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, PÂque), 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 £8,000 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.