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Updated: May 12, 2025
One remembers reading somewhere, I think in Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress," of a certain "grievous crab-tree cudgel," and the impression left by this description is that the weapon, gnarled and knotty, was capable of inflicting grievous bodily harm.
It is, nevertheless, curious that, at this very time, an attempt appears to have been made to connect the novelist with the controversy which presently arose out of Cibber's well-known letter to Pope. In August 1742, the month following its publication, among the pamphlets to which it gave rise, was announced The Cudgel; or, a Crab-tree Lecture, To the Author of the Dunciad.
He had now no longer any doubt that the lesser branch outside had been broken, and the large inside branch bruised, by the passage of a Bushman's throw-club. These, their only missile weapons, are usually made of crab-tree, and consist of a very thin short handle, with a large, heavy, and smooth knob.
He slid cautiously down the slanting roof until he came to the corner where he saw the dark group of horses. There were three tied to the peach-trees. He made his way back to Barney and whispered: "There are but three horses. If you are up to an adventure I think we can make this turn to our profit." "I'm up to anything, as the cat said when Biddy Hiks's plug ran her up the crab-tree."
Dropping every other topic, they began to argue over the crops; and after that they could not pass a harmless calf tethered to a crab-tree that they did not quarrel over the breed, nor start a drove of grunting swine out of the mast but they must lay wagers on the weight.
Trunnion, being disturbed and distracted with the uproar, turned out in his shirt like a maniac, and, arming himself with a cudgel of crab-tree, made an irruption into his wife's apartment, where, perceiving a couple of carpenters at work in joining a bedstead, he, with many dreadful oaths and opprobrious invectives, ordered them to desist, swearing he would suffer no bulkheads nor hurricane-houses to stand where he was master: but finding his remonstrances disregarded by these mechanics, who believed him to be some madman belonging to the family, who had broken from his confinement, he assaulted them both with great fury and indignation, and was handled so roughly, in the encounter, that in a very short time he measured his length on the floor, in consequence of a blow that he received from a hammer by which the sight of his remaining eye was grievously endangered.
Over the unwearied plaint of French-horn, violin, and bassoon, rose a silvery confusion of voices and laughter and the sound of a hundred footfalls in unison, while, from the open windows there issued a warm breath, heavily laden with the smell of scented fans, of rich fabrics, of dying roses, to mingle with the spicy perfume of a wild crab-tree in fullest blossom, which stood near enough to peer into the ball-room, and, like a brocaded belle herself, challenge the richest to show raiment as fine, the loveliest to look as fair and joyful in the dawn..
But to draw sense out of that boy was as hard as picking cherries off a crab-tree. One silly tale he had that he kept on drifting back to, and to hear him you would have thought that it was the only thing that happened to him in his life. "We was at anchor," he would say, "off an island called the Basket of Flowers, and the sailors had caught a lot of parrots and we were teaching them to swear.
"With many a stiff thwack, many a bang, Hard crab-tree and old iron rang; While none who saw them could divine To which side conquest would incline."
The bailiff turned the collar over thoughtfully with his foot, and felt his scanty white beard with his hard hand; and then he went back to the cart-house. Up in the cart-house, on the ledge of the wall beneath the thatch, there were three or four sticks, each about four feet long and as thick as your thumb, with the bark on some were ground ash, some crab-tree, and one was hazel.
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