The Elm and the Vine were associated particularly by Latin authors. Because pruned elm trees acted as vine supports, this was taken as a symbol of marriage [1] and imagery connected with their pairing also became common in Renaissance literature. Various fables were created out of their association in both Classical and later times. Although Aesop was not credited with these formerly, later fables hint at his authorship.
The 'marriage' of elm trees and vines continued in Italy from Roman times into the 20th century. [2] There are references to this both in works on husbandry and in poetry. The most famous of the latter was Ovid's account of the myth of Vertumnus and Pomona in his Metamorphoses . Vertumnus takes the shape of an old woman and urges the reluctant goddess to marriage by pointing to the vine in her orchard. In the version by the work's first English translator, Arthur Golding:
The subject was commonly painted in Europe between the 16th–18th centuries, and there are examples which feature a vine trained up an elm from Italy, the Netherlands, France and England (see the Gallery below).
The theme's continuing popularity was partly encouraged by the entry of the imagery into Emblem books, beginning with the most popular of them all, Andrea Alciato's Emblemata, in which it figures under the title Amicitia etiam post mortem durans (Friendship lasting even after death). [4] This interpretation had been influenced by a first-century CE poem by Antipater of Thessalonica in which a withered plane tree (rather than an elm) recounts how the vine trained about it keeps it green. [5] Alciato was followed in this interpretation by Geoffrey Whitney in England, [6] using Alciato's illustration but accompanied by verses of his own. It has been argued that William Shakespeare borrowed from this source of imagery for his The Comedy of Errors , in which Adriana reasons with Antipholus of Syracuse,"Come, I will fasten on this sleeve of thine./ Thou art an elm, my husband, I a vine,/ Whose weakness, married to thy stronger state,/ Makes me with thy strength to communicate" (2.2.166–169). [7]
Other emblem writers who took up this theme include Otto Vaenius in his Amorum emblemata (1608), where it is interpreted as love continuing after the death of a partner; [8] by Jean Jacques Boissard in his Emblemes latins (1588), where he takes it as a sign of undying friendship; [9] and by Daniel Heinsius in his Emblemata Amatoria (1607), where he makes the tree a plane, following the Greek epigram, and interprets it as the sign of undying love. The French version of his Latin poem reads
– as the vine survives about the plane, So will my love the stroke of fate. [10] Similarly Konstantin Batyushkov, with a history of borrowings from foreign sources, will later speak of receiving a beloved's last embrace "as the tendrils of the vine around the slender elm go winding" in his Russian poem "Elysium" of 1810. [11] [12]
Grateful dependence of a different sort was signified by the French emblem of Gilles Corrozet in his Hecatomographie (1540), where a fruiting vine acknowledges its debt to the 'little tree' that supports it. [13] In the following century an adaptation of the emblem was adopted as printer's mark by the House of Elzevir for their press in Leiden. There a scholar picks grapes from the vine trained round the tree, on the other side of which is the Latin device Non Solus (not alone), pointing to the alliance between learning and literature. [14]
A fable, or at least a parable, of the mutual support of the unfruitful elm and the fruiting vine appeared early on in the quasi-Biblical Shepherd of Hermas. The interpretation given it there was that the rich are in need of the prayers of the poor, which they can only acquire by acts of charity. [15] There is a return to the association with marriage in the anonymous poem "The Elm and Vine", first published in England in 1763 and reprinted elsewhere for some fifty years both there and in the USA. The story is set "In Aesop's days, when trees could speak" and concerns a vine that scorns the tree's proposal, only to take it up when beaten down by a storm. [16] Much the same story was versified in the 19th century by the Mexican fabulist Jose Rosas Moreno, then in turn translated in a condensed version by the American poet William Cullen Bryant. [17]
A different fable appeared in prose in Robert Dodsley's Select Fables of Esop (1764). This, however, was an adaptation of the fable of The Gourd and the Palm-tree and appeared in the book's third section of 'modern fables'. [18] There the pert vine refused the elm's proposal and boasted of being able to rely on its own resources. The elm replies to the 'poor infatuated shrub' that misapplication of its resources will soon bring about its downfall. The text was reissued in a 1776 edition of Dodsley's work illustrated by Thomas Bewick and again in John Brocket's Select Fables (Newcastle 1820), also with Bewick's woodcut. [19]
An emblem book is a book collecting emblems with accompanying explanatory text, typically morals or poems. This category of books was popular in Europe during the 16th and 17th centuries.
The Honeysuckle Bower is a self-portrait of the Flemish Baroque painter Peter Paul Rubens and his first wife Isabella Brant, executed c. 1609.The couple is seated in fine clothes within a garden composition and a vine of honeysuckle is placed overhead. The symbolism of the double-portrait alludes to meanings of love and marriage, such as the holding of right hands, and the concept of the garden of love. The pose of the two figures and their fine clothing signify self-fashioning by Rubens. They wed in 1609, the same year that work was created; it was ultimately given to Isabella’s father Jan Brant and would later end up in the collection of Johann Wilhem II of Düsseldorf. The couple would be married for seventeen years, and have three children before Isabella died in 1625. Her death would have a profound impact on Rubens and through his loss he created an posthumous portrait.
The Oak and the Reed is one of Aesop's Fables and is numbered 70 in the Perry Index. It appears in many versions: in some it is with many reeds that the oak converses and in a late rewritten version it disputes with a willow.
The Walnut Tree is one of Aesop's fables and numbered 250 in the Perry Index. It later served as a base for a misogynistic proverb, which encourages the violence against walnut trees, asses and women.
The Two Pots is one of Aesop's Fables and numbered 378 in the Perry Index. The fable may stem from proverbial sources.
The Trees and the Bramble is a composite title which covers a number of fables of similar tendency, ultimately deriving from a Western Asian literary tradition of debate poems between two contenders. Other related plant fables include The Oak and the Reed and The Fir and the Bramble.
The Gourd and the Palm-tree is a rare fable of West Asian origin that was first recorded in Europe in the Middle Ages. In the Renaissance a variant appeared in which a pine took the palm-tree's place and the story was occasionally counted as one of Aesop's Fables.
Washing the EthiopianWhite is one of Aesop's Fables and is numbered 393 in the Perry Index. The fable is only found in Greek sources and, applied to the impossibility of changing character, became proverbial at an early date. It was given greater currency in Europe during the Renaissance by being included in emblem books and then entered popular culture. There it was often used to reinforce outright racist attitudes.
The Crow or Raven and the Snake or Serpent is one of Aesop's Fables and numbered 128 in the Perry Index. Alternative Greek versions exist and two of these were adopted during the European Renaissance. The fable is not to be confused with the story of this title in the Panchatantra, which is completely different.
"The Blind Man and the Lame" is a fable that recounts how two individuals collaborate in an effort to overcome their respective disabilities. The theme is first attested in Greek about the first century BCE. Stories with this feature occur in Asia, Europe and North America.
"The Astrologer who Fell into a Well" is a fable based on a Greek anecdote concerning the pre-Socratic philosopher Thales of Miletus. It was one of several ancient jokes that were absorbed into Aesop's Fables and is now numbered 40 in the Perry Index. During the scientific attack on astrology in the 16th–17th centuries, the story again became very popular.
Developed by authors during Renaissance times, the story of an ass eating thistles was a late addition to collections of Aesop's Fables. Beginning as a condemnation of miserly behaviour, it eventually was taken to demonstrate how preferences differ.
The Fowler and the Snake is a story of Greek origin that demonstrates the fate of predators. It was counted as one of Aesop's Fables and is numbered 115 in the Perry Index.
The Fox and the Mask is one of Aesop's Fables, of which there are both Greek and Latin variants. It is numbered 27 in the Perry Index.
The Ass Carrying an Image is one of Aesop's Fables and is numbered 182 in the Perry Index. It is directed against human conceit but at one period was also used to illustrate the argument in Canon Law that the sacramental act is not diminished by the priest's unworthiness.
The Trumpeter Taken Captive is one of Aesop's Fables and is numbered 370 in the Perry Index. One of the rare tales in which only human beings figure, it teaches that association with wrongdoers makes one equally culpable.
In ancient times, the beaver was hunted for its testicles, which it was thought had medicinal qualities. The story that the animal would gnaw these off to save itself when hunted was preserved by some ancient Greek naturalists and perpetuated into the Middle Ages. It also appeared as a Greek fable ascribed to Aesop and is numbered 118 in the Perry Index.
The Acorn and the Pumpkin, in French Le gland et la citrouille, is one of La Fontaine's Fables, published in his second volume (IX.4) in 1679. In English especially, new versions of the story were written to support the teleological argument for creation favoured by English thinkers from the end of the 17th century onwards.
The Bear and the Bees is a fable of North Italian origin that became popular in other countries between the 16th - 19th centuries. There it has often been ascribed to Aesop's fables, although there is no evidence for this and it does not appear in the Perry Index. Various versions have been given different interpretations over time and artistic representations have been common.
The story of the feud between the eagle and the beetle is one of Aesop's Fables and often referred to in Classical times. It is numbered 3 in the Perry Index and the episode became proverbial. Although different in detail, it can be compared to the fable of The Eagle and the Fox. In both cases the eagle believes itself safe from retribution for an act of violence and is punished by the destruction of its young.