Folk-lore of Shakespeare Part 47

[515] See Nares's "Glossary," vol. ii. p. 482.

[516] "Popular Names of British Plants," 1879, p. 128.

_Knotgra.s.s._[517] The allusion to this plant in "A Midsummer-Night's Dream" (iii. 2)-

"Get you gone, you dwarf!

You minimus, of hindering knot-gra.s.s made; You bead, you acorn!"-

refers to its supposed power of hindering the growth of any child or animal, when taken in an infusion, a notion alluded to by Beaumont and Fletcher ("c.o.xcombe," ii. 2):

"We want a boy extremely for this function, Kept under for a year with milk and knot-gra.s.s."

[517] _Polygonum aviculare._

In "The Knight of the Burning Pestle" (ii. 2) we read: "The child's a fatherless child, and say they should put him into a strait pair of gaskins, 'twere worse than knot-gra.s.s; he would never grow after it."

_Lady-smocks._ This plant is so called from the resemblance of its white flowers to little smocks hung out to dry ("Love's Labour's Lost," v. 2), as they used to be at that season of the year especially

"When daisies pied, and violets blue, And lady-smocks all silver white, And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue, Do paint the meadows with delight.

When shepherds pipe on oaten straws,

And maidens bleach their summer smocks."

According to another explanation, the lady-smock is a corruption of "Our Lady's Smock," so called from its first flowering about Lady-tide. This plant has also been called cuckoo-flower, because, as Gerarde says, "it flowers in April and May, when the cuckoo doth begin to sing her pleasant notes without stammering."

_Laurel._ From the very earliest times this cla.s.sical plant has been regarded as symbolical of victory, and used for crowns. In "t.i.tus Andronicus" (i. 1) t.i.tus says:

"Cometh Andronicus, bound with laurel boughs."

And in "Antony and Cleopatra" (i. 3) the latter exclaims:

"upon your sword Sit laurelled victory."[518]

[518] See "3 Henry VI.," iv. 6; "Troilus and Cressida," i. 3.

_Leek._ The first of March is observed by the Welsh in honor of St.

David, their patron saint, when, as a sign of their patriotism, they wear a leek. Much doubt exists as to the origin of this custom.

According to the Welsh, it is because St. David ordered his Britons to place leeks in their caps, that they might be distinguished in fight from their Saxon foes. Shakespeare, in "Henry V." (iv. 7), alludes to the custom when referring to the battle of Cressy. Fluellen says, "If your majesties is remembered of it, the Welshmen did good service in a garden where leeks did grow, wearing leeks in their Monmouth caps, which your majesty know to this hour is an honourable badge of the service; and I do believe your majesty takes no scorn to wear the leek upon Saint Tavy's day."[519] Dr. Owen Pughe[520] supposes the custom arose from the practice of every farmer contributing his leek to the common repast when they met at the Cymmortha, an a.s.sociation by which they reciprocated a.s.sistance in ploughing the land. Anyhow, the subject is one involved in complete uncertainty, and the various explanations given are purely conjectural (see p. 303).

[519] See "Henry V.," iv. 1.

[520] "Cambrian Biography," 1803, p. 86; see Brand's "Pop.

Antiq.," 1849, vol. i. pp. 102-108.

_Lily._ Although so many pretty legends and romantic superst.i.tions have cl.u.s.tered round this sweet and favorite flower, yet they have escaped the notice of Shakespeare, who, while attaching to it the choicest epithets, has simply made it the type of elegance and beauty, and the symbol of purity and whiteness.

_Long Purples._ This plant, mentioned by Shakespeare in "Hamlet" (iv. 7) as forming part of the nosegay of poor Ophelia, is generally considered to be the early purple orchis (_Orchis mascula_), which blossoms in April or May. It grows in meadows and pastures, and is about ten inches high. Tennyson ("A Dirge") uses the name:

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

Another term applied by Shakespeare to this flower was "Dead Men's Fingers," from the pale color and hand-like shape of the palmate tubers:

"Our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them."

In "Flowers from Stratford-on-Avon," it is said, "there can be no doubt that the wild arum is the plant alluded to by Shakespeare," but there seems no authority for this statement.

_Love-in-Idleness_, or, with more accuracy, _Love-in-Idle_,[521] is one of the many nicknames of the pansy or heart's-ease-a term said to be still in use in Warwickshire. It occurs in "Midsummer-Night's Dream"

(ii. 1),[522] where Oberon says:

"Yet mark'd I where the bolt of Cupid fell: It fell upon a little western flower, Before milk-white, now purple with love's wound, And maidens call it love-in-idleness."

[521] See Dr. Prior's "Popular Names of British Plants," 1870, p. 139.

[522] Cf. "Taming of the Shrew," i. 1.

The phrase literally signifies love in vain, or to no purpose, as Taylor alludes to it in the following couplet:

"When pa.s.sions are let loose without a bridle, Then precious time is turned to _love and idle_."

That flowers, and pansies especially, were used as love-philters,[523]

or for the object of casting a spell over people, in Shakespeare's day, is shown in the pa.s.sage already quoted. where Puck and Oberon amuse themselves at t.i.tania's expense. Again, a further reference occurs (iv.

1), where the fairy king removes the spell:

"But first I will release the fairy queen.

Be as thou wast wont to be: See as thou wast wont to see: Dian's bud[524] o'er Cupid's flower[525]

Hath such force and blessed power.

Now, my t.i.tania; wake you, my sweet queen."

[523] Cf. what Egeus says (i. 1) when speaking of Lysander:

"This man hath bewitch'd the bosom of my child; Thou, thou Lysander, thou hast given her rhymes And interchanged love-tokens with my child."

[524] Dian's bud is the bud of the _Agnus castus_, or chaste tree. "The virtue this herbe is, that he will kepe man and woman chaste." "Macer's Herbal," 1527.

[525] Cupid's flower, another name for the pansy.

"It has been suggested," says Mr. Aldis Wright,[526] "that the device employed by Oberon to enchant t.i.tania by anointing her eyelids with the juice of a flower, may have been borrowed by Shakespeare from the Spanish romance of 'Diana' by George of Montemayor. But apart from the difficulty which arises from the fact that no English translation of this romance is known before that published by Young in 1598, there is no necessity to suppose that Shakespeare was indebted to any one for what must have been a familiar element in all incantations at a time when a belief in witchcraft was common." Percy ("Reliques," vol. iii.

bk. 2) quotes a receipt by the celebrated astrologer, Dr. Dee, for "an ungent to anoynt under the eyelids, and upon the eyelids eveninge and morninge, but especially when you call," that is, upon the fairies. It consisted of a decoction of various flowers.

[526] Notes to "A Midsummer-Night's Dream," 1877. Preface, p. xx.

_Mandragora_ or _Mandrake_. No plant, perhaps, has had, at different times, a greater share of folk-lore attributed to it than the mandrake; partly owing, probably, to the fancied resemblance of its root to the human figure, and the accidental circ.u.mstance of _man_ being the first syllable of the word. An inferior degree of animal life was a.s.signed to it; and it was commonly supposed that, when torn from the ground, it uttered groans of so pernicious a character, that the person who committed the violence either went mad or died. In "2 Henry VI." (iii.

2) Suffolk says: