EASTERTIDE, SHAMROCKS AND SPERMACETI
Most people think of Easter as a Christian festival, but it is really
in name and origin a pagan one. The word "Easter" is the modern form
of "Eastra," the name of the Anglo-Saxon goddess of spring (in
primitive Germanic, "Austro"). The Germans, like ourselves, keep its
true pagan name, "Ostern." The Latin nations use for Easter the word
Pascha (French, Paque), the Greek form of the Jewish name for the
feast of the Passover, with which it is historically associated by the
Christian Church. Terrible quarrels have occurred in early ages over
fixing Easter Day and its exact relation to the Jewish calendar. This
is the explanation of its being "a movable feast" and of the
consequent inconvenience to Parliament, schoolboys, and
Bank-holiday-makers at the present day. It must be admitted that when
Easter comes as early as it sometimes does those who have but the
short spring holiday of the Easter week-end are hardly used. Instead
of enjoying the sunny spring weather of Austro, and the flowers and
the bursting buds which an Easter at the end of April often gives,
they have to put up with the dreary chill of arid March, and this,
absurdly enough, is all on account of a mistaken attempt at accuracy
made by the Church some sixteen hundred or more years ago in trying to
bring the Christian festival into line with the Jewish Passover. If it
were desired to celebrate the Feast of the Resurrection each year on
the day corresponding astronomically with that indicated in the
Gospels, the Astronomer Royal would have no difficulty in exactly
fixing the day, making due allowance for the changes of the calendar
and for the irregularities of the Jewish year. I do not know what day
in what month such a calculation would finally establish as that of
the ecclesiastical festival, but the Bank Holiday and the Anglo-Saxon
Easter might be dealt with separately, and assigned, once for all, to
the end of April, the real "opening," or spring month.
The yellow "tansy cakes" which used to be, and the coloured eggs which
still are, given away at Easter throughout Europe, are not of
Christian origin, but belong to the Roman celebration (at the same
season, viz., April 12th to 15th) of the goddess of Plenty--Ceres.
Eggs are the symbols of fecundity and the renewal of life in the
spring. They were decorated and given in baskets by rich Romans to
their friends and dependents at this season. "Hot-cross buns" are
peculiar to England, and no doubt have a Christian significance. They
have not survived in Scotland, although Easter eggs are well known
there (sometimes they are called "pace-eggs"), nor on the Continent,
where "Pascal eggs" are an institution. "Buns" owe their name to the
old Norse word "bunga," a convexity or round lump, preserved also in
our words "bunion" and "bung." In Norman French it became "bonne," and
in the fourteenth century was applied to the round loaf of bread given
to a horse; the loaf was called Bayard's bonne (pronounced "bun"). In
some parts of England a "bunny" still means a swelling due to a blow.
The April fish, the "poisson d'Avril," is the polite French term for
what we call an "April fool." But why a fish is introduced in this
connection I am unable to say. The custom of sending people on fool's
errands on the First of April is probably due to the change of the
calendar in France in 1564; but there is a Hindoo feast on March 31st,
when similar jokes are perpetrated. It is called "Huli," which, in
accordance with phonetic laws, readily becomes "Fooli." This is
probably only a coincidence.
A curious Easter custom in country districts in England used to be
(perhaps still is) that called "lifting" or "heaving." On Easter
Monday two men will join hands so as to form a seat; their companions
then "by right of custom" compel the women they may meet to sit, one
after the other, on the improvised throne and be lifted or heaved as
high as may be. On Easter Tuesday the women perform the same rite upon
the men. Strangers thus assailed have been much disconcerted and have
recorded their astonishment in "notes of travel." The custom is said
to be a popular degeneration of the celebration of the Resurrection.
* * * * *
An early Easter falls little in advance of St. Patrick's Day, when
there is much "wearing of the green" and questioning as to what plant
is "the real shamrock." This matter has become so involved and
developed by wild enthusiasm, ignorance, and false sentiment that it
is difficult to deal with it. A distinguished Irishman once showed me
the "shamrock" he was wearing in his buttonhole as "the true" plant of
that name. He assured me that he had studied the subject from boyhood
and knew well the true and the false. "What is its flower like?" I
asked him. "It never has a flower at all," he said. Another injustice
to Ireland, one must suppose, or a miracle of St. Patrick's! His
"green" was a bit of the small variety of the common clover,
_Trifolium repens_, which, of course, produces the usual tuft of
florets or clover-head. It is true that this plant has now been
vulgarly substituted for St. Patrick's shamrock. The shamrock is not
really the common clover nor any variety of it. The common Dutch
clover and its varieties were introduced into Ireland two hundred
years ago from England and are not Irish at all! The true shamrock is
the delicate little wood-sorrel, _Oxalis acetosella_, which has a
beautifully formed three-split or trefoil leaf of the most vivid green
colour, and a white flower like that of a geranium. It is called
"fairy-bell" by the Welsh, and was believed to ring chimes for the
elfin folk. It was also greatly esteemed for its acid flavour and for
various reputed medicinal and magical properties by the Druids and
among the early inhabitants of Great Britain and Ireland. Pliny says
it never shelters a snake, and is an antidote to the poison of
serpents and scorpions--a good reason for its association with St.
Patrick! It had already a reputation and sanctity when, if tradition
be true, St. Patrick used its threefold leaf to symbolise the doctrine
of the Trinity.
It is much rarer to find the wood-sorrel trefoil with a fourth leaflet
than it is to find the clover trefoil so provided. The two plants
belong to families widely separated from one another. The ancient
architectural decoration of trefoil carving, and also the heraldic
shamrock in the arms of the United Kingdom, represent the leaf of the
wood-sorrel, and not that of the clover. No doubt there has been some
sentimental intention in putting forward the humble, abundant,
down-trodden dwarf-clover, the very sod itself of Ireland (really
introduced from England) as "the shamrock!" But, as often happens in
such cases, truth and the ancient and honourable tradition of a
beautiful thing have been wantonly disregarded in order to do business
in cheap sentiment. Traders are always ready to take advantage of an
ignorant public. Common sprats are called "sardines," the name of
another and rarer fish, in order to conceal the fact that they are
sprats; clarified horse fat is called "fresh country butter," and
Irish regiments are made to decorate themselves with common clover
under the delusion that it is the shamrock. Other plants have been
from time to time utilised to usurp the title of "shamrock." Thus the
small Lucerne clover or medicago is often sold as "shamrock" to Irish
patriots, and the watercress has been solemnly pat forward as the true
shamrock simply because old writers tell us, as evidence of the
barbarous state of the Irish, that they fed upon shamrocks and
watercress. The true shamrock (the wood-sorrel) was formerly greatly
valued all over Europe as a salad and a flavouring herb on account of
its leaves containing oxalic acid. It was used for the manufacture of
oxalic acid, which was sold as "salts of lemons" for removing
iron-mould. It was the basis of the soup and of the green sauce for
fish, in which the dock-sorrel (Rumex) has now taken its place. The
name "shamrock" is an old Irish word, written "seamragg," and means a
little "trefoil." Curiously enough there appears to be an Oriental
word, "shamrakh," which I am told is of Arabic origin, and also means
a trefoil. In English writers from the seventeenth century onwards the
Irish shamrock is variously written of as "shamroots," "shamerags"
(this and the next following with hostile intent), "shame-rogues,"
"sham-brogues," and "sham-rug."
I am sorry to say that Shakespeare does not mention the shamrock at
all. No Irishman who knows the little oxalis or wood-sorrel could wish
for a more beautiful floral emblem of the Emerald Isle, or dream of
letting the vulgar Saxon intruder--the dwarf clover--take its place.
Perhaps it is the Ulstermen who have set up the foreign "Dutch" clover
to replace the true shamrock, the wood-sorrel. These changes are
easily made. For instance, "green" is not the original colour of
Ireland, but light blue--Cambridge blue!
* * * * *
This chapter is one of varied material, and I now pass abruptly from
fresh emerald leaflets to the waxy crystals stewed out of the fat of a
monster's head. There has seldom been a controversy so entertaining as
that between Dr. Bode (the talented director of the Art Gallery of
Berlin) and his opponents, in regard to the age of the wax-bust which
he purchased not long ago for L8,000 in Bond Street in the belief that
it was the work of Leonardo da Vinci. Science has had its share in the
examination of the bust. The last scientific contribution to the
matter was the discovery by an analytical chemist, Dr. Pinkus, that
the waxy mixture of which the bust is composed consists in definite
proportion of spermaceti. Now since spermaceti was not used before the
year 1700, the bust cannot (say Dr. Bode's opponents) have been made
by Leonardo da Vinci, who died in the early part of the sixteenth
century. "Nonsense!" reply Dr. Bode's supporters, "Shakespeare makes
Hotspur speak of 'parmaceti,' and it was well known to the doctors of
Salerno in 1100 A.D., and probably used by the ancients."
Nevertheless, the opponents of Dr. Bode are right. I am sorry, because
Dr. Bode is, in regard to "works of art," a most able expert, and I
think it is better that experts should always be right. Spermaceti was
known, probably from classical times onwards, as a rare and precious
unguent, "resolutive and mollifying," as M. Pomel, "chief druggist to
the late French King Louis XIV," says in his treatise on drugs,
translated into English in 1737. It was applied as a liniment for
hardness of the skin and breasts, and was also taken internally.
Shakespeare's reference to it is "parmaceti for an inward bruise." The
fact is it was known and used in small quantity before 1700 A.D. in
connection with medicine and the toilet, but was not consumed by the
thousand tons a year, as it was after the hunting of the sperm whale
or cachalot (_Physeter mecrocephalus_) had been set a-going by the
brave fishermen of Nantucket and the Northern Atlantic coast of
America in 1690. In 1730 or thereabouts the English and the Dutch also
sent out ships to take part in this perilous industry, which is now
again, in its dwindled condition, exclusively American. It is the
pursuit of by far the biggest and fiercest animal which man has doomed
to extinction. Those who enjoy such stories of adventure should read
Mr. Bullen's personal narrative, "The Cruise of the Cachalot." It was
at the end of the eighteenth century that spermaceti became so
abundant in the market that candles of it were manufactured and sold
cheaper than those of wax. From about 1860 it was superseded by
paraffin and other wax-like products: and it was at its cheapest
period, and when it was most widely in use, that Lucas, the English
artist, who made many wax busts and statuettes, is known to have mixed
it, in the form of "old candles," with beeswax, in order to form the
composition which he used in his works. The evidence given by the
chemist, Dr. Pinkus, appears to me to be conclusive (even without the
evidence of the old clothes stuffed into the hollow of the bust)
against the theory that the Bode wax-bust of Flora is more ancient
than the nineteenth century, and much in favour of its being the work
of Lucas, who is exceptionally known as a wax-modeller of repute sixty
years ago, who did use spermaceti.
Spermaceti is a perfectly definite chemical body, which can be
recognised without chance of error. It is a combination of palmitic
acid and a peculiar hydrocarbon, called (after the whale) "cetyl," and
easily forms pure crystals. Before sperm whales were hunted it was
obtained in relatively small quantity from individual sperm whales,
which by misadventure landed themselves on the coast of France, Spain,
or Great Britain, and was eagerly purchased by the apothecaries and
perfumers of the great cities of Europe. There are several records of
such strange mistakes on the part of the great sperm whale. Only ten
or fifteen years ago one was stranded on the Lincolnshire coast,
whilst the specimen exhibited in the Natural History Museum was washed
ashore at Thurso in Caithness. The spermaceti is found dissolved in
the more ordinary oil (or fat), which occupies a huge region above the
bones of the upper jaw and gives the sperm whale its barrel-shaped
head. It separates on cooling, from the liquid oil, in crystalline
flakes, forming great masses, which are purified by re-melting and
cooling. In early times the fine waxy, flaky material thus obtained
was known in samples of a few ounces, and sold by apothecaries. It was
known that it came from a whale, and was believed to be the seed or
sperm of that animal, hence its name "spermaceti." M. Pomel, whom I
cited above, believed it to come from the brain of the whale called
"cachalot." No one would have dreamt in the sixteenth century of
mixing this precious stuff with beeswax for modelling purposes. At
that date one would as soon have mixed amber with pitch. That reminds
me that "grey amber" or "ambergris" is also a product of the sperm
whale not to be confounded with spermaceti. It is an unhealthy
intestinal concretion like bezoar-stone (see p. 64), only
exceptionally produced. It is found floating in the ocean, and is
recognised as coming from the cachalot owing to its being largely made
up of the horny beaks of cuttle-fish, upon which the cachalot feeds.
It is still used in perfumery, and fetches the extraordinary price of
four guineas the ounce. A piece weighing 4-1/2 oz. may be seen in
Cromwell Road.
Though the oils (or fats) of plants and animals are very similar to
one another in appearance, there are a very large number of them
differing chemically from one another. Thus the fat or oil of dozens
of different nuts and plant-products and of lower animals and fishes,
and of sheep, oxen, pigs, dogs, elephants, and men contain different
and special chemical substances, corresponding to the "cetyl" which is
present in the fat of the sperm whale's head. Many of them have
acquired as a result of experience and tradition special value for
some special purpose. Several oils have peculiar fitness and great
value for oiling delicate machinery; others are used in curing
leather, for burning, and for medicinal ointments, whilst a large
variety is used as human food.