The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare Part 74

While Mr. Ruskin's account of it is this: "When the sun rises behind a ridge of Pines, and those Pines are seen from a distance of a mile or two against his light, the whole form of the tree, trunk, branches and all, becomes one frost-work of intensely brilliant silver, which is relieved against the clear sky like a burning fringe, for some distance on either side of the sun."--_Stones of Venice_, i. 240.

The Pine is the established emblem of everything that is "high and lifted up," but always with a suggestion of dreariness and solitude. So it is used by Shakespeare and by Milton, who always a.s.sociated the Pine with mountains; and so it has always been used by the poets, even down to our own day. Thus Tennyson--

"They came, they cut away my tallest Pines-- My dark tall Pines, that plumed the craggy ledge-- High o'er the blue gorge, and all between The snowy peak and snow-white cataract Fostered the callow eaglet; from beneath Whose thick mysterious boughs in the dark morn The panther's roar came m.u.f.fled while I sat Down in the valley."

_Complaint of aenone._

Sir Walter Scott similarly describes the tree in the pretty and well-known lines--

"Aloft the Ash and warrior Oak Cast anchor in the rifted rock; And higher yet the Pine tree hung His shattered trunk, and frequent flung, Where seemed the cliffs to meet on high, His boughs athwart the narrow sky."

Yet the Pine which was best known to Shakespeare, and perhaps the only Pine he knew, was the Pinus sylvestris, or Scotch fir, and this, though flourishing on the highest hills where nothing else will flourish, certainly attains its fullest beauty in sheltered lowland districts.

There are probably much finer Scotch firs in Devonshire than can be found in Scotland. This is the only indigenous Fir, though the Pinus pinaster claims to be a native of Ireland, some cones having been supposed to be found in the bogs, but the claim is not generally allowed (there is no proof of the discovery of the cones); and yet it has become so completely naturalized on the coast of Dorsetshire, especially about Bournemouth, that it has been admitted into the last edition of Sowerby's "English Botany."

But though the Scotch Fir is a true native, and was probably much more abundant in England formerly than it is now, the tree has no genuine English name, and apparently never had. Pine comes directly and without change from the Latin, _Pinus_, as one of the chief products, pitch, comes directly from the Latin, _pix_. In the early vocabularies it is called "Pin-treow," and the cones are "Pin-nuttes." They were also called "Pine apples," and the tree was called the Pine-Apple Tree.[208:1] This name was transferred to the rich West Indian fruit[208:2] from its similarity to a fir-cone, and so was lost to the fruit of the fir-tree, which had to borrow a new name from the Greek; but it was still in use in Shakespeare's day--

"Sweete smelling Firre that frankensence provokes, And Pine Apples from whence sweet juyce doth come."

CHESTER'S _Love's Martyr_.

And Gerard describing the fruit of the Pine Tree, says: "This Apple is called in . . . Low Dutch, Pyn Appel, and in English, Pine-apple, clog, and cones." We also find "Fyre-tree," which is a true English word meaning the "fire-tree;" but I believe that "Fir" was originally confined to the timber, from its large use for torches, and was not till later years applied to the living tree.

The sweetness of the Pine seeds, joined to the difficulty of extracting them, and the length of time necessary for their ripening, did not escape the notice of the emblem-writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. With them it was the favourite emblem of the happy results of persevering labour. Camerarius, a contemporary of Shakespeare and a great botanist, gives a pretty plate of a man holding a Fir-cone, with this moral: "Sic ad virtutem et honestatem et laudabiles actiones non nisi per labores ac varias difficultates perveniri potest, at postea sequuntur suavissimi fructus." He acknowledges his obligation for this moral to the proverb of Plautus: "Qui e nuce nucleum esse vult, frangat nucem" ("Symbolorum," &c., 1590).

In Shakespeare's time a few of the European Conifers were grown in England, including the Larch, but only as curiosities. The very large number of species which now ornament our gardens and Pineta from America and j.a.pan were quite unknown. The many uses of the Pine--for its timber, production of pitch, tar, resin, and turpentine--were well known and valued. Shakespeare mentions both pitch and tar.

FOOTNOTES:

[208:1] For many examples see "Catholicon Anglic.u.m," s.v. Pyne-Tree, with note.

[208:2] The West Indian Pine Apple is described by Gerard as "Ananas, the Pinea, or Pine Thistle."

PINKS.

(1) _Romeo._

A most courteous exposition.

_Mercutio._

Nay, I am the very Pink of courtesy.

_Romeo._

Pink for flower.

_Mercutio._

Right.

_Romeo._

Why, then is my pump well flowered.

_Romeo and Juliet_, act ii, sc. 4 (60).

(2) _Maiden._

Pinks of odour faint.

_Two n.o.ble Kinsmen_, Introd. song.

To these may perhaps be added the following, from the second verse sung by Mariana in "Measure for Measure," act iv, sc. 1 (337)--

Hide, oh hide, those hills of snow Which thy frozen bosom bears!

On whose tops the Pinks that grow Are of those that April wears.

The authority is doubtful, but it is attributed to Shakespeare in some editions of his poems.

The Pink or Pincke was, as now, the name of the smaller sorts of Carnations, and was generally applied to the single sorts. It must have been a very favourite flower, as we may gather from the phrase "Pink of courtesy," which means courtesy carried to its highest point; and from Spenser's pretty comparison--

"Her lovely eyes like Pincks but newly spred."

_Amoretti_, Sonnet 64.

The name has a curious history. It is not, as most of us would suppose, derived from the colour, but the colour gets its name from the plant.

The name (according to Dr. Prior) comes through _Pinksten_ (German), from Pentecost, and so was originally applied to one species--the Whitsuntide Gilliflower. From this it was applied to other species of the same family. It is certainly "a curious accident," as Dr. Prior observes, "that a word that originally meant 'fiftieth' should come to be successively the name of a festival of the Church, of a flower, of an ornament in muslin called _pinking_, of a colour, and of a sword stab."

Shakespeare uses the word in three of its senses. First, as applied to a colour--

Come, thou monarch of the Vine, Plumpy Bacchus with Pink eyne.

_Antony and Cleopatra_, act ii, sc. 7.[210:1]

Second, as applied to an ornament of dress in Romeo's person--

Then is my pump well flowered;

_Romeo and Juliet_, act ii, sc. 4.

_i.e._, well pinked. And in Grumio's excuses to Petruchio for the non-attendance of the servants--

Nathaniel's coat, Sir, was not fully made, And Gabriel's pumps were all unpinked I' the heel.