The Mulberry. 237 



era. Horace praises mulberries as immensely conducive 

 to health if gathered before the heat of the day, and 

 eaten as dessert after dinner. In Virgil, ^gle, the 

 playful shepherdess of the sixth Eclogue, paints the 

 eyelids of the sleeping poet with the purple juice. 



When originally brought into England is also unknown. 

 Seeing that the Anglo-Saxons had a name for it mor- 

 beam, literally morus-tree, it may have been introduced 

 by the Romans, whose appellation would have in the 

 Saxon a lingering echo. Or as Charlemagne, that great 

 patron of the useful, ordered it to be grown upon all the 

 imperial farms, it may have been during his reign, say 

 about A.D. 812, that this tree was first carried across the 

 English Channel by Saxon visitors to the Continent. 

 "Mor" got changed into "mul" by a process of permu- 

 tation of sounds exceedingly common in the annals of 

 language ; and " beam " would very naturally, in the case 

 of a fruit-tree, give place to "berry," though the Saxon is 

 retained to this day in horn-beam and in white-beam. 



The object with Charlemagne in planting his mulberries 

 was to establish the home-production of silk, by providing 

 plenty of food for the worm. The effort was imitated by 

 Henry IV. (of France), and then, immediately, by English 

 James I., who imported ship-loads of young mulberry- 

 trees from the Continent, and caused them to be diffused 

 all over the country. The scheme, like many other plans 

 laid by the unfortunate first of the Stuarts, died in its 

 infancy. Praiseworthy, and for a time promising, in the 

 end it proved utterly unsuccessful. A certain pathetic 



