PLANT-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE 
22 
J 
©tons. 
Thy banks with Pioned and twilled brims, 
Which spongy April at thy best betrims, 
To make cold nymphs chaste crowns.— Tempest , iv. I, 65. 
There is much dispute about this passage, the dispute 
turning on the question whether “ Pioned ” has reference to 
the Peony flower or not. The word by some is supposed to 
mean only “ digged,” and it doubtless often had this meaning, 1 
though the word is now obsolete, and only survives with us in 
“pioneer,” which, in Shakespeare’s time, meant “digger” only, 
and not as now, “ one who goes before to prepare the way ”— 
thus Llamlet— 
Well said, old mole ! cans’t work i’ the earth so fast ? 
A worthy pioner ?— Hamlet , i. 5, 161. 
and again— 
There might you see the labouring pioner 
Begrim’d with sweat, and smeared all with dust.— Lucrece, 1380. 
But this reading seems very tame, tame in itself, and doubly 
tame when taken in connection with the context, and “ Cer¬ 
tainly savours more of the commentators’ prose than of 
Shakespeare’s poetry” (“Edinburgh Review,” 1872, p. 363). 
I shall assume, therefore, that the flower is meant, spelt in the 
form of “ Piony,” instead of Peony or Paeony. 2 
1 1 ‘ Which to outbarre, with painful pyonings, 
From sea to sea, he heapt a mighty mound ! ” 
Spenser, F. Q., ii. 10, 46. 
2 The name was variously spelt, e. g .— 
“And other trees there was mane one, 
The Pyany, the Poplar, and the Piane.” 
The Squyr of Lowe Degre , 39. 
‘‘ The pretie Pinke and purple Pianet. ” 
Cutwode, Caltha Poetamm , 1599, st. 24. 
“A Pyon (Pyion A.) pionia, herba est .”—Catholicon Anglicum. 
