And we may finish the Hawthorn with a short account of its name, which is interesting:--"Haw," or "hay," is the same word as "hedge" ("sepes, id est, _haies_," John de Garlande), and so shows the great antiquity of this plant as used for English hedges. In the north, "haws" are still called "haigs;" but whether Hawthorn was first applied to the fruit or the hedge, whether the hedge was so called because it was made of the Thorn tree that bears the haws, or whether the fruit was so named because it was borne on the hedge tree, is a point on which etymologists differ.
[112:1] "Gilbert White in his 'Naturalists' Calendar' as the result of observations taken from 1768 to 1793 puts down the flowering of the Hawthorn as occurring in different years upon dates so widely apart as the twentieth of April and the eleventh of June."--MILNER'S _Country Pleasures_, p. 83.
Her [Queen Mab's] chariot is an empty Hazel-nut Made by the joiner squirrel or old grub, Time out o' mind the fairies' coachmakers.
Kate like the Hazel twig Is straight and slender and as brown in hue As Hazel-nuts and sweeter than the kernels.
_Taming of the Shrew_, act ii, sc. 1 (255).
Sweetest Nut hath sourest rind, Such a Nut is Rosalind.
For his verity in love I do think him as concave as a covered goblet or a worm-eaten Nut.
Believe this of me, there can be no kernel in this light Nut.
_All's Well that Ends Well_, act ii, sc. 5 (46).
Thou wilt quarrel with a man for cracking Nuts, having no other reason but because thou hast Hazel eyes.
Hector shall have a great catch, if he knock out either of your brains; a' were as good crack a fusty Nut with no kernel.
_Troilus and Cressida_, act ii, sc. 1 (109).
I'll warrant him for drowning; though the ship were no stronger than a Nut-shell.
I have a venturous fairy that shall seek The squirrel's hoard, and fetch thee new Nuts.
_Midsummer Night's Dream_, act iv, sc. 1 (40).
O God, I could be bounded in a Nut-shell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.
Some devils ask but the parings of one's nail, A Rush, a hair, a drop of blood, a pin, A Nut, a Cherry-stone.
Dr. Prior has decided that "'Filbert' is a barbarous compound of _phillon_ or _feuille_, a leaf, and _beard_, to denote its distinguishing peculiarity, the leafy involucre projecting beyond the nut." But in the times before Shakespeare the name was more poetically said to be derived from the nymph Phyllis. Nux Phyllidos is its name in the old vocabularies, and Gower ("Confessio Amantis") tells us why--