Legend has it that, once, the mulberry's blood red fruit was white. A tale of two lovers explains how it turned red.
The affinity that I have for mulberry trees, I admit, stems in part from the fact that my family’s livelihood in Turkey, prior to World War I, was dependent upon them. Growing up in the U.S. - after the Armenian Genocide had forced them out of the country and had decimated their resources – I was filled with stories of Bitias and of the family estate where mulberry trees provided food for the silkworms that we once bred and exported to silk producing regions, especially Provence.
Later, as a student at Indiana University, I remember a campus filled with mulberry trees, whose fruit I would “harvest” each year to bake into cobblers and distill into a cordial that was probably more appreciated by my friends than the dessert! Looking back, it wasn’t a half-bad attempt at cordial creation…I should try it again this year and tell you all how it comes out…
Anyway, back to the mulberry tree, another native of the Middle East – but one that has been exported to temperate climates all over the world as far back as anyone can remember.
Legend has it that, once, the mulberry was a pure white fruit, growing in what is now the country of Iraq. There, in the City of Babylon, lived Pyramus and Thisbe. The two lived in adjoining houses in the city and had played together from the time they were little. As they grew, the handsome Pyramus and the gentle Thisbe discovered that their young friendship had matured into a deep love. Unfortunately, their parents’ friendship had disintegrated at about the same rate and – by the time any discussion of a marriage could occur – the parents’ hatred of each other had grown so deep that the two were forbidden to meet.
Being in love, they disobeyed that command and found a small chink in the wall connecting their two homes, where they would talk to each other each night after their parents had retired to bed. In time, they hatched a plan to elope and agreed to meet outside the city walls, by a gnarled mulberry tree the next evening.
Thisbe, arriving first, encountered a lion with a fresh kill still bloodying its mouth. Terrified, she ran away, dropping her veil in the excitement.
Pyamus arrived soon after and found the lion with the now-bloody veil in its mouth, Assuming the worst, in grief he pulled out his knife and killed himself (Does this sound like Romeo and Juliet yet?…). Later, Thisbe returned to the scene and found her love dying of his wounds. She, of course, then took his knife and plunged it into her own heart, dying in his arms.
The mulberry fruit, it is said, was spattered with the lovers’ co-mingling blood and has been a deep blood red ever since.
Mulberry trees, while best known for their leaves, that provide food for the silkworms, does bear a very eatable berry in the late summer, here in the Northeastern United States. The berries taste somewhat like raspberries or blackberries, but have no seeds to speak of to sick in one’s teeth. Usually, I just enjoy them fresh off the tree, but they can be used just about any way that you can use blackberries. You can bake them into those cobblers, boil them into preserves – and distill them into cordials.
