344 
PLANT-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE 
for jilted lovers, male and female. It was probably with refer¬ 
ence to this that Shakespeare represented poor mad Ophelia 
hanging her flowers on the “Willow tree aslant the brook” 
(No. 8), and it is more pointedly referred to in Nos. 2, 5, 6, 
9, 10, and 11. The feeling was expressed in a melancholy ditty, 
which must have been very popular in the sixteenth century, 
of which Desdemona says a few of the first verses (No. 9), and 
which concludes thus-— 
“ Come all you forsaken and sit down by me, 
He that plaineth of his false love, mine’s falser than she ; 
The Willow wreath weare I, since my love did fleet, 
A garland for lovers forsaken most meet.” 
The ballad is entitled “The Complaint of a Lover For¬ 
saken of His Love—To a Pleasant New Tune,” and is printed 
in the “ Roxburghe Ballads.” This curious connection of the 
Willow with forsaken or disappointed lovers stood its ground 
for a long time. Spenser spoke of the “Willow worne of 
forlorne paramoures.” Drayton says that—• 
“ In love the sad forsaken wight 
The Willow garland weareth”— Muse’s Elysium. 
And though we have long given up the custom of wearing 
garlands of any sort, yet many of us can recollect one of the 
most popular street songs, that was heard everywhere, and at 
last passed into a proverb, and which began— 
“ All round my hat I vears a green Willow 
In token,” &c. 
It has been suggested by many that this melancholy associa¬ 
tion with the Willow arose from its Biblical associations; and 
this may be so, though all the references to the Willow that 
occur in the Bible are, with one notable exception, connected 
with joyfulness and fertility. The one exception is the plaintive 
wail in the 137th Psalm— 
“By the streams of Babel, there we sat down, 
And we wept when we remembered Zion. 
On the Willows among the rivers we hung our harps.” 
