The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespear, Henry Nicholson Ellacombe [read with me .TXT] 📗
- Author: Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
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The wood of the Sycamore is useful for turning and a few other purposes, but is not very durable. The sap, as in all the Maples, is full of sugar, and the pollen is very curious; "it appears globular in the microscope, but if it be touched with anything moist, the globules burst open with four valves, and then they appear in the form of a cross."—Miller.
THISTLE (see also Holy Thistle). (1) Burgundy. And nothing teemsBut hateful Docks, rough Thistles, Kecksies, Burs. Henry V, act v, sc. 2 (51). (2) Bottom. Mounsieur Cobweb, good mounsieur, get you your weapons ready in your hand, and kill me a red-hipped humble bee on the top of a Thistle; and, good mounsieur, bring me the honey-bag. Midsummer Night's Dream, act iv, sc. 1 (10).
Thistle is the old English name for a large family of plants occurring chiefly in Europe and Asia, of which we have fourteen species in Great Britain, arranged under the botanical families of Carlina, Carduus, and Onopordon. It is the recognized symbol of untidiness and carelessness, being found not so much in barren ground as in good ground not properly cared for. So good a proof of a rich soil does the Thistle give, that a saying is attributed to a blind man who was choosing a piece of land—"Take me to a Thistle;" and Tusser says—
"Much wetnes, hog-rooting, and land out of hart makes Thistles a number foorthwith to upstart. If Thistles so growing proove lustie and long, It signifieth land to be hartie and strong."
October's Husbandry (13).
If the Thistles were not so common, and if we could get rid of the associations they suggest, there are probably few of our wild plants that we should more admire: they are stately in their foliage and habit, and some of their flowers are rich in colour, and the Thistledown, which carries the seed far and wide, is very beautiful, and was once considered useful as a sign of rain, for "if the down flyeth off Coltsfoot, Dandelyon, or Thistles when there is no winde, it is a signe of rain."—Coles.
It had still another use in rustic divination—
There is a weed upon whose head grows down,
Sow Thistle 'tis y'clept, whose downy wreath
If anyone can blow off at a breath
We deem her for a maid."—Browne's Brit. Past., i, 4.
But it is owing to these pretty Thistledowns that the plant becomes a most undesirable neighbour, for they carry the seed everywhere, and wherever it is carried, it soon vegetates, and a fine crop of Thistles very quickly follows. In this way, if left to themselves, the Thistles will soon monopolize a large extent of country, to the extinction of other plants, as they have done in parts of the American prairies, and as they did in Australia, till a most stringent Act of Parliament was passed about twenty years ago, imposing heavy penalties upon all who neglected to destroy the Thistles on their land. For these reasons we cannot admit the Thistle into the garden, at least not our native Thistles; but there are some foreigners which may well be admitted. There are the handsome yellow Thistles of the South of Europe (Scolymus), which besides their beauty have a classical interest. "Hesiod elegantly describing the time of year, says,
when the Scolymus flowers, i.e., in hot weather or summer ("Op. et dies," 582). This plant crowned with its golden flowers is abundant throughout Sicily."—Hogg's Classical Plants of Sicily. There is the Fish-bone Thistle (Chamæpeuce diacantha) from Syria, a very handsome plant, and, like most of the Thistles, a biennial; but if allowed to flower and go to seed, it will produce plenty of seedlings for a succession of years. And there is a grand scarlet Thistle from Mexico, the Erythrolena conspicua ("Sweet," vol. ii. p. 134), which must be almost the handsomest of the family, and which was grown in England fifty years ago, but has been long lost. There are many others that may deserve a place as ornamental plants, but they find little favour, for "they are only Thistles."
Any notice of the Thistle would be imperfect without some mention of the Scotch Thistle. It is the one point in the history of the plant that protects it from contempt. We dare not despise a plant which is the honoured badge of our neighbours and relations, the Scotch; which is ennobled as the symbol of the Order of the Thistle, that claims to be the most ancient of all our Orders of high honour; and which defies you to insult it or despise it by its proud mottoes, "Nemo me impune lacessit," "Ce que Dieu garde, est bien gardé." What is the true Scotch Thistle even the Scotch antiquarians cannot decide, and in the uncertainty it is perhaps safest to say that no Thistle in particular can claim the sole honour, but that it extends to every member of the family that can be found in Scotland.[292:1]
Shakespeare has noticed the love of the bee for the Thistle, and it seems that it is for other purposes than honey gathering that he finds the Thistle useful. For "a beauty has the Thistle, when every delicate hair arrests a dew-drop on a showery April morning, and when the purple blossom of a roadside Thistle turns its face to Heaven and welcomes the wild bee, who lies close upon its flowerets on the approach of some storm cloud until its shadow be past away. For with unerring instinct the bee well knows that the darkness is but for a moment, and that the sun will shine out again ere long."—Lady Wilkinson.
FOOTNOTES:[292:1] See an interesting and fanciful account of the fitness of the Thistle as the emblem of Scotland in Ruskin's "Proserpina," pp. 135-139.
THORNS. (1) Ariel. Tooth'd Briers, sharp Furzes, pricking Goss, and Thorns,Which entered their frail skins. Tempest, act iv, sc. 1 (180). (2) Quince. One must come in with a bush of Thorns and a lanthorn, and say he comes in to disfigure, or to present, the person of Moonshine. Midsummer Night's Dream, act iii, sc. 1 (60). (3) Puck. For Briers and Thorns at their apparel snatch. Ibid., act iii, sc. 2 (29). (4) Prologue. This man with lanthorn, dog, and bush of Thorn,
Presenteth Moonshine. Ibid., act v, sc. 1 (136). (5) Moonshine. All that I have to say, is to tell you that the lanthorn is the moon; I, the man in the moon; this Thorn-bush, my Thorn-bush; and this dog, my dog. Ibid. (261). (6) Dumain. But, alack, my hand is sworn
Ne'er to pluck thee from thy Thorn. Love's Labour's Lost, act iv, sc. 3 (111). (7) Carlisle. The woe's to come; the children yet unborn
Shall feel this day as sharp to them as Thorn. Richard II, act iv, sc. 1 (322). (8) King Henry. The care you have of us,
To mow down Thorns that would annoy our foot,
Is worthy praise. 2nd Henry VI, act iii, sc. 1 (66). (9) Gloucester. And I—like one lost in a Thorny wood,
That rends the Thorns and is rent with the Thorns,
Seeking a way, and straying from the way. 3rd Henry VI, act iii, sc. 2 (174). (10) K. Edward. Brave followers, yonder stands the Thorny wood. Ibid., act v, sc. 4 (67). (11) K. Edward. What! can so young a Thorn begin to prick. Ibid., act v, sc. 4 (13). (12) Romeo. Is love a tender thing? It is too rough,
Too rude, too boisterous, and it pricks like Thorn. Romeo and Juliet, act i, sc. 4 (25). (13) Boult. A Thornier piece of ground. Pericles, act iv, sc. 6 (153). (14) Leontes. Which being spotted
Is goads, Thorns, Nettles, tails of wasps. Winter's Tale, act i, sc. 2 (328). (15) Florizel. But O, the Thorns we stand upon! Ibid., act iv, sc. 4 (596). (16) Ophelia. Do not, as some ungracious pastors do,
Shew me the steep and Thorny path to Heaven. Hamlet, act i, sc. 3 (47). (17) Ghost. Leave her to Heaven,
And to those Thorns that in her bosom lodge,
To prick and sting her. Ibid., act i, sc. 5 (86). (18) Bastard. I am amazed, methinks, and lose my way
Among the Thorns and dangers of this world. King John, act iv, sc. 3 (40). See also Rose, Nos. 7, 18, 22, 30, the scene in the Temple gardens; and Brier, No. 11.
Thorns and Thistles are the typical emblems of desolation and trouble, and so Shakespeare uses them; and had he spoken of Thorns in this sense only, I should have been doubtful as to admitting them among his other plants, but as in some of the passages they stand for the Hawthorn tree and the Rose bush, I could not pass them by altogether. They might need no further comment beyond referring for further information about them to Hawthorn, Briar, Rose, and Bramble; but in speaking of the Bramble I mentioned the curious legend which tells why the Bramble employs itself in collecting wool from every stray sheep, and there is another very curious instance in Blount's "Antient Tenures" of a connection between Thorns and wool. The original document is given in Latin, and is dated 39th Henry III. It may be thus translated: "Peter de Baldwyn holds in Combes, in the county of Surrey, by the service to go a wool gathering for our Lady the Queen among the White Thorns, and if he refuses to gather it he shall pay into the Treasury of our Lord the King xxs. per annum." I should almost suspect a false reading, as the editor is inclined to do, but that many other services, equally curious and improbable, may easily be found.
THYME. (1) Oberon. I know a bank where the wild Thyme blows. Midsummer Night's Dream, act ii, sc. 1 (249). (2) Iago. We will plant Nettles or sow Lettuce, set Hyssop and weed up Thyme. Othello, act i, sc. 3 (324). (See Hyssop.) (3) And sweet Time true. Two Noble Kinsmen, Introd. song.It is one of the most curious of the curiosities of English plant names that the Wild Thyme—a plant so common and so widely distributed, and that makes itself so easily known by its fine aromatic, pungent scent, that it is almost impossible to pass it by without notice—has yet no English name, and seems never to have had one. Thyme is the Anglicised form of the Greek and Latin Thymum, which name it probably got from its use for incense in sacrifices, while its other name of serpyllum pointed out its
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