PLANT-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE 267 
the word Albion, suggests that the land may have been so 
named from the White Roses which abounded in it— c Albion 
insula sic dicta ab albis rupibus, quas mare alluit, vel ob rosas 
albas quibus abundat.’ Whatever we may think of the etymo¬ 
logical skill displayed in the suggestion . . . we look with 
almost a new pleasure on the Roses of our own hedgerows, 
when regarding them as descended in a straight line from the 
c rosas albas’ of those far-off summers.”— Quarterly Review , 
vol. cxiv. 
The Damask Rose (No. 5) remains to us under the same 
name, telling its own history. There can be little doubt that 
the Rose came from Damascus, probably introduced into 
Europe by the Crusaders or some of the early travellers in the 
East, who speak in glowing terms of the beauties of the gardens 
of Damascus. So Sir John Mandeville describes the city : 
“ In that Cytee of Damasce, there is gret plentee of Welles, 
and with in the Cytee and with oute, ben many fayre Gardynes 
and of dyverse frutes. Non other Cytee is not lyche in com¬ 
parison to it, of fayre Gardynes, and of fayre desportes.”—- 
Voiage and Travaile , cap. xi. And in our own day the author of 
“ Eothen ” described the same gardens as he saw them : “ High, 
high above your head, and on every side all down to the ground, 
the thicket is hemmed in and choked up by the interlacing 
boughs that droop with the weight of Roses, and load the slow 
air with their damask breath. There are no other flowers. 
The Rose trees which I saw were all of the kind we call 
‘ damask ’; they grow to an immense height and size.”— 
Eothen , ch. xxvii. It was not till long after the Crusades that 
the Damask Rose was introduced into England, for Hakluyt, 
in 1582, says: “In time of memory many things have been 
brought in that were not here before, as the Damaske Rose by 
Doctour Linaker, King Henry the Seventh and King Henrie the 
Eight’s Physician.”— Voiages, vol. ii. 1 
1 The Damask Rose was imported into England at an earlier date, but 
probably only as a drug. It is mentioned in a “ Bill of Medicynes fur¬ 
nished for the use of Edward I, 1306-7 : ‘ Item pro aqua rosata de 
Damasc,’ lb. xl, iiii //.”—Archaeological Journal, vol. xiv. 271. 
