CHAPTER III. SPENSER.
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Thompson, C. J. S. (Charles John Samuel)
Edmund Spenser was born in London towards the close of the year 1552, and in his after career, added lustre to an age which for brilliancy in literature has never been equalled in the history of this country. He lived for some time in Lancashire in his early days, but in 1578 quitted the country for the court. It was probably his friend Sir Walter Raleigh who introduced him to court-favour and Queen Elizabeth. In 1589 he published the Faerie Queen, a poem which will ever live in English literature.
There are few allusions in the works of Edmund Spenser to medicinal plants, although he frequently mentions salves and other methods of administration used in the leechcraft of his time, as instanced in the following quotations:—
“Eftsoons he gan apply relief Of salves and med’cines which has passing prefe”.[39]
“With wholesome read of sad sobriety, To rule the stubborn rage of passion blind, Give salves to every sore, but counsel to the mind.”[40]
In the first book of the Faerie Queen Spenser makes an interesting allusion to trees and their uses in his time, in the following lines:—
“Much gave they praise the trees so straight and high: The sailing pine; the cedar proud and tall; The vine-prop elm; the poplar never dry; The builder oak, sole king of forests all; The aspen good for staves; the cypress funeral; The laurel, meed of mighty conquerors And poets sage; the fir that weepeth still; The willow, worn of forlorn paramours; The yew, obedient to the binder’s will; The birch for shafts; the sallow for the mill; The myrrh sweet bleeding in the bitter wound; The warlike beech; the ash for nothing ill; The fruitful olive, and the plantane round; The carver holm; the maple, seldom inward sound”.[41]
The sailing pine was doubtless so called on account of it being so largely used for the masts of ships. The wood of the aspen tree was often used for making staves on account of its toughness. He alludes also to the ancient use of the cypress at funeral rites, and the wearing of the willow as a badge of the unfortunate; the yew, chiefly employed for making the long bows; the birch, for the strongest arrows; and the sallow, which when plaited formed the sails of the windmills.
Incisions are cut in the bark of the myrrh tree in order that the gum should exude as from an open wound.
Beech was used for the shafts of spears and axes, and the carver holm or cutting holly was so called from its prickles.
In the sixth canto we have mention of the flower-de-luce:—
“The lily, lady of the flowering field, The flow’r-de-luce her lovely paramour”.[42]
Flower-de-luce was the old name for the iris, and is also the French fleur-de-lis, and the origin of that symbol. The roots of many of the iris species have long been used in medicine for their cathartic and emetic properties. That of the I. florentina is well known for its sweet violet smell, and from early times has been employed to sweeten the breath and as an ingredient in tooth powders. Another old name for this plant was “The flower of delights”.
In the seventh canto the poet shows he was well acquainted with some medicinal plants, and gives us quite a group of “herbs of ill favour”.
“There mournful cypress grew in greatest store; And trees of bitter gall; and ebon sad; Dead sleeping poppy, and black hellebore; Cold coloquintida, and tetra mad; Mortal samnitis; and cicuta bad, With which th’ unjust Athenians made to die Wise Socrates, who, thereof quaffing glad, Pour’d out his life and last philosophy To the fair Critias, his dearest belamy!”[43]
Here we have mention of the narcotic poppy and the black hellebore, a drastic purgative with which tradition states Melampus, the great soothsayer and physician, cured the daughters of Prœtus, King of Argos, of madness. Also the colocynth or bitter apple; tetra mad, an old name for the belladonna or deadly nightshade; savin, here called mortal samnitis, a plant possessing powerful properties, used in medicine from the time of the Romans; and the cicuta or hemlock, which formed the active ingredient in the poison cup of the Greeks.
In the Shepherd’s Calendar we have another allusion to the black hellebore:—
“Here grows melampode ev’rywhere, And terebinth, good for goats; The one my madding kids to smear, The next to heal their throats”.[44]
The ancient name for hellebore was melampus root, hence the name melampode, which doubtless arose from the old tradition. By terebinth the poet probably means one of the species of pine from which turpentine is obtained.