But aye stedfast, &c.[442]
[440] Ibid.
[441] Oliver, p. 134.
[442] Works, ed. Nicolas, t. vi. p. 259.
Were it not for this symbolism for the woodbine, we had been quite unable to understand why in our old testamentary bequests, the flower should have been so especially mentioned as we find in the will of Joan Lady Bergavenny who, A.D. 1434, leaves to one of her friends, a “bed of silk, black and red, embroidered with woodbined flowers of silver,” &c.[443] Besides its symbolism of those colours—black and red—for which we have but this moment given the reasons, p. cxlix., the funeral cope which we noticed before, p. [cxxvi]., showed a symbolism of flowers in the woodbine wrought upon it. Sure may we be that the donor’s wish—perhaps the fingers of a weeping widow had worked it for Lincoln Cathedral—was to tell for her in after days the unfaltering love she ever bore towards her husband, and to say so every time this vestment happened to be worn at the services sounded for him. May be that quaint old likeness of Anne Vavasour, exhibited here A.D. 1868 among the “National Portraits,” and numbered 680, p. 138 of the Catalogue, had its background trailed all over with branches of the woodbine in leaf, at the particular behest of a fond spouse Sir H. Lee, and so managed that the plant’s only cyme of flower should hang just below her bosom. By Shakespeare floral symbolism was well understood; and he often shows his knowledge of it in “A Winter’s Tale,” act iv. scene iii. He gives us several meanings of flower-speech, and when he makes (Henry VIII. act iv. scene ii.) Queen Katherine say to Griffith “Farewell—when I am dead—strew me over with maiden flowers, that all the world may know I was a chaste wife to my grave,” he tells of an olden custom still kept up among us, and more fully carried out in Wales and the Western parts of England, where the grave of a dear departed one is weekly dressed by loving hands with the prettiest flowers that may be had. The symbolism of colours is learnedly treated by Portal in his “Couleurs Symboliques.”
The readers of those valuable inventories of the chasubles, copes, and other liturgical silk garments which belonged to Exeter cathedral and that of London, about the middle of the thirteenth century, will not fail to observe that some of them bore, amongst other animals, the horse, and fish of different sorts, nay, porpoises figured on them: “una capa de palla cum porphesiis et leonibus deauratis,”[444] “due cape de palla cum equis et avibus,”[445] “unum pulvinar breudatum avibus, piscibus et bestiis,”[446] “capa de quodam panno Tarsico, viridis coloris cum pluribus piscibus et rosis aurifilo contextis.”[447] Even here, under [No. 8229], p. 151, we have from the East a small shred of crimson silk, which shows on it a flat-shaped fish. If to some minds it be a subject of wonderment that, amid flowers and fruits, not only birds and beasts—elephants included—but such odd things as fish, even the porpoise, are to be found represented upon textiles chosen for the service of the altar, they should learn that all such stuffs were gladly put to this very use for the symbolism they carried, by accident, about them. Then, as now, the clergy had to say, and the people to listen daily to that canticle: “O all ye works of the Lord, bless ye the Lord; O ye angels of the Lord, O ye whales, and all that move in the waters, O ye fowls of the air, O all ye beasts and cattle, bless ye the Lord and magnify Him for ever!” Not merely churchmen, but the lay folks, deemed it but fitting that while the prayer above was being offered up, an emphasis should be given to its words by the very garment worn by the celebrant as he uttered them.
[443] Test. Vet. i. 228.
[444] Oliver’s Exeter, p. 299.
[445] Ibid.
[446] St. Paul’s, p. 316.