The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare

ONIONS.

(1)	Bottom.	And, most dear actors, eat no Onions nor Garlic, for we are to utter sweet breath.
Midsummer Night's Dream, act iv, sc. 2 (42).

(2)	Lafeu.	Mine eyes smell Onions, I shall weep anon: Good Tom Drum, lend me a handkercher.
All's Well that Ends Well, act v, sc. 3 (321).

(3)	Enobarbus.	Indeed the tears live in Onion that should water this Sorrow.
Antony and Cleopatra, act i, sc. 2 (176).

(4)	Enobarbus.	Look, they weep, And I, an ass, am Onion-eyed.
Ibid., act iv, sc. 2 (34).

(5)	Lord.	And if the boy have not a woman's gift To rain a shower of commanded tears, An Onion will do well for such a shift, Which in a napkin being close conveyed Shall in despite enforce a watery eye.
Taming of the Shrew, Induction, sc. 1 (124).

There is no need to say much of the Onion in addition to what I have already said on the Garlick and Leek, except to note that Onions seem always to have been considered more refined food than Leek and Garlick. Homer makes Onions an important part of the elegant little repast which Hecamede set before Nestor and Machaon—

"Before them first a table fair she spread,
Well polished and with feet of solid bronze;
On this a brazen canister she placed,
And Onions as a relish to the wine,
And pale clear honey and pure Barley meal."

Iliad, book xi. (Lord Derby's translation).

But in the time of Shakespeare they were not held in such esteem. Coghan, writing in 1596, says of them: "Being eaten raw, they engender all humourous and corruptible putrifactions in the stomacke, and cause fearful dreames, and if they be much used they snarre the memory and trouble the understanding" ("Haven of Health," p. 58).

The name comes directly from the French oignon, a bulb, being the bulb par excellence, the French name coming from the Latin unio, which was the name given to some species of Onion, probably from the bulb growing singly. It may be noted, however, that the older English name for the Onion was Ine, of which we may perhaps still have the remembrance in the common "Inions." The use of the Onion to promote artificial crying is of very old date, Columella speaking of "lacrymosa cÆpe," and Pliny of "cÆpis odor lacrymosus." There are frequent references to the same use in the old English writers.

The Onion has been for so many centuries in cultivation that its native home has been much disputed, but it has now "according to Dr. Regel ('Gartenflora,' 1877, p. 264) been definitely determined to be the mountains of Central Asia. It has also been found in a wild state in the Himalaya Mountains."—Gardener's Chronicle.

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