126 
BRAMBLES AND BAY LEAVES. 
renewing love, and steadfast hope in the promised here¬ 
after. 
And here, sitting on the green bank, which, is as soft 
and elastic with the mossy growths of many years as any 
bed of down; with the smiling face of one whom w 7 e love 
beside us, let us indulge in a soliloquy on the all-ab¬ 
sorbing topic of Blackberries. Not that the silence of 
the woods needs to be broken by the voice of man, for 
he, too often, carries strife and tumult into regions which 
had else known peace, and blights the fresh face of 
Nature with his iniquities and feverish impulses. Never¬ 
theless, it seems meet, and the shadows nod a welcome. 
Well, this said luscious, jet-black berry, or fruit of 
the bramble, is a thing of no mean degree, either in its 
botanical or literary history. Its botanical characteristics 
ally it closely to the brilliant roses of our gardens, and to 
the velvet peach, and the apple and the cherry. It is, in 
truth, a rose, and its blossom, in shape and arrangement, 
is a miniature of the rose of the hedges. Its sprays are 
long and flexible, its juices are wholesome, and its fruit 
salutary and refreshing. The leaves and stems afford a 
valuable dye; and its young tops w 7 ere anciently eaten 
by the Greeks as a salad. It grows in every country of 
Europe; and over the broad moorlands of the north it 
produces abundance of its welcome fruits. Its homely 
name of bramble, from, the Anglo-Saxon brceamble , or 
bremel (anguis crucians ), signifies something furious, or 
that w 7 hich lacerates the skin; * and suggests the hirsute 
nature of its stems. Hence, —“ Doth the Bramble 
* Vide Skelton by Dyce, I. pp. 187, 216, 278; and Chaucer’s 
Romaunt of the Rose. 
