150 FAMILIAR TREES 



-with the Babylonian species, which, however, Shake- 

 speare certainly never saw ; but so pathetic is the 

 lament of the Jewish captives, that one can well 

 believe it may have permanently altered the sym- 

 bolism of the once joy-inspiring Willow. There is a 

 pretty legend that its boughs first drooped under the 

 weight of the harps, as the exiled Hebrews sang: 

 "By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, 

 yea, we wept, when we remembered Sion. We 

 hanged our harps upon the Willows in the midst 

 thereof." The Arabian story-tellers, however, have a 

 very different tale to tell. They relate that David, 

 after he had married Bathsheba, was one day playing 

 on his harp in his private chamber, when two angels 

 appeared before him and convinced him of his sin. 

 Thereupon he threw himself upon the ground, and 

 lay forty days and forty nights weeping bitter tears 

 of penitence ; and in those forty days he wept as many 

 tears as the whole human race have, or will, shed on 

 account of their sins, from then until the Day of 

 Judgment ; so that two streams of tears flowed out 

 into the garden, whence there sprang up two trees, 

 the Weeping Willow and the Frankincense-tree, the 

 boughs of the one drooping in grief, whilst the other 

 constantly distils tears of sorrow. 



The torches used at funerals by the ancients were 

 made of Willow wood; and it may have been a tree of 

 ill omen, seeing that the soothsayers of Babylon are 

 said to have foretold the early death of Alexander 

 the Great, from the fact that the boughs of a Weeping 

 Willow swept the crown from his head as he was 

 crossing the Euphrates in a boat. 



