106 THE CRAB, ITS CHARACTERISTICS AND ASSOCIATIONS. 
But what the poet calls a “ long moss,” is in reality a Lichen called Usnea barbata , and if any old 
Apple tree in an orchard is neglected for a few years, it is sure to get its branches covered with the 
gray beardlike Usnea. 
There are several references to crabbedness—meaning a surly temper—in the Plays of 
Beaumont and Fletcher: 
“ It does me good to think how I shall conjure 
And crucify his crabbedness.” 
(The Pilgrim.) 
“ Hast thou forgot the ballad, Crabbed Age ? ” 
(The Woman's Prize.) 
Age is often assumed though not always justly, to be “ crabbed ” with a verjuice face, and thus 
Beaumont and Fletcher in their “Four Plays,” mention “Old Crabbed Saturn!” and so rare 
Ben Jonson in his “ Silent Woman,” stigmatises “ A crabbed coxcomb.” But though this notion 
of moroseness taken from the sour taste of the expressed juice of the Crab is often used both in 
writing and colloquially, yet the “ crab sauce ” of a knotted stick as an “ argumentum baculinum ” 
is the most favourite idea, as thus introduced by Beaumont and Fletcher in their Dramas :— 
“ Petronius. —Give her a crab-tree cudgel ! 
Petruchio. —So I will; 
And after it a flock bed for her bones.” 
(The Woman's Prize.) 
“ Malicorn. —Ay there’s the point; we would expect good eating; 
La Poop .—I know we would, but we may find good beating. 
Laverdine. —You say true, gentlemen, and by my soul, 
Tho’ I love meat as well as any man, 
Such Crab-sauce to my meat will turn my palate. 
******* 
-If cudgell’d, 
I hope I shall outlive it: I am sure 
’Tis not the hundreth time I have been serv’d so.” 
(The Honest Man's Fortune.) 
Crab sticks made from the often curiously knotted branches of the old neglected Crab trees 
that in obscure places become ugly and distorted, were formerly much in demand, but are now out of 
fashion ; and Crab trees are at present only valued as stocks for grafting various sorts of Apples 
upon, being well adapted for that purpose. 
“ Art bids th’ illnatured Crab produce 
The gentle Apple’s winy juice.” 
( Cowly.) 
and this is very often done when a farmer finds a strong Crab-tree rising up in one of his hedges, 
and so converts it to a useful tree bearing good fruit: — 
“ As fruits ungrateful to the planter’s care, 
On savage stocks inserted learn to bear.” 
(Pope.) 
