The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare Part 56

_The Flower and the Leaf_ (240).

And certainly a fine Medlar tree "ful of blossomes" is a handsome ornament on any lawn. There are few deciduous trees that make better lawn trees. There is nothing stiff about the growth even from its early youth; it forms a low, irregular, picturesque tree, excellent for shade, with very handsome white flowers, followed by the curious fruit; it will not, however, do well in the North of England or Scotland.

It does not seem to have been a favourite fruit with our forefathers.

Bullein says "the fruite called the Medler is used for a medicine and not for meate;" and Shakespeare only used the common language of his time when he described the Medlar as only fit to be eaten when rotten.

Chaucer said just the same--

"That ilke fruyt is ever lenger the wers Till it be rote in mullok or in stree-- We olde men, I drede, so fare we, Till we be roten, can we not be rype."

_The Reeves Tale._

And many others writers to the same effect. But, in fact, the Medlar when fit to be eaten is no more rotten than a ripe Peach, Pear, or Strawberry, or any other fruit which we do not eat till it has reached a certain stage of softness. There is a vast difference between a ripe and a rotten Medlar, though it would puzzle many of us to say when a fruit (not a Medlar only) is ripe, that is, fit to be eaten. These things are matters of taste and fashion, and it is rather surprising to find that we are accused, and by good judges, of eating Peaches when rotten rather than ripe. "The j.a.panese always eat their Peaches in an unripe state. In the 'Gartenflora' Dr. Regel says, in some remarks on j.a.panese fruit trees, that the j.a.panese regard a ripe Peach as rotten."

There are a few varieties of the Medlar, differing in the size and flavour of the fruits, which were also cultivated in Shakespeare's time.

FOOTNOTES:

[160:1] So Chester speaks of it as "the Young Man's Medlar" ("Love's Martyr," p. 96, New Sh. Soc.).

MINTS.

(1) _Perdita._

Here's flowers for you; Hot Lavender, Mints, Savory, Marjoram.

_Winter's Tale_, act iv, sc. 4 (103).

(2) _Armado._

I am that flower,

_Dumain._

That Mint.

_Longaville._

That Columbine.

_Love's Labour's Lost_, act v, sc. 2 (661).

The Mints are a large family of highly-perfumed, strong-flavoured plants, of which there are many British species, but too well known to call for any further description.

MISTLETOE.

_Tamora._

The trees, though summer, yet forlorn and lean, O'ercome with Moss and baleful Mistletoe.

_t.i.tus Andronicus_, act ii, sc. 3 (94).

The Mistletoe was a sore puzzle to our ancestors, almost as great a mystery as the Fern. While they admired its fresh, evergreen branches, and pretty transparent fruit, and used it largely in the decoration of their houses at Christmas, they looked on the plant with a certain awe.

Something of this, no doubt, arose from its traditional connection with the Druids, which invested the plant with a semi-sacred character, as a plant that could drive away evil spirits; yet it was also looked upon with some suspicion, perhaps also arising from its use by our heathen ancestors, so that, though admitted into houses, it was not (or very seldom) admitted into churches. And this character so far still attaches to the Mistletoe, that it is never allowed with the Holly and Ivy and Box to decorate the churches, and Gay's lines were certainly written in error--

"Now with bright Holly all the temples strow, With Laurel green and sacred Mistletoe."

The mystery attaching to the Mistletoe arose from the ignorance as to its production. It was supposed not to grow from its seeds, and how it was produced was a fit subject for speculation and fable. Virgil tells the story thus--

"Quale solet sylvis brumali frigore visc.u.m Fronde virere nova, quod non sua seminat arbos, Et croceo ftu teretes circ.u.mdare truncos."

_aeneid_, vi, 205.

In this way Virgil elegantly veils his ignorance, but his commentator in the eighteenth century (Delphic Cla.s.sics) tells the tale without any doubts as to its truth. "Non nascitur e semine proprio arboris, at neque ex insidentum volucrum fimo, ut putavere veteres, sed ex ipso arborum vitali excremento." This was the opinion of the great Lord Bacon; he ridiculed the idea that the Mistletoe was propagated by the operation of a bird as an idle tradition, saying that the sap which produces the plant is such as "the tree doth excerne and cannot a.s.similate," and Browne ("Vulgar Errors") was of the same opinion. But the opposite opinion was perpetuated in the very name ("Mistel: fimus, muck,"

c.o.c.kayne),[163:1] and was held without any doubt by most of the writers in Shakespeare's time--

"Upon the oak, the plumb-tree and the holme, The stock-dove and the blackbird should not come, Whose mooting on the trees does make to grow Rots-curing hyphear, and the Mistletoe."

BROWNE, _Brit. Past._ i, 1.

So that we need not blame Gerard when he boldly said that "this excrescence hath not any roote, neither doth encrease himselfe of his seed, as some have supposed, but it rather commethe of a certaine moisture gathered together upon the boughes and joints of the trees, through the barke whereof this vaporous moisture proceeding bringeth forth the Misseltoe." We now know that it is produced exclusively from the seeds probably lodged by the birds, and that it is easily grown and cultivated. It will grow and has been found on almost any deciduous tree, preferring those with soft bark, and growing very seldom on the Oak.[163:2] Those who wish for full information upon the proportionate distribution of the Mistletoe on different British trees will find a good summary in "Notes and Queries," vol. iii. p. 226.

FOOTNOTES:

[163:1] "_Mistel_ est a _mist_ stercus, quod ex stercore avium p.r.o.nascitur, nec aliter p.r.o.nasci potest."--WACHTER, _Glossary_ (quoted in "Notes and Queries," 3rd series, vii. 157. In the same volume are several papers on the origin of the word). Dr. Prior derives it from _mistl_ (different), and _tan_ (twig), being so unlike the tree it grows upon.

[163:2] Mistletoe growing on an oak had a special legendary value. Its rarity probably gave it value in the eyes of the Druids, and much later it had its mystic lore. "By sitting upon a hill late in a evening, near a Wood, in a few nights a fire drake will appeare, mark where it lighteth, and then you shall find an oake with Mistletoe thereon, at the Root whereof there is a Misle-childe, whereof many strange things are conceived. _Beati qui non crediderunt._"--PLAT., _Garden of Eden_, 1659, No. 68.

MOSS.

(1) _Adriana._

If ought possess thee from me, it is dross, Usurping Ivy, Brier, or idle Moss.

_Comedy of Errors_, act ii, sc. 2 (179).