[79] Act I, Scene I.
Fairies were thought to be particularly fond of thyme, and that is one reason why Shakespeare covered the bank where Titania was wont to sleep with wild thyme. The other reason was that he chose the sweetest flowers for perfume for the canopy and couch of the Fairy Queen: musk-roses, eglantine, honeysuckle, violets, and wild thyme mingling the most delicious of scents. The word comes from the Greek and Latin thymum. Thyme covered Mount Hymettus and gave to the honey produced there a particularly delicious aromatic flavor. The "honey of Mount Hymettus" became a proverb. Hybla in Sicily was no less famed for its thyme, and, consequently, its honey. Thyme is especially a "bee-plant"; and those who would see their gardens full of bees would do well to plant thyme with lavish hand. Ladies used to embroider a bee hovering over a sprig of thyme on the scarves they gave to their lovers—a symbol of action and honor. Thyme, too, was supposed to renew the spirits of man and beast and it was deemed a powerful antidote against melancholy.
Turning to our old friend, Parkinson, we find that
"The ordinary garden Thyme (Thymus vulgatius sive durius) is a small, low, woody plant with brittle branches and small, hard, green leaves, as every one knoweth, having small white purplish flowers standing round about the tops of the stalks. The seed is small and brown, darker than Marjoram. The root is woody and abideth well divers Winters.
SHAKESPEARE GARDEN, VAN CORTLANDT HOUSE, VAN CORTLANDT PARK, COLONIAL
DAMES OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK
SHAKESPEARE GARDEN, VAN CORTLANDT HOUSE, VAN CORTLANDT PARK, COLONIAL
DAMES OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK
"To set down all the particular uses whereunto Thyme is applied were to weary both the writer and the reader. I will but only note out a few, for besides the physical uses to many purposes for the head, stomach, spleen, etc., there is no herb almost of more use in the houses both of high and low, rich and poor, both for inward and outward occasions,—outwardly for bathings among other hot herbs and among other sweet herbs for strewings. Inwardly in most sorts of broths, with Rosemary, as also with other faseting (or rather farsing) herbs,[80] and to make sauce for divers sorts, both fish and flesh, as to stuff the belly of a goose to be roasted and after put into the sauce and the powder with bread to strew on meat when it is roasted, and so likewise on roasted or fried fish. It is held by divers to be a speedy remedy against the sting of a bee, being bruised and laid thereon.
[80] Farsi, stuffing.