Greek Honeysuckle Ornament.
Greek Honeysuckle Ornament.
Sacred Tree (N.W. Palace, Nimroud).
Ornament on the Robe of King.
Fig. 87.—From Nineveh (Layard).
The honeysuckle, termed conventionally a palmette, is classically represented as either seven or nine-lobed, and this symbol of the Dayspring or of Wisdom was common alike both East and West. The palm branch is merely another form of the fern or fish-bone, and the word palm is radically alma, the all nourisher. The palm leaf appears on one of the stones at New Grange, but as Fergusson remarks, “how a knowledge of this Eastern plant reached New Grange is by no means clear”.[281] The feather was a further emblem of the same spiritual father, feeder, or fodder, and in Egypt Ma or Truth was represented with a single-feather headdress (ante, [p. 136]). From the mistletoe to the fern, a sprig of any kind was regarded as the spright, spirit, or spurt of new life or new Thought (Thaut?), and the forms of this young sprig are innumerable. The gist, ghost, or essence of the Maypole was that it should be a sprout well budded out, whence to this day at Saffron Walden the children on Mayday sing:—
A branch of May we have brought you,