Both gods and parents with compassion heard.
The whiteness of the Mulberry soon fled,
And ripening, saddened in a dusky red;
While both their parents their lost children mourn,
And mix their ashes in one golden urn.”—Eusden.
Lord Bacon tells us that in Calabria Manna falls upon the leaves of Mulberry-trees during the night, from whence it is afterwards collected.——Pliny called the Mulberry the wisest of trees, because it is late in unfolding its leaves, and thus escapes the dangerous frosts of early spring. To this day, in Gloucestershire, the country folks have a saying that after the Mulberry-tree has shown its green leaves there will be no more frost.——At Gioiosa, in Sicily, on the day of St. Nicholas that saint is believed to bless the sea and the land, and the populace sever a branch from a Mulberry-tree and preserve it for one year as a branch of good augury.——In Germany, at Iserlohn, the mothers, to deter the children from eating the Mulberries, sing to them that the Devil requires them for the purpose of blacking his boots.——According to Gerarde, “Hegesander, in Athenæus, affirmeth that the Mulberry-tree in his time did not bring forth fruit in twenty yeares together, and that so great a plague of the gout then raigned, and raged so generally, as not onely men, but boies, wenches, eunuches, and women were troubled with that disease.”——A Mulberry-tree, planted by Milton in the garden of Christ’s College, Cambridge, has been reverentially preserved by successive college gardeners. The Mulberry planted by Shakspeare in Stratford-on-Avon was recklessly cut down in 1759; but ten years later, when the freedom of the town was presented to Garrick, the document was enclosed in a casket made from the wood of the tree. A cup was also wrought from it, and at the Shakspeare Jubilee, Garrick, holding this cup aloft, sang the following lines composed by himself:—
“Behold this fair goblet, ’twas carved from the tree
Which, O my sweet Shakspeare, was planted by thee;
As a relic I kiss it, and bow at the shrine;
What comes from thy hand must be ever divine!