"Seu condis amabile carmen
Prima feres Hederæ victricis præmia."—Horace.
And in mediæval times it was used with Holly for Christmas decorations, so that Bullein called it "the womens Christmas Herbe." But the old writers always assumed a curious rivalry between the two—
"Holly and Ivy made a great party
Who should have the mastery
In lands where they go."
And there is a well-known carol of the time of Henry VI., which tells of the contest between the two, and of the mastery of the Holly; it is in eight stanzas, of which I extract the last four—
"Holly he hath berries as red as any Rose,
The foresters, the hunters, keep them from the does;
Ivy she hath berries as black as any Sloe,
There come the owls and eat them as they go;
Holly he hath birds, a full fair flock,
The nightingale, the popinjay, the gentle laverock;
Good Ivy, say to us, what birds hast thou?
None but the owlet that cries 'How, how!'"
Thus the Ivy was not allowed the same honour inside the houses of our ancestors as the Holly, but it held its place outside the houses as a sign of good cheer to be had within. The custom is now extinct, but formerly an Ivy bush (called a tod of Ivy) was universally hung out in front of taverns in England, as it still is in Brittany and Normandy. Hence arose two proverbs—"Good wine needs no bush," i.e., the reputation is sufficiently good without further advertisement; and "An owl in an Ivy bush," as "perhaps denoting originally the union of wisdom or prudence with conviviality, as 'Be merry and wise.'"—Nares.
The Ivy was a plant as much admired by our grandfathers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries as it is now by us. Spenser was evidently fond of it—
"And nigh thereto a little chappel stoode
Which being all with Yvy overspread
Deckt all the roofe, and shadowing the rode
Seem'd like a grove faire branched over hed."
F. Q., vi, v, 25.
In another place he speaks of it as—