Page 413 - J. C. Turner - History and Science of Knots

The The Love Knot 407

Such pains of heart were soon to be related to True Love Knots. The
concluding stanzas to the fifteenth century ballad of Fair Margaret and Sweet
William [9]:

Margaret was buried in the lower chancel,
Sweet William in the higher;
Out of her breast there sprung a rose;
and out of his a brier.
They grew up as high as the church top,
till they could grow no higher,
And then they grew in a true lover's knot,
Which made all people admire.

In Shakespeare's (1591) comedy The Two Gentlemen of Verona [act II,
scene VII] the following dialogue is to be found between Lucetta and Julia
who dresses up as youngster:

Lucetta: Why then, your ladyship must cut your hair.
Julia: No, girl; I'll knit it up in silken strings
With twenty odd-conceited true-love knots.
The year 1611 brought a madrigal in six strophes in Davidson's Poetical
Rhapsody, entitled The True Lover's Knot [6]; and from the 1631 Merry Devil
of Edmonton stems [6]:

With pardon, sir, that name is quite undon,
This true-love knot cancelles both maide and nun.

John Gay in Shepherd's Week, from Six Pastorals drawn from the English
rustic life (1714), describes the manner of tying the True Lover's Knot by the
following lines [15]:

As Lubberkin once slept beneath a tree,
I twitch'd his dangling garter from his knee;
He wist not when the hempen string I drew,
Now mine I quickly doff, of inkle blue;
Together fast I tie the garters twain,
And, while I knit the knot, repeat this strain-
Three times a true-love-knot I tie
Firm be the knot secure,
Firm may his love endure.
With my sharp heel I three times mark the ground,
And turn me thrice around, around, around.