_ PART I. THE PLANT-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE WORMWOOD, YEW
WORMWOOD.
(1) Rosaline.
To weed this Wormwood from your fruitful brain.
--- Love's Labour's Lost, act v, sc. 2 (857).
(2) Nurse.
For I had then laid Wormwood to my dug.
* * * * *
When it did taste the Wormwood on the nipple
Of my dug, and felt it bitter, pretty fool.
--- Romeo and Juliet, act i, sc. 3 (26).
(3) Hamlet (aside).
Wormwood, Wormwood.
--- Hamlet, act iii, sc. 2 (191).
(4)
Thy secret pleasure turns to open shame,
Thy private feasting to a public fast,
Thy smoothing titles to a ragged name,
Thy sugar'd tongue to bitter Wormwood taste.
--- Lucrece (890).
See also DIAN'S BUD.
Wormwood is the product of many species of Artemisia, a family consisting of 180 species, of which we have four in England. The whole family is remarkable for the extreme bitterness of all parts of the plant, so that "as bitter as Wormwood" is one of the oldest proverbs. The plant was named Artemisia from Artemis, the Greek name of Diana, and for this reason: "Verily of these three Worts which we named Artemisia, it is said that Diana should find them, and delivered their powers and leechdom to Chiron the Centaur, who first from these Worts set forth a leechdom, and he named these Worts from the name of Diana, Artemis, that is, Artemisias."--
Herbarium Apulaei, Cockayne's translation. The Wormwood was of very high reputation in medicine, and is thus recommended in the Stockholm MS.:
"Lif man or woman, more or lesse
In his head have gret sicknesse
Or gruiance or any werking
Awoyne he take wt. owte lettyng
It is called Sowthernwode also
And hony eteys et spurge stamp yer to
And late hy yis drunk, fastined drinky
And his hed werk away schall synkyn."[325:1]
But even in Shakespeare's time this high character had somewhat abated, though it was still used for all medicines in which a strong bitter was recommended. But its chief use seems to have been as a protection against insects of all kinds, who might very reasonably be supposed to avoid such a bitter food. This is Tusser's advice about the plant--
"While Wormwood hath seed get a handful or twaine
To save against March, to make flea to refraine:
Where chamber is sweeped and Wormwood is strowne,
No flea, for his life, dare abide to be knowne.
What saver is better (if physick be true),
For places infected than Wormwood and Rue?
It is as a comfort for hart and the braine,
And therefore to have it, it is not in vaine."
---
July's Husbandry. This quality was the origin of the names of Mugwort[326:1] and Wormwood. Its other name (in the Stockholm MS. referred to), Avoyne or Averoyne is a corruption of the specific name of one of the species, A. Abrotanum. Southernwood is the southern Wormwood,
i.e., the foreign, as distinguished from the native plant. The modern name for the same species is Boy's Love, or Old Man. The last name may have come from its hoary leaves, though different explanations are given: the other name is given to it, according to Dr. Prior, "from an ointment made with its ashes being used by young men to promote the growth of a beard." There is good authority for this derivation, but I think the name may have been given for other reasons. "Boy's Love" is one of the most favourite cottage-garden plants, and it enters largely into the rustic language of flowers. No posy presented by a young man to his lass is complete without Boy's Love; and it is an emblem of fidelity, at least it was so once. It is, in fact, a Forget-me-Not, from its strong abiding smell; so St. Francis de Sales applied it: "To love in the midst of sweets, little children could do that; but to love in the bitterness of Wormwood is a sure sign of our affectionate fidelity." Not that the Wormwood was ever named Forget-me-Not, for that name was given to the Ground Pine (
Ajuga chamaepitys) on account of its unpleasant and long-enduring smell, until it was transferred to the Myosotis (which then lost its old name of Mouse-ear), and the pretty legend was manufactured to account for the name.
In England Wormwood has almost fallen into complete disuse; but in France it is largely used in the shape of Absinthe. As a garden plant, Tarragon, which is a species of Wormwood, will claim a place in every herb garden, and there are a few, such as A. sericea, A. cana, and A. alpina, which make pretty shrubs for the rockwork.
FOOTNOTES:
[325:1] Wormwood had a still higher reputation among the ancients, as the following extract shows:
+Artemisia monoklonos.+
+Auei gar kopon audros hodoiporou, hos k'eni chersin
ten monoklonon eche; peri d' au posin herpeta panta
pheugei, hen tis eche en hodo, kai phasmata deina.+
--- Anonymi Carmen de Herbis, in "Poetae Bucolici."
[326:1] In connection with Mugwort there is a most curious account of the formation of a plant name given in a note in the "Promptorium Parvulorum," s.v. Mugworte: "Mugwort, al on as seyn some, Modirwort; lewed folk that in manye wordes conne no rygt sownyge, but ofte shortyn wordys, and changyn lettrys and silablys, they coruptyn the
o in to
a and
d in to
g, and syncopyn
i smytyn a-wey
i and
r and seyn mugwort."--
Arundel MS., 42, f. 35 v.
YEW.
(1) Song.
My shroud of white, stuck all with Yew,
Oh! prepare it.
--- Twelfth Night, act ii, sc. 4 (56).
(2) 3rd Witch.
Gall of goat, and slips of Yew
Sliver'd in the moon's eclipse.
--- Macbeth, act iv, sc. 1 (27).
(3) Scroop.
Thy very beadsmen learn to bend their bows
Of double-fatal Yew against thy state.
--- Richard II, act iii, sc. 2 (116).
(4) Tamora.
But straight they told me they would bind me here
Unto the body of a dismal Yew.
--- Titus Andronicus, act ii, sc. 3 (106).
(5) Paris.
Under yond Yew-trees lay thee all along,
Holding thine ear close to the hollow ground;
So shall no foot upon the churchyard tread
(Being loose, unfirm, with digging up of graves)
But thou shalt hear it.
--- Romeo and Juliet, act v, sc. 3 (3).
(6) Balthasar.
As I did sleep under this Yew tree here,[327:1]
I dreamt my master and another fought,
And that my master slew him.
--- Ibid. (137).
See also HEBENON, p. 118.
The Yew, though undoubtedly an indigenous British plant, has not a British name. The name is derived from the Latin
Iva, and "under this name we find the
Yew so inextricably mixed up with the
Ivy that, as dissimilar as are the two trees, there can be no doubt that these names are in their origin identical." So says Dr. Prior, and he proceeds to give a long and very interesting account of the origin of the name. The connection of Yew with
iva and
Ivy is still shown in the French
if, the German
eibe, and the Portuguese
iva.
Yew seems to be quite a modern form; in the old vocabularies the word is variously spelt iw, ewe,[328:1] eugh-tre,[328:2] haw-tre, new-tre, ew, uhe, and iw.
The connection of the Yew with churchyards and funerals is noticed by Shakespeare in Nos. 1, 5, and 6, and its celebrated connection with English bow-making in No. 3, where "double-fatal" may probably refer to its noxious qualities when living and its use for deadly weapons afterwards. These noxious qualities, joined to its dismal colour, and to its constant use in churchyards, caused it to enter into the supposed charms and incantations of the quacks of the Middle Ages. Yet Gerard entirely denies its noxious qualities: "They say that the fruit thereof being eaten is not onely dangerous and deadly unto man, but if birds do eat thereof it causeth them to cast their feathers and many times to die--all which I dare boldly affirme is altogether untrue; for when I was yong and went to schoole, divers of my schoolfellowes, and likewise my selfe, did eat our fils of the berries of this tree, and have not only slept under the shadow thereof, but among the branches also, without any hurt at all, and that not at one time but many times." Browne says the same in his "Vulgar Errors:" "That Yew and the berries thereof are harmlesse, we know" (book ii. c. 7). There is no doubt that the Yew berries are almost if not quite harmless,[328:3] and I find them forming an element in an Anglo-Saxon recipe, which may be worth quoting as an example of the medicines to which our forefathers submitted. It is given in a Leech Book of the tenth century or earlier, and is thus translated by Cockayne: "If a man is in the water elf disease, then are the nails of his hand livid, and the eyes tearful, and he will look downwards. Give him this for a leechdom: Everthroat, cassuck, the netherward part of fane, a yew berry, lupin, helenium, a head of marsh mallow, fen, mint, dill, lily, attorlothe, pulegium, marrubium, dock, elder, fel terrae, wormwood, strawberry leaves, consolida; pour them over with ale, add holy water, sing this charm over them thrice [here follow some long charms which I need not extract]; these charms a man may sing over a wound" ("Leech Book," iii. 63).
I need say little of the uses of the Yew wood in furniture, nor of the many grand specimens of the tree which are scattered throughout the churchyards of England, except to say that "the origin of planting Yew trees in churchyards is still a subject of considerable perplexity. As the Yew was of such great importance in war and field sports before the use of gunpowder was known, perhaps the parsons of parishes were required to see that the churchyard was capable of supplying bows to the males of each parish of proper age; but in this case we should scarcely have been left without some evidence on the matter. Others again state that the trees in question were intended solely to furnish branches for use on Palm Sunday"[329:1] (
see PALM, p. 195), "while many suppose that the Yew was naturally selected for planting around churches on account of its emblematic character, as expressive of the solemnity of death, while, from its perennial verdure and long duration, it might be regarded as a pattern of immortality."--
Penny Magazine, 1843.
A good list of the largest and oldest Yews in England will be found in Loudon's "Arboretum."
* * * * *
The "dismal Yew" concludes the list of Shakespeare's plants and the first part of my proposed subject; and while I hope that those readers who may have gone with me so far have met with some things to interest them, I hope also they will agree with me that gardening and the love of flowers is not altogether the modern accomplishment that many of our gardeners now fancy it to be. Here are two hundred names of plants in one writer, and that writer not at all writing on horticulture, but only mentioning plants and flowers in the most incidental manner as they happened naturally to fall in his way. I should doubt if there is any similar instance in any modern English writer, and feel very sure that there is no such instance in any modern English dramatist. It shows how familiar gardens and flowers were to Shakespeare, and that he must have had frequent opportunities for observing his favourites (for most surely he was fond of flowers), not only in their wild and native homes, but in the gardens of farmhouses and parsonages, country houses, and noblemen's stately pleasaunces. The quotations that I have been able to make from the early writers in the ninth and tenth centuries, down to gossiping old Gerard, the learned Lord Chancellor Bacon, and that excellent old gardiner Parkinson, all show the same thing, that the love of flowers is no new thing in England, still less a foreign fashion, but that it is innate in us, a real instinct, that showed itself as strongly in our forefathers as in ourselves; and when we find that such men as Shakespeare and Lord Bacon (to mention no others) were almost proud to show their knowledge of plants and love of flowers, we can say that such love and knowledge is thoroughly manly and English.
In the inquiry into Shakespeare's plants I have entered somewhat largely into the etymological history of the names. I have been tempted into this by the personal interest I feel in the history of plant names, and I hope it may not have been uninteresting to my readers; but I do not think this part of the subject could have been passed by, for I agree with Johnston: "That there is more interest and as much utility in settling the nomenclature of our pastoral bards as that of all herbalists and dry-as-dust botanists" ("Botany of the Eastern Border"). I have also at times entered into the botany and physiology of the plants; this may have seemed needless to some, but I have thought that such notices were often necessary to the right understanding of the plants named, and again I shelter myself under the authority of a favourite old author: "Consider (gentle readers) what shiftes he shall be put unto, and how rawe he must needs be in explanation of metaphors, resemblances, and comparisons, that is ignorant of the nature of herbs and plants from whence their similitudes be taken, for the inlightening and garnishing of sentences."--NEWTON'S
Herball for the Bible.
I have said that my subject naturally divides itself into two parts, first, The Plants and Flowers named by Shakespeare; second, His Knowledge of Gardens and Gardening. The first part is now concluded, and I go to the second part, which will be very much shorter, and which may be entitled "The Garden-craft of Shakespeare."
FOOTNOTES:
[327:1] The reading of the folio is "young tree," for "Yew tree."
[328:1]
"An Eu tre (Ewetre); taxus, taximus."--Catholicon Anglicum.
[328:2]
"The eugh obedient to the bender's will."--SPENSER, F. Q., i. 9.
"So far as eughen bow a shaft may send."--F. Q., ii. 11-19.
[328:3] There are, however, well-recorded instances of death from Yew berries. The poisonous quality, such as it is, resides in the hard seed, and not in the red mucilaginous skin, which is the part eaten by children. (
See HEBENON.)
[329:1] "For eucheson we have non Olyfe that bereth grene leves we takon in stede of hit Hew and Palmes wyth, and beroth abowte in procession and so this day we callyn palme sonnenday."--
Sermon for "Dominica in ramis palmarum," Cotton MSS. _