188 
PLANT-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE 
rope-making, the Rhea fibre of the Himalaya, which is simply 
a gigantic Nettle ( Ur tic a or Boehmeria nivea ), is very largely 
cultivated. Nor is the Nettle to be despised as an article of 
food. 1 In many parts of England the young shoots are boiled 
and much relished. In 1596 Coghan wrote of it: “ I will 
speak somewhat of the Nettle that Gardeners may understand 
what wrong they do in plucking it for the weede, seeing it is 
so profitable to many purposes. . . . Cunning cookes at the 
spring of the yeare, when Nettles first bud forth, can make 
good pottage with them, especially with red Nettles ” (“ Haven 
of Health,” p. 86). In February, 1661, Pepys made the entry 
in his diary—“ We did eat some Nettle porridge, which was 
made on purpose to-day for some of their coming, and was very 
good.” Andrew Fairservice said of himself—“ Nae doubt I 
should understand my trade of horticulture, seeing I was bred 
in the Parish of Dreepdaily, where they raise lang Kale under 
glass, and force the early Nettles for their spring Kale ” (“ Rob 
Roy,” c. 7). Gipsies are said to cook it as an excellent vege¬ 
table, and M. Soyer tried hard, but almost in vain, to recom¬ 
mend it as a most dainty dish. Having so many uses, we are 
not surprised to find that it has at times been regularly cul¬ 
tivated as a garden crop, so that I have somewhere seen an 
account of tithes of Nettles being taken; and in the old 
churchwardens’ account of St. Michael’s, Bath, is the entry 
in the year 1400, “ Pro Urticis venditis ad Lawrencium 
Bebbe, 2d.” 
Nettles are much used in the neighbourhood of London to 
pack plums and other fruit with bloom on them, so that in 
some market gardens they are not only not destroyed, but 
encouraged, and even cultivated. And this is an old practice; 
Lawson’s advice in 1683 was—“ For the gathering of all other 
stone-fruit, as Nectarines, Apricots, Peaches, Pear-plums, 
Damsons, Bullas, and such like, . . . in the bottom of your 
large sives where you put them, you shall lay Nettles, and like- 
1 “ Si forte in medio positorum abstemius herbis 
Vivis et Urtica. ’’—Horace, Ep., i. 10, 8. 
il Mihi festa luce coquatar Urtica.”— Persius, vi. 68. 
