“Did you think that you had Gyges’ ring?
Or the herb that gives invisibility?”
Again, in Ben Jonson’s “New Inn” (i. 1):
“I had
No medicine, sir, to go invisible,
No fern-seed in my pocket.”
As recently as Addison’s day, we are told in the Tatler (No. 240) that “it was impossible to walk the streets without having an advertisement thrust into your hand of a doctor who had arrived at the knowledge of the green and red dragon, and had discovered the female fern-seed.”[496]
Fig. Formerly the term fig served as a common expression of contempt, and was used to denote a thing of the least importance. Hence the popular phrase, “not to care a fig for one;” a sense in which it is sometimes used by Shakespeare, who makes Pistol say, in “Merry Wives of Windsor” (i. 3), “a fico for the phrase!” and in “Henry V.” (iii. 6) Pistol exclaims, “figo for thy friendship!” In “Othello” (i. 3) Iago says, “Virtue! a fig!”
The term “to give or make the fig,” as an expression of insult, has for many ages been very prevalent among the nations of Europe, and, according to Douce,[497] was known to the Romans. It consists in thrusting the thumb between two of the closed fingers, or into the mouth, a practice, as some say,[498] in allusion to a contemptuous punishment inflicted on the Milanese, by the Emperor Frederic Barbarossa, in 1162, when he took their city. This, however, is altogether improbable, the real origin, no doubt, being a coarse representation of a disease, to which the name of ficus or fig has always been given.[499]
The “fig of Spain,” spoken of in “Henry V.” (iii. 6), may either allude to the poisoned fig employed in Spain as a secret way of destroying an obnoxious person, as in Webster’s “White Devil:”[500]
“I do look now for a Spanish fig, or an Italian salad, daily;”
and in Shirley’s “Brothers:”[501]
“I must poison him;
One fig sends him to Erebus;”