The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare Part 106

_Ibid._ xcix.

There are about a hundred different species of Violets, of which there are five species in England, and a few sub-species. One of these is the Viola tricolor, from which is descended the Pansy, or Love-in-Idleness (_see_ PANSY). But in all the pa.s.sages in which Shakespeare names the Violet, he alludes to the purple sweet-scented Violet, of which he was evidently very fond, and which is said to be very abundant in the neighbourhood of Stratford-on-Avon. For all the eighteen pa.s.sages tell of some point of beauty or sweetness that attracted him. And so it is with all the poets from Chaucer downwards--the Violet is noticed by all, and by all with affectation. I need only mention two of the greatest.

Milton gave the Violet a chief place in the beauties of the "Blissful Bower" of our first parents in Paradise--

"Each beauteous flower, Iris all hues, Roses, and Jessamin Rear'd high their flourish't heads between, and wrought Mosaic; underfoot the Violet, Crocus and Hyacinth with rich inlay Broidered the ground, more coloured than with stone Of costliest emblem;"

_Paradise Lost_, book iv.

and Sir Walter Scott crowns it as the queen of wild flowers--

"The Violet in her greenwood bower, Where Birchen boughs with Hazels mingle, May boast itself the fairest flower In glen, in copse, or forest dingle."

Yet favourite though it ever has been, it has no English name. Violet is the diminutive form of the Latin Viola, which again is the Latin form of the Greek ???. In the old Vocabularies Viola frequently occurs, and with the following various translations:--"Ban-wyrt," _i.e._, Bone-wort (eleventh century Vocabulary); "Clfre," _i.e._, Clover (eleventh century Vocabulary); "Viole, Appel-leaf" (thirteenth century Vocabulary);[310:1] "Wyolet" (fourteenth century Vocabulary); "Vyolytte"

(fifteenth century Nominale); "Violetta, A{ce}, a Violet" (fifteenth century Pictorial Vocabulary); and "Viola Cleafre, Ban-vyrt" (Durham Glossary). It is also mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon translation of the Herbarium of Apuleius in the tenth century as "the Herb Viola purpurea; (1) for new wounds and eke for old; (2) for hardness of the maw"

(c.o.c.kayne's translation). In this last example it is most probable that our sweet-scented Violet is the plant meant, but in some of the other cases it is quite certain that some other plant is meant, and perhaps in all. For Violet was a name given very loosely to many plants, so that Laurembergius says: "Vox Violae distinctissimis floribus communis est. Videntur mihi antiqui suaveolentes quosque flores generatim Violas appella.s.se, cujuscunque etiam forent generis quasi vi oleant."--_Apparat. Plant._, 1632. This confusion seems to have arisen in a very simple way. Theophrastus described the Leucojum, which was either the Snowdrop or the spring Snowflake, as the earliest-flowering plant; Pliny literally translated Leucojum into Alba Viola. All the earlier writers on natural history were in the habit of taking Pliny for their guide, and so they translated his Viola by any early-flowering plant that most took their fancy. Even as late as 1693, Samuel Gilbert, in "The Florists' Vade Mec.u.m," under the head of Violets, only describes "the lesser early bulbous Violet, a common flower yet not to be wasted, because when none other appears that does, though in the snow, whence called Snowflower or Snowdrop;" and I think that even later instances may be found.

When I say that there is no genuine English name for the Violet, I ought, perhaps, to mention that one name has been attributed to it, but I do not think that it is more than a clever guess. "The commentators on Shakespeare have been much puzzled by the epithet 'happy lowlie down,'

applied to the man of humble station in "Henry IV.," and have proposed to read 'lowly clown,' or to divide the phrase into 'low lie down,' but the following lines from Browne clearly prove 'lowly down' to be the correct term, for he uses it in precisely the same sense--

'The humble Violet that lowly down Salutes the gay nymphs as they trimly pa.s.s.'

_Poet's Pleasaunce._"

This may prove that Browne called the Violet a Lowly-down, but it certainly does not prove that name to have been a common name for the Violet. It was, however, the character of lowliness combined with sweetness that gave the charm to the Violet in the eyes of the emblem writers: it was for them the readiest symbol of the meekness of humility. "Humilitas dat gratiam" is the motto that Camerarius places over a clump of Violets. "A true widow is, in the church, as a little 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 colouring showing the spirit of her mortification, she seeks untrodden and solitary places," &c.--ST. FRANCIS DE SALES. And the poets could nowhere find a fitter similitude for a modest maiden than

"A Violet by a mossy stone Half hidden from the eye."

Violets, like Primroses, must always have had their joyful a.s.sociations as coming to tell that the winter is pa.s.sing away and brighter days are near, for they are among

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

Yet it is curious to note how, like Primroses, they have been ever a.s.sociated with death, especially with the death of the young. I suppose these ideas must have arisen from a sort of pity for flowers that were only allowed to see the opening year, and were cut off before the full beauty of summer had come. This was prettily expressed by H. Vaughan, the Silurist:

"So violets, so doth the primrose fall At once the spring's pride and its funeral, Such early sweets get off in their still prime, And stay not here to wear the foil of time; While coa.r.s.er flowers, which none would miss, if past, To scorching summers and cold winters last."

_Daphnis_, 1678.

It was from this a.s.sociation that they were looked on as apt emblems of those who enjoyed the bright springtide of life and no more. This feeling was constantly expressed, and from very ancient times. We find it in some pretty lines by Prudentius--

"Nos tecta fovebimus ossa Violis et fronde frequente, t.i.tulumque et frigida saxa Liquido spargemus odore."

Shakespeare expresses the same feeling in the collection of "purple Violets and Marigolds" which Marina carries to hang "as a carpet on the grave" (No. 14), and again in Laertes' wish that Violets may spring from the grave of Ophelia (No. 8), on which Steevens very aptly quotes from Persius Satires--

"e tumulo fortunataque favilla.

Nascentur Violae."

In the same spirit Milton, gathering for the grave of Lycidas--

"Every flower that sad embroidery wears,"

gathers among others "the glowing Violet;" and the same thought is repeated by many other writers.

There is a remarkable botanical curiosity in the structure of the Violet which is worth notice: it produces flowers both in spring and autumn, but the flowers are very different. In spring they are fully formed and sweet-scented, but they are mostly barren and produce no seed, while in autumn they are very small, they have no petals and, I believe, no scent, but they produce abundance of seed.[313:1]

I need say nothing to recommend the Violet in all its varieties as a garden plant. As a useful medicinal plant it was formerly in high repute--

"Vyolet an erbe cowth Is knowyn in ilke manys mowthe, As bokys seyn in here language, It is good to don in potage, In playstrys to wondrys it is comfortyf, W{h} oyer erbys sanatyf:"

_Stockholm MS._

and it still holds a place in the Pharmacopia, while the chemist finds the pretty flowers one of the most delicate tests for detecting the presence of acids and alkalies; but as to the many other virtues of the Violet I cannot do better than quote Gerard's pleasant and quaint words: "The Blacke or Purple Violets, or March Violets of the garden, have a great prerogative above others, not only because the minde conceiveth a certain pleasure and recreation by smelling and handling of those most odoriferous flowres, but also for that very many by these Violets receive ornament and comely grace; for there be made of them garlands for the head, nosegaies, and poesies, which are delightfull to looke on and pleasant to smell to, speaking nothing of their appropriate vertues; yea, gardens themselves receive by these the greatest ornament of all chiefest beautie and most gallant grace, and the recreation of the minde 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 flowres through their beautie, variety of colour, and exquisite forme, do bring to a liberall and greatte many minde the remembrance of honestie, comelinesse, and all kindes of vertues. For it would be an unseemely and filthie thing (as a certain wise man saith) for him that doth looke upon and handle faire and beautifull things, and who frequenteth and is conversant in faire and beautifull places, to have his minde not faire but filthie and deformed." With these brave words of the old gardener I might well close my account of this favourite flower, but I must add George Herbert's lines penned in the same spirit--

"Farewell, dear flowers, sweetly your time ye spent, Fit, while ye lived, for smell or ornament, And after death for cures; I follow straight without complaint or grief, Since if my scent be good, I care not if It be as short as yours."

_Poems on Life._

FOOTNOTES:

[310:1] Appel-leaf is given as the English name for Viola in two other MS. Glossaries quoted by c.o.c.kayne, vol. iii. p. 312.

[313:1] This peculiarity is not confined to the Violet. It is found in some species of Oxalis, Impatiens, Campanula, Eranthemum, Amphicarpea, Leeisia, &c. Such plants are technically called Cleistogamous, and are all self-fertilizing.

WALNUT.

(1) _Petruchio._

Why, 'tis a c.o.c.kle or a Walnut-sh.e.l.l, A knack, a toy, a trick, a baby's cap.

_Taming of the Shrew_, act iv, sc. 3 (66).

(2) _Ford._

Let them say of me, "As jealous as Ford that searched a hollow Walnut for his wife's leman."

_Merry Wives of Windsor_, act iv, sc. 2 (170).

The Walnut is a native of Persia and China, and its foreign origin is told in all its names. The Greeks called it Persicon, _i.e._, the Persian tree, and Basilikon, _i.e._, the Royal tree; the Latins gave it a still higher rank, naming it Juglans, _i.e._, Jove's Nut. "Haec glans, optima et maxima, ab Jove et glande juglans appellata est."--VARRO. The English names tell the same story. It was first simply called Nut, as the Nut _par excellence_. "_Juglantis vel nux_, knutu."--aeLFRIC'S _Vocabulary_. But in the fourteenth century it had obtained the name of "Ban-nut," from its hardness. So it is named in a metrical Vocabulary of the fourteenth century--

Pomus Pirus Corulus nux Avelanaque Ficus Appul-tre Peere-tre Hasyl Note Bannenote-tre Fygge;

and this name it still holds in the West of England. But at the same time it had also acquired the name of Walnut. "_Hec avelana_, A{ce} Walnot-tree" (Vocabulary fourteenth century). "_Hec avelana_, a Walnutte and the Nutte" (Nominate fifteenth century). This name is commonly supposed to have reference to the hard sh.e.l.l, but it only means that the nut is of foreign origin. "Wal" is another form of Walshe or Welch, and so Lyte says that the tree is called "in English the Walnut and Walshe Nut tree." "The word Welsh (_wilisc_, _woelisc_) meant simply a foreigner, one who was not of Teutonic race, and was (by the Saxons) applied especially to nations using the Latin language. In the Middle Ages the French language, and in fact all those derived from Latin, and called on that account _linguae Romanae_, were called in German _Welsch_.

France was called by the mediaeval German writers _daz Welsche lant_, and when they wished to express 'in the whole world,' they said, _in allen Welschen und in Tiutschen richen_, 'in all Welsh and Teutonic kingdoms.'