128 



THE BROOM-BUSH 



The Broom LIKE the whin-bush, which, at a distance and espe- 

 m poetry. c j a ]jy when in bloom, it resembles, the broom is 

 described by botanists as papilionaceous and legu- 

 minous, meaning thereby that its flowers are shaped 

 like butterflies (' on tiptoe for a flight '), and its 

 seeds confined in pods as are those of the pea and 

 the bean. It is more favoured, however, by the poets 

 than is the whin, and it is dearer to the popular 

 imagination, because, though it wants the virtue of 

 fragrance, which the furze possesses, it wants also the 10 

 objectionable vice of thorns. One can lie among it in 

 pastoral ease. 



O the Broom, the yellow Broom! 



The ancient poets sung it; 

 And sweet it is on summer days 



To lie at rest among it. 



Both mediaeval and modern poets have sung it. 

 Chaucer has a pretty vignette in his House of Fame 

 of a herd-boy piping in the luminous shadow of its 

 cool, green, flowering branches : 20 



Pypes made of grene corne 

 Han thise litel herde-gromes 

 That kepen bestes in the bromes. 



The broom of Cowdenknowes, and the joys of shepherd 

 life which it sheltered, are well known to the lover of 

 Lowland Scottish ballads. No broom, or bush of any 

 kind not even the bush aboon Traquair (thought 

 Robert Crawford) could compare with Cowdenknowes 

 broom ; and the three successive songs that celebrate 

 it will go echoing up and down Leader side for ever ! so 



