Y.

_Iris._

Thy banks with Pioned and twilled brims,
Which spongy April at thy best betrims,
To make cold nymphs chaste crowns.

_Tempest_, act iv, sc. 1 (65).

There is much dispute about this passage, the dispute turning on the
question whether "Pioned" has reference to the Peony flower or not. The
word by some is supposed to mean only "digged," and it doubtless often
had this meaning,[211:1] though the word is now obsolete, and only
survives with us in "pioneer," which, in Shakespeare's time, meant
"digger" only, and not as now, "one who goes before to prepare the
way"--thus Hamlet--

Well said, old mole! cans't work i' the earth so fast?
A worthy pioner?

_Hamlet_, act i, sc. 5 (161).

and again--

There might you see the labouring pioner
Begrim'd with sweat, and smeared all with dust.

_Lucrece_ (1380).

But this reading seems very tame, tame in itself, and doubly tame when
taken in connection with the context, and "Certainly savours more of the
commentators' prose than of Shakespeare's poetry" ("Edinburgh Review,"
1872, p. 363). I shall assume, therefore, that the flower is meant,
spelt in the form of "Piony," instead of Peony or Paeony.[211:2]

The Paeony (_P. corallina_) is sometimes allowed a place in the British
flora, having been found apparently wild at the Steep Holmes in the
Bristol Channel and a few other places, but it is now considered
certain that in all these places it is a garden escape. Gerard gave one
such habitat: "The male Peionie groweth wilde upon a Coneyberry in
Betsome, being in the parish of Southfleet, in Kent, two miles from
Gravesend, and in the ground sometimes belonging to a farmer there,
called John Bradley;" but on this his editor adds the damaging note: "I
have been told that our author himselfe planted that Peionee there, and
afterwards seemed to find it there by accident; and I do believe it was
so, because none before or since have ever seen or heard of it growing
wild since in any part of this kingdome."

But though not a native plant, it had been cultivated in England long
before Shakespeare's and Gerard's time. It occurs in most of the old
vocabularies from the tenth century downwards, and in Shakespeare's time
the English gardens had most of the European species that are now grown,
including also the h