PLANT-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE 
187 
(9) I’ll spring up in his tears, an ’twere a Nettle against May. 
Troilus and Cressida , i. 2, 190. 
(10) We call a Nettle but a Nettle, and 
The fault of fools but folly.— Coriolanus , ii. 1, 207. 
(11) Goads, Thorns, Nettles, tails of wasps. — Winter's Tale , i. 2, 329. 
(12) If we will plant Nettles or sow Lettuce. 
Othello , i. 3, 324. (See Hyssop.) 
(13) Who do bear thy yoke 
As ’twer a wreath of roses, yet is heavier 
Than lead itselfe, stings more than Nettles. 
Two Noble Kinsmen, v. 1, 101. 
HE Nettle needs no introduction ; we are all 
too well acquainted with it, yet it is not 
altogether a weed to be despised. We have 
two native species (Urtica urens and U. dioica) 
with sufficiently strong qualities, but we have a 
third ( U. pilulifera ) very curious in its manner 
of bearing its female flowers in clusters of compact little balls, 
which is far more virulent than either of our native species, 
and is said by Camden to have been introduced by the Romans 
to chafe their bodies when frozen by the cold of Britain. The 
story is probably quite apocryphal, but the plant is an alien, 
and only grows in a few places. 
Both the Latin and English names of the plant record its 
qualities. Urtica is from uro , to burn; and Nettle is (ety¬ 
mologically) the same word as needle, and the plant is so named, 
not for its stinging qualities, but because at one time the 
Nettle supplied the chief instrument of sewing ; not the instru¬ 
ment which holds the thread, and to which we now confine the 
word needle, but the thread itself, and very good thread it 
made. The poet Campbell says in one of his letters—“ I 
have slept in Nettle sheets, and dined off a Nettle table-cloth, 
and I have heard my mother say that she thought Nettle cloth 
more durable than any other linen.” It has also been used 
for making paper, and for both these purposes, as well as for 
