[Illustration: TUDOR MANOR HOUSE WITH MODERN ARRANGEMENT OF GARDENS]
While in it holly is not actually described, _Amiens's_ song will always remain the song of songs to holly:
Blow, blow, thou winter wind, Thou art not so unkind As man's ingratitude; Thy tooth is not so keen, Because thou art not seen, Although thy breath be rude. Heigh ho! sing heigh ho! unto the green holly: Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly. Then heigh ho the holly! This life is most jolly.
Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky, Thou dost not bite so nigh As benefits forgot; Though thou the waters warp Thy sting is not so sharp As friend remembered not. Heigh ho! sing, heigh ho! unto the green holly: Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly. Then, heigh ho! the holly! This life is most jolly.
IVY (_Hedera Helix_). Shakespeare mentions ivy twice: in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" where _Titania_, bidding _Bottom_ sleep, says:
Sleep thou and I will wind thee in my arms ... the female ivy so Enrings the barky fingers of the elm.[86]
and in "The Tempest," when _Prospero_ compares his false brother with the ivy:
The ivy, which had hid my princely trunk, And suck'd my verdure out on 't.[87]
In the old carols and plays Ivy is always represented as a woman, and yet, although beloved, was used for the outside decorations and doorways. Ivy never had the place within that holly occupied.
As ivy clings and embraces the object near it, the plant was chosen as an emblem of confiding love and friendship. Tusser's commands are as follows: "Get Ivy and Holly, women, deck up thy house." Ivy was also used in the church decorations at Christmas-tide. In the Middle Ages ivy was a favored and most auspicious plant. An old carol says:
Ivy is soft and meke of speech, Against all bale she is bliss, Well is he that her may reach:-- _Veni, coronaberis_.
Ivy is green with color bright, Of all trees best she is, And that I prove will now be right:- _Veni, coronaberis_.
Ivy beareth berries black, God grant us all His bliss, For there we shall nothing lack:-- _Veni, coronaberis_.
Ivy was the crown of the Greek and Roman poets, whose myths proclaimed the plant sacred to Bacchus. Indeed the plant took its name from Bacchus (_kissos_) for it was said that the child was hidden under ivy when abandoned by his mother, Semele. The ivy was mingled with the grape in the crown of Bacchus and it enwreathed his thyrsus. Ivy berries eaten before wine was swallowed prevented intoxication, so Pliny says. Perhaps because of its association with Bacchus ivy was hung at the vintners' doors in England as well as on the Continent, and a reference to this custom is contained in Nash's "Summer's Last Will and Testament" (1600).