Sleep thou and I will wind thee in my arms ... the female ivy so Enrings the barky fingers of the elm.[86] and in "The Tempest," when _Prospero_ compares his false brother with the ivy: The ivy, which had hid my princely trunk, And suck'd my verdure out on 't.[87] [86] Act IV, Scene I. [87] Act I, Scene II. In the old carols and plays Ivy is always represented as a woman, and yet, although beloved, was used for the outside decorations and doorways. Ivy never had the place within that holly occupied. As ivy clings and embraces the object near it, the plant was chosen as an emblem of confiding love and friendship. Tusser's commands are as follows: "Get Ivy and Holly, women, deck up thy house." Ivy was also used in the church decorations at Christmas-tide. In the Middle Ages ivy was a favored and most auspicious plant. An old carol says: Ivy is soft and meke of speech, Against all bale she is bliss, Well is he that her may reach:-- _Veni, coronaberis_. Ivy is green with color bright, Of all trees best she is, And that I prove will now be right:- _Veni, coronaberis_. Ivy beareth berries black, God grant us all His bliss, For there we shall nothing lack:-- _Veni, coronaberis_. Ivy was the crown of the Greek and Roman poets, whose myths proclaimed the plant sacred to Bacchus. Indeed the plant took its name from Bacchus (_kissos_) for it was said that the child was hidden under ivy when abandoned by his mother, Semele. The ivy was mingled with the grape in the crown of Bacchus and it enwreathed his thyrsus. Ivy berries eaten before wine was swallowed prevented intoxication, so Pliny says. Perhaps because of its association with Bacchus ivy was hung at the vintners' doors in England as well as on the Continent, and a reference to this custom is contained in Nash's "Summer's Last Will and Testament" (1600). In Shakespeare's time ivy was considered a remedy against plague, which gave another reason for veneration. England would almost cease to be England without the ivy that so luxuriantly covers the walls of old buildings and adds its soft beauty to the crumbling ruins. Everybody loves it--strangers as well as natives; and every one loves the poem that Dickens inserted into "The Pickwick Papers": Oh, a dainty plant is the Ivy green, That creepeth o'er ruins old! On right choice food are his meals, I ween, In his cell so lone and cold. The wall must be crumbled, the stone decay'd To pleasure his dainty whim; And the mouldering dust that years have made, Is a merry meal for him. Creeping where no life is seen, A rare old plant is the Ivy green!