"The Oak, the Ash, and the Ivy tree,
O, they flourished best at hame, in the north countrie."
Old Ballad.
In the dales of Yorkshire it is especially beautiful, and any one who sees the fine old trees in Wharfdale and Wensleydale will confess that, though it may not have the rich luxuriance of the Oaks and Elms of the southern and midland counties, yet it has a grace and beauty that are all its own, so that we scarcely wonder that Gilpin called it "the Venus of the woods."
FOOTNOTES:
[24:3] It is called in the "Promptorium Parvulorum" "Esche," and the seed vessels "Esche key."
ASPEN.
| (1) | Marcus. | O, had the monster seen those lily hands Tremble, like Aspen leaves, upon a lute. |
| Titus Andronicus, act 2, sc. 4 (44). | ||
| (2) | Hostess. | Feel, masters, how I shake. . . . . Yea, invery truth do I an 'twere an Aspen leaf. |
| 2nd Henry IV, act ii, sc. 4 (114). | ||
The Aspen or Aspe[25:1] (Populus tremula) is one of our three native Poplars, and has ever been the emblem of enforced restlessness, on account of which it had in Anglo-Saxon times the expressive name of quick-beam. How this perpetual motion in the "light quivering Aspen" is produced has not been quite satisfactorily explained; and the mediæval legend that it supplied the wood of the Cross, and has never since ceased to tremble, is still told as a sufficient reason both in Scotland and England.