140 THE BRAMBLE, OR BLACKBERRY 



fruit, and fit only as fuel for the flames ! Chaucer 20 

 was one of the earliest of our open-air poets to say 

 a word in its favour : its chaste, sweet, unassuming 

 blossom caught his unprejudiced eye. It grows, in 

 one or other of its many varieties, more or less luxu- 

 riantly in our own country, from the shores of the 

 Moray firth to the Solway side ; and flourishes (mostly 

 on sufferance, it must be confessed) south of the 

 Border, where, as the Blackberry, it cannot grow too 

 abundantly for schoolboys and other vagrants unbur- 

 dened with the care of land or lordship. b 



Thy fruit full well the schoolboy knows, 

 Wild bramble of the brake 



bravely sang Ebenezer Elliott, the Corn-Law Rhymer, 

 nearly a century ago ; and again 



Scorned bramble of the brake ! once more 



Thou bid'st me be a boy, 

 To gad with thee the woodlands o'er 



In freedom and in joy. 



Its thorns Scorned, indeed, it still is by fruit-grower and gar- 

 lionnot dener ' an d ve t there are signs that this traditionary 40 

 its fruit! scorn, for which there is really small reason, is relent- 

 ing, and that Rubus fruticosus is being more and 

 more judged on its merits. No one will deny the rare 

 delicacy of its flavour in jams and jellies, and, if the 

 great objection of its thorns could be overcome by 

 the development of a spineless variety, there is little 

 doubt it would soon find a place in the fruit garden, 

 where its inveterate tendency to run amok among 

 law-abiding bushes would doubtless be successfully 

 countered. It should not be beyond the scientific so 



