26 
SHAKESPEARE’S GARDEN 
dyes, and the bright red hips appear, it is almost 
equally striking. • 
Mark the faire blooming of the hawthorn-tree, 
Who, finely clothed in a robe of white, 
Fills full the wanton eye with May’s delight. 
Browne : Britannia's Pastorals , ii. 2.* 
It is said by Ellacombe seldom to flower till June, 
except in Devonshire and Cornwall ; but even in 
this year 1902, cold as it is, it is in full flower in 
Warwickshire as I write (May 14), and some was 
bound in our village maypole on the first of the 
month. An old Suffolk custom, it appears, allowed 
a dish of cream to those who brought a bough in full 
blossom into the house on May Day ; but this in 
Brand’s time was discontinued. Sir John Mandeville, 
in speaking of our Blessed Lord, says : 
“ Then was our Lord yled into a gardyn, and there 
the Jewes scorned hym and maden hym a crowne of 
the branches of the albiespyne, that is whitethorn, 
which grew in the same gardyn, and setten yt upon 
hys heved. And therefore hath the whitethorn 
many virtues. For he that beareth a branch on 
hym thereof, no thundre, ne no maner of tempest 
may dere hym, ne in the house that it is ynne may 
non evil ghost enter” (Ellacombe, p. 117). 
Its uses in Shakespeare’s phrases are various. As 
an object on which Orlando hangs odes, it is found 
in As You Like It, III. ii. 379 ; as a “ tiring-house ” 
for the players in Midsummer-Night’s Dream, III. i. 4. 
Its buds are referred to in the same play (I. i. 184) : 
When wheat is green, when hawthorn buds appear; 
and, again, as " lisping hawthorn buds ” in Merry 
Wives of Windsor, III. iii. 77, and compared, much 
Quoted by Ellacombe, p. 115. 
