The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare Part 31

_Conf. Aman._, lib. sept. (3, 129. Paulli.)

These virtues cannot be told more pleasantly than by Longfellow--

"Above the lowly plants it towers, The Fennel with its yellow flowers, And in an earlier age than ours Was gifted with the wondrous powers-- Lost vision to restore.

It gave men strength and fearless mood, And gladiators fierce and rude Mingled it with their daily food: And he who battled and subdued A wreath of Fennel wore."

"Yet the virtues of Fennel, as thus enumerated by Longfellow, do not comprise either of those attributes of the plant which ill.u.s.trate the two pa.s.sages from Shakespeare. The first alludes to it as an emblem of flattery, for which ample authority has been found by the commentators.[89:2] Florio is quoted for the phrase 'Dare finocchio,'

_to give fennel_, as meaning _to flatter_. In the second quotation the allusion is to the reputation of Fennel as an inflammatory herb with much the same virtues as are attributed to Eringoes."--Mr. J. F. MARSH in _The Garden_.

The English name was directly derived from its Latin name _Fniculum_, which may have been given it from its hay-like smell (_fnum_), but this is not certain. We have another English word derived from the Giant Fennel of the South of Europe (_ferula_); this is the ferule, an instrument of punishment for small boys, also adopted from the Latin, the Roman schoolmaster using the stalks of the Fennel for the same purpose as the modern schoolmaster uses the cane.

The early poets looked on the Fennel as an emblem of the early summer--

"Hyt befell yn the month of June When the Fenell hangeth yn toun."

_Libaeus Diaconus._(1225).

As a useful plant, the chief use is as a garnishing and sauce for fish.

Large quant.i.ties of the seed are said to be imported to flavour gin, but this can scarcely be called useful. As ornamental plants, the large Fennels (F. Tingitana, F. campestris, F. glauca, &c.) are very desirable where they can have the necessary room.

FOOTNOTES:

[89:1] "Fennelle or Fenkelle, feniculum maratrum."--_Catholicon Anglic.u.m._

[89:2]

"_Christophers._

No, my _good lord_.

_Count._

Your _good lord_! O, how this smells of Fennel."

BEN JONSON, _The Case Altered_, act ii, sc. 2.

FERN.

_Gadshill._

We have the receipt of Fern-seed--we walk invisible.

_Chamberlain._

Now, by my faith, I think you are more beholding to the night than to Fern-seed for your walking invisible.

_1st Henry IV_, act ii, sc. 1 (95).

There is a fashion in plants as in most other things, and in none is this more curiously shown than in the estimation in which Ferns are and have been held. Now-a-days it is the fashion to admire Ferns, and few would be found bold enough to profess an indifference to them. But it was not always so. Theocritus seems to have admired the Fern--

"Like Fern my tresses o'er my temples streamed."

_Idyll_ xx. (_Calverley._)

"Come here and trample dainty Fern and Poppy blossom."

_Idyll_ v. (_Calverley._)

But Virgil gives it a bad character, speaking of it as "filicem invisam." Horace is still more severe, "neglectis urenda filix innascitur agris." The Anglo-Saxon translation of Boethius spoke contemptuously of the "Thorns, and the Furzes, and the Fern, and all the weeds" (c.o.c.kayne). And so it was in Shakespeare's time. Butler spoke of it as the--

"Fern, that vile, unuseful weed, That grows equivocably without seed."

Cowley spoke the opinion of his day as if the plant had neither use nor beauty--

"Nec caulem natura mihi, nec Floris honorem, Nec mihi vel s.e.m.e.n dura Noverca dedit-- Nec me sole fovet, nec cultis crescere in hortis Concessum, et Foliis gratia nulla meis-- Herba invisa Deis poteram cloque videri, Et spurio Terrae nata puerperio."

_Plantarum_, lib. i.

And later still Gilpin, who wrote so much on the beauties of country scenery at the close of the last century, has nothing better to say for Ferns than that they are noxious weeds, to be cla.s.sed with "Thorns and Briers, and other ditch trumpery." The fact, no doubt, is that Ferns were considered something "uncanny and eerie;" our ancestors could not understand a plant which seemed to them to have neither flower nor seed, and so they boldly a.s.serted it had neither. "This kinde of Ferne," says Lyte in 1587, "beareth neither flowers nor sede, except we shall take for sede the black spots growing on the backsides of the leaves, the whiche some do gather thinking to worke wonders, but to say the trueth it is nothing els but trumperie and superst.i.tion." A plant so strange must needs have strange qualities, but the peculiar power attributed to it of making persons invisible arose thus:--It was the age in which the doctrine of signatures was fully believed in; according to which doctrine Nature, in giving particular shapes to leaves and flowers, had thereby plainly taught for what diseases they were specially useful.[91:1] Thus a heart-shaped leaf was for heart disease, a liver-shaped for the liver, a bright-eyed flower was for the eyes, a foot-shaped flower or leaf would certainly cure the gout, and so on; and then when they found a plant which certainly grew and increased, but of which the organs of fructification were invisible, it was a clear conclusion that properly used the plant would confer the gift of invisibility. Whether the people really believed this or not we cannot say,[92:1] but they were quite ready to believe any wonder connected with the plant, and so it was a constant advertis.e.m.e.nt with the quacks.

Even in Addison's time "it was impossible to walk the streets without having an advertis.e.m.e.nt thrust into your hand of a doctor who had arrived at the knowledge of the Green and Red Dragon, and had discovered the female Fern-seed. n.o.body ever knew what this meant" ("Tatler," No.

240). But to name all the superst.i.tions connected with the Fern would take too much s.p.a.ce.

The name is expressive; it is a contraction of the Anglo-Saxon _fepern_, and so shows that some of our ancestors marked its feathery form; and its history as a garden plant is worth a few lines. So little has it been esteemed as a garden plant that Mr. J. Smith, the ex-Curator of the Kew Gardens, tells us that in the year 1822 the collection of Ferns at Kew was so extremely poor that "he could not estimate the entire Kew collection of exotic Ferns at that period at more than forty species"

(Smith's "Ferns, British and Exotic," introduction). Since that time the steadily increasing admiration of Ferns has caused collectors to send them from all parts of the world, so that in 1866 Mr. Smith was enabled to describe about a thousand species, and now the number must be much larger; and the closer search for Ferns has further brought into notice a very large number of most curious varieties and monstrosities, which it is still more curious to observe are, with very few exceptions, confined to the British species.

FOOTNOTES:

[91:1] See Brown's "Religio Medici," p. ii. 2.

[92:1] It probably was the real belief, as we find it so often mentioned as a positive fact; thus Browne--

"Poor silly fool! thou striv'st in vain to know If I enjoy or love where thou lov'st so; Since my affection ever secret tried Blooms like the Fern, and seeds still unespied."

_Poems_, p. 26 (Sir E. Brydges' edit. 1815).

FIGS.

(1) _t.i.tania._