Lime tree in culture
The lime tree or linden is important in the mythology, literature, and folklore of a number of cultures.
Cultural significance
Slavic mythology
In old Slavic mythology, the linden was considered a sacred tree. Particularly in Poland, many villages have the name "Święta Lipka", which literally means "Holy Lime". To this day, the tree is a national emblem of the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Lusatia. Lipa gave name to the traditional Slavic name for the month of June or July. It is also the root for the German city of Leipzig, taken from the Sorbian name lipsk. The Croatian currency, kuna, consists of 100 lipa. "Lipa" was also a proposed name for Slovenian currency in 1990, however the name "tolar" ultimately prevailed. In the Slavic Orthodox Christian world, limewood was the preferred wood for panel icon painting. The icons by the hand of Andrei Rublev, including the Holy Trinity, and The Savior, now in the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, are painted on linden wood. Its wood was chosen for its ability to be sanded very smooth and for its resistance to warping once seasoned. The southern Slovenian village of "Lipica" signifies little Lime tree and has given its name to the Lipizzan horse breed.Baltic mythology
In Baltic mythology, there is an important goddess of fate by the name of Laima /laɪma/, whose sacred tree is the lime. Laima‘s dwelling was a lime-tree, where she made her decisions as a cuckoo. For this reason Lithuanian women prayed and gave sacrifices under lime-trees asking for luck and fertility. They treated lime-trees with respect and talked with them as if they were human beings.Germanic mythology
The linden was also a highly symbolic and hallowed tree to the Germanic peoples in their native pre-Christian Germanic mythology.Originally, local communities assembled not only to celebrate and dance under a linden tree, but to hold their judicial thing meetings there in order to restore justice and peace. It was believed that the tree would help unearth the truth. Thus the tree became associated with jurisprudence even after Christianization, such as in the case of the Gerichtslinde, and verdicts in rural Germany were frequently returned sub tilia until the Age of Enlightenment.
In the Nibelungenlied, a medieval German work ultimately based on oral tradition recounting events amongst the Germanic tribes in the 5th and 6th centuries, Siegfried gains his invulnerability by bathing in the blood of a dragon. While he did so, a single linden leaf sticks to him, leaving a spot on his body untouched by the blood and he thus has a single point of vulnerability.
The most notable street in Berlin, Germany, is called Unter den Linden, named after the trees lining the avenue. It leads from the center of Berlin to Potsdam, the country residence of the Prussian kings.
In German folklore, the linden tree is the "tree of lovers." The well-known Middle High German poem Under der linden by Walter von der Vogelweide describes a tryst between a maid and a knight under a linden tree.
Hohenlinden is a community in the upper Bavarian district of Ebersberg in which the Battle of Hohenlinden took place; Thomas Campbell wrote the poem Hohenlinden about said battle.
Greek mythology
, Horace, Virgil, and Pliny mention the linden tree and its virtues. As Ovid tells the old story of Baucis and Philemon, she was changed into a linden and he into an oak when the time came for them both to die.Herodotus says:
Philyra, mother of the centaur Chiron, turned into a linden tree after bearing Chiron.
Literary references
- J. R. R. Tolkien composed the poem Light as Leaf on Lindentree which was originally published in 1925 in volume 6 of The Gryphon magazine. After many emendations it was later included in The Lord of the Rings as a song sung by Aragorn about the tale of Beren and Lúthien.
- One of the best known poems of the Minnesanger Walther von der Vogelweide is Under der linden, which describes a tryst between a maid and a knight under a linden tree.
- A play called The Linden Tree was written by Bradford-born English novelist, playwright and broadcaster J. B. Priestley.
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge features linden trees as an important symbol in his poem "This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison".
- The short poems of Polish poet Jan Kochanowski commonly feature linden trees, especially "Na Lipę", published in 1584. Kochanowski was heavily influenced by the Czarnolas, or the Polish Black Forest, where it is the dominant tree species.
- A poem from Wilhelm Müller's Winterreise cycle of poems is called "Der Lindenbaum". In 1827, Franz Schubert wrote the famous song cycle "Winterreise" based on these poems. In Thomas Mann's novel The Magic Mountain, a recording of this song cycle is an important plot device and philosophical touchstone.
- Hans Christian Andersen's short story "The Elf of the Rose" mentions a linden tree and its leaves frequently.
- Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther features a linden tree throughout the novel, and the protagonist, Werther, is buried under the tree after his suicide.
- In Swann's Way, the first book of Proust's In Search of Lost Time, the narrator dips a petite madeleine into a cup of Tilia blossom tea. The aroma and taste of cake and tea triggers his first conscious involuntary memory.
- "The Three Linden Trees" is a 1912 fairy tale by Hermann Hesse strongly influenced by the Greek legend of Damon and Pythias. The story, set in the medieval period, tries to explain three huge linden trees whose branches intertwine to cover the entire cemetery of the Hospital of the Holy Spirit in Berlin.
- John Updike's novel The Centaur, like James Joyce in Ulysses, uses myth in an attempt to turn a modern and common scene into something more profound, a meditation on life and man's relationship to nature and eternity. In it Updike parallels the lives of modern characters with the Greek myth in which Chiron's mother Philyra transforms into a linden tree to escape the shame of giving birth to a seemingly mutant half-horse, half-man as a result of her being raped by Kronos.
- The lime tree is referred to in the story "The Man Who Planted Trees" by Jean Giono. The unnamed narrator of the story re-visits a once abandoned and desolate village around which the man referenced by the books title has planted a forest over a period of 40 years. He returns to find by the fountain:
- Eminescu's Linden Tree is a 500-year-old silver lime situated in Iași, Romania. Mihai Eminescu reportedly wrote some of his best works underneath this lime, rendering the tree one of Romania's most important natural monuments and an Iași landmark.
In popular culture
- O-Zone's song Dragostea din Tei is titled after the tree.
In surnames