The trunk of an old hawthorn is more gnarled and rough than, perhaps, that
of any other tree; and this, with its hoary appearance, and its fragrance,
renders it a favourite tree with pastoral and rustic poets, and with those
to whom they address their songs. Milton, in his L'Allegro, has not
forgotten this favourite of the village:--
"Every shepherd tells his tale
Under the hawthorn in the dale."
When Burns, with equal force and delicacy, delineates the pure and
unsophisticated affection of young, intelligent, and innocent country
people, as the most enchanting of human feelings, he gives additional
sweetness to the picture by placing his lovers
"Beneath the milk-white thorn, that scents the evening gale."
There is something about the tree, which one bred in the country cannot
soon forget, and which a visiter learns, perhaps, sooner than any
association of placid delight connected with rural scenery. When, too, the
traveller, or the man of the world, after a life spent in other pursuits,
returns to the village of his nativity, the old hawthorn is the only
playfellow of his boyhood that has not changed. His seniors are in the
grave; his contemporaries are scattered; the hearths at which he found a
welcome are in the possession of those who know him not; the roads are
altered; the houses rebuilt; and the common trees have grown out of his
knowledge: but be it half a century or more, if man spare the old hawthorn,
it is just the same--not a limb, hardly a twig, has altered from, the
picture that memory traces of his early years.--_Library of Entertaining
Knowledge_.
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