2O4 Fruits and Fruit- Trees. 



THE BLACKBERRY (Rubus fruticosus). 



OF all our wild eatable fruits the Blackberry, though 

 it may be somewhat plebeian, is unquestionably the most 

 interesting to people in general. It holds the singular 

 pre-eminence of being the only good fruit that is vexatious 

 in the gathering, every tenth berry costing a prick or a 

 scratch, joy and grief going hand in hand : still it is the 

 fruit of all others bound up with the golden days of lang 

 syne, the time when, despite the crimson sap upon the 

 torn fingers, it was pleasantest of all, for was it not the 

 fruit of travail and the holiday? Not only does it live 

 in our ancient and most comfortable proverb "Tis a 

 long lane that has no blackberries in it" picturesque 

 paraphrase of the immortal truth that to the patient and 

 the hopeful all things worth having come some day; it 

 re-appears in the pathetic old nursery ballad : 



"Their pretty lips with blackberries 



Were all besmeared and dy'd, 

 And when they saw the darksome night, 

 They sat them down and cry'd." 



The Children in the Wood. 

 Roxburghe Ballads, ii. 220. 



Falstaff, in Henry the Fourth, says, " Give you a reason 

 on compulsion? If reasons were as plenty as black- 

 berries, I would give no man a reason on compulsion." 

 Further on, in the same scene, while joking with Prince 

 Henry, the old knight exclaims, "Shall the blessed son 



