Coming down from the pagan mysteries into lower and more literal forms, the Ivy preserved two meanings. It was already the vine of life, and the early Christians laid it in the coffins of their departed, as the emblem of a new life in Christ.[4] It had hung upon the limbs of naked nymphs, convulsed in passionate orgies, as a type of vitality renewed by pleasure—it was now wreathed at Christmas-tide over quaint columns and tracery-laden Gothic windows and arches, as a sign—they knew not exactly of what—but guessed, naturally enough, and rightly, that it typified as an undying winter-plant the resurrection. And they sang its praises in many a brave carol:
Ivy, chief of trees it is,
Veni coronaberis.
The most worthy she is in town,—
He who says other says amiss;
Worthy is she to bear the crown;
Veni coronaberis.
Ivy is soft and meek of speech,
Against all woe she bringeth bliss;
Happy is he that may her reach:
Veni coronaberis.
Ivy is green, of color bright,
Of all trees the chief she is;
And that I prove will now be right:
Veni coronaberis.
Ivy, she beareth berries black;
God grant to all of us his bliss,
For then we shall nothing lack:
Veni coronaberis.
Very quaint is the following fragment:
Holly and Ivy made a great party,
Who should have the mastery
In lands where they go.
Then spake Holly, 'I am fierce and jolly,
I will have the mastery
In lands where we go.'
Then spake Ivy, 'I am loud and proud,
And I will have the mastery
In lands where we go.'
Then spake Holly, and bent him down on his knee,
'I pray thee, gentle Ivy,
Essay me no villany
In lands where we go.'
Old Christmas Carol.
'Good wine needs no bush,' says an old proverb; but is it generally known that the 'bush' in question, used as a sign for wine, was a bunch of Ivy? The custom went from Greece to Italy, from Italy to Germany, and so on westward. Very different is this use of the evergreen vine in taverns, from that of adorning churches—the one meaning a mere invitation to drink, while the other reminds the believer that, as the Ivy lives through the bitter winter, so shall our souls endure through cold death and live again in Christ, even as He passed through the grave to live in 'eternal bloom.' Yet to those who have mastered the legend of Bacchus, there is no absolute difference between the two, when studied with regard to their origin. It is worth remarking that among the ancients the impression prevailed that the Ivy was the plant of joyousness, of triumphant strength, and of life, even as Bacchus was the lord of joy. And at a later day, long after the association with genial Bacchus was forgotten, the Ivy in popular lay and legend, and quaint custom and holiday rite, still by some inexplicable association always seemed to the multitude to be sweet and gentle, noble and dear. It is such a feeling of love, derived from old traditions and old worships, long forgotten, which makes the stork and the house-cricket and the robin and dragon-fly and swallow so dear to children and grown people in many parts of Europe. The rose is gone, but the perfume still lingers in the old leaves of the manuscript. And the reader who comprehends this may also comprehend the tender affection for the Ivy expressed in the old Christmas carols which I have quoted, and which, without such comprehension, seem absurd enough; while with it, they appear truly beautiful and touching.
As the symbol of a joyous faith, the Ivy seems to have been especially repugnant to the Hebrews, whose stern monotheism admitted few attributes to the Deity save those of tremendous power, vengeance, and gloom. So we find (Maccabees, book ii., c. 6., v. 7) that it was regarded by them as most horrible that, 'in the day of the king's birth, every month, they were brought, by bitter constraint, to eat of the sacrifices; and, when the feast of Bacchus was kept, the Jews were compelled to go in procession to Bacchus, carrying Ivy.' A dislike to this emblem of heathen joy seems, however, to have clung to them through all changes of faith—a fact apparently well known to Ptolemy Philopater, king of Egypt, who ordered that all the Jewish renegades who had abjured their religion should be branded with an Ivy-leaf.
When the reader who may be interested in the architecture of the middle ages meets in its tracery, as he often must, the Ivy-leaf, let him recall that here is a symbol which was not used unthinkingly by the Free Masons, who seldom lost an opportunity to bring forward their orientally derived Nature-lore. In fact, the whole mass and body of mediæval architectural emblems presents nothing less than a protest of Nature and life, independence and intelligence, knowledge and joyousness, against the gloomy prison of form and tyranny which held Truth in chains. The stone Ivy-leaf carved on the capitals of old cathedrals was as reviving a symbol to the heart of the Initiated as was the living Ivy on the walls without, green and beautiful among mid-winter's snow. It has been well conjectured by a German writer (Stieglitz, Archæologie der Baukunst der Griechen und Römer, Weimar, 1801, I Theil, § 268), that the relation of the Ivy to Bacchus was probably the cause why it was so frequently introduced by the Greeks among the architectural ornaments of their temples; a very natural conjecture, when we remember that it was a firm conviction in the early faith, even of India, that where the Ivy was found, the god had literally been. The same bold spirit of tradition which brought into the very bosom of the church so much genial, latent heresy and heathen daring, kept the Ivy alive—for Nature and Truth will live, and man will have his guardian angels, who will hope for him and for the dawn, though buried in the deepest night and lost among horrible dreams and ghastly incubi. A French writer on mediæval art[5] has declared that an excellent work might be written on the foliage of Christian architecture, but regrets that the relations of the leaves as employed—or, in fact, the law guiding their employment—should be unintelligible. Let them be studied according to their symbolical and antique meaning, and they will seem clear as legible letters; and to those who can read them, the gloomy Gothic piles will ray forth a strange and beautiful light—the sympathetic light of congenial minds long passed away, yet who did not vanish ere they had breathed out to those who were to come after them, in leaf or other character, their hatred of the tyrant, and their unfailing conviction of the Great Truth. God bless them all! I have studied for hours their solemn symbols—each a cry for freedom and a prayer for light; and when I thought of the gloom and cruelty and devilishness of the foul age which pressed around them, I wondered that they, knowing what they did, could have lived—ay, lived and sung and given a soul to art. And, understanding them in spirit and in truth, every Ivy-leaf carved by them seemed the whole Prometheus bound and unbound—yes, all poems of truth, all myths, all religion.
And as it is the leaf of life, so is it by that very fact the leaf of death; for death is only the water of life. And in this sense we find a rare beauty in the poem by Mrs. Hemans, though she saw its truth, not through the dim glass of tradition, but by direct communion with Nature.