The Epic of Weeding has still to be written! It should be undertaken in
no light or frolic vein, but with all the gravity that the subject
demands. What I should wish to see would be either a careful scientific
treatise by a competent authority, or, what would perhaps be still
better, a great poem, which, like all the highest poetry, would go
straight to the very soul of the subject, and leave the votary of it
satisfied for ever. To the earnest-minded Weeder, most other occupations
seem comparatively subordinate. Blank is that day some portion of which
has not been devoted to faithful weeding. Blank is that night in which,
as he lays his head upon the pillow, he cannot say to himself that such,
or such a piece of ground has been thoroughly cleared, and will not
require to be done again--for quite a fortnight!
One disadvantage it certainly has, but then it is one that it shares
with all the other higher, and more absorbing pursuits. If inordinately
pursued, it tends to grow upon its votary, until everything else becomes
subsidiary. What was originally a virtue, may thus in time come near to
growing into a vice. Of this danger I am myself a proof. There have been
moments--not many, nevertheless some--when I have found myself sighing
for more weeds to conquer. Worse, I have had the greatest difficulty on
more than one occasion to keep myself from pouncing upon my neighbour’s
perfectly private chickweeds and groundsels, which I have happened to
catch sight of across a fence!
I notice in myself, and have observed in others, a lamentable lack of
accuracy as regards the proper names of weeds. Even some that I know the
best, and hate the hardest, I really cannot put any name to. Now this is
not as it should be. Everything, however detestable, has a name of its
own, and that name ought to be used. You may not like a man, but that is
hardly a reason for calling him “What’s-his-name,” or “Thingamy.” It is
true that in the West of Ireland it is regarded as a very unsafe thing
to mention any of the more malignant powers by their right names. The
_Sidh_, for instance, if spoken of by their proper title, invariably fly
at you, and do you a mischief. The only way of avoiding this peril is to
use some obscure and roundabout designation, which is not their real
name at all. I do not know whether the same mode of reasoning has ever
been held to apply to weeds. If so, I cannot say that the plan appears
to me to answer. At least I can safely swear that I have never called
one of them by its proper botanical name in my life, yet they rush in on
us from all sides, and persecute us none the less impishly.
There is one particularly diabolical individual, which has clearly
marked this garden as its prey, and marches continually to and fro of it
like a roaring lion. What its correct name is I shall in all probability
never know, though I have carefully cross-examined several botanical
works on the subject. It has narrow fleshy leaves; a mass of roots,
constructed of equal parts of pin wire and gutta-percha; the meanest of
pinky white flowers, and a smell like sour hay. It is not the leaves,
the flowers, the roots, or even the smell, that I so much object to. It
is the capacity it possesses of flinging out offshoots of itself to
incredible distances, which offshoots no sooner touch ground than they
begin to weave a kind of ugly green net over everything within reach,
enmeshing it all into as dense a mass of leaves and roots as is the
parent plant.
Although I am no nearer extirpating it than I was before, since
yesterday I have at least been able to name it, a satisfaction which
many a poor Speaker must have been thankful for, especially in an age
grown too picked and tender to allow of even the most obdurate
obstructor being despatched to either the Tower, or the Block.
It was Cuttle who provided me with that satisfaction, and it is not one
of the least of the many debts that I owe him.
“What can be the name of this thing, I wonder, Cuttle?” I said, rising
exhausted from an effort to hinder a fresh colony from enmeshing and
strangling a line of “Laurette Messimy” which had been recently planted
upon the top of a slope.
“I’m not sure as I can tell you its proper name, ma’am, but about here
_we_ calls it ‘Snaking Tommy.’”
Admirable Cuttle! “Snaking Tommy” of course! The instant I heard it I
felt convinced that in that preliminary naming of all plants and animals
performed by Adam in the garden of Eden, that, and no other, must have
been the name bestowed upon this. It is true some theologian might
assure me that there were no weeds in the garden of Eden, but that I
think is not particularly likely, because, whether there were weeds in
that garden or not, there are certainly no theologians in this one.
Moreover we all know that the snake was there, to everyone’s
immeasurable discomfort. And if the snake, why not, let me ask, “Snaking
Tommy”?