fought with monsters and dragons; and sometimes by St. Christopher, whose figure was gigantic, like Thor's. Our royal fern (Osmunda regalis), the Herb Christopher' of Gerard, may be regarded as having been anciently connected with the Northern god. No one who has seen this stateliest of ferns in its own most favoured haunts-some sheltered Cornish valley, the banks of a rushing Dartmoor stream, or the wooded margin of Grasmere or Killarney like Naiad by the side Of Grecian brook, or Lady of the Mere will doubt that its size and remarkable appearance, especially in But alas! many other The foxglove is a worthy pensioner of Oberon. It is less easy to account for his choice of the rosemary, the 'ellegrin,' 'elves-green' of Denmark, and the 'alecrim' of Spain, where the name seems to be a corruption of the true Northern word, introduced by the Gothic conquerors. But the virtues of rosemary were formerly regarded as very great. It was used at weddings, gilt, like oak-leaves on King Charles's day; and was hung about the porch and door-posts, to bring good luck into the household. It kept off thieves; and, best of all, it could make old folks young again. There was once, says 'Galiene'-in whom we are to recognise the wise physician Galen-a gouty and crooked old queen, who looked back to her dancing days with longing regret. So 'Of rosmaryn she took six pownde, and then mixed it with water, in which she bathed three times a day, taking care to anoint her head with gode balm' afterwards. Her old flesh fell away; and she became so young, tender, and fresh, that she began to look out for a husband.* We have thought it right to give our readers the full benefit of the prescription; but it may be feared that the elves have withdrawn their gift in these latter days. The root of the common bracken, cut across, not only displays the figure of an oak-tree, but foretells by its markings much that is of special interest to the investigator, always supposing that he has the power to read them aright. But it is on *The story is from an old English poem on the virtues of rosemary, printed by Wright and Halliwell, Reliquiæ Antiquæ,' i. 195. Vol. 114.-No. 227. the eve of St. John, when the hosts of elf-land are abroad in greatest power, that the fern becomes most mysterious. It then puts forth, at dusk, a small blue flower, which soon disappears; and the wonderful seed, quickly ripening, falls from the plant at midnight. He who hath the receipt of fern-seed may walk invisible. It must be carefully caught in a white napkin, as it falls; and the elves will no doubt whisk about the ears' of the catcher, as Aubrey declares they did in his days about the ears of one who undertook the adventure. These passages are well known. There is a curious reference to the old belief in the works of Dean Jackson, one of the best and most learned divines of the seventeenth century, which has been less frequently quoted: 'It was my hap,' he writes, since I undertook the ministry, to question an ignorant soul (whom, by undoubted report, I had known to have been seduced by a teacher of unhallowed arts to make a dangerous experiment) what he saw or heard when he watcht the falling of the fernseed at an unseasonable and suspicious hour. "Why,' quoth he, fearing (as his brief reply occasioned me to conjecture) lest I should press him to tell before company what he had voluntarily confessed unto a friend in secret some fourteen years before), "do you think that the devil hath aught to do with that good seed? No; it is in the keeping of the King of Fayries, and he, I know, will do me no harm, although I should watch it again." Yet had he utterly forgotten this king's name, upon whose kindness he so presumed, until I remembered it unto him out of my reading in Huon of Bordeaux. And having made this answer, he began to pose me thus :-S', you are a scholar, and I am none. Tell me what said the angel to Our Lady? or what conference had Our Lady with her cousin Elizabeth concerning the birth of St. John the Baptist? 'As if his intention had been to make bystanders believe that he knew somewhat more on this point than was written in such books as I use to read. Howbeit, the meaning of his riddle I quickly conceived, and he confessed to be this: that the Angel did foretell John Baptist should be born at that very instant in which the fernseed, at other times invisible, did fall; intimating, further (as far as I could then perceive), that this saint of God had some extraordinary virtue from the time or circumstance of his birth.' † The name of the King of Fayries,' who presented Sir Huon of Bordeaux with the enchanted horn, whose sound would bring fairy help to the knight whenever he might need it, was Oberon, which Mr. Keightley has shown to be identical with Elberich." King Henry IV., Part i., act 2, scene 1. Jackson's Works, vol. i., p. 916 (London, 1673). The passage is given in 'Choice Notes from Notes and Queries-Folk Lore,' p. 64. It was apparently in the picturesque romance of Huon that Shakspeare found the name which now shines upon all the world in so dazzling a light of poetry. Less famous, perhaps, than the fern, but almost as mysterious in its direct connexion with the elfin races, is the mountain ash, or rowan; and into what lovely places-what wild, heathy coppices-what solitary hollows of the moorland-its very name takes us! As we write there rises before us a half-wooded glen on the skirts of Dartmoor, where the hill-stream descends from ledge to ledge in a succession of falls, filling all the place with its wild music. At the foot of one of the larger waterfalls rises a mountain ash of great age and size; its clusters of scarlet berries sparkling in the gleams of sunlight that sweep across, and forming an admirable foreground to the grey, lichen-tinted rocks, and the patches of oaken coppice and underwood, with which the steep sides of the glen are lined. It is completely Wordsworth's picture : the pool Glows at her feet, and all the gloomy rocks No more perfect trysting-place for the pixies could possibly be imagined; and they were accordingly often seen in old times, say the neighbours, under the branches of their favourite tree-a certain proof that the pixies are, after all, of no very evil nature. For the rowan is the especial property of the 'light' elves; and crosses made from its wood, or sprays of its leaves hung from the rafters, will prevent any evil creature from entering the house or the cattle-sheds. In the old North the tree was called 'Thor's helper,' because it bent itself to the grasp of that god when on his way to the land of the frost giants he had to cross a river which a sorceress had made to overflow. Hence the tree was greatly reverenced by the Norsemen. At Modrufell, on the north coast of Iceland, is, or was, a large rowan, always on Christmas eve stuck full of torches, which no wind could possibly extinguish; and one of the Orkneys possessed a still more mysterious tree, with which the fate of the islands was bound up, since, if a leaf was carried away, they would pass to some foreign lord. Veneration for the mountain ash, however, was by no means confined to the Scandinavian north. Many a Welsh churchyard had its ancient rowan, taking the place of the yew-tree in England; and small crosses made from its wood were solemnly distributed on certain festivals, as a protection from evil spirits. The great beauty of the tree-covered in spring with its clusters of * Excursion: 'Churchyard among the Mountains.' R 2 white white flowers, and in autumn bright with scarlet berries, both of which render it a conspicuous object in the woods-may account to some extent for the marvellous properties assigned to it; but it seems also to partake of the sanctity of the ash Yggdrasil; and it may perhaps be the Western representative of a still more ancient world tree. At Boitpoor, says Bishop Heber, 'we passed a fine tree, with leaves at a little distance so much resembling those of the mountain ash, that I was for a moment deceived, and asked if it did not bring fruit? They said, no; but that it was a very noble tree, being called the Imperial tree for its excellent properties; that it slept all night, and wakened and was alive all day, withdrawing its leaves if any one attempted to touch them. Above all, however, it was useful as a preservative against magic. A sprig worn in the turban, or suspended over the bed, was a perfect security against all spells, or the evil eye; insomuch that the most formidable wizard would not, if he could help it, approach its shade. One, indeed, they said, who was very renowned for his power (like Lorinite, in the Kehama) of killing plants and drying up their sap with a look, had come to this very tree, and gazed on it intently; but, said the old man, who told me this with an air of triumph, " look as he might, he could do the tree no harm.' The Bishop remarks on the singularity of trees so similar having the same superstitions attached to them. 'Which nation,' he asks, is in this case the imitator? or from what common centre are all these common notions derived?' Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton has suggested, in his 'Strange Story,' that the wood of certain trees to which magical properties are ascribed may in truth possess virtues little understood, and deserving of careful investigation. The rowan would take its place among these; as would the common hazel, from which the miner's divining rod is always cut. The use of this 'baguette divinatoire,' as it is called by Vallemont, who towards the end of the seventeenth century wrote an elaborate treatise on it, was by no means confined to the search for veins of metal, or for water. It assisted in the pursuit of criminals; and Vallemont gives the 'histoire surprenant d'un paysan, qui, guidé par la baguette divinatoire, a poursuivi un meurtrier durant plus de 45 lieues sur terre, et plus de 30 lieues en mer.' The hazel is so far connected with the elves that, according to the Cornish miners, the rod is guided to the mine by the pixies; for all the treasures of the earth are in their keeping, and many a rich lode has been discovered by the songs of the small people heard on the moors at nightfall. In some parts of Germany the call of the cuckoo is thought to dis *Indian Journal.' close close mines; and certain plants-the cuckoo's 'bread,' the 'cuckoo flower' (the latter is the large purple orchis very common in England), are believed to grow in most luxuriance where the depths of the earth are rich in metal. The cuckoo has always been one of the chief birds of augury, and many flowers which appear nearly at the same time with it have received its name, and a certain share of its prophetical character. One of these was perhaps the plantain, or waybread, said to have been once a maiden, who, watching by the wayside for her lover, was changed into the plant which still loves to fix itself beside the beaten path. Once in seven years it becomes a bird, either the cuckoo or the cuckoo's servant, the dinnick,' as it is called in Devonshire, the German 'wiedhopf,' which is said to follow its master everywhere. Although it is not impossible that almost every plant which the old herbalists record as bearing the name of some saint, or as distinguished by some specially religious epithet, might be traced back, if we had the means, to the days of heathenism, there are many of which we have only the later canonization,' and which we must accept as the more direct representatives of the monastic garden and herbary. How amply these were stocked, and with how many of the plants most famous in ancient leechcraft, is evident from a glance at the very curious plans of the great monastery of St. Gall, drawn up, it is said, by Eginhardt, toward the end of the eighth century. In these, every bed in the garden is marked out, and the name of the herb with which it should be filled carefully inserted. It was, no doubt, from their great virtues as 'all heals,' or 'singular wound herbs,' that such names as 'angelica' and 'archangel' were bestowed on the plants that still bear them. The 'herba benedicta,' herb bennet,' the 'blessed' herb (Geum urbanum), was a remedy for nearly all diseases under the sun. Its graceful trefoiled leaf, and the five golden petals of its blossoms, symbolizing the Holy Trinity and the five wounds of Our Lord, early attracted the attention of the artist-monk; and toward the end of the thirteenth century the plant frequently occurs as an architectural decoration, sometimes in patterns on the walls, and sometimes in the leafage encircling pier capitals. The vervain (verbena), called the holy herb,' should perhaps have been placed in the former division, since it was, according to Pliny, one of the sacred plants of the Druids, 6 Grimm, D. Myth., p. 787. The latter part of the belief is a piece of Devonshire folk-lore. †These plans were first published by Mabillon, in the Annales Ord. Benedict.,' and have been made the subject of a very interesting paper, by Professor Willis, in the Archæological Journal.' and |