When Cytherea all in love forlorn A longing tarriance for Adonis made Under an Osier growing by a brook. _Passionate Pilgrim_ vi. (13) Though to myself forsworn, to thee I'll constant prove; Those thoughts, to me like Oaks, to thee like Osiers bow'd. _Ibid._ v. _See also_ PALM TREE, No. 1, p. 192. Willow is an old English word, but the more common and perhaps the older name for the Willow is Withy, a name which is still in constant use, but more generally applied to the twigs when cut for basket-making than to the living tree. "Withe" is found in the oldest vocabularies, but we do not find "Willow" till we come to the vocabularies of the fifteenth century, when it occurs as "Hæc Salex, A{e} Wyllo-tre;" "Hæc Salix-icis, a Welogh;" "Salix, Welig." Both the names probably referred to the pliability of the tree, and there was another name for it, the Sallow, which was either a corruption of the Latin Salix, or was derived from a common root. It was also called Osier. The Willow is a native of Britain. It belongs to a large family (_Salix_), numbering 160 species, of which we have seventeen distinct species in Great Britain, besides many sub-species and varieties. So common a plant, with the peculiar pliability of the shoots that distinguishes all the family, was sure to be made much use of. Its more common uses were for basket-making, for coracles, and huts, or "Willow-cabins" (No. 1), but it had other uses in the elegancies and even in the romance of life. The flowers of the early Willow (_S. caprea_) did duty for and were called Palms on Palm Sunday (_see_ PALM), and not only the flowers but the branches also seem to have been used in decoration, a use which is now extinct. "The Willow is called _Salix_, and hath his name _à saliendo_, for that it quicklie groweth up, and soon becommeth a tree. Heerewith do they in some countries trim up their parlours and dining roomes in sommer, and sticke fresh greene leaves thereof about their beds for coolness."--NEWTON'S _Herball for the Bible_.[321:1] But if we only look at the poetry of the time of Shakespeare, and much of the poetry before and after him, we should almost conclude that the sole use of the Willow was to weave garlands for jilted lovers, male and female. It was probably with reference to this that Shakespeare represented poor mad Ophelia hanging her flowers on the "Willow tree aslant the brook" (No. 6), and it is more pointedly referred to in Nos. 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, and 9. The feeling was expressed in a melancholy ditty, which must have been very popular in the sixteenth century, of which Desdemona says a few of the first verses (No. 7), and which concludes thus--