An emblem of being forsaken. “All round my hat I wear a green willow.” So Shakespeare: “I offered him my company to a willow-tree … . to make him a garland, as being forsaken.” (Much Ado About Nothing, ii. 1.) The very term weeping willow will suffice to account for its emblematical character.
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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.