THE CRAB, ITS CHARACTERISTICS AND ASSOCIATIONS. 
103 
authority, for though they would be familiar with the Crab, it is very dubious whether the ancient 
painted Britons in pre-historic times knew anything of grafting. As, however, Crabs when roasted, 
“hissed in the bowl” at a much later period, so the Britons as well as their honoured instructors 
the Druids, may have enjoyed a luxury that was easily within their reach, though their orchards, if 
they had any, did not produce fruit fit for converting into cider. The “ Horan Apel-tree” is 
sometimes mentioned in Saxon charters as a convenient conspicuous boundary, but it was probably 
nothing but an old Crab-tree, whose bark had been whitened —hoary was a favourite term 
with the Saxons for any white stock or stone—by being encrusted with the continuous growth of 
lichens, which is often the case with old trees in the present day. William of Malmesbury, writing 
of Saxon times, says, that once in the year 973, King Edgar lay down to sleep “ under a wild Apple 
tree.” The expression of wild, which evidently means the Crab, also implies that there were 
cultivated Apples in the country. But after the Romans had accomplished the conquest of the 
southern parts of Britain, and their military and civil officers formed villas in the neighbourhood of 
their cities and stations, they then no doubt introduced into their gardens all they had been accus¬ 
tomed to see in Italy, and the Apple among the rest. They would also probably direct the grafting 
of the native Crab, so extensively practised in Italy at this period, following the dictum of Virgil— 
“ Poma quoque ut primum truncos sensere valentes, 
Et vires habuere suas ad sidera raptim 
Vi propria nituntur.” 
Virg. Georg. II, 426. 
“ Apple trees grafted with the tender shoot, 
Quickly gain strength and bear superior fruit.” 
That the Romans during their occupation of Britain did exercise a powerful influence upon the 
horticulture of the country they had colonized, is clear from the following statement of a learned 
writer :—“When the Saxons got possession of Britain, they found it not such as Julius Csesar 
describes it, but cultivated and improved by all the Romans knew of agriculture and gardening and 
he goes on to mention a number of plants that were unknown in Britain previous to the Roman 
invasion, and were afterwards commonly cultivated both for ornament and use. 
Although our native Crab may be praised for the beauty of its blossoms when called forth 
by vernal influence ; and its fruit in autumn, 
“Sun-reddened with a tempting cheek,” 
(as Clare the rural poet writes), may allure rustics and farmers’ boys, it is but an ugly-looking tree 
at the best, and often gets terribly deformed with knobs and excrescences. Thus its deformities 
with attendant hardness, have become proverbial, not only colloquially as designating an ill-natured 
hard-hearted “ crabbed” fellow, but various poets, and especially Shakspeare, have brandished the 
crab-stick 'unmercifully, as the following quotations will prove :— 
“ Fetch me a dozen crab-tree staves, and strong ones, these 
are but switches to ’em—I’ll scratch your heads.” 
(Henry VIII, Sc. 3.) 
“ We have some old crab-trees here at home, that will not 
Be grafted to your relish.” 
(Coriolanus II, Sc. 1.) 
* Chronicles and Memoirs of Great Britain during the Middle Ages. Published by authority of Her Majesty’s 
Treasury, under the direction of the Master of the Rolls, 1864. 
