Sweet briar

“ The Common Sweet Briar should be grown about four feet high. The Penzance Briars make enormous base shoots, which may be shortened to ten feet or less according to one's requirements, and some of the strong laterals of last year shortened back. Lord and Lady Penzance, from their Austrian briar blood, are [24] much less vigorous, and need far less pruning, only cutting out dead wood. When the Penzance and Common Sweet Briars are grown as hedges, the base is apt to get bare, and some of the long shoots must be laid down to keep it clothed, while the rest are pruned much shorter. ”

“ And yet she was never conceited or puffed-up, as some good-looking and accomplished people are apt to be. On the contrary, she was always sweet-tempered and modest, and for this reason she was loved. People may admire [61] good looks and a graceful deportment, and they may respect ability, but it is only sweetness of nature and goodness of heart that can win love. And these things were the gift of the third fairy.
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So the years passed, and at last came the day when the Princess Briar-Rose was fifteen years of age. ”

“ Being a fairy, Brier could understand their language, and heard them singing and talking as they worked, and very funny were some of the songs and sayings. Close by her seat rose a neat little mound, and one most industrious ant was tugging away with load after load of sand from within; up he would come with a big grain, lay it nicely outside, take a breath of fresh air, and hurry back again in such haste that he often tumbled head over heels down his little hole. ”

“ Brier looked up to find a mild-eyed dove waving its white wings beside her, as it cooed these gentle words; and, before the fairy could answer, came other little voices from the tree above her head, calling: "Come up! come up, mamma! and bring the wonderful elf. We cannot fly and we cannot wait; come soon, else we shall fall out with trying to see."
With that Brier heard a flapping of wings, a rustling of leaves, and saw two small heads peering over the edge of a nest, with eyes full of eager delight. ”

“ I will go and see the beautiful Briar-Rose.” The good old man might dissuade him as he would, he did not listen to his words.
But by this time the hundred years had just passed. The day was come when Briar-Rose was to awake again. When the King’s Son came near to the thorn-hedge, it was nothing but large and beautiful flowers, which parted from each other of their own accord, and let him pass unhurt. Then they closed again behind him like a hedge.
In the castle-yard he saw the horses and the spotted hounds lying asleep. On the roof, sat the pigeons with their heads under their wings. ”

“ The stream itself was, on my side, fringed with bulrushes and other aquatic plants; on the opposite bank there were some large alders lifting their branches above great masses of bramble and rose-briar, all together forming as rich and beautiful a tangle as one could find even in the most luxuriant of the wild, unkept hedges round the village. The briars especially flourished wonderfully at this spot, climbing high and dropping their long, slim branches quite down to the surface of the water, and in some places forming an arch above the stream. ”

“ You would not have had all this underbrush, these dead limbs, these briers running riot over trees, and sometimes choking and killing them. You would have well-trimmed trees and velvet turf. But I love briers, dead limbs, and all, for their very savage freedom. Every once in a while you see in a wood a jessamine, or a sweet-brier, or a grape-vine, that throws itself into a gracefulness of growth which a landscape gardener would go down on his knees for, but cannot get. Nature resolutely denies it to him. ”

“ At last he reached the tower, and opened the door into the little room where Brier Rose was asleep. There she lay, looking so beautiful that he could not take his eyes off her; he bent down and gave her a kiss. As he touched her, Brier Rose opened her eyes and looked quite sweetly at him. Then they went down together; and the King and the Queen and all the courtiers woke up, and looked at each other with astonished eyes. ”

“ You would not have believed that the man who walked so quietly along the greensward with the moonlight on his face, could have been the same person who stood on [112] the deck of that brig and superintended the number of lashes that should be dealt on the back of a human being. Once or twice, as his glance fell on some familiar object, a sweet brier bush, perhaps, or a cluster of tall mulleins that had grown by the footpath since he was a child, his eyes would fill with tears. There was something holy and homelike in the stillness that made a child of this cruel man. ”

“ Perhaps the most beautiful of all of them is the variety known as Lady Penzance—descended from the Austrian Copper Briar and the Eglantine—which has single flowers of the most delicate blend of pink, yellow and orange. One great advantage which these single-flowered briars, as well as most of the June-flowering roses, have over the Hybrid Perpetuals is that they may be left practically unpruned, and so display the naturally graceful habit which is as important a part of the beauty of the Rose as is the flower itself. ”

“ A Rabbits best friend is his brier patch and he is seldom more than eight and one half hops away from it. Jenny Ragtail used to carry a copy of that beautiful poem, Brier Rose, in her reticule, so that she would always have a place of refuge in time of trouble. ”

“ BRIER
GOOD FRIDAY
Because, dear Christ, your tender, wounded arm
Bends back the brier that edges life's long way,
That no hurt comes to heart, to soul no harm,
I do not feel the thorns so much to-day. ”

“ There is, or used to be, a delicate pale flowered briar rose, having small foliage and numerous blossoms of a low branching habit growing in the high oak-hills in the township of Rawdon. I have never seen the flowers myself, but have heard the plant described as a rare species. The Swamp Rose, Rosa Carolina, is not uncommon; it is often seen growing at the margin of lakes and rivers, and at the edges of stony islands; it will climb, by aid of supporting trees, to the height of eight and ten feet. The flowers are of a somewhat purplish tinge of pink. The leaves are whitish underneath ”

“ Brier besought him to let go, and all the ant people came running to see, but dared not help, because the black ant was far bigger and stronger than they, and belonged to a very fierce tribe, which had destroyed their village more than once. So they ran away again as fast as they came; and when the black fellow had vented his rage, he went on his way, leaving the Emmet quite dead on the ground. Brier was very much grieved and shocked at such a display of temper, and cried over the departed ant very tenderly, as she laid him in the little house he would never want any more. ”

“ Better than these, however, in the eyes of the dwellers at The Briars were the great white-rose bushes, like the sweetbriar of old England. From these the house took its name, and thus the family in it seemed less far away from their old home.
In a grove near the house were trees of every description, grapes of all kinds and citron, orange, shaddoc, guava, and mango trees in the greatest abundance. The surplus raised in the garden beyond what the family could use brought its owner several hundred pounds a year. ”

“ Then a fairy rose in her place and said—
“I will begin. My gift to the Princess Briar-Rose is the gift of Beauty. She shall have eyes like stars, and hair as bright as the sunshine of the spring day on which she was born, and cheeks as fresh and fair as the petals of the flower from which she takes her name. None shall surpass her in loveliness.” ”

“ Often it assumes truly gigantic size and may tower above a tall man’s head.
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(A) Common Green Brier (Smilax rotundifolia) is a woody climbing vine with scattered sharp prickles; it climbs by means of pairs of tendrils from the axils of the leaves. Leaves alternating along the stem; round-ovate, sharply pointed at the tip and somewhat heart-shaped at the base. Flowers, few on slender peduncles from the angles of the leaves; perianth bell-shaped, with six short, spreading lobes, pale greenish in color. Common in moist thickets from N. S. to Minn. and southward, flowering in May and June. ”

“ So all the fairies in turn named the gift which they had brought for Briar-Rose. The fourth said that whatever the Princess put her hand to, she should do with the most exquisite grace; the fifth, that she should sing like a nightingale; the sixth that she should dance as lightly as a
fairy, and so on until she had nearly all the virtues and accomplishments which even a King might desire for his daughter. ”

“ In life they loved and (God knows why A lover so should sue) He slew her, on the gallows high Died pious—and they flew. Her pinions were bedraggled, soiled And torn as by a gale, While his were bright—all freshly oiled The feathers of his tail. Her visage, too, was stained and worn And menacing and grim; His sweet and mild—you would have sworn That she had murdered him. When they'd arrived before the gate He said to her: "My dear, 'Tis hard once more to separate, But you can't enter here. ”

“ A breath of cold air struck Byring full in the face; the boughs of trees above him stirred and moaned. A strongly defined shadow passed across the face of the dead, left it luminous, passed back upon it and left it half obscured. The horrible thing was visibly moving! At that moment a single shot rang out upon the picket-line - a lonelier and louder, though more distant, shot than ever had been heard by mortal ear! It broke the spell of that enchanted man; it slew the silence and the solitude, dispersed the hindering host from Central Asia and released his modern manhood. ”

“ The brier on which it grows is an annual plant, springing each year from the roots and dying after bearing fruit. The plant is very largely cultivated, bearing larger and more presentable berries, but gaining nothing in flavor and palatability. The berries are generally black when fully ripe, though red during the ripening stage and sometimes when mature. They are eaten raw, stewed, and in pies or “cobblers.” The berry is extensively used for making jams, jellies, and preserves, and for canning purposes. The juice of the berry is used for making a wine, usually with the admixture of sugar. ”

“ Starlings are fond of elder-berries: a flock alighting on a bush black with ripe berries will clear the bunches in a very short time. Haws, or peggles, which often quite cover the hawthorn bushes, are not so general a food as the fruit of the briar. Hips are preferred; at least, the fruit of the briar is the first of the two to disappear. The hip is pecked open (by thrushes, redwings, and blackbirds) at the tip, the seeds extracted, and the part where it is attached to the stalk left, just as if the contents had been sucked out. Greenfinches, too, will eat hips. ”

“ He approached to inform them it was a [pg 156] fine morning, when the great beast of a bear "rose like the steam of rich distilled perfume" from the earth in front of them, and made a mouth at him. Juniper did not run, as might have been expected; he stood for a moment peering into the brute's cavernous jaws, and then flew! He absented himself with such extraordinary nimbleness that after he was a mile distant his image appeared to be standing there yet; and looking back he saw it himself. Baffled of his dwarf, the bear thought he would make a shift to get on, for the present, with an orphan. ”

“ As I was working in the corn, a lazy breeze blew across the meadows from the west, and after loitering a moment among the blackberry bushes sought me out where I was busiest. Do you know the scent of the blackberry? Almost all the year round it is a treasure-house of odours, even when the leaves first come out; but it reaches crescendo in blossom time when, indeed, I like it least, for being too strong. It has a curious fragrance, once well called by a poet “the hot scent of the brier,” and aromatically hot it is and sharp like the briers themselves. ”

“ The brisgein is a root plentifully turned up by the plough in spring, and ranked in olden times as the ‘seventh bread.’ Its inferior quality and its being found underground, are probably the cause of its being assigned to the Fairies. It is a question whether the stalks of heather are the tops or the stems of the plant. Neither contain much sap or nourishment. The Banshi Fairy, or Elle woman, has been seen by hunters milking the hinds, just as women milk cows.
Those who partake of Fairy food are as hungry after their repast as before it. ”

“ The Briers is like a great, big, beautiful dog that lies there begging you to come and plow it and scratch it and hoe it and rake it, while it licks out green curly vegetable tongues for more. At first Sam seemed slightly overwhelmed by all the offers of help that came with me in Redwheels, dressed in business-like corduroys that had been made like mine, in a hurry, and with hoes and seed-baskets, or that Pink or Tolly drove out in their cars ”

“ Briarley did not know what. There was a wonderful and sweet gentleness in the face of the older woman as it bent to the simple earnestness of the other. Mrs. Briarley’s one little thought of truth had unerringly met and rounded its circle. It is not only at the sacramental table that we are partakers together of the Bread of Life.
“I’m so glad you told me!” said Mrs. Beatoun. She was not a demonstrative woman, but in that pause she had put her arms round Mrs. Briarley and kissed her, under the very shade of the rummage hat. ”