Strawberies look to be covered with strawe.
Laid ouerly trim upon crotchis and bows,
And after uncovered as weather allows."

TUSSER, _December's Husbandry_.

But the name is much more ancient than either of these customs.
Strawberry in different forms, as Strea-berige, Streaberie-wisan,
Streaw-berige, Streaw-berian wisan, Streberilef, Strabery,
Strebere-wise, is its name in the old English Vocabularies, while it
appears first in its present form in a Pictorial Vocabulary of the
fifteenth century, "Hoc ffragrum, A{ce} a Strawbery." What the word
really means is pleasantly told by a writer in Seeman's "Journal of
Botany," 1869: "How well this name indicates the now prevailing practice
of English gardeners laying straw under the berry in order to bring it
to perfection, and prevent it from touching the earth, which without
that precaution it naturally does, and to which it owes its German
_Erdbeere_, making us almost forget that in this instance 'straw' has
nothing to do with the practice alluded to, but is an obsolete
past-participle of 'to strew,' in allusion to the habit of the plant."
This obsolete word is preserved in our English Bibles, "gathering where
thou hast not strawed," "he strawed it upon the water," "straw me with
apples;" and in Shakespeare--

The bottom poison, and the top o'erstrawed
With sweets.--_Venus and Adonis._

From another point of view there is almost as great a mistake in the
second half of the name, for in strict botanical language the fruit of
the Strawberry is not a berry; it is not even "exactly a fruit, but is
merely a fleshy receptacle bearing fruit, the true fruit being the ripe
carpels, which are scattered over its surface in the form of minute
grains looking like seeds, for which they are usually mistaken, the
seed lying inside of the shell of the carpel." It is exactly the
contrary to the Raspberry, a fruit not named by Shakespeare, though
common in his time under the name of Rasps. "When you gather the
Raspberry you throw away the receptacle under the name of core, never
suspecting that it is the very part you had just before been feasting
upon in the Strawberry. In the one case, the receptacle robs the carpels
of all their juice in order to become gorged and bloated at their
expense; in the other case, the carpels act in the same selfish manner
upon the receptacles."--LINDLEY, _Ladies' Botany_.

Shakespeare's mention of