And so on and so on, much in the strain of modern advertisement of patent medicines. The boot is on the other leg now, for although hot elder-berry wine glows comfortably in memories of boyhood, I know not where I might now get a glass thereof, were I to perish for want of it.[15] Thoughtful housewives still provide elder flower water on the toilet tables of their guests, and methinks the ointment may be found in some conservative nurseries.
Contemporary with mediæval esteem of the elder was the belief that it was accursed because it was the tree whereon Judas hanged himself. We know, of course, that in Southern Europe the beautiful Judas tree (_Cercis siliquastrum_) is stained by that imputation, but Sir John Mandeville (fourteenth century) assured his countrymen that he had been shown at Jerusalem the identical "Tree of Eldre" on which the traitor ended his career. The chief reason for hesitating to accept Mandeville's evidence is that he never, or hardly ever, told the truth except by accident. Shakespeare, however, entertained the belief, for in _Love's Labour's Lost_ he makes Biron say to Holofernes, "Judas was hanged on an elder," and science has lent assent to the rural fancy which gave the name Jew's Ears to the flabby black fungus that makes the elder its peculiar host by calling it _Hirneola auricula-Judæ_.
The pith which bulks so largely in the young growth of elder ceases to increase after the second year, and becomes compressed, and the wood that forms round it is exceedingly hard. In old times it was much in request for making pipes and other musical instruments. Pliny has preserved a quaint bit of folk-lore about it. He says the shepherds believe "that the most sonorous horns are made of an elder growing where it has never heard a cock crow." In our day we put the wood to no use whatever, unless, in the West of England, butchers still use it for skewering meat, which it was supposed to guard from taint. But--
No sound shall creak through the solemn pines, The ocean shall lose its roar, The wild horse cease to skim the plain, The alpine peaks be level again, The eagle forget to soar,
before our boys forget the simple craft that turns whistles and popguns out of elder shoots. For this, and certain other qualities, the elder claims a permanent place in our affection. It never winces or complains under the harshest phases of our climate, and it forgets its melancholy at midsummer, when an old bourtree, 30 feet high or so, set with scores of creamy saucers, is a really beautiful object.