Fulham, with that name, is well known to the oarsmen on the Thames. It derives its denomination from a large crab-tree growing near the public-house, which gave its name to the whole village. The WILLOW TREE is very rare; in the seventeenth century it was the sign of a shop in the Old Exchange, as appears from a trades token, but what business was carried on under this gloomy sign does not appear. Fuller, in his Worthies, (_voce_ Cambridgeshire,) says of willows:-- “A sad tree whereof such who have lost their love make them mourning garlands; and we know that exiles hung their harps upon such doleful supporters; the twiggs hereoff are physick to drive out the folly of children. Let me add that if green ash may burn before a queen, withered willows may be allowed to burn before a lady.” As an attribute of forsaken love it is of constant occurrence in old plays:-- “_Sylli._ If you forsake me, Send me word, that I may provide a _willow garland_ To wear when I drown myself.” MASSINGER’S _Maid of Honour_, a. iv. s. 5, 1631. And in the same play Sylli, who thinks himself the preferred lover, says to his rival:-- “You may cry willow, willow!”--_Ibid._, a. v. s. 1. Shakespeare uses the same emblem frequently, particularly in Desdemona’s famous willow song. There is a quaint ballad which an old Northumberland woman used to sing, but which we have never seen in print: it begins as follows:-- “Young men are false, and they are so deceitful: Young men are false, and they seldom will prove true; For wi’ wrangling and jangling, their minds are always changing, They’re always seeking for some pretty girl that’s new. It’s all round my hat, I will wear a green willow, It’s all round my hat for a twelvemonth and a day; If any one should ask you the reason why I wear it, Oh! tell them I have been slighted by my own true love.” Douce, in his “Illustrations to Shakespeare,” says:--This tree might have been chosen as the symbol of sadness from the verse in Psalm cxxxvii.: “We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof;” or else from a coincidence between the weeping willow and falling tears. Another reason has been assigned: the _Agnus castus_ or _vitex_ was supposed by the ancients to promote chastity, “and the willow being of a much like nature,” says an old writer, “it is yet a custom that he which is deprived of his love must wear a willow garland.”--_Swan’s Speculum Mundi_, ch. vi. sec. 4. 1635.