WHEAT.
I might perhaps content myself with marking these passages only, and dismiss Shakespeare's Wheat without further comment, for the Wheat of his day was identical with our own; but there are a few points in connection with English Wheat which may be interesting. Wheat is not an English plant, nor is it a European plant; its original home is in Northern Asia, whence it has spread into all civilized countries.[318:1] For the cultivation of Wheat is one of the first signs of civilized life; it marks the end of nomadic life, and implies more or less a settled habitation. When it reached England, and to what country we are indebted for it, we do not know; but we know that while we are indebted to the Romans for so many of our useful trees, and fruits, and vegetables, we are not indebted to them for the introduction of Wheat. This we might be almost sure of from the very name, which has no connection with the Latin names, triticum or frumentum, but is a pure old English word, signifying originally white, and so distinguishing it as the white grain in opposition to the darker grains of Oats and Rye. But besides the etymological evidence, we have good historical evidence that Cæsar found Wheat growing in England when he first landed on the shores of Kent. He daily victualled his camp with British Wheat ("frumentum ex agris quotidie in castra conferebat"); and it was while his soldiers were reaping the Wheat in the Kentish fields that they were surrounded and successfully attacked by the British. He tells us, however, that the cultivation of Wheat was chiefly confined to Kent, and was not much known inland: "interiores plerique frumenta non serunt, sed lacte et carne vivunt."—De Bello Gallico, v, 14. Roman Wheat has frequently been found in graves, and strange stories have been told of the plants that have been raised from these old seeds; but a more scientific inquiry has proved that there have been mistakes or deceits, more or less intentional, for "Wheat is said to keep for seven years at the longest. The statements as to mummy Wheat are wholly devoid of authenticity, as are those of the Raspberry seeds taken from a Roman tomb."—Hooker, "Botany" in Science Primers. The oft-repeated stories about the vitality of mummy Wheat were effectually disposed of when it was discovered that much of the so-called Wheat was South American Maize.
FOOTNOTES:
[318:1] Yet Homer considered it to be indigenous in Sicily—Odyss: ix, 109—and Cicero, perhaps on the authority of Homer, says the same: "Insula Cereris . . . ubi primum fruges inventæ esse dicuntur."—In Verrem, v, 38.
WILLOW.
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 "Hæc Salex, Ae Wyllo-tre;" "Hæc 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 à 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 entitled "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 passed 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 association with the Willow arose from its Biblical associations; 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 associated 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 associated 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 Reginæ 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. | ||
| Romeo and Juliet, act i, sc. 3 (26). | ||
| (3) | Hamlet (aside). | Wormwood, Wormwood. |
| Hamlet, act iii, sc. 2 (191). | ||
| (4) | Thy secret pleasure turns to open shame, Thy private feasting to a public fast, Thy smoothing titles to a ragged name, Thy sugar'd tongue to bitter Wormwood taste. | |
| Lucrece (890). | ||
See also [Dian's Bud].
Wormwood is the product of many species of Artemisia, a family consisting of 180 species, of which we have four in England. The whole family is remarkable for the extreme bitterness of all parts of the plant, so that "as bitter as Wormwood" is one of the oldest proverbs. The plant was named Artemisia from Artemis, the Greek name of Diana, and for this reason: "Verily of these three Worts which we named Artemisia, it is said that Diana should find them, and delivered their powers and leechdom to Chiron the Centaur, who first from these Worts set forth a leechdom, and he named these Worts from the name of Diana, Artemis, that is, Artemisias."—Herbarium Apulæi, Cockayne's translation. The Wormwood was of very high reputation in medicine, and is thus recommended in the Stockholm MS.:
"Lif man or woman, more or lesse
In his head have gret sicknesse
Or gruiance or any werking
Awoyne he take wt. owte lettyng
It is called Sowthernwode also
And hony eteys et spurge stamp yer to
And late hy yis drunk, fastined drinky
And his hed werk away schall synkyn."[325:1]
But even in Shakespeare's time this high character had somewhat abated, though it was still used for all medicines in which a strong bitter was recommended. But its chief use seems to have been as a protection against insects of all kinds, who might very reasonably be supposed to avoid such a bitter food. This is Tusser's advice about the plant—
"While Wormwood hath seed get a handful or twaine
To save against March, to make flea to refraine:
Where chamber is sweeped and Wormwood is strowne,
No flea, for his life, dare abide to be knowne.
What saver is better (if physick be true),
For places infected than Wormwood and Rue?
It is as a comfort for hart and the braine,
And therefore to have it, it is not in vaine."
July's Husbandry.
This quality was the origin of the names of Mugwort[326:1] and Wormwood. Its other name (in the Stockholm MS. referred to), Avoyne or Averoyne is a corruption of the specific name of one of the species, A. Abrotanum. Southernwood is the southern Wormwood, i.e., the foreign, as distinguished from the native plant. The modern name for the same species is Boy's Love, or Old Man. The last name may have come from its hoary leaves, though different explanations are given: the other name is given to it, according to Dr. Prior, "from an ointment made with its ashes being used by young men to promote the growth of a beard." There is good authority for this derivation, but I think the name may have been given for other reasons. "Boy's Love" is one of the most favourite cottage-garden plants, and it enters largely into the rustic language of flowers. No posy presented by a young man to his lass is complete without Boy's Love; and it is an emblem of fidelity, at least it was so once. It is, in fact, a Forget-me-Not, from its strong abiding smell; so St. Francis de Sales applied it: "To love in the midst of sweets, little children could do that; but to love in the bitterness of Wormwood is a sure sign of our affectionate fidelity." Not that the Wormwood was ever named Forget-me-Not, for that name was given to the Ground Pine (Ajuga chamæpitys) on account of its unpleasant and long-enduring smell, until it was transferred to the Myosotis (which then lost its old name of Mouse-ear), and the pretty legend was manufactured to account for the name.
In England Wormwood has almost fallen into complete disuse; but in France it is largely used in the shape of Absinthe. As a garden plant, Tarragon, which is a species of Wormwood, will claim a place in every herb garden, and there are a few, such as A. sericea, A. cana, and A. alpina, which make pretty shrubs for the rockwork.
FOOTNOTES:
[325:1] Wormwood had a still higher reputation among the ancients, as the following extract shows:
Ἀρτεμισία μονόκλωνος.
Αὐει γὰρ κόπον ἀυδρὸς ὁδοιπόρου, ὅς κ᾽ ένι χέρσιν
την μονόκλωνον ἔχη· περὶ δ᾿ ἀυ ποσὶν ἕρπετα πάντα
φεύγει, ἤν τις ἔχη ἐν ὁδῶ, κὰι φάσματα δεινά.
Anonymi Carmen de Herbis, in "Poetæ Bucolici."
[326:1] In connection with Mugwort there is a most curious account of the formation of a plant name given in a note in the "Promptorium Parvulorum," s.v. Mugworte: "Mugwort, al on as seyn some, Modirwort; lewed folk that in manye wordes conne no rygt sownyge, but ofte shortyn wordys, and changyn lettrys and silablys, they coruptyn the o in to a and d in to g, and syncopyn i smytyn a-wey i and r and seyn mugwort."—Arundel MS., 42, f. 35 v.