They fell on : I made good my place; at length they came to the broomstaff with me.—Henry VIII., V. iv. 56. Another woodland beauty, no less remarkable for its palmate foliage than for its glossy red-brown fruit, was probably introduced by the Romans. It is the Castanea vulgaris of Linnæus, the sweet chestnut of commerce. Not only is it good to eat, but its timber is excellent and extremely durable. A good deal of ancient timber-work ordinarily considered oak is really of this tree. We have many fine specimens of it in our English deer-parks, not forgetting those at Tortworth-old in the reign of King John. It is referred to by the poet as an edible in— A sailor's wife had chestnuts in her lap, as bursting while roasting: And do you tell me of a woman's tongue, and once as a colour : Taming of the Shrew, I. ii. 208; Chestnut was ever the only colour. As You Like It, III. iv. 12. The crab-tree is one of our greatest ornaments this month in hedge and copse. And not only an ornament, for was it not under a crab that the poet is said by a scandalous tradition to have fallen asleep after a drinking-bout at the Falcon Inn in Bidford? The crab apple (Pyrus malus, L.) is the native source from which all our domesticated apples are derived. And not only so, but its strong, tough wood was employed in the manufacture of quarter-staves. Hence we get: Fetch me a dozen crab-tree staves, and tough ones. Its fruit, roasted, was an ingredient in the spiced ale of the Christmas frolics : When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl, Love's Labour's Lost, V. ii. 935. And, again, the mischievous Puck: And sometimes lurk I in a gossip's bowl, And when she drinks, against her lips I bob. Midsummer-Night's Dream, II. i. 47. It was used also uncooked, and that not for want of better apples. From the juice verjuice was made, and the acidity of the crab is often mentioned in the poet's metaphors: She will taste as like this as a crab does to a crab. Pet. Nay, come, Kate, come! you must not look so sour. We may pass quickly by the various garden apples to which the poet refers. First comes the applejohn-probably, says Ellacombe, the Easter pippin of Maund. It is twice mentioned : I am withered like an old apple-john. I Henry IV., III. iii. 4. Mass! thou sayest true. The prince once set a dish of apple-johns before him, and told him there were five more Sir Johns, and, putting off his hat, said, "I will now take my leave of these six dry, round, old, withered knights."2 Henry IV., II. iv. 4. The bitter-sweeting is once mentioned: Thy wit is a very bitter-sweeting; it is a most sharp sauce. Romeo and Juliet, II. iv. 83. The codling is a name applied at that time to any unripe apple. Thus, A codling when 'tis almost an apple. Twelfth Night, I. v. 167. It does not mean the variety so called in our modern gardens. Leathercoats, referred to in 2 Henry IV., V. iii. 44, are brown russets. The pippin, originally applied to any apple raised from pips, is now, and may have been in Elizabethan times, assigned specifically to bright-skinned apples with good keeping qualities. Thus, as an example, the apple is referred to as "last year's pippin in 2 Henry IV., V. iii, 2, and again in the Merry Wives of Windsor, I. ii. 13: There's pippins and cheese to come. The pomewater cannot be identified with any certainty. Ellacombe suggests the modern Lord Suffield apple : The pomewater, who now hangeth like a jewel in the ear of caelo. Love's Labour's Lost, IV. ii. 4. There is also the costard, a coarse variety, used as a contemptuous epithet for an ignorant head in King Richard III., I. iv. 159. Its name is of interest, since our word "costermonger" is derived from it. Besides all these, we have a reference to a dish as popular then as it is to-day-apple tart : What's this? a sleeve? 'Tis like a demi-cannon: Taming of the Shrew, IV. iii. 88. And, lastly, to the apple of the Garden of Eden, which, by the way, was certainly not an apple, but probably the orange, citron, or quince: How like Eve's apple doth thy beauty grow! Sonnets, xciii. A handsome tree is the sycamore (Acer pseudoplatanus, L.). A native of Middle Europe, but now well naturalized in our islands, few trees exceed it in beauty, and its shady branches rise to the height of 40 to 60 feet. Nor is it useful for sight alone. Its fine-grained wood is much used in turnery, and its sap is sufficiently sugary to serve for maple sugar. Our native species of the genus is a small tree, seldom exceeding 10 to 20 feet; but, small as it is, the wood is very finely and delicately grained. This tree must not be confounded with the sycamore or zicamine of the Bible, which is a fig mulberry, and a native of Africa and Syria. In Scotland the sycamore bears the name of dool, or grief tree, and was used for feudal executions. The most celebrated is that at the Castle of Cassilis. Shakespeare mentions the "cool shade of a sycamore in Love's Labour's Lost, V. ii. 89; "the grove of sycamore in Romeo and Juliet, I. i. 128; and in Othello, IV. iii. 41, The poor soul sat sighing by a sycamore-tree. There is, however, a small tree which takes one of its names--“may”—from this month. It is also called the albespoine, hawthorn, hawthorn quickset or whitethorn, or simply thorn by the country people, and is the Crataegus oxyacantha, L. Its snowy blossoms, massed in profuse luxuriance on their setting of bright green leaves, serve to make a hawthorn glade one of the loveliest components of English scenery. And when the leaves are painted with their autumnal dyes, and the bright red hips appear, it is almost equally striking. Mark the faire blooming of the hawthorn-tree, BROWNE: Britannia's Pastorals, ii. 2. * It is said by Ellacombe seldom to flower till June, except in Devonshire and Cornwall; but even in this year 1902, cold as it is, it is in full flower in Warwickshire as I write (May 14), and some was bound in our village maypole on the first of the month. An old Suffolk custom, it appears, allowed a dish of cream to those who brought a bough in full blossom into the house on May Day; but this in Brand's time was discontinued. Sir John Mandeville, in speaking of our Blessed Lord, says: "Then was our Lord yled into a gardyn, and there the Jewes scorned hym and maden hym a crowne of the branches of the albiespyne, that is whitethorn, which grew in the same gardyn, and setten yt upon hys heved. And therefore hath the whitethorn many virtues. For he that beareth a branch on hym thereof, no thundre, ne no maner of tempest may dere hym, ne in the house that it is ynne may non evil ghost enter" (Ellacombe, p. 117). 66 Its uses in Shakespeare's phrases are various. As an object on which Orlando hangs odes, it is found in As You Like It, III. ii. 379; as a tiring-house for the players in Midsummer-Night's Dream, III. i. 4. Its buds are referred to in the same play (I. i. 184): When wheat is green, when hawthorn buds appear; and, again, as "lisping hawthorn buds" in Merry Wives of Windsor, ÎII. iii. 77, and compared, much * Quoted by Ellacombe, p. 115. |