86 
PLANT-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE 
(2) What says my /Esculapius? my Galen? my heart of Elder? 
Merry Wives, ii. 3, 29. 
(3) Look for thy reward 
Among the Nettles at the Elder tree, 
0 « • OBO 
This is the pit and this the Elder tree. 
Titus Audronicus, ii. 3, 271. 
(4) That’s a perilous shot out of an Elder gun, that a poor and private 
displeasure can do against a monarch.— Henry V, iv. 1, 200. 
(5) Holofernes. Begin, sir, you are my Elder. 
Biron . Well followed ; Judas was hanged on an Elder. 
Love's Labour's Lost , v. 2, 608. 
There is, perhaps, no tree round which so much of con¬ 
tradictory folk-lore has gathered as the Elder tree. 1 With 
many it was simply “ the stinking Elder,” of which nothing 
but evil could be spoken. Biron (No. 5) only spoke the 
common mediaeval notion that “Judas was hanged on an 
Elder ; ” and so firm was this belief that Sir John Mandeville 
was shown the identical tree at Jerusalem, 44 and faste by is 
zit, the Tree of Eldre that Judas henge himself upon, for 
despeyr that he hadde, when he solde and betrayed oure 
Lord.” This was enough to give the tree a bad fame, which 
other things helped to confirm—the evil smell of its leaves, 
the heavy narcotic smell of its flowers, its hard and heartless 
wood, 2 * and the ugly drooping black fungus that is almost 
exclusively found on it (though it occurs also on the Elm), 
which was vulgarly called the Ear of Judas ( Hirneola auricula 
Judce). This was the bad character ; but, on the other hand, 
there were many who could tell of its many virtues, so that in 
1644 appeared a book entirely devoted to its praises. This 
was 44 The Anatomie of the Elder, translated from the Latin of 
1 Called also Eldern in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and still 
earlier, Eller or Ellyr (“ Catholicon Anglicum ”). “The Ellern is a tree 
with long bowes, ful sounde and sad wythout, and ful holowe within, and 
ful of certayne nesshe pyth.”— Clanvil deprop. 
2 From the facility with which the hard wood can be hollowed out, the 
tree was from very ancient times called the Bore-tree. See 4 ‘Catholicou 
Anglicum,” s.v. Bur-tre. 
