THE CROCUS. 157 



Little less seems to have been the prejudice 

 excited by the use of saffron as a dye (though in 

 this case it was used for dyeing linen) when Ireland 

 fell under the English yoke. The subject became 

 one of stringent legislation, as well as of bitter 

 reproach. A statute in the 28th of Henry VIII. 

 prohibits the Irish, under penalty, from wear- 

 ing any " shirt, smock, kerchor, bendel [fillet, 

 perhaps the 'greate linnen roll" which so greatly 

 raised the ire of Spenser], neckerchor, mocket [hand- 

 kerchief], or linen cap dyed with saffron," &c. Sir 

 Henry Ellis suggests that the dye was adopted for 

 its ornamental colour,* but it seems scarcely proba- 

 ble that so scarce and expensive a dye should be 

 commonly employed by a whole people, whose island 

 abounded in common plants yielding yellow dyes of 

 as fine, or even of finer, hues ; plants too which we 

 know were familiarly used by them. Indeed most 

 contemporary writers, with greater shew of proba- 

 bility, attribute the custom to a belief that it was 

 good for the health, " mitigating the effects of their 

 humid climate." Spenser fancifully traces it to the 

 ancient Scythians, the nation from whom he " de- 

 duced " the inhabitants of Ireland. The statement 

 respecting the effects of saffron as a dye, is borne 

 out by the extraordinary value formerly attached to 

 it, wherever it was known, as an exhilarating and 

 " comforting " drug. " Dormivit in sacco croci " was 

 the monkish proverbial description of a man of 

 placid, lively temper, and the reader will recollect 

 how happily the expression has been made use of in 

 " The Caxtons," and a general belief formerly pre- 

 * " Metrical Romances." 



