PLANT-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE 
3i3 
information about them to Hawthorn, Brier, Rose, and Bramble ; 
but in speaking of the Bramble I mentioned the curious legend 
which tells why the Bramble employs itself in collecting wool 
from every stray sheep, and there is another very curious 
instance in Blount’s “Antient Tenures” of a connection 
between Thorns and wool. The original document is given 
in Latin, and is dated 39th Henry III. It may be thus 
translated : “ Peter de Baldwyn holds in Combes, in the county 
of Surrey, by the service to go a wool gathering for our Lady 
the Queen among the White Thorns, and if he refuses to 
gather it he shall pay into the Treasury of our Lord the King 
xxj. per annum.” I should almost suspect a false reading, as 
the editor is inclined to do, but that many other services, 
equally curious and improbable, may easily be found. 
Ubgtne. 
(1) I know a bank where the wild Thyme blows. 
Midsummer Night's Dream , ii. 1, 249. 
(2) \\ e will plant Nettles or sow Lettuce, set Hyssop and weed up Thyme. 
Othello , i. 3, 324. ( See Hyssop.) 
(3) And sweet Time true. — Two Noble Kinsmen , Introd. son 0- . 
It is one of the most curious of the curiosities of English 
plant names that the Wild Thyme—a plant so common and so 
widely distributed, and that makes itself so easily known by its 
fine aromatic, pungent scent, that it is almost impossible to 
pass it by without notice—has yet no English name, and seems 
never to have had one. Thyme is the Anglicised form of the 
Greek and Latin Thy mum , which name it probably got from 
its use for incense in sacrifices, while its other name of serpyllum 
pointed out its creeping habit. I do not know when the word 
I hyme was first introduced into the English language, for it is 
another curious point connected with the name, that thy mum 
does not occur in the old English vocabularies. We have in 
