PLANT-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE 
2 I4 
And the word was so used in and after Shakespeare’s time, as 
by Ben Jonson— 
“A pill as small as a peas z”—Magnetic Lady. 
The Squash is the young Pea, before the Peas are formed 
in it, and the Peascod is the ripe shell of the Pea before it 
is shelled. 1 * * The garden Pea (.Pisum sativum) is the cultivated 
form of a plant found in the South of Europe, but very much 
a ltered by cultivation. It w as probably not introduced into 
England as a garden vegetable 
long before Shakespeare’s time. 
It is not mentioned in the old 
lists of plants before the six¬ 
teenth century, and Fuller tells 
us that in Queen Elizabeth’s 
time they were brought from 
Holland, and were “ fit dainties 
for ladies, they came so far and 
cost so dear.” 
The beautiful ornamental 
Peas (Sweet Peas, Everlasting 
Peas, &c.) are of different 
family ( Lathyrus , not Pisum), 
but very closely allied. There 
is a curious amount of folklore connected with Peas, and in 
every case the Peas and Peascods are connected with wooing 
the lasses. This explains Touchstone’s speech (No. 6). Brand 
gives several instances of this, from which one stanza from 
Browne’s “ Pastorals ” may be quoted— 
“ The Peascod greene, oft with no little toyle, 
Ile’d seek for in the fattest, fertil’st soile, 
And rend it from the stalke to bring it to her, 
And in her bosom for acceptance wooe her.”—Book ii, song 3. 
1 The original meaning of Peascod is a bag of Peas. Cod is bag, as 
Matt. x. 10—“ne codd, ne hlaf, ne feo on heora gyrdlum— 4 not a bag, 
not a loaf, not (fee) money in their girdles.’ 
Sparroiv , p. 518. 
-Cockayne, Spoon and 
