The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare Part 109

(10) _Friar._

I must up-fill this Willow cage of ours With baleful Weeds and precious juiced Flowers.

_Romeo and Juliet_, act ii, sc. 3 (7).

(11) _Celia._

West of this place, down in the neighbour bottom; The rank of Osiers by the murmuring stream Left on your right hand, brings you to the place.

_As You Like It_, act iv, sc. 3 (79).

(12)

When Cytherea all in love forlorn A longing tarriance for Adonis made Under an Osier growing by a brook.

_Pa.s.sionate Pilgrim_ vi.

(13)

Though to myself forsworn, to thee I'll constant prove; Those thoughts, to me like Oaks, to thee like Osiers bow'd.

_Ibid._ v.

_See also_ PALM TREE, No. 1, p. 192.

Willow is an old English word, but the more common and perhaps the older name for the Willow is Withy, a name which is still in constant use, but more generally applied to the twigs when cut for basket-making than to the living tree. "Withe" is found in the oldest vocabularies, but we do not find "Willow" till we come to the vocabularies of the fifteenth century, when it occurs as "Haec Salex, A{e} Wyllo-tre;" "Haec Salix-icis, a Welogh;" "Salix, Welig." Both the names probably referred to the pliability of the tree, and there was another name for it, the Sallow, which was either a corruption of the Latin Salix, or was derived from a common root. It was also called Osier.

The Willow is a native of Britain. It belongs to a large family (_Salix_), numbering 160 species, of which we have seventeen distinct species in Great Britain, besides many sub-species and varieties. So common a plant, with the peculiar pliability of the shoots that distinguishes all the family, was sure to be made much use of. Its more common uses were for basket-making, for coracles, and huts, or "Willow-cabins" (No. 1), but it had other uses in the elegancies and even in the romance of life. The flowers of the early Willow (_S.

caprea_) did duty for and were called Palms on Palm Sunday (_see_ PALM), and not only the flowers but the branches also seem to have been used in decoration, a use which is now extinct. "The Willow is called _Salix_, and hath his name _a saliendo_, for that it quicklie groweth up, and soon becommeth a tree. Heerewith do they in some countries trim up their parlours and dining roomes in sommer, and sticke fresh greene leaves thereof about their beds for coolness."--NEWTON'S _Herball for the Bible_.[321:1]

But if we only look at the poetry of the time of Shakespeare, and much of the poetry before and after him, we should almost conclude that the sole use of the Willow was to weave garlands for jilted lovers, male and female. It was probably with reference to this that Shakespeare represented poor mad Ophelia hanging her flowers on the "Willow tree aslant the brook" (No. 6), and it is more pointedly referred to in Nos.

2, 4, 5, 7, 8, and 9. The feeling was expressed in a melancholy ditty, which must have been very popular in the sixteenth century, of which Desdemona says a few of the first verses (No. 7), and which concludes thus--

"Come all you forsaken and sit down by me, He that plaineth of his false love, mine's falser than she; The Willow wreath weare I, since my love did fleet, A garland for lovers forsaken most meet."

The ballad is ent.i.tled "The Complaint of a Lover Forsaken of His Love--To a Pleasant New Tune," and is printed in the "Roxburghe Ballads." This curious connection of the Willow with forsaken or disappointed lovers stood its ground for a long time. Spenser spoke of the "Willow worne of forlorne paramoures." Drayton says that--

"In love the sad forsaken wight The Willow garland weareth"--

_Muse's Elysium._

and though we have long given up the custom of wearing garlands of any sort, yet many of us can recollect one of the most popular street songs, that was heard everywhere, and at last pa.s.sed into a proverb, and which began--

"All round my hat I vears a green Willow In token," &c.

It has been suggested by many that this melancholy a.s.sociation with the Willow arose from its Biblical a.s.sociations; and this may be so, though all the references to the Willow that occur in the Bible are, with one notable exception, connected with joyfulness and fertility. The one exception is the plaintive wail in the 137th Psalm--

"By the streams of Babel, there we sat down, And we wept when we remembered Zion.

On the Willows among the rivers we hung our harps."

And this one record has been sufficient to alter the emblematic character of the Willow--"this one incident has made the Willow an emblem of the deepest of sorrows, namely, sorrow for sin found out, and visited with its due punishment. From that time the Willow appears never again to have been a.s.sociated with feelings of gladness. Even among heathen nations, for what reason we know not, it was a tree of evil omen, and was employed to make the torches carried at funerals. Our own poets made the Willow the symbol of despairing woe."--JOHNS. This is the more remarkable because the tree referred to in the Psalms, the Weeping Willow (_Salix Babylonica_), which by its habit of growth is to us so suggestive of crushing sorrow, was quite unknown in Europe till a very recent period. "It grows abundantly on the banks of the Euphrates, and other parts of Asia, as in Palestine, and also in North Africa;" but it is said to have been introduced into England during the last century, and then in a curious way. "Many years ago, the well-known poet, Alexander Pope, who resided at Twickenham, received a basket of Figs as a present from Turkey. The basket was made of the supple branches of the Weeping Willow, the very same species under which the captive Jews sat when they wept by the waters of Babylon. The poet valued highly the small and tender twigs a.s.sociated with so much that was interesting, and he untwisted the basket, and planted one of the branches in the ground.

It had some tiny buds upon it, and he hoped he might be able to rear it, as none of this species of Willow was known in England. Happily the Willow is very quick to take root and grow. The little branch soon became a tree, and drooped gracefully over the river, in the same manner that its race had done over the waters of Babylon. From that one branch all the Weeping Willows in England are descended."--KIRBY'S _Trees_.[323:1]

There is probably no tree that contributes so largely to the conveniences of English life as the Willow. Putting aside its uses in the manufacture of gunpowder and cricket bats, we may safely say that the most scantily-furnished house can boast of some article of Willow manufacture in the shape of baskets. British basket-making is, as far as we know, the oldest national manufacture; it is the manufacture in connection with which we have the earliest record of the value placed on British work. British baskets were exported to Rome, and it would almost seem as if baskets were unknown in Rome until they were introduced from Britain, for with the article of import came the name also, and the British "basket" became the Latin "bascauda." We have curious evidence of the high value attached to these baskets. Juvenal describes Catullus in fear of shipwreck throwing overboard his most precious treasures: "precipitare volens etiam pulcherrima," and among these "pulcherrima" he mentions "bascaudas." Martial bears a still higher testimony to the value set on "British baskets," reckoning them among the many rich gifts distributed at the Saturnalia--

"Barbara de pictis veni bascauda Britannis Sed me jam vult dicere Roma suam."--Book xiv, 99.

Many of the Willows make handsome shrubs for the garden, for besides those that grow into large trees, there are many that are low shrubs, and some so low as to be fairly called carpet plants. Salix Reginae is one of the most silvery shrubs we have, with very narrow leaves; S.

lanata is almost as silvery, but with larger and woolly leaves, and makes a very pretty object when grown on rockwork near water; S.

rosmarinifolia is another desirable shrub; and among the lower-growing species, the following will grow well on rockwork, and completely clothe the surface: S. alpina, S. Grahami, S. retusa, S. serpyllifolia, and S.

reticulata. They are all easily cultivated and are quite hardy.

FOOTNOTES:

[321:1] In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the Willow does not appear to have had any value for its medical uses. In the present day salicine and salicylic acid are produced from the bark, and have a high reputation as antiseptics and in rheumatic cases.

[323:1] This is the traditional history of the introduction of the Weeping Willow into England, but it is very doubtful.

WOODBINE, _see_ HONEYSUCKLE.

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.