“There grows no Vine
By the haunted Rhine,
By Danube or Guadalquiver,
Nor an island or cape
That bears such a Grape
As grown by the Beautiful River.”
The wood of the Vitis sylvestris was used by the Greeks in the instrument they employed for producing fire. The Aryan method of kindling sacred fire by wood friction was practised both by Greeks and Romans down to a late period. The Greeks called their kindling instrument pyreia, and the drilling stick which worked in it trupanon; and according to Theophrastus and Pliny, the lower part of the pyreia was formed of the wood of the wild Vine, Ivy, or Athragene.——To dream of Vines denotes health, prosperity, abundance, and fertility, “for which,” says a dream oracle, “we have the example of Astyages, King of the Medes, who dreamed that his daughter brought forth a Vine, which was a prognostic of the grandeur, riches, and felicity of the great Cyrus, who was born of her after this dream.”——Culpeper states that the Vine is “a gallant tree of the Sun, very sympathetical with the body of man; and that is the reason spirits of wine is the greatest cordial among all vegetables.”
VIOLET.—According to Rapin, the Violet was once a fair nymph, who was changed by Diana into this flower to avoid the importunities of Apollo. The poet thus describes the metamorphosis:—
“Next from the Vi’let choice perfumes exhale;
She now disguised in a blue dusky veil