“A willow garland thou didst send
Perfumed, last day, to me;
Which did but only this portend,
I was forsook by thee.
“Since it is so, I’ll tell thee what;
To-morrow thou shalt see
Me wear the willow, after that
To die upon the tree.
“As beasts unto the altars go
With garlands dressed, so I
Will with my willow-wreath also
Come forth, and sweetly die.”
The willow seems, from the oldest times, to have been dedicated to grief; under them the children of Israel lamented their captivity:—“By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept when we remembered Zion: we hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof.”[239]
The wicker-baskets made by our forefathers are the subject of an epigram by Martial:—
“From Britain’s painted sons I came,
And basket is my barbarous name;
Yet now I am so modish grown,
That Rome would claim me for her own.”
It is worthy to be recollected, that some of the smallest trees known are willows; nay, the smallest tree known, without any exception. The herbaceous willow, salix herbacea, is seldom higher than three inches, sometimes not more than two; and yet it is in every respect a tree, notwithstanding the name herbaceous, which, as it has been observed, is inappropriate. Dr. Clarke says, in his “Travels in Norway,” “We soon recognised some of our old Lapland acquaintances, such as Betula nana, with its minute leaves, like silver pennies; mountain-birch; and the dwarf alpine species of willow: of which half a dozen trees, with all their branches, leaves, flowers, and roots, might be compressed within two of the pages of a lady’s pocket-book, without coming into contact with each other. After our return to England, specimens of the salix herbacea were given to our friends, which, when framed and glazed, had the appearance of miniature drawings. The author, in collecting them for his herbiary, has frequently compressed twenty of these trees between two of the pages of a duodecimo volume.” Yet in the great northern forests, Dr. Clarke found a species of willow “that would make a splendid ornament in our English shrubberies, owing to its quick growth, and beautiful appearance. It had much more the appearance of an orange than of a willow-tree, its large luxuriant leaves being of the most vivid green colour, splendidly shining. We believed it to be a variety of salix amygdalina, but it may be a distinct species: it principally flourishes in Westro Bothnia, and we never saw it elsewhere.”
So much, and more than is here quoted, respecting the willow, has been gathered by the fair authoress of Sylvan Sketches.
In conclusion, be it observed, that the common willow is in common language sometimes called the sallow, and under that name it is mentioned by Chaucer:—
“Whoso buildeth his hous all of salowes,
And pricketh his blind hors over the falowes,
And suffreth his wife for to seche hallowes,
He is worthy to be honged on the gallowes.”