PLANT-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE 
13 
Here Shakespeare names the Apple, the Crab, the Pippin, 
the Pomewater, the Apple-john, the Codling, the Caraway, the 
Leathercoat, and the Bitter-Sweeting. Of the Apple generally 
I need say nothing, except to notice that the name was not 
originally confined to the fruit now so called, but was a generic 
name applied to any fruit, as 
we still speak of the Love- 
apple, the Pine-apple, 1 &c. The 
Anglo - Saxon name for the 
Blackberry was the Bramble- 
apple; and Sir John Mande- 
ville, in describing the Cedars 
of Lebanon, says : “And upon 
the hills growen Trees of Cedre, 
that ben fulle hye, and they 
beren longe Apples, and als 
grete as a man’s heved ” 2 (cap. 
ix.). In the English Bible it 
is the same. The Apple is 
mentioned in a few places, but 
it is almost certain that it never 
means the Pyms mcilus , but is either the Orange, Citron, or 
Quince, or is a general name for a tree fruit. So that when 
Shakespeare (24) and the other old writers speak of Eve’s 
Apple, they do not necessarily assert that the fruit of the 
temptation was our Apple, but simply that it was some fruit 
that grew in Eden. The Apple (pomum) has left its mark in 
the language in the word “pomatum,” which, originally an 
ointment made of Apples, is now an ointment in which Apples 
have no part. 
The Crab was held in far more esteem in the sixteenth cent¬ 
ury than it is with us. The roasted fruit served with hot ale 
(9 and 10) was a favourite Christmas dish, and even without 
ale the roasted Crab was a favourite, and this not for want of 
1 See Pine. 
2 “A peclie appulle.” “The appulys of a peclie tre.”— Porkington 
MSS. ill Early English Miscellany. (Published by War ton Club.) 
