66 BRAMBLES AND BAY LEAVES. 



■witli the mossy growths of many years as any bed of down ; with the 

 smiling face of one whom we love beside us, let us indulge in a soli- 

 loquy on the all-absorbing topic of Blackberries. Not that the silence 

 of the woods needs to be broken by the voice of man, for he, too often> 

 carries strife and tumult into regions which had else known peace, and 

 blights the fresh face of Nature with his iniquities and feverish im- 

 pulses. Nevertheless, it seems meet, and the shadows nod a welcome. 

 Well, this said luscious, jet-black berry, or fruit of the bramble, is 

 a thing of no mean degree, either in its botanical or literary history. 

 Its botanical characteristics ally it closely to the brilliant roses of our 

 gardens, and to the velvet peach, and the apple and the cherry. It is, 

 in truth, arose, and its blossom, in shape and arrangement, is a minia- 

 ture of the rose of the hedges. Its sprays are long and flexible, its 

 juices are wholesome, and its fruit salutary and refreshing. The 

 leaves and stems afford a valuable dye; and its young tops were 

 anciently eaten by the Greeks as a salad. It grows in every coimtry 

 of Europe, and over the broad moorlands of the north it produces 

 abundance of its welcome fruits. Its homely name of bramble, from 

 the Anglo-Saxon brcsamble, orbremel {anguis crucians), signifies some- 

 thing furious or that which lacerates the skin;* and suggests the 

 hirsute nature of its stems. Hence, — " Doth the bramble cumber a 

 garden ? It makes the better hedge ; where, if it chance to prick the 

 owner, it will tear the thief; " f though in this sense the term is not 

 confined among the Saxon writers to the Blackberry plant, but 

 applied to others which are ragged and thorny. For instance, — 

 Swete as is the bramble flour 

 That beareth the red hepe, % 



in which the wilding rose is *' the bramble flour," and not our own 

 true Blackberry : though in another use of the word there is no 

 doubt but the ^^«c^-berry is referred to, — 



One of hem was a tre 



That beareth a fruit of sauour wicke, 



Full croked was that foule sticke, 



And knottie here and their also, 



And blacke as berry or any slo. § 



* Firfe Skelton by Dyce, l.pp. 187, 216, 278; and Chaucer's iio»jauni of the 

 Rose. 



t Grew, Cosmologia, III. c. 2. 



t Chaucer, Rime of Sir Thopas, v. 13. 



§ Chaucer, Rom. Rose, 



