The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare Part 51

It is used in the same way by Bullein when, speaking of the flower of the Honeysuckle (_see_ HONEYSUCKLE), and it must have been used in the same sense by Isaak Walton, when he saw a boy gathering "Lilies and Lady-smocks" in the meadows.

We have still many records of this loose way of speaking of the Lily, in the Water Lily, the Lily of the Valley, the Lent Lily, St. Bruno's Lily, the Scarborough Lily, the Belladonna Lily, and several others, none of which are true Lilies.

But it is time to come to Shakespeare's Lilies. In all the twenty-eight pa.s.sages the greater portion simply recall the Lily as the type of elegance and beauty, without any special reference to the flower, and in many the word is only used to express a colour, Lily-white. But in the others he doubtless had some special plant in view, and there are two species which, from contemporary writers, seem to have been most celebrated in his day. The one is the pure White Lily (_Lilium candidum_), a plant of which the native country is not yet quite accurately ascertained. It is reported to grow wild in abundance in Lebanon, and it probably came to England from the East in very early times. It was certainly largely grown in Europe in the Middle Ages, and was universally acknowledged by artists, sculptors, and architects, as the emblem of female elegance and purity, and none of us would dispute its claim to such a position. There is no other Lily which can surpa.s.s it, when well grown, in stateliness and elegance, with sweet-scented flowers of the purest white and the most graceful shape, and crowning the top of the long leafy stem with such a coronal as no other plant can show. On the rare beauties and excellences of the White Lily it would be easy to fill a volume merely with extracts from old writers, and such a volume would be far from uninteresting. Those who wish for some such account may refer to the "Monographie Historique et Litteraire des Lis,"

par Fr. de Cannart d'Hamale, 1870. There they will find more than fifty pages of the botany, literary history, poetry, and medical uses of the plant, together with its application to religious emblems, numismatics, heraldry, painting, &c. Two short extracts will suffice here:--"Le lis blanc, surnomme la fleur des fleurs, les delices de Venus, la Rose de Junon, qu'Anguillara designa sous le nom d'Ambrosia, probablement a cause de son parfum suivant, et pent etre aussi de sa soidisante divine origine, se place tout naturellement a le tete de ce groupe splendide."

"C'est le Lis cla.s.sique, par excellence, et en meme temps le plus beau du genre."

The other is the large Scarlet or Chalcedonian Lily; and this also is one of the very handsomest, though its beauty is of a very different kind to the White Lily. The habit of the plant is equally stately, and is indeed very grand, but the colours are of the brightest and clearest red. These two plants were abundantly grown in Shakespeare's time, but besides these there do not seem to have been more than about half-a-dozen species in cultivation. There are now forty-six recognized species, besides varieties in great number.

The Lily has a very wide geographical range, spreading from Central Europe to the Philippines, and species are found in all quarters of the globe, though the chief homes of the family seem to be in California and j.a.pan. Yet we have no wild Lily in England. Both the Martagon and the Pyrenean Lily have been found, but there is no doubt they are garden escapes.

As a garden plant it may safely be said that no garden can make any pretence to the name that cannot show a good display of Lilies, many or few. Yet the Lily is a most capricious plant; while in one garden almost any sort will grow luxuriantly, in a neighbouring garden it is found difficult to grow any in a satisfactory manner. Within the last few years their culture has been much studied, and by the practical knowledge of such great growers of the family as G. F. Wilson, H. J.

Elwes, and other kindred liliophilists, we shall probably in a few years have many difficulties cleared up both in the botanical history and the cultivation of this lovely tribe.

But we cannot dismiss the Lily without a few words of notice of its sacred character. It is the flower specially dedicated to the Virgin Mary, and which is so familiar to us in the old paintings of the Annunciation. But it has, of course, a still higher character as a sacred plant from the high honour placed on it by our Lord in the Sermon on the Mount. After all that has been written on "the Lilies of the field," critics have not yet decided whether any, and, if so, what particular plant was meant. Each Eastern traveller seems to have selected the flower that he most admired in Palestine, and then to p.r.o.nounce that that must be the Lily referred to. Thus, at various times it has been decided to be the Rose, the Crown Imperial, the White Lily, the Chalcedonian Lily, the Oleander, the Wild Artichoke, the Sternbergia, the Tulip, and many others, but the most generally received opinion now is, that if a true Lily at all, the evidence runs most strongly in favour of the L. Chalcedonic.u.m; but that Dean Stanley's view is more probably the correct one, that the term "Lily" is generic, alluding to the many beautiful flowers, both of the Lily family and others, which abound in Palestine. The question, though deeply interesting, is not one for which we need to be over-curious as to the true answer. All of us, and gardeners especially, may be thankful for the words which have thrown a never dying charm over our favourites, and have effectually stopped any foolish objections that may be brought against the deepest study of flowers, as a petty study, with no great results. To any such silly objections (and we often hear them) the answer is a very short and simple one--that we have been bidden by the very highest authority to "consider the Lilies."

FOOTNOTES:

[140:1] This is a modern reading, the older and more correct reading is "twilled."

[142:1]

"Within the garden's peaceful scene Appeared two lovely foes, Aspiring to the rank of Queen, The Lily and the Rose.

Yours is, she said, the n.o.blest hue, And yours the statelier mien, And till a third surpa.s.ses you Let each be deemed a Queen."--COWPER.

LIME.

(1) _Ariel._

All prisoners, sir, In the Line-grove which weather-fends your cell.

_Tempest_, act v, sc. 1 (9).

(2) _Prospero._

Come, hang them on this Line.

_Ibid._, act iv, sc. 1 (193).

(3) _Stephano._

Mistress Line, is not this my jerkin?

_Ibid._, act iv, sc. 1 (235).

It is only in comparatively modern times that the old name of Line or Linden, or Lind,[146:1] has given place to Lime. The tree is a doubtful native, but has been long introduced, perhaps by the Romans. It is a very handsome tree when allowed room, but it bears clipping well, and so is very often tortured into the most unnatural shapes. It was a very favourite tree with our forefathers to plant in avenues, not only for its rapid growth, but also for the delicious scent of its flowers; but the large secretions of honey-dew which load the leaves, and the fact that it comes late into leaf and sheds its leaves very early, have rather thrown it out of favour of late years. As a useful tree it does not rank very high, except for wood-carvers, who highly prize its light, easily-cut wood, that keeps its shape, and is very little liable to crack or split either in the working or afterwards. Nearly all Grinling Gibbons' delicate carving is in Lime wood. To gardeners the Lime is further useful as furnishing the material for bast or bazen mats,[147:1]

which are made from its bark, and interesting as being the origin of the name of Linnaeus.

FOOTNOTES:

[146:1] "Be ay of chier as light as lyf on Lynde."--CHAUCER, _The Clerkes Tale_, _l'envoi_.

[147:1] "Between the barke and the woode of this tree, there bee thin pellicles or skins lying in many folds together, whereof are made bands and cords called Bazen ropes."--PHILEMON HOLLAND'S _Pliny's Nat. Hist._ xvi. 14. The chapter is headed "Of the Line or Linden Tree."

LING.

_Gonzalo._

Now would I give a thousand furlongs of sea for an acre of barren ground, Ling, Heath, brown Furze, anything.

_Tempest_, act i, sc. 1 (70).

If this be the correct reading (and not Long Heath) the reference is to the Heather or Common Ling (_Calluna vulgaris_). This is the plant that is generally called Ling in the South of England, but in the North of England the name is given to the Cotton Gra.s.s (_Eriophorum_). It is very probable, however, that no particular plant is intended, but that it means any rough, wild vegetation, especially of open moors and heaths.

LOCUSTS.

_Iago._

The food that to him now is as luscious as Locusts, shall be to him shortly as bitter as Coloquintida.

_Oth.e.l.lo_, act i, sc. 3 (354).

The Locust is the fruit of the Carob tree (_Ceratonia siliqua_), a tree that grows naturally in many parts of the South of Europe, the Levant, and Syria, and is largely cultivated for its fruit.[148:1] These are like Beans, full of sweet pulp, and are given in Spain and other southern countries to horses, pigs, and cattle, and they are occasionally imported into England for the same purpose. The Carob was cultivated in England before Shakespeare's time. "They grow not in this countrie," says Lyte, "yet, for all that, they be sometimes in the gardens of some diligent Herboristes, but they be so small shrubbes that they can neither bring forth flowers nor fruite." It was also grown by Gerard, and Shakespeare may have seen it; but it is now very seldom seen in any collection, though the name is preserved among us, as the jeweller's carat weight is said to have derived its name from the Carob Beans, which were used for weighing small objects.

The origin of the tree being called Locust is a little curious. Readers of the New Testament, ignorant of Eastern customs, could not understand that St. John could feed on the insect locust, which, however, is now known to be a common and acceptable article of food, so they looked about for some solution of their difficulty, and decided that the Locusts were the tender shoots of the Carob tree, and that the wild honey was the luscious juice of the Carob fruit. Having got so far it was easy to go farther, and so the Carob soon got the names of St.

John's Bread and St. John's Beans, and the monks of the desert showed the very trees by which St. John's life was supported. But though the Carob tree did not produce the locusts on which St. John fed, there is little or no doubt that "the husks which the swine did eat," and which the Prodigal Son longed for, were the produce of the Carob tree.

FOOTNOTES: