PLANT-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE 
137 
Thus the Ivy was not allowed the same honour inside the 
houses of our ancestors as the Holly, but it held its place out¬ 
side the houses as a sign of good cheer to be had within. The 
custom is now extinct, but formerly an Ivy bush (called a tod 
of Ivy) was universally hung out in front of taverns in England, 
as it still is in Brittany and Normandy. Hence arose two 
proverbs—“ Good wine needs no bush,” i. e. the reputation is 
sufficiently good without further advertisement; amd “ An owl 
in an Ivy bush,” as “perhaps denoting originally the union 
of wisdom or prudence with conviviality, as ‘ Be merry and 
wise.’” — Nares. 
The Ivy was a plant as much admired by our grandfathers 
of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries as it is now by us. 
Spenser was evidently fond of it— 
“And nigh thereto a little chappel stoode 
Which being all with Yvy overspread 
Deckt all the roofe, and shadowing the rode 
Seem’d like a grove faire branched over hed.” 
F. Q., vi. 5, 25. 
In another place he speaks of it as— 
“Wanton Yvie, flouring fayre.”— F. Q., h* v, 29. 
And in another place— 
“'Amongst the rest the clambering Ivie grew 
Knitting his wanton armes with grasping hold, 
Least that the Poplar happely should rew 
Her brother’s strokes, whose boughs she doth enfold 
With her lythe twigs till they the top survew, 
And paint with pallid greene her buds of gold.”— Virgil’s Gnat. 
Chaucer describes it as—- 
“The erbe Ivie that groweth in our yard that mery is.” 
And in the same poem he prettily describes it as—■ 
“ The pallid Ivie building his own bowre.” 
As a wild plant, the Ivy is found in Europe, Asia, and 
Africa, but not in America, and wherever it is found it loves 
to cover old walls and buildings, and trees of every sort, with 
