is called Fœmina and the lesser Mas. We do call them generally Lavender, or Lavender Spike, and the Lesser Spike. Lavender is little used in physic but outwardly: the oil for cold and benumbed parts and is almost wholly spent with us for to perfume linen, apparrell, gloves, leather, etc., and the dried flowers to comfort and dry up the moisture of a cold brain.

"Our ordinary Garden Lavender riseth up with a hard woody stem about the ground parted into many small branches whereon are set whitish long and narrow leaves by couples; from among which riseth up naked square stalks with two leaves at a joint and at the top divers small husks standing round about them formed in long or round heads or spikes with purple gaping flowers springing out of each of them. The heads of the flowers are used to be put among linen and apparrell."

Because of its scent, lavender was often included in the nosegay. Lavender was much loved by sweethearts. In the "Handful of Pleasant Delights" (1584) it is described thus:

Lavender is for lovers true, Whichever more be saine, Desiring always for to have Some pleasure for their pain. And when that they obtainèd have The Love that they require, Then have they all their perfect joy And quenched is the fire.

Lavender belongs to the crowfoot family, and therefore is related to the columbine, buttercup, and monk's-hood (aconite). The ancients used it in their baths, whence the name from the Latin lavare, to wash. The Elizabethans loved, as we do to-day, to place bags of dried lavender among the household linen.

MINTS (Mentha). Mints occur in Perdita's list with "hot lavender, thyme and savory." Although many kinds of mint were cultivated in gardens, Parkinson mentions only three:

"The Red Mint, or Brown Mint, with dark green nicked leaves, reddish flowers and of a reasonable good scent; Speare Mint, greener and paler leaves, with flowers growing in long ears, or spikes, of a pale red, or blush, color; and Parti-colored, or White Mint, with leaves more nicked, half white and half green, and flowers in long heads, close set together of a bluish color.

"Mints are oftentimes used in baths with Balm and other herbs as a help to comfort and strengthen the nerves and sinews, either outwardly applied or inwardly drunk. Applied with salt, it is a good help for the biting of a mad dog. It is used to be boiled with mackerel and other fish. Being dried, it is often and much used with pennyroyal to put into puddings, as also among pease that are boiled for pottage."

In Elizabethan days it was the custom to strew churches with mint. In an Elizabethan play, "Appius and Virginia," these lines occur:

Thou knave, but for thee ere this time of day My lady's fair pew had been strewed full gay With primroses, cowslips and violets sweet, With mints, with marigold and marjoram meek.

Pliny said "the smell of mint doth stir up the mind and taste to a greedy desire of meat." This carries mint-sauce back into antiquity! Medieval writers believed that the smell of mint refreshed the head and memory; and in Medieval days the herb was dedicated to the Virgin and called Herba Sanctæ Mariæ and Menthe de Notre Dame. The ancients dedicate it to Venus; hence it was used as a garland for brides--corona Veneris. The old myth had it that Menthe was a nymph beloved of Pluto and transformed into an herb by Proserpina who had now become sufficiently interested in the husband who had carried her off against her will to be jealous.

FENNEL (Fœniculum vulgare). Falstaff speaks of fennel as a relish for conger in "King Henry IV"; and Ophelia presents fennel to the King to clear his sight just as she gave rosemary to Laertes to refresh his memory, for according to a belief held by Pliny: "Fennel hath a wonderful property to mundify our sight and take away the film, or web, that overcasteth and dimmeth our eyes."

Act II, Scene IV.

"There's fennel for you and columbines" ("Hamlet"; Act IV, Scene V).

"There are three sorts of Fennel," says Parkinson, "whereof two are sweet." The one of them is the ordinary sweet fennel whose seeds are larger and yellower than the common. The other sweet Fennel is not much known and called Cardus Fennel by those that sent it out of Italy. Fennel is of great use to trim up and strew upon fish, as also to boil, or put among fish of divers sorts, Cowcumbers pickled and other fruits, etc. The roots are used with parsley roots to be boiled in broths and drinks. The seed is much used to be put into pippin pies and divers other such baked fruits, as also into bread to give it the better relish.

"The Sweet Cardus Fennel being sent by Sir Henry Wotton to John Tradescant had likewise a large direction with it how to dress it, for they used to white it after it hath been transplanted for their uses, which by reason of the sweetness by nature and the tenderness of art causeth it to be most delightful to the taste, especially with them that are accustomed to feed on green herbs."

Another ancient belief preserved by Pliny was "that serpents eat fennel because it restored their youth by causing them to cast their old skins and they recovered their sight by eating the plant."

The flowers of the fennel are yellow.

The Greek name for fennel is marathon. The Battle of Marathon took its name from the plant. The story goes that a youth named Pheidippides ran to Sparta to seek aid for Athens when the Persian fleet appeared, and he was told that the Spartans could not come until after the full moon. Very disheartened, he was returning to Athens when Pan appeared to him and promised victory, giving the youth a piece of fennel as a token of his prophecy. The battle took place on a field full of fennel and was known henceforth as the Battle of Marathon (490 B. C.). Statues of the youth always represented him as holding a sprig of fennel. Browning has told the story in his "Pheidippides."

III

Sweet Marjoram, Thyme, and Savory

MARJORAM (Origanum vulgare) was a favorite plant in Tudor and Stuart times. An old writer informs us that "Sweet Marjoram is not only much used to please the outward sense in nosegays and in the windows of houses, as also in sweet powders, sweet bays and sweet washing waters, but is also of much use in physic."

Perdita classes it with hot lavender and savory. Shakespeare, appreciating its delicate and delightful scent, brings this out most beautifully in his "Sonnet XCIX":

The forward violet thus did I chide:-- Sweet thief, whence didst thou steal thy sweet that smells If not from my love's breath? The purple pride Which on thy soft cheek for complexion dwells, In my love's veins thou hast too grossly dyed. The lily I condemnèd for thy hand, And buds of marjoram had stolen thy hair.

"The Winter's Tale"; Act IV, Scene III.

This comparison is even more lovely than Milton's description of Sabrina with her "loose braid of amber-dropping hair."

In Shakespeare's time several species were grown: the common, the winter, and the sweet. They were all favorite pot-herbs and were used in salads, if we may believe the Clown in "All's Well That Ends Well":

LAFEN. 'Twas a good lady, 'twas a good lady; we may pick a thousand sallets ere we light on such another herb.

CLOWN. Indeed, sir, she was the Sweet Marjoram of the sallet, or, rather, the Herb of Grace.

LAFEN. They are not sallet-herbs, you knave, they are nose-herbs.

CLOWN. I am no great Nebuchadnezzar; sir, I have not much skill in grass.

Act IV, Scene V.

Parkinson writes:

"The common Sweet Marjoram (Marierome) is a low herb, little above a foot high, full of branches and small whitish, soft, roundish leaves, smelling very sweet. At the tops of the branches stand divers small, scaly heads, like unto knots, of a whitish green color, out of which come, here and there, small, white flowers, and afterward small reddish seed. Called Mariorama in Latin, it is taken of most writers to be the Amaracus, or Sampsuchum, of Dioscorides, Theophrastus and Pliny."

According to the Greek myth a young man named Amarakos was employed in the household of the King of Cyprus. One day when he was carrying a vase of perfumes he dropped it, and he was so much humiliated by his carelessness that he fell and lost consciousness. The gods then changed him into the sweet herb amarakos, or amaracus, which is the Greek name for this plant. Rapin thought it owed its existence to Venus:

And tho' Sweet Marjoram will your garden paint With no gay colors, yet preserve the plant, Whose fragrance will invite your kind regard When her known virtues have her worth declared: On Simois' shore fair Venus raised the plant, Which from the Goddess' touch derived her scent.

THYME (Thymus Serpyllum). Thyme has always been appreciated by those who delight in aromatic perfume. It was one of those plants that Lord Bacon said were so delicious when trodden upon and crushed. Thyme was the symbol for sweetness in Elizabethan days.

And sweet thyme true

was a favorite expression. "Sweet thyme true" occurs in connection with roses, "maiden pinks," and daisies in the song in "The Two Noble Kinsmen."

Act I, Scene I.

Fairies were thought to be particularly fond of thyme, and that is one reason why Shakespeare covered the bank where Titania was wont to sleep with wild thyme. The other reason was that he chose the sweetest flowers for perfume for the canopy and couch of the Fairy Queen: musk-roses, eglantine, honeysuckle, violets, and wild thyme mingling the most delicious of scents. The word comes from the Greek and Latin thymum. Thyme covered Mount Hymettus and gave to the honey produced there a particularly delicious aromatic flavor. The "honey of Mount Hymettus" became a proverb. Hybla in Sicily was no less famed for its thyme, and, consequently, its honey. Thyme is especially a "bee-plant"; and those who would see their gardens full of bees would do well to plant thyme with lavish hand. Ladies used to embroider a bee hovering over a sprig of thyme on the scarves they gave to their lovers--a symbol of action and honor. Thyme, too, was supposed to renew the spirits of man and beast and it was deemed a powerful antidote against melancholy.

Turning to our old friend, Parkinson, we find that

"The ordinary garden Thyme (Thymus vulgatius sive durius) is a small, low, woody plant with brittle branches and small, hard, green leaves, as every one knoweth, having small white purplish flowers standing round about the tops of the stalks. The seed is small and brown, darker than Marjoram. The root is woody and abideth well divers Winters.

"To set down all the particular uses whereunto Thyme is applied were to weary both the writer and the reader. I will but only note out a few, for besides the physical uses to many purposes for the head, stomach, spleen, etc., there is no herb almost of more use in the houses both of high and low, rich and poor, both for inward and outward occasions,--outwardly for bathings among other hot herbs and among other sweet herbs for strewings. Inwardly in most sorts of broths, with Rosemary, as also with other faseting (or rather farsing) herbs, and to make sauce for divers sorts, both fish and flesh, as to stuff the belly of a goose to be roasted and after put into the sauce and the powder with bread to strew on meat when it is roasted, and so likewise on roasted or fried fish. It is held by divers to be a speedy remedy against the sting of a bee, being bruised and laid thereon.

Farsi, stuffing.

"The wild Thyme (Serpyllum hortense sive maius), growth upright, but yet is low, with divers slender branches and small round green leaves, somewhat like unto small fine Marjoram, and smelling somewhat like unto it. The flowers grow in roundels at the tops of the branches of a purplish color. And in another of this kind they are of a pure white color. There is another also that smelleth somewhat like unto Musk, and therefore called Musk Thyme, whose green leaves are not so small as the former, but larger and longer."

SAVORY (Satureia). This herb is mentioned by Perdita. It was a great favorite in the old herb-garden and was probably introduced into England by the Romans. It is mentioned in Anglo-Saxon recipes as "savorie." Both the winter and summer savory were used as seasoning for dressing and sauces. "The Winter Savory is used as a condiment and sauce to meat, to put into puddings, sausages and such-like kinds of meat." So says an old writer, who continues: "Some do use the powder of the herb dried to mix with grated bread to bread their meat, be it fish or flesh, to give it the quicker relish."

Parkinson writes:

"The Winter Savory (Satureia sive Thymbra) is a small, low, bushy herb, very like unto hyssop, but not above a foot high, with divers small, hard branches and hard, dark, green leaves thereon, thicker set together than the former by so much, and as thick as common Hyssop, sometimes with four leaves, or more, at a joint, of a reasonable strong scent, yet not so strong or quick as the former. The flowers are of a pale purplish color, set at several distances at the tops of the stalks with leaves at the joints also with them, like the former. The root is woody with divers small strings thereat, and abideth all the winter with his green leaves. It is more usually increased by slipping, or dividing, the root and new setting it, severally again in the Spring, than by sowing the seed."

Sweet Balm and Camomile

SWEET BALM (Melissa officinalis). Sweet Anne Page commanded the elves to bestow good luck throughout Windsor Castle:

The several chairs of order look you scour With juice of balm and every precious flower.

"The Merry Wives of Windsor"; Act V, Scene V.

The Greek and Latin names, melissa, melissophyllum, and apiastrum, show that this was a bee-plant, which was still the case in Shakespeare's time.

"It is an herb," says Parkinson, "wherein bees do much delight"; and he also tells us that if balm is rubbed on the inside of the hive "it draweth others to resort thither." He goes on to describe it as follows:

"The Garden Balm hath divers square blackish green stalks and round, hard, dark, green pointed leaves growing thereon by couples, a little notched about the edges; of a pleasant sweet scent drawing near to the scent of a Lemon or Citron; and therefore of some called Citrago. The flowers grow about the tops of the stalks at certain distances, being small and gaping, of a pale carnation color, almost White. The roots fasten themselves strongly on the ground and endure many years. It is increased by dividing the roots; for the leaves die down to the ground every year, leaving no show of leaf or stalk in the Winter. Balm is often used among other hot and sweet herbs to make baths and washings for men's bodies in the Summer time. The herb without all question is an excellent help to comfort the heart, as the very smell may induce any so to believe. It is also good to heal green wounds being made into salve. I verily think that our forefathers hearing of the healing and comfortable properties of the true natural Balm and finding this herb to be so effectual gave it the name of Balm in imitation of his properties and virtues."

Arabian physicians recommended balm for affections of the heart and hypochondria.

CAMOMILE (Anthemis nobilis). Falstaff points a moral in the lowly camomile: "Though the Camomile the more it is trodden on the faster it grows, yet youth the more it is wasted the sooner it wears." A similar idea occurs in Lyly's "Euphues" (1588): "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."

"King Henry IV"; Part I, Act II, Scene IV.

Emblem of patience, the camomile was often used to point a moral and to teach patience. In "The More the Merrier" (1608), a character observes:

The Camomile shall teach thee patience, Which riseth best when trodden most upon.

Because its scent was brought out when trodden upon, camomile was planted in and along walks and on the edges of flower-beds. Its low growth and delicious perfume made it a very attractive border plant.

In Lawson's "New Orchard" (about 1616) there are instructions for "Large walks, broad and long, close and open like the Tempe groves in Thessaly, raised with gravel and sand, having seats and banks of Camomile: all this delights the mind and brings health to the body."

In Shakespeare's day camomile grew in "the wild field by Richmond Green."

"Our ordinary Camomill [says Parkinson] is well known to all to have many small trailing branches set with very fine small leaves and spreading thick over the ground taking root as it spreadeth; the tops of the branches have white flowers with yellow thrums in the middle, very like unto the Featherfew, but somewhat greater not so hard but more soft and gentle in handling and the whole herb is to be of a very sweet scent.

"Camomill is called Anthemis Leucanthemis and Leucanthemum of the whiteness of the flowers; and Chamœmœlum of the corrupted Italian name Camomilla. Some call the naked Camomill Chrysanthemum odoratum. The double Camomill is called by some Chamœmœlum Romanum flore multiplici.

"Camomill is put to divers and sundry uses both for pleasure and profit; both for inward and outward diseases, both for the sick and the sound, in bathings to comfort and strengthen the sound and to ease pains in the diseased. The flowers boiled in posset drink provoketh sweat and helpeth to expel colds, aches and other griefs. A syrup made of the juice of the double Camomill with the flowers and white wine is used by some against jaundice and dropsy."

Dian's Bud and Monk's-hood Blue

DIAN'S BUD (Artemesia). This plant is nothing more nor less than absinthe, or wormwood. It is mentioned under its poetic name by Shakespeare in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" when Oberon bids Puck find him the "little purple flower called Love in Idleness," the juice of which placed on sleeping eyelids would make man, or woman, madly dote on the first object beheld on awakening, and with which he intended to anoint the eyelids of the sleeping Titania. He also told the mischievous sprite that the charm could be removed with another herb--Dian's bud, the flower sacred to the goddess Diana. Later in the play, touching the eyes of the spellbound fairy with this second herb, Oberon pronounces the following incantation:

Be as thou was wont to be, See as thou was wont to see; Dian's bud on Cupid's flower Hath such force and blessed power.

From the earliest times absinthe was associated with sorcery and was used for incantations. Pliny says the traveler who carried it about him would never grow weary and that it would drive away any lurking devils and counteract the evil eye. Ovid calls it absinthium and speaks of its bitterness.

The Greeks also called it artemesia after the goddess Artemis, or Diana, and made it a moon-plant. Very poetically, therefore, Shakespeare alludes to it as "Dian's Bud,"--and most appropriately does it appear in the moon-lit forest. Gerard, however, quaintly says that is was named for Queen Artemesia, wife of Mausolus, King of Caria, who built the Mausoleum, which was one of the "Seven Wonders of the World." The ancients liked its flavor in their wine as many people still like vermouth, one of its infusions.

In Shakespeare's time people hung up sprays of wormwood to drive away moths and fleas; and there was a homely verse:

Whose chamber is swept and wormwood is thrown No flea for his life dare abide to be known.

Wormwood was also kept in drawers and closets. To dream of the plant was of good augury: happiness and domestic enjoyment were supposed to result. Mugwort is another old name for the plant.

MONK'S-HOOD (Aconitum Napellus). This plant has three names: monk's-hood, wolf's-bane, and aconite. Aconite is the "dram of poison" that Romeo calls for, and Shakespeare alludes to aconitum in "King Henry IV," where the king, addressing Thomas of Clarence, compares its strength and that of gunpowder. "Though it do work as strong as aconitum or rash gunpowder." Aconite was supposed in Elizabethan days to be an antidote against the most deadly poison. Ben Jonson in "Sejanus" makes one of his characters remark:

I have heard that aconite Being timely taken hath a healing might Against the scorpion's sting.

Lord Bacon in "Sylva" calls Napellus "the most powerful poison of all vegetables."

"Romeo and Juliet"; Act V, Scene I.

Part II, Act IV, Scene IV.

Act III, Scene III.

Yet despite its poisonous qualities, an English garden lover writes, "the plant has always held, and deservedly, a place among the ornamental plants of our gardens; its stately habit and its handsome leaves and flowers make it a favorite."

The ancients, who were unacquainted with mineral poisons, regarded aconite as the most deadly of all poisons and believed that Hecate had caused the plant to spring from the venomous foam frothing from the mouth of the three-headed dog, Cerberus, when Hercules took him from Pluto's dark realm on one of his Twelve Labors. Ovid describes the aconite as

A weed by sorcerers renowned The strongest constitution to compound Called aconite, because it can unlock All bars and force its passage through a rock.

In Greece it was also known as Wolf's-bane (Lycoctonum), and it was thought that arrow-heads rubbed with it would kill wolves. Turner quaintly writes in his "Herbal" (1568):

"This of all poisons is the most hastie poison, howbeit Pliny saith this herb will kill a man if he take it, except it find in a man something to kill. Let our Londoners which have of late received this blue Wolf's-bane, otherwise called Monk's Cane, take heed that the poison of the root of this herb do not more harm than the freshness of the flower hath done pleasure. Let them not say but they are warned."

Parkinson's name for it is Napellus verus flore cœruleo (Blue Helmet-Flower, or Monk's-hood).

"The Helmet Flower," he writes, "hath divers leaves of a fresh green color on the upper side and grayish underneath, much spread abroad and cut into many slits and notches. The stalk riseth up two or three foot high, beset to the top with the like leaves, but smaller. The top is sometimes divided into two or three branches, but more usually without, whereon stand many large flowers one above another, in form very like a hood, or open helmet, being composed of five leaves, the uppermost of which and the greatest is hollow, like unto a helmet, or headpiece: two other small leaves are at the sides of the helmet, closing it like cheeks, and come somewhat under, and two other which are the smallest hang down like labels, or as if a close helmet were opened and some pieces hung by, of a perfect, or fair, blue color (but grow darker having stood long) which causeth it to be so nourished up in Gardens that their flowers, as was usual in former times (and yet is in many country places) may be laid among green herbs in windows and rooms for the Summertime; but although their beauty may be entertained for the uses aforesaid, yet beware they come not near your tongue or lips, lest they tell you to your cost, they are not so good as they seem to be. In the middest of the flower, when it is open and gapeth wide, are seen certain small threads like beards, standing about a middle head, which, when the flower is past, groweth into three or four, or more, small blackish pods, containing in them black seeds. The roots are brownish on the outside and white within, somewhat big and round about and small downwards, somewhat like unto a small, short carrot root, sometimes two being joined at the head together. It is the true Napellus of the ancient writers, which they so termed from the form of a turnip called Napus in Latin."

Generally speaking the leaf and flower of the monk's-hood resemble the larkspur; and, like the larkspur and the columbine, the plant has wandered away from its original family, the buttercup tribe. The upper sepal has developed from a spur into a hood.

Winter

"WHEN ICICLES HANG BY THE WALL"

Holly and Ivy

HOLLY (Ilex aquifolium). Holly, with its beautiful red berries and unique leaf, stiff and prickly, but highly decorative, is the chief emblem of Christmas. We are continuing very ancient traditions when we hang up our Christmas wreaths and garlands. The earliest records of the human race contain references to the custom of decorating houses and temples and evergreens on occasions of rejoicing. Holly comes to us from pagan usage. Five hundred years before the birth of Christ the Romans had been celebrating their midwinter festival--the Saturnalia--commemorating the equality supposed to have existed on earth in the golden reign of Saturn. The Saturnalia was a period of general merry-making and relaxation. People gave each other presents, wished each other "Io Saturnalia," just as we wish each other "Merry Christmas," and decorated their houses and temples with evergreens, among which holly was conspicuous. The early Christians, who celebrated the birth of Christ during the Saturnalia, adorned their homes with holly for the purpose of safety. They would have been unpleasantly noticed had they left their homes undecorated. After a time holly became associated with the Christian festival itself. As the Christmas celebration spread throughout Europe and into Great Britain, local observances naturally became added to the original rites; and gradually to certain features taken over from the Saturnalia were added customs which the Germanic tribes, the Scandinavians, the Gauls, the Celts, and early Britons practised for the midwinter festival. "Thus," says a modern writer, "all the pagan winter festivals were transmuted and sanctified by the Christian Church into the beautiful Christmas festival that keeps the world's heart young and human. The Church also brought from ancient observances a number of lovable customs, such as the giving of presents, the lighting of candles, the burning of the Yule-log, the Boar's Head, the Christmas Tree, the mistletoe, the holly, laurel and other greens and the mince-pies."

At a season when everything was chosen to commemorate, or invoke, the spirit of growth, or fertility, the holly, mistletoe and ivy--all of which bear fruit in the winter--become particularly precious. Beautiful, cheery holly, with its glossy, prickly leaves and its coral bells, was a sacred plant in the childhood of the world and will continue to be a sacred plant as long as the world lasts. We may make garlands of laurel or bay-leaves, we may bind together ropes of crow's-foot or smilax, and we may bring into our rooms pots of poinsettia; but nothing takes, or will ever take, the place the holly occupies in our affections. In our literature holly is honored. It now symbolizes the spirit of Christmas as nothing else does.

One of the earliest Christmas carols, dating from the Fifteenth Century, describes a contest of Holly and Ivy for the chief place in the hall. Holly is the man and Ivy the woman. They have an argument (which is a kind of duet), each setting forth his or her claim to superiority. Finally, it is decided that Holly, with his beautiful red berries, shall reign in the hall instead of Ivy, whose berries are black. Moreover, many sweet birds are attracted to Holly; but only the owl loves Ivy.

Holly is, of course, the subject of many carols. A typical one of the Fifteenth Century is as follows:

Here comes Holly, that is so gent, Alleluia! To please all men is his intent, Alleluia! But lord and lady of the hall, Alleluia! Whosoever against Holly call, Alleluia! Whosoever against Holly do cry, Alleluia! In a lepe shall he hang full high. Alleluia! Whosoever against Holly do sing, Alleluia! He may weep and his handys wring, Alleluia!

From the above it will be seen that it was a crime to say a derogatory word about holly. Holly was not only loved for its beauty but it was a holy plant. Witches detested it and it was a charm against their evil machinations. The name comes from the Anglo-Saxon holegn. The Norse word is hulf, or hulver; and as Chaucer calls it "Hulfeere" we may conclude that holly was familiar to the people of Chaucer's time under that name.

It is somewhat singular that Shakespeare has written a song of wintry wind and holly berries to be sung in the Forest of Arden. It affords, however, a delightful contrast to the sun-lit summer woodland.

While in it holly is not actually described, Amiens's song will always remain the song of songs to holly:

Blow, blow, thou winter wind, Thou art not so unkind As man's ingratitude; Thy tooth is not so keen, Because thou art not seen, Although thy breath be rude. Heigh ho! sing heigh ho! unto the green holly: Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly. Then heigh ho the holly! This life is most jolly.

Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky, Thou dost not bite so nigh As benefits forgot; Though thou the waters warp Thy sting is not so sharp As friend remembered not. Heigh ho! sing, heigh ho! unto the green holly: Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly. Then, heigh ho! the holly! This life is most jolly.

IVY (Hedera Helix). Shakespeare mentions ivy twice: in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" where Titania, bidding Bottom sleep, says:

Sleep thou and I will wind thee in my arms ... the female ivy so Enrings the barky fingers of the elm.

and in "The Tempest," when Prospero compares his false brother with the ivy:

The ivy, which had hid my princely trunk, And suck'd my verdure out on 't.

Act IV, Scene I.

Act I, Scene II.

In the old carols and plays Ivy is always represented as a woman, and yet, although beloved, was used for the outside decorations and doorways. Ivy never had the place within that holly occupied.

As ivy clings and embraces the object near it, the plant was chosen as an emblem of confiding love and friendship. Tusser's commands are as follows: "Get Ivy and Holly, women, deck up thy house." Ivy was also used in the church decorations at Christmas-tide. In the Middle Ages ivy was a favored and most auspicious plant. An old carol says:

Ivy is soft and meke of speech, Against all bale she is bliss, Well is he that her may reach:-- Veni, coronaberis.

Ivy is green with color bright, Of all trees best she is, And that I prove will now be right:- Veni, coronaberis.

Ivy beareth berries black, God grant us all His bliss, For there we shall nothing lack:-- Veni, coronaberis.

Ivy was the crown of the Greek and Roman poets, whose myths proclaimed the plant sacred to Bacchus. Indeed the plant took its name from Bacchus (kissos) for it was said that the child was hidden under ivy when abandoned by his mother, Semele. The ivy was mingled with the grape in the crown of Bacchus and it enwreathed his thyrsus. Ivy berries eaten before wine was swallowed prevented intoxication, so Pliny says. Perhaps because of its association with Bacchus ivy was hung at the vintners' doors in England as well as on the Continent, and a reference to this custom is contained in Nash's "Summer's Last Will and Testament" (1600).

In Shakespeare's time ivy was considered a remedy against plague, which gave another reason for veneration.

England would almost cease to be England without the ivy that so luxuriantly covers the walls of old buildings and adds its soft beauty to the crumbling ruins. Everybody loves it--strangers as well as natives; and every one loves the poem that Dickens inserted into "The Pickwick Papers":

Oh, a dainty plant is the Ivy green, That creepeth o'er ruins old! On right choice food are his meals, I ween, In his cell so lone and cold. The wall must be crumbled, the stone decay'd To pleasure his dainty whim; And the mouldering dust that years have made, Is a merry meal for him. Creeping where no life is seen, A rare old plant is the Ivy green!

First, he stealeth on, though he wears no wings, And a staunch old heart has he; How closely he turneth, how close he clings, To his friend, the huge oak tree! And slily he traileth along the ground, And his leaves he gently waves, As he joyously hugs and crawleth round The rich mould of men's graves. Creeping where grim Death hath been, A rare old plant is the Ivy green!

Whole ages have fled and their works decayed, And nations have scattered been; But the stout old ivy shall never fade From its hale and hearty green. The brave old plant in its lonely days Shall fatten on the past, For the stateliest building man can raise Is the ivy's food at last. Creeping on where Time has been A rare old plant is the Ivy green!

Mistletoe and Box

THE MISTLETOE (Viscum album). The mistletoe, the "all-healer," is a mysterious and mystical plant. The Greeks venerated it. Virgil gave it to Æneas for the "Golden Bough," to guide him to the Underworld. The Scandinavians dedicated it to their goddess of love, Freya (or Freyja). The mistletoe is, however, more closely associated with the Druids than with any other race. The plant was so sacred to these strange people that it was never allowed to touch the ground. At the New Year the Druids marched in solemn procession into the forest, and the high priest climbed the oak-tree and, with a golden sickle, cut the mistletoe from the branches. Other priests stood below holding a white cloth to receive the mistletoe as it fell. The sacred plant was dipped into water and then distributed among the people, to whom it was supposed to bring good luck of all kinds.

Even to-day we do not like the "Mistletoe Bough" to fall. We say it is "unlucky"; but possibly we have unconsciously inherited from our remote ancestors a spark of reverence for the "Golden Bough."

The Welsh thought the mistletoe "pure gold," believing that it had a connection with the golden fire of the sun; and they thought also that the mistletoe absorbed the life of the oak-tree to which it clung.

The Church never sanctioned the mistletoe. It never appears, therefore, among the Christmas decorations in the churches. No edicts, however, were strong enough to banish it from the decorations of the house, and the mistletoe bough is always a feature in the home where Christmas is celebrated with picturesque traditions. The precise reason for hanging up the Mistletoe Bough is lost in antiquity; but it is possible that the particular reasons were because it has supposed miraculous powers of healing sickness and averting misfortune, and great potency in promoting fertility and bestowing prosperity. For hundreds of years the mistletoe has been reverenced alike in castle, baronial hall, manor house and farmhouse in Shakespeare's country and in the homes of rich and poor in our own country.

Undoubtedly the idea of kissing under the Mistletoe Bough was derived from the fact that the plant was dedicated to the Northern goddess of love. The old saying is that the maiden who is not kissed under the mistletoe will not be married within the coming year. The ceremony of kissing is not properly performed unless a berry is plucked off and given with each kiss to the maiden. When the berries are all gone the privilege of kissing ceases.

That mistletoe grows on the oak-tree solely is a popular error. In fact, the plant prefers the apple. Most of the English mistletoe now comes from the apple orchards of Herefordshire. Normandy sends a great deal of mistletoe to England and to our country. The strange parasite is also found on the linden, poplar, and white-thorn. When once the seed is lodged, it drives its roots deep into the branch and draws sap and nourishment from the tree. The European variety is known as Viscum album and is much forked. In the United States the ordinary mistletoe is known as Phoradendron and grows on various hardwood trees in many of the Southern States.

There is something curiously interesting about the mistletoe. It is not beautiful, the leaves are irregular and often stained and broken, the berries fall almost when looked at and the plant is stiff and woody; yet for all that there is a peculiar quality in the greenish white and waxy berries and the shape of the forked twig that makes us think of divining-rods and magical words. It has a mystic fascination for us. Shakespeare's only reference speaks of it as baleful: Tamora says in "Titus Andronicus":

The trees, through summer, yet forlorn and lean, O'ercome with moss and baleful mistletoe.

Act II, Scene III.

BOX (Buxus sempervirens). Shakespeare mentions the box once--when Sir Toby Belch and Sir Andrew Aguecheek and the Clown are in Olivia's garden and Maria, running out to tell them that Malvolio is coming, excitedly cries:

Get ye all three into the box-tree.

"Twelfth Night"; Act II, Scene V.

Every one knows how important a feature the box-bush is in English gardens and in the old American gardens that were planted after English models.

So fine in color, so deep and luxuriant in foliage, so dignified and aristocratic in its atmosphere the name box is almost synonymous with old gardens. Its acrid yet aromatic scent--most delicious after rain--is one of its characteristics.

Greek myth consecrated the box to Pluto, and the plant was said to be symbolical of the life in the Underworld which continues all the year. The ancients used it to border their flower-beds, and probably the great use of box in England comes from the Roman times. The wood was used for delicate inlay in the days of the Renaissance and also for making musical instruments.

Box is thought to be the assur-wood of the Bible. There is authority for using greenery in church decoration for in Isaiah we read: "The glory of Lebanon shall come unto thee; the fir-tree, the pine-tree, and the box together to beautify the place of my sanctuary; and I will make the places of my feet glorious."

Chap. LX, v. 13.

To dream of box, according to the astrologers of Shakespeare's time, signified a happy marriage, long life, and prosperity.

Box was used for decoration in the Tudor and Stuart days and succeeded the Christmas garlands, as Herrick sings in the time of Charles I, at Candlemas (February 2):

Down with the Rosemary and Bays, Down with the Mistletoe, Instead of Holly now upraise The greener Box for show.

The Holly hitherto did sway, Let Box now domineer Until the dancing Easter Day On Easter eve appear.

The youthful Box which now hath grace Your houses to renew, Grown old, surrender must his place Unto the crispèd Yew.

When Yew is out, then Birch comes in, And many flowers beside, Both of a fresh and fragrant kin To honor Whitsuntide.

Green rushes then and sweetest Bents, With cooler oaken boughs Come in for comely ornaments To re-adorn the house.

Thus a constant succession of decorative flowers and evergreens appeared in the houses of Old England. Every season had its appropriate flowers, each and all emblematical. It was also the same in the Church. An English writer remarks:

"Mindful of the Festivals which our Church prescribes, I have sought to make these objects of floral nature the timepieces of my religious calendar and the mementos of the hastening period of my mortality. Thus, I can light my taper to our Virgin Mother in the blossoming of the white Snowdrop, Which opens its flower at the time of Candlemas; the Lady's Smock and Daffodil remind me of the Annunciation; the blue Harebell of the Festival of St. George; the Ranunculus of the Invention of the Cross; the Scarlet Lychnis of St. John the Baptist's day; the White Lily of the Visitation of Our Lady; the Virgin's Bower of the Assumption; and Michaelmas, Martinmas, Holy Rood and Christmas have all their appropriate decorations."