26 
PLANT-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE 
was approaching. We have no proof that such an idea ever 
prevailed in England. In the second passage reference is 
made to the decking of the chief dish at high feasts with gar¬ 
lands of flowers and evergreens. But the Bay tree had been 
too recently introduced from the South of Europe in Shake¬ 
speare’s time to be so used to any great extent, though the tree 
was known long before, for it is mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon 
Vocabularies by the name of Beay-beam, that is, the Coronet 
tree; 1 but whether the Beay-beam meant our Bay tree is very 
uncertain. We are not much helped in the inquiry by the 
notice of the “flourishing green Bay tree” in the Psalms, for 
it seem very certain that the Bay tree there mentioned is either 
the Oleander or the Cedar, certainly not the Laurus nobilis. 
The true Bay is probably mentioned by Spenser in the 
following lines— 
“The Bay, quoth she, is of the victours born, 
Yielded them by the vanquisht as theyr meeds, 
And they therewith doe Poetes heads adorne 
To sing the glory of their famous deeds. ” 
A morelli —Sonnet xxix. 
And in the following passage (written in the lifetime of 
Shakespeare) the Laurel and the Bay are both named as the 
same tree—- 
“ And when from Daphne’s tree he plucks more Bales 
LI is shepherd’s pipe may chant more heavenly lays.” 
Christopher Brooke — Introd. verses to Browne's Pastorals . 
In the present day no garden of shrubs can be considered 
complete without the Bay tree, both the common one and 
especially the Californian Bay ( Umbellularia Californica), 
which, with its bright green lanceolate foliage and powerful 
aromatic scent (to some too pungent), deserves a place every¬ 
where, and it. is not so liable to be cut by the spring winds as 
1 “ The Anglo-Saxon Beay was not a ring only, or an armlet; it was also 
a coronet or diadem. . . . The Bays, then, of our Poets and the Bay tree 
were in reality the Coronet and the Coronet tree.”— Cockayne, Spoon and 
Sparrow, p. 21. 
