Horace recommends that Mulberries be gathered before sunset:—
"AEstatis peraget qui nigris prandia moris
Finiet ante gravem quae legerit arbore solem."
The generic name, Morus, is derived from the Celtic mor, "black." In Germany (at Iserlohn), mothers, in order to deter their children from eating Mulberries, tell them the devil requires the juicy berries for the purpose of blacking his boots. This fruit was fabled to have become changed from white to a deep red through absorbing the blood of Pyramus and Thisbe, who were slain beneath its shade.
It is thought by some that "morus" has been derived from the Latin word mora, delay, as shown in a tardy expansion of the buds. Because cautious not to burst into leaf until the last frost of spring is over, the Mulberry tree, as the wisest of its fellows, was dedicated by the ancients to Minerva, and the story of Pyramus and Thisbe owed its origin to the white and black fruited varieties:—
"The Mulberry found its former whiteness fled,
And, ripening, saddened into dusky red."
Shakespeare's famous Mulberry tree, planted in 1609, was of the black species. It was recklessly cut down at New Place, Stratford-on-Avon, in 1759. Ten years afterwards, when the freedom of the city was presented to Garrick, the document was enclosed in a casket made from the wood of this tree. Likewise a cup was [358] wrought therefrom, and at the Shakespeare Jubilee, Garrick, holding the cup aloft, recited the following lines, composed by himself for the occasion:—
"Behold this fair goblet: 'twas carved from the tree
Which, oh, my sweet Shakespeare, was planted by thee!
As a relic I kiss it, and bow at thy shrine,
What comes from thy hand must be ever divine."
"All shall yield to the Mulberry tree;
Bend to the blest Mulberry:
Matchless was he who planted thee,
And thou, like him, immortal shall be."
A slip of it was grown by Garrick in his garden at Hampton Court. The leaves of the Mulberry tree are known to furnish excellent food for silk worms.
Botanically, each fruit is a collection of berries on a common pulpy receptacle, being, like the Strawberry, especially wholesome for those who are liable to heartburn, because it does not undergo acetous fermentation in the stomach. In France Mulberries are served at the beginning of a meal. Among the Romans the fruit was famous for maladies of the throat and windpipe.