130 THE BROOM-BUSH 



idyl of The Oak and the Broom, which he would never 

 have written had not Burns shown him the way by 

 the Address to a Mountain Daisy. 



Hotv The broom grows frequently in communities of 



seedisdis- immemorial age, self-seeded and self-protected ; but 

 seminated. there is to be found, now and again, in some remote 

 recess or romantic rock- ere vice, a solitary stock of 

 broom flourishing gaily in its solitude. How came it 70 

 planted there ? It was by a freak of nature : breeze, 

 or bird, or fleece of vagrant sheep conveyed the seed, 

 and it grew a seedling, a sapling, and a fully matured 

 matron-bush, capable at last of founding a colony, and 

 attracting adventurous bees and roving butterflies to 

 its West Indian wealth of blossom. 



The The historical interest of the broom, the Planta 



history * H 9 en ^ a variety, is of next interest to the poetical and 

 picturesque. For over three centuries it was the 

 badge and the surname (Plantagenet) of the Kings so 

 of England that is, from the accession of Henry II 

 to the death on Bosworth plain of the third Richard. It 

 was the Angevin Geoffrey who first wore it (for some 

 reason or other) in his bonnet. It was the broom, too, 

 though in its domestic capacity, that adorned the 

 masthead of Martin Tromp when that fighting Dutch 

 admiral sailed ostentatiously up the Channel after his 

 one great victory over Blake in Dover Straits on St. 

 Andrew's Day 1652. It was supposed to emblematize 

 the sweeping of England's mariners for ever from the 90 

 seas. But, as one Scottish poet says, ' Britannia still 

 rules the wave ' ; and, as another nobly sings, ' the 

 sweeping of the deep ' is being and is to be done by 

 ' the Mariners of England '. 



There is something of the wild grace and bouquet 



