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VETCHES.

Iris. Ceres, most bounteous lady, thy rich leas

Of Wheat, Rye, Barley, Vetches, Oats, and Peas.
Tempest, act iv, sc. 1.

The cultivated Vetch (Vicia sativa) is probably not a British plant, and it is not very certain to what country it rightly belongs; but it was very probably introduced into England by the Romans as an excellent and easily-grown fodder-plant. There are several Vetches that are true British plants, and they are among the most beautiful ornaments of our lanes and hedges. Two especially deserve to take a place in the garden for their beauty; but they require watching, or they will scramble into parts where their presence is not desirable; these are V. cracca and V. sylvatica. V. cracca has a very bright pure blue flower, and may be allowed to scramble over low bushes; V. sylvatica is a tall climber, and may be seen in copses and high hedges climbing to the tops of the Hazels and other tall bushes. It is one of the most graceful of our British plants, and perhaps quite the most graceful of our climbers; it bears an abundance of flowers, which are pure white streaked and spotted with pale blue; it is not a very common plant, but I have often seen it in Gloucestershire and Somersetshire, and wherever it is found it is generally in abundance.

The other name for the Vetch is Tares, which is, no doubt, an old English word that has never been satisfactorily explained. The word has an interest from its biblical associations, though modern scholars decide that the Zizania is wrongly translated Tares, and that it is rather a bastard Wheat or Darnel.

VINES.

(1) Titania. Feed him with Apricocks and Dewberries,
With purple Grapes, green Figs, and Mulberries.
Midsummer Night's Dream, act iii, sc. 1.
The tartness of his face sours ripe Grapes.
Coriolanus, act v, sc. 4.

(2) Menenius.

(3) Song.

(4) Cleopatra.

Come, thou monarch of the Vine,
Plumpy Bacchus, with pink eyne,
In thy vats our cares be drowned,
With thy Grapes our hairs be crowned.

Antony and Cleopatra, act ii, sc. 7.
Now no more

The juice of Egypt's Grape shall moist this lip.

Ibid, act v, sc. 2.

(5) Timon. Dry up thy Marrows, Vines, and plough-torn leas. Timon of Athens, act iv, sc. 3.

(6) Timon. Go, suck the subtle blood of the Grape,

Till the high fever seethe your blood to froth. Ibid. (7) Touchstone. The heathen philosopher, when he had a desire to eat a Grape, would open his lips when he put it into his mouth, meaning thereby that Grapes were made to eat and lips to open. As You Like It, act v, sc. 1.

X(8) Iago. Blessed Fig's end-the wine she drinks is made of

Grapes.

Othello, act ii, sc. 1.

(9) Lafeu. Q, will you eat no Grapes, my royal fox?

Yes, but you will my noble Grapes, an if
My royal fox could reach them.

All's Well that Ends Well, act ii, sc. 1.

(10) Lafeu. There's one Grape yet.

(11) Clown. I was in "The Bunch of Grapes," where, indeed, you have a delight to sit.

(12) Constable.

Ibid., act ii, sc. 3.

Measure for Measure, act ii, sc. 1.

Let us quit all

Henry V, act iii, sc. 5.

And give our Vineyards to a barbarous people.

(13) Burgundy. Her Vine, the merry cheerer of the heart, Unpruned, dies.

Our Vineyards, fallows, meads, and hedges,
Defective in their natures, grow to wildness.

Ibid., act v, sc. 2.

(14) Mortimer. And pithless arms, like to a withered Vine
That droops his sapless branches to the ground.
1st Henry VI, act ii, sc. 5.

(15) Cranmer. In her days every man shall eat in safety
Under his own Vine what he plants, and sing
The merry songs of peace to all his neighbours.
Henry VIII, act v, sc. 4.

(16) Cranmer. Peace, plenty, love, truth, terror,
That were the servants to this chosen infant,
Shall then be his, and like a Vine grow to him.

Ibid.

(17) Lear.

Now our joy,

Although the last, not least; to whose young love
The Vines of France and milk of Burgundy

Strive to be interessed.

King Lear, act i, sc. 1.

(18) Arviragus. And let the stinking Elder, grief, entwine His perishing root with the increasing Vine.

Cymbeline, act iv, sc. 2.

(19) Adriana. Thou art an Elm, my husband, I a Vine, Whose weakness married to thy stronger state Makes me with thy strength to communicate.

Comedy of Errors, act ii, sc. 2.

(20) Gonzalo. Bound of land, tilth, Vineyard, none.

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(23) Richmond.

Tempest, act ii, sc. 1.
Ibid., act iv, sc. 1.

Ibid.

Vines with clustering bunches growing,
Plants with goodly burden bowing.

The usurping boar,

That spoils your summer fields and fruitful Vines.
Richard III, act v, sc. 2.

(24) Isabella. He hath a garden circummured with brick,
Whose western side is with a Vineyard back'd;
And to that Vineyard is a planched gate,
That makes his opening with this bigger key:
This other doth command a little door,
Which from the Vineyard to the garden leads.

(25)

Measure for Measure, act iv, sc. 1. For one sweet Grape, who will the Vine destroy? Rape of Lucrece. Besides these different references to the Grape Vine, some of its various products are mentioned, as Raisins,* wine, aquavitæ or brandy, claret (the "thin potations" forsworn by Falstaff), sherris-sack or sherry, and malmsey. But none of these passages gives us much insight into the culture of the Vine in England, the whole history of which is curious and interesting.

The Vine is not even a native of Europe, but of the East, whence it was very early introduced into Europe; so early, indeed, that it has recently been found "fossil in a tufaceous deposit in the south of France."-Darwin. It was no doubt

* Under the head of Raisins I omitted a passage in which Raisins are certainly alluded to, if not actually named. In 1st Henry IV, act ii, sc. 3, Falstaff says: "If Reasons were as plenty as Blackberries, I would give no man a reason upon compulsion, I.” "It seems that a pun underlies this; the association of reasons with blackberries springing out of the fact that reasons sounded like raisins." EARLE, Philology, &c.

brought into England by the Romans. Tacitus, describing England in the first century after Christ, says expressly that the Vine did not, and, as he evidently thought, could not grow there. "Solum, præter oleam vitemque et cætera calidioribus terris oriri sueta, patiens frugum, fæcundum." Yet Bede, writing in the eighth century, describes England as "opima frugibus atque arboribus insula, et alendis apta pecoribus et jumentis Vineas etiam quibusdam in locis germinans."

From that time till the time of Shakespeare there is abundant proof not only of the growth of the Vine as we now grow it in gardens, but in large Vineyards. In AngloSaxon times "a Vineyard" is not unfrequently mentioned in various documents. "Edgar gives the Vineyard situated. at Wecet, with the Vinedressers."-Turner's Anglo-Saxons. "Domesday Book contained thirty-eight entries of valuable Vineyards; one in Essex consisted of six acres, and yielded twenty hogsheads of wine in a good year. There was another of the same extent at Ware." H. Evershed, in Gardeners' Chronicle. So in the Norman times, "Giraldus Cambrensis, speaking of the Castle of Manorbeer (his birthplace), near Pembroke, said that it had under its walls, besides a fishpond, a beautiful garden, enclosed on one side by a Vineyard and on the other by a wood, remarkable for the projection of its rocks and the height of its Hazel trees. In the twelfth century Vineyards were not uncommon in England." Wright. Neckam, writing in that century, refers to the usefulness of the Vine when trained against the wall-front"Pampinus latitudine suâ excipit æris insultus, cum res ita desiderat, et fenestra clementiam cæloris solaris admittat."Hudson Turner.

In the time of Shakespeare I suppose that most of the Vines in England were grown in Vineyards of more or less extent, trained to poles. These formed the "pole-clipt Vineyards" of No. 21, and are thus described by Gerarde"The Vine is held up with poles and frames of wood, and by that means it spreadeth all about and climbeth aloft; it joyneth itselfe unto trees, or whatsoever standeth next unto it "in other words, the Vine was then chiefly grown as a standard in the open ground.

There are numberless notices in the records and chronicles of extensive vineyards in England, which it is needless to quote; but it is worth noticing that the memory of these Vineyards remains not only in the chronicles and in the treatises which teach of Vine-culture, but also in the names

of streets, &c., which are occasionally met with. There is "Vineyard Holm," in the Hampshire Downs; the "Vineyard Hills," at Godalming; the "Vines," at Rochester and Sevenoaks; the "Vineyards" at Bath and Ludlow; and the "Vine Fields," near the Abbey at Bury S. Edmunds;* and probably a closer search among the names of fields in other parts would bring to light many similar instances.

Among the English Vineyards those of Gloucestershire stood pre-eminent. William of Malmesbury, writing of Gloucestershire in the twelfth century, says: "This county is planted thicker with Vineyards than any other in England, more plentiful in crops, and more pleasant in flavour. For the wines do not offend the mouth with sharpness, since they do not yield to the French in sweetness"-De Gestis Pontif., book iv. Of these Vineyards the tradition still remains in the county. The Cotswold Hills are in many places curiously marked with a succession of steps or narrow terraces; these are traditionally the sites of the old Vineyards, but the tradition cannot be fully depended on, and the formation of the terraces has been variously accounted for. By some they are supposed to be natural formations, but wherever I have seen them they appear to me too regular and artificial; nor, as far as I am aware, does the oolite, on which formation these terraces mostly occur, take the form of a succession of narrow terraces. There seems nothing improbable in the idea that the ground was artificially formed into these terraces with very little labour, and that they were utilised for some special cultivation, and as likely for Vines as for any other. It is also certain that as the Gloucestershire Vineyards were among the most ancient and the best in England, so they held their ground till within a very recent period. I cannot find the exact date, but some time during the last century there is "satisfactory testimony of the full success of a plantation in Cromhall Park, from which ten hogsheads of wine were made in the year. The Vine plantation was discontinued or destroyed in consequence of a dispute with the Rector on a claim of the tythes."-Rudge's History of Gloucestershire. This, however, is not quite the latest notice I have met with, for Phillips, writing in 1820, says: There are several flourishing Vineyards at this time in Somersetshire; the late Sir

* At Stonehouse "there are two arpens of Vineyard."- Domesday Book, quoted by Rudder. Also "the Vineyard" was the residence of the Abbots of Gloucester. It was at St. Mary de Lode near Gloucester, and "the Vineyard and Park were given to the Bishopric of Gloucester at its foundation and again confirmed 6th Edward VI."-RUDDER.

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