Now their fair race the rural scenes adorn.”
In a legend current among the Greeks, the Cypress owes its origin to the daughters of Eteocles, King of Thebes. Carried away by the goddesses in a whirlwind, which kept revolving them in endless circles, they were at length precipitated into a pond, upon which Gæa took compassion on the young girls, and changed them into Cypress-trees.——Perhaps owing to its funereal and sorrowful character, the Cypress has been named as the tree which furnished the wood of the Saviour’s Cross.——An ancient legend referred to in the ‘Gospel of Nicodemus,’ Curzon’s ‘Monasteries of the Levant,’ and other works, carries the history of the Cross back as far as the time of Adam. In substance it is as follows:—Adam, one day, fell sick, and sent his son Seth to the Garden of Eden to ask the guardian angel for some drops of the oil of mercy, distilled from the Tree of Life. The angel replied that none could have that till five thousand years had passed, but gave him a slip of the tree, which was afterwards planted on Adam’s grave, and grew into a goodly tree with three branches. Another version states that the Angel in Paradise gave Seth three seeds, which he placed under Adam’s tongue before burial, from which they grew into the Cypress, the Cedar, and the Pine. These were subsequently carried away by Moses, who cut his rod from them, and King David transplanted them near a fountain at Jerusalem, where the three saplings combined and grew into one grand tree. Under its umbrageous shade he composed his Psalms and lamented his sins. His son Solomon afterwards cut it down for a pillar in his Temple, but no one was able to fix it there. Some say it was preserved in the Temple, while others aver that it formed a bridge across a marsh, which the Queen of Sheba refused to pass, being deterred by a vision of its future burden. It was afterwards buried in the Pool of Bethesda, thereby accounting for the healing properties possessed by its waters. At the Passion, it floated and was taken for the Cross, or, as some say, for the upright beam. Henry Maundrell speaks of a Greek convent, about half an hour’s distance from Jerusalem, where they showed him a hole in the ground under the high altar, where the stump of the tree stood. Sir John Maundevile also says that the spot where the tree grew at Jerusalem was pointed out to him; the wood, he states, formed a bridge over the brook Cedron.——Some versions of the legend of the wood of the Cross state it was made of Cypress, Cedar, Pine, and Box: one names Cypress for the body, Palm for the hands, Cedar for the support of the feet, and Olive for the superscription.——Another version states that the cross beam was of Cypress; the upright beam of “immortal Cedar;” the title of Olive; and the foot-rest of Palm: hence the line—
“Ligna crucis Palma, Cedrus, Cupressus, Oliva.”
In all countries, and from the earliest times, the Cypress has been deemed the emblem of woe. Gerarde tells us, that it had the reputation of being deadly, and that its shadow was unfortunate. Horace, Virgil, and Ovid all refer to it as a tree both gloomy and funereal. By the Greeks and Romans alike, the “sad” tree was consecrated to Pluto and Proserpine, as well as to the Fates and the Furies. The Greeks crowned with Cypress their tragic Muse Melpomene, and it became an accompaniment of Venus in the annual processions in which she was supposed to lament over Adonis.——The ancients planted the Cypress around graves, and in the event of a death, placed it either before the house or in the vestibule, so that no one about to perform a sacred rite might enter a place polluted with a dead body. The Cypress was probably selected for this purpose because of the belief that, when once cut down, it never springs up again.——But, in connection with its funereal associations, the Cypress has always been highly esteemed as an undying tree, ever verdant, flourishing (Cupressus sempervirens) and odorous, and a tree of which the wood, like the Cedar, is incorruptible. Theophrastus attributes great honour to the tree, and points out how the roofs of old temples became famous by reason of its wood, and that the timber of which the rafters were made was deemed everlasting, because it was unhurt by rotting, moth, worm, or corruption. Martial describes the Cypress as deathless. Gerarde identifies it with the Thya of Pliny and Homer: “He showeth that this is burned among the sweet smells which Circe was much delighted withall.... The verse is extant in the fifth booke of Odysses, where he mentioneth that Mercurie, by Jupiter’s commandment, went to Calypsus’ den, and that he did smell the burnt trees, Thya and Cedrus, a great way off.” Theocritus and Virgil both allude to the fragrance of the Cypress, and on account of the balsamic scent of its timber, chips of it were sometimes employed to flavour wine with. The Athenians buried their heroes in coffins of this wood, and the Egyptians made of it those apparently indestructible chests that contain the mummies of a bygone age.——Pausanias tells us, that the Greeks guarded scrupulously the Cypresses which grew over the Tomb of Alcmæon, and that these trees attained such a height, that they cast their shadows on the neighbouring mountain. The same writer mentions several groves of Cypress which were looked upon as sacred by the Greeks; for instance, those which surrounded the Temples of Bellerophon and Æsculapius, one of the shrines of Venus, the Tomb of Lais, near Corinth, and a dense wood of Cypress, where were to be seen statues of Apollo, Mercury, and Rhea. Diodorus Siculus, Plato, and Solinus speak of groves of Cypress which were held sacred in Crete, near the ruins of the reputed dwelling of Rhea, and in the vicinity of the Cavern of Zeus. Solinus also remarks on the peculiarity of the Cretan Cypresses in sprouting afresh after being cut down.——P. della Valla, a great traveller of Evelyn’s time, tells of a wonderful Cypress, then extant, near the tomb of Cyrus, to which pilgrimages were made. This tree was hollowed within, and fitted for an oratory, and was noted for a gummy transudation which it yielded, reputed by the Turks to turn, every Friday, into drops of blood.——Plato desired to have the laws engraved on tablets of Cypress, because he thought the wood more durable even than brass: the antique idol of Vejovis (or Vedius), in Cypress-wood, at the Capitol, corroborates this notion. Semiramis selected the timber of the Cypress for his bridge across the Euphrates; the valves, or doors, of the Ephesian temple were of this material, as were also the original gates of St. Peter’s, Rome. It has been thought that the Gopher, mentioned in Genesis (vi., 14), of which the Ark was built, was really Kupros, Cupar, or Cuper, the Cypress. Epiphanius relates that some relics of the Ark (circa campos Sennaar) lasted even to his days, and was judged to have been of Cypress. Certain it is that the Cretans employed it in ship-building, and that so frequent was the Cypress in those parts of Assyria where the Ark was supposed to have been built, that the vast armadas which Alexander the Great sent forth from Babylon were constructed of it. Of Cypress-wood were formed Cupid’s darts, Jove’s sceptre, and the club of Hercules used in recovering the cows stolen by the robber Cacus. Either of Fig- or Cypress-wood were fashioned the obscene statues of Priapus set up by the Romans in their gardens and orchards, which were presided over by this lascivious god, who exercised a peculiar faculty of detecting and punishing thieves. The thunderbolts of Indra possessed the like distinctive power. In Northern mythology, the club of Hercules and the thunderbolts of Indra are replaced by the mallet of Thor, which it is not difficult to recognise in the mallet of Cypress-wood that, in Germany, was formerly believed to impart the power of discovering thieves.——From its qualities, the Cypress acquired throughout the East a sacred character. This was more particularly the case in Persia. In the Zend-Avesta, it is accounted divine—consecrated to the pure light of Ormuzd, whose word was first carved on this noble tree. Parsi traditions tell of a Cypress planted by Zoroaster himself, which grew to wondrous dimensions, and beneath the branches of which he built himself a summer-house, forty yards high and forty yards broad. This tree is celebrated in the songs of Firdusi as having had its origin in Paradise. It is not surprising
, therefore, that the Cypress, a tree of Paradise, rising in a pyramidal form, with its taper summit pointing to the skies, like the generating flame, should be planted at the gates of the most sacred fire-temples, and, bearing the law inscribed by Zoroaster, should stand in the forecourt of the royal palace and in the middle of pleasure gardens, as a reminiscence of the lost Paradise. This is the reason why sculptured images of the Cypress are found in the temples and palaces of Persepolis; for the Persian kings were servants of Ormuzd. Sacred Cypresses were also found in the very ancient temple of Armavir, in Atropatene, the home of Zoroaster and his light-worship. The Cypress, indeed, reverenced all over Persia, was transmitted as a sacred tree down from the ancient Magi to the Mussulmans of modern times.——From Asia, the Cypress passed to the island of Cyprus (which derived its name from the tree), and here the primitive inhabitants worshipped, under the Phœnician name Beroth, a goddess personified by the Cypress-tree.——According to Claudian, the Cypress was employed by the goddess Ceres as a torch, which she cast into the crater of Etna, in order to stay the eruption of the volcano, and to imprison there Vulcan himself.——An Italian tradition affirms that the Devil comes at midnight to carry off three Cypresses confided to the care of three brothers—a superstitious notion evidently derived from the fact that the tree was by the ancients consecrated to Pluto.——Like all the trees connected with the Phallica, the Cypress is at once a symbol of generation, of death, and of the immortal soul.——In Eastern legends, the Cypress often represents a young lover, and the Rose, his beloved. In a wedding song of the Isle of Crete, the bridegroom is compared to the Cypress, the bride to the scented Narcissus. In Miller’s Chrestomathie is a popular Russian song, in which a young girl tells her master that she has dreamed of a Cypress and of a Sugar-tree. The master tells her that the Cypress typifies a husband, and the Sugar-tree a wife; and that the branches are the children, who will gather around them.——At Rome, according to Pliny, they used to plant a Cypress at the birth of a girl, and called it the dotem of the daughter.——The oldest tree on record is the Cypress of Somma, in Lombardy. An ancient chronicle at Milan proves it was a tree in Julius Cæsar’s time, B.C. 42. It is 121 feet high, and 23 feet in circumference at one foot from the ground. Napoleon, when laying down the plan for his great road over the Simplon, diverged from a straight line to avoid injuring this tree.——To dream of a Cypress-tree denotes affliction and obstruction in business.
Daffodil, Daffodilly, or Daffadowndilly.—See [Narcissus].
DAHLIA.—The Dahlia (Dahlia variabilis) is first mentioned in a History of Mexico, by Hernandez (1651): it was next noticed by Menonville, who was employed by the French Minister to steal the cochineal insect from the Spaniards in 1790. The Abbé Cavanilles first described the flower scientifically from a specimen which had bloomed in the Royal Garden of Madrid the previous year, and he named the plant after his friend Andrew Dahl, the Swedish botanist.——The Dahlia was introduced into England in 1789 by Lady Bute from Madrid, but this single plant speedily perished. Cavanilles sent specimens of the three varieties then known to the Jardin des Plantes in 1802, and the flower was very successfully cultivated in France, so that in 1814, on the return of peace, the improved varieties of the Dahlia created quite a sensation among English visitors to Paris. Meanwhile, Lady Holland had in July, 1804, sent Dahlia-seeds to England from Madrid, and ten years after we find her husband thus writing to her:—
“The Dahlia you brought to our isle
Your praises for ever shall speak;
Mid gardens as sweet as your smile,