Laurel (pronounced lawruhl or lor-uhl)
(1) A small European evergreen tree, Laurus nobilis, of
the Lauraceae family, having dark, glossy green leaves (known also as the bay tree
or sweet bay).
(2) Any tree of the genus Laurus.
(3) In general use, any of various similar trees or
shrubs, as the mountain laurel or the great rhododendron.
(4) The foliage of the laurel as an emblem of victory or
distinction.
(5) A branch or wreath of laurel foliage.
(6) In the plural (laurels or victory laurels), an award
conferred (literally or figuratively) as an honor for achievement in some field
or activity.
(7)
An English gold coin minted in 1619, so called because the king's head was
crowned with laurel.
(8)
In many color charts, a green of a darker hue.
(9)
To adorn or enwreathe with laurel.
(10) To honor with marks of distinction.
(11) A female given name (there have been rare instances of male use, including as a "second name" referencing some relative).
1250–1300: A dissimilated variant of the Middle English laurer (laurel), from the Anglo-Norman, from the twelfth century Old French laurier & lorier (bay tree; laurel tree), the construct being lor (bay) + -ier, from the Medieval Latin laurārius, from the Latin laurus (laurel tree), thought related to the Greek daphne (laurel), probably from a pre-Indo-European Mediterranean language. The French suffix -ier was from the Middle French -ier & -er, from the Old French, from the Latin -ārium, the accusative of -ārius. It was used to form the names of trees, ships, jobs etc. The second -r- in the Middle English laurer changed to -l- by process of dissimilation. Laurel & laureate are nouns & verbs, laureateship & laurustinus are nouns, laureled & laurelled are verbs & adjectives and lauriferous & lauraceous are adjectives; the noun plural is laurels.
The use to describe an emblem of victory or of distinction (hence the phrase “to rest on one’s laurels” (the original form was “repose upon”)) dates from 1831. The phrase is now used used in the cautionary sense “don’t rest on your laurels”, a warning not to rely on a reputation gained through past successes but instead continue to strive and improve. The companion phrase “look to your laurels” is an idiomatic expression (known in Antiquity) meaning one needs to be vigilant and attentive to one's accomplishments, skills or position because there will be those eager to surpass or outshine you. Like “don’t rest on your laurels”, it stresses the importance of maintaining one’s competitive edge. It was a bay leaf from a laurel shrub that Πυθία (Pythia, priestess of Pythian Apollo at Delphi) chewed during her prophetic trances.
Although most associated with women (the feminine variants including Laura, Lauren, Lori and Lorraine), Laurel is a unisex given name. It was related to the German Lorelie and in Germanic mythology there were several tales of the lovely maiden Lorelei (luring rock) who lived upon a rock in the River Rhine. She lured fishermen to their deaths by singing songs of such beauty they couldn't resist, a variation of the stories of the Sirens in Greek mythology. The Sirens were legendarily beautiful but deadly creatures who used their lyrical and earthly charms to lure sailors to their death. Attracted by their enchanting music and voices, the intrigued seafarers would sail too close to the rocky coast of the Siren’s island and be shipwrecked, there to suffer a worse fate still at the hands of the hungry Sirens. In Homer's Odyssey (an epic poem from perhaps as long ago as the eighth century BC), it was Odysseus who most famously escaped the sirens. Longing to hear their songs but, forewarned by Circe and having no wish to be shipwrecked and devoured, he had his sailors fill their ears with beeswax, rendering them deaf. Then, he ordered he be tied to the mast, telling his crew that whatever he said, they were not to release him but instead tighten the knots, not cutting the bonds until the ship had sailed far from the coast. Of course, approaching the rocks, he heard the lovely voices and implored the crew to release him but they followed their skipper’s orders, not setting him free until the danger had passed. Some writers claimed the Sirens were doomed to die if a man heard their singing and escaped and, as Odysseus sailed off, they flung themselves into the waters and drowned but, among the myths, that was not always their fate. Not untypically for the myths of Antiquity, the Sirens are said to have had many homes. The Romans said they lived on some small islands called Sirenum scopuli while later authors place them variously on the islands of Anthemoessa, on Cape Pelorum, on the islands of the Sirenuse, near Paestum, or in Capreae. All were places with rocky coasts and tall cliffs and thus for ships potentially lethal places although the fate of sailors was more gruesome, the Sirens devouring them. The Argonauts sailed close to the Sirens, but, using the same principle as “radio jamming” in the twentieth century, Orpheus sang as long as the crew was within earshot of them (“drowning out their signal”), so none were lured (except the unfortunate Butes, carried away by Aphrodite after he fell victim).
The feminine proper name Daphne was from the Greek daphne (laurel, bay tree) and in mythology was the name of a nymph. Etymologists conclude the word is related to the Latin laurus (laurel) although the mechanism has been lost in time. In Greek mythology, Δάφνη (Daphne), daughter of the River Ladon (and sometimes of the Thessalian River Peneus), was a nymph with whom the God Apollo fell in love; he was provoked by Cupid, having disputed with him the power of his darts which Apollo, the recent conqueror of the Python, belittled. When he pursued her to the banks of the Peneus, she was saved from being ravished by the god who transformed her into a Laurel tree, the origin of Apollo being so often depicted crowned with laurel leaves. None of the writers from Antiquity seem ever to have pondered whether the nymph, had she been offered time to consider the choice between being ravished by a Greek god or becoming eternally arboreous, might have preferred to permit a slice be cut from the loaf. While at the time not of much consolation to the unfortunate Daphne, Apollo ordained that the laurels should be the prize for poets and victors and, being, at least briefly, a sentimental chap, Apollo adopted the laurel as his favorite tree so there’s that. The site of temples and a stadium, the Grove of Daphne was a pleasure resort of renowned natural beauty, dedicated to Apollo and located near Antioch.
Being a Greek myth, there are of course variants in the tales and in a Laconian version, Daphne was the daughter of Amyclas who spent her days among the mountains where she was a favourite of Artemis. From afar, Leucippus fell in love with her and, disguising himself as a girl, joined her companions. Daphne became fond of him (thinking him a her), but Apollo became jealous and vowing to expose his trickery, inspired Daphne and her companions with a wish to bathe. Leucippus, obviously, hesitated to remove his clothing, but his companions forcibly undressed him and, feeling betrayed upon discovering his identity, they attacked him, his life saved only by the gods rendering him invisible. At this point, Apollo dashed to try to seize Daphne but she ran off and in answer to her prayer, Zeus turned her into a laurel. Latter-day interpretations of Daphne's fate have differed. While her name lives on as a tragic hero (the girl who gave up her life rather than succumb to a sexual assault) some feminists have criticized the notion that a victim of such a crime should be transformed into something silent and thus uncomplaining.
As an adjective, laureate (crowned with laurels as a mark of distinction) dates from the late fourteenth century and the earliest reference was to poets of particular distinction, from the Latin laureatus (crowned with laurel), from laurea (laurel crown; emblematic of victory or distinction in poetry), from the feminine laureus (of laurel). The first known use of Laureat poete is in Geoffrey Chaucer’s (circa 1344-1400) Canterbury Tales (1387-1400) in reference to Scholar and poet of early Renaissance Italy, Petrarch (Francesco Petrarca (1304–1374), and it was used in Middle English of Greek fabulist Aesop (circa 620–564 BC) and, by the early fifteenth century of Chaucer himself.
In English the inverted form “poet laureate” was in imitation of Latin word order and although used informally since the early 1400s, the evidence suggests the first appointed by the state was probably (and perhaps posthumously) Ben Jonson (circa 1572–circa 1637) in 1638 although the first for whom the letters patent remain extant was John Dryden (1631–1700). In the UK, the position of poet laureate is an honorary office in the gift of the sovereign but in these days, appointed on the advice of the prime minister; because few prime-ministers know much of poetry, they too take advice on the matter; in that, it's similar to the appointment of bishops, most prime ministers knowing as little of religion. Curiously, although the office is not un-remunerated, the government describes it still as an “honorary appointment”, the advantage of that being summary dismissal is a simpler process should the poet start writing material unpleasing to the party in power. It may be more correct to call it a kind of sinecure because while the expectation is the appointee will compose verse to mark moments of national significance, such things are not defined and nor are aspects such as frequency or length. So it’s one of those “gentlemen’s agreements” which, as late as the 1950s was still a feature of the way the establishment ran the UK. That would have extended also to Dame Carol Ann Duffy (b 1955, poet laureate 2009-2019), thus far the only woman appointed (she had the benefit of ticking several boxes for Gordon Brown (b 1951; prime minister of the UK 2007-2010): Scottish; female; lesbian). Just for once, Gordon's stars aligned.
For his laureateship, Dryden's was paid an annual fee of Stg£200, the inclusion in 1630 by the doomed Charles I (1600–1649; King of England, Scotland & Ireland 1625-1649) of an annual “butt of Canary wine”, later converted into the monetary equivalent. A butt of wine (known also as “a pipe”) had a volume of 105 imperial gallons (126 US gallons, 477 litres) and was part of the English standardized “Cask Measurement System” regulating trade in liquids between brewers, distillers, merchants and shippers. All graduations of the defined sizes of wooden barrels were fractions of the largest standard cask (the “tun” (210 imperial gallons (252 US gallons, 954 litres)) with a butt a half-tun and a “hogshead” half a butt (52 imperial gallons (63 US gallons, 238 litres)). However, being English, the system was complicated by a butt of ale or beer being defined as 108 imperial gallons (130 US gallons, 491 litres). As a unit of measurement the butt was the origin of the slang term “buttload”. The tradition of the “butt of Canary wine” was revived on the request of Ted Hughes (1930–1998; poet laureate 1984-1998) who received 720 bottles of sherry. Being Irish, the poet Brendan Behan (1923-1964) wouldn't have been created poet laureate but the government avoided a significant charges against the exchequer by not appointing Dylan Thomas for whom 720 bottles of anything would likely not have proved sufficient.
The poet laureate's annual payment is now “Stg£5,750 and a barrel of sherry” so it’s good gig considering there are no set hours and only the vaguest KPIs (key performance indicators). There was a time when a poet laureate was an exalted figure but these days there’s less interest and the best remembered probably still is Ted Hughes (1930–1998; poet laureate 1984-2008) and that less for his oeuvre than calls by feminists to boycott his works because he had Sylvia Plath’s (1932-1963) “blood on his quill”. The noun laureate came into existence in the 1520s, either as an evolution from the adjective or through a mistaken reading and laureateship has been in use since 1732. In modern use, laureate is most frequently applied to Nobel prize winners, a use that began in 1947; while many of the Nobel laureates have been outstanding figures in their field, there have been a few about as undeserving as some of the less distinguished British poets laureate. Of the 21 who have held the office, serious critics seem to rate only Dryden, William Wordsworth (1770–1850; poet laureate 1843-1850) and Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892; poet laureate 1850-1892) as first-rate poets.
The laurel appeared in Hymn to Proserpine (1866), a poem by Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837–1909) exploring atheism, a theme to which he would on occasion return as he developed in verse his increasingly strident opposition to Christianity in general and stifling Victorian morality particularly. Nominated every year between 1903 and 1909 for the Nobel Prize in Literature, his name was on the list in 1893 presented to Victoria (1819–1901; Queen of the UK 1837-1901) as the replacement for Tennyson as Poet Laureate but the queen vetoed him “on moral grounds” although it’s not known if she’d read or merely been told about his works discussing sado-masochism and lesbian longings. Swinburne was of a figure of the post-Romantic disillusionment and a part of the sceptical tradition that would emerge in the nineteenth century to grow to a critical mass in the twentieth; even if not familiar with his most “disturbing” verse, Hymn to Proserpine, an address to Proserpina (in Rome, the goddess of the Underworld), lamenting that the rise of Christianity had displaced the pagan goddess and her pantheon, would alone have been enough to incur royal disapprobation.
Thou hast
conquered, O pale Galilean; the world has
grown grey
from Thy breath;
We have
drunken of things Lethean, and fed on the
fullness of
death.
Laurel is
green for a season, and love is sweet for a day;
But love
grows bitter with treason, and laurel outlives
not May.
The meaning is that both romantic love and artistic fame are fleeting, fragile, and bound to fade, the work a pagan perspective rejecting the idea of eternal life or permanent earthly glory. In saying “Laurel is green for a season”, the leaves exist in their traditional symbolic role celebrating poetic glory, victory and cultural achievement but as “Love is sweet for a day”, while human affection can briefly be thrillingly intense, notoriously is it brief and transitory. Just as “love grows bitter with treason” with relationships easily and often turned toxic by a betrayal or shift in faith, the “laurel outlives not May” and like spring flowers, fame dies quickly when the cultural season shifts and fashions change. Nothing lasts forever and even the highest artistic achievements will one day dissolve into nothingness: Man can write his will across the heavens but those stars will soon dim and fall. Swinburne found comfort not in an afterlife, but in the total, final darkness granted by Proserpine, the goddess of death. Charmingly, Christians and pagans alike would both concur with the scriptural “Vanity, vanity, vanity of vanity of vanities, all is vanity” (Ecclesiastes 1:2) although each would draw different conclusions, the former in eternal life, the latter in peaceful oblivion. As a footnote, Hymn to Proserpine includes cross-rhyme (known also as an interlaced rhyme) a device occurring in long couplets, the device operating on words in the middle of each line (here “season” and “treason”).
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