"Judas, he japed With jewen silver, And sithen on an eller Hanged hymselve."
So firmly rooted was this belief in days gone by that Sir John Mandeville tells us in his Travels, which he wrote in 1364, that he was actually shown the identical tree at Jerusalem, "And faste by is zit, the tree of Elder that Judas henge himself upon, for despeyr that he hadde when he solde and betrayed oure Lord." This tradition no doubt, in a great measure, helped to give it its bad fame, causing it to be spoken of as "the stinking elder." Shakespeare makes it an emblem of grief. In "Cymbeline" (iv. 2) Arviragus says:
"Grow, patience! And let the stinking elder, grief, untwine His perishing root with the increasing vine!"
The dwarf elder[491] (_Sambucus ebulus_) is said only to grow where blood has been shed either in battle or in murder. The Welsh call it "Llysan gward gwyr," or "plant of the blood of man." Shakespeare, perhaps, had this piece of folk-lore in mind when he represents Bassianus, in "Titus Andronicus" (ii. 4), as killed at a pit beneath an elder-tree:
"This is the pit and this the elder tree."
_Eringoes._ These were formerly said to be strong provocatives, and as such are mentioned by Falstaff in "Merry Wives of Windsor" (v. 5): "Let the sky rain potatoes; let it thunder to the tune of Green Sleeves, hail kissing comfits, and snow eringoes." Mr. Ellacombe[492] thinks that in this passage the globe artichoke is meant, "which is a near ally of the eryngium, and was a favorite dish in Shakespeare's time."
[492] "Plant-Lore of Shakespeare," p. 66.
_Fennel._ This was generally considered as an inflammatory herb; and to eat "conger and fennel" was "to eat two high and hot things together," which was an act of libertinism.[493] Thus in "2 Henry IV." (ii. 4) Falstaff says of Poins, he "eats conger and fennel." Mr. Beisly states[494] that fennel was used as a sauce with fish hard of digestion, being aromatic, and as the old writers term it, "hot in the third degree." One of the herbs distributed by poor Ophelia, in her distraction, is fennel, which she offers either as a cordial or as an emblem of flattery: "There's fennel for you, and columbines."
[493] Nares's "Glossary," vol. i. p. 302; Dyce's "Glossary," p. 159.