PLANT-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE 117 
places where otherwise but little shade and shelter could be 
found. 
“Every shepherd tells his tale 
Under the Hawthorn in the dale.”— Milton . 
And “at Hesket, in Cumberland, yearly 011 St. Barnabas’ 
Day, by the highway side under a Thorn tree is kept the court 
for the whole forest of Englewood .”—History of Westmoreland ’ 
The Thorn may well be admitted as a garden shrub either 
in its ordinary state, or in its beautiful double white, red, and 
pink varieties, and those who like to grow curious trees should 
not omit the Glastonbury Thorn, which flowers at the ordinary 
time, and bears fruit, but also buds and flowers again in winter, 
showing at the same time the new flowers and the older 
fruit. 
Nor must we omit to mention that the Whitethorn is one 
of the trees that claims to have been used for the sacred 
Crown of Thorns. It is most improbable that it was so, in 
fact almost certain that it was not; but it was a mediaeval 
belief, as Sir John Mandeville witnesses: “Then was our 
Lord yled into a gardyn, and there the Jewes scorned hym, 
and maden hym a crowne of the branches of the Albiespyne, 
that is Whitethorn, that grew in the same gardyn, and setten 
yt upon hys heved. And therefore hath the Whitethorn many 
virtues. For he that beareth a branch on hym thereof, no 
thundre, ne no maner of tempest may dere hym, ne in the 
howse that it is ynne may non evil ghost enter.” 
And we may finish the Hawthorn with a short account of 
its name, which is interesting:—-“Haw,” or “hay,” is the 
same word as “hedge” (“ sepes, id est, haiesf John de 
Garlande), and so shows the great antiquity of this plant as 
used for English hedges. In the north, “haws” are still 
called “ haigs ”; but whether Hawthorn was first applied to 
the fruit or the hedge, whether the hedge was so called 
because it was made of the Thorn tree that bears the haws, 
or whether the fruit was so named because it was borne on 
the hedge tree, is a point on which etymologists differ. 
