The Folk lore of Plants - T. F. Thiselton Dyer
"The rose o'er crag or vale,
Sultana of the nightingale,
The maid for whom his melody,
His thousand songs are heard on high,
Blooms blushing to her lover's tale,
His queen, the garden queen, his rose,
Unbent by winds, unchilled by snows."
Thackeray, too, has given a pleasing rendering of this favourite
legend:--
"Under the boughs I sat and listened still,
I could not have my fill.
'How comes,' I said, 'such music to his bill?
Tell me for whom he sings so beautiful a trill.'
'Once I was dumb,' then did the bird disclose,
'But looked upon the rose,
And in the garden where the loved one grows,
I straightway did begin sweet music to compose.'"
Mrs. Browning, in her "Lay of the Early Rose," alludes to this legend,
and Moore in his "Lalla Rookh" asks:--
"Though rich the spot
With every flower this earth has got,
What is it to the nightingale,
If there his darling rose is not?"
But the rose is not the only plant for which the nightingale is said to
have a predilection, there being an old notion that its song is never
heard except where cowslips are to be found in profusion. Experience,
however, only too often proves the inaccuracy of this assertion. We may
also quote the following note from Yarrell's "British Birds" (4th ed.,
i. 316):--"Walcott, in his 'Synopsis of British Birds' (vol. ii. 228),
says that the nightingale has been observed to be met with only where
the _cowslip_ grows kindly, and the assertion receives a partial
approval from Montagu; but whether the statement be true or false, its
converse certainly cannot be maintained, for Mr. Watson gives the
cowslip (_Primula veris_) as found in all the 'provinces' into which he
divides Great Britain, as far north as Caithness and Shetland, where we
know that the nightingale does not occur." A correspondent of _Notes and
Queries_ (5th Ser. ix. 492) says that in East Sussex, on the borders of
Kent, "the cowslip is quite unknown, but nightingales are as common as
blackberries there."
A similar idea exists in connection with hops; and, according to a
tradition current in Yorkshire, the nightingale made its first
appearance in the neighbourhood of Doncaster when hops were planted. But
this, of course, is purely imaginary, and in Hargrove's "History of
Knaresborough" (1832) we read: "In the opposite wood, called Birkans
Wood (opposite to the Abbey House), during the summer evenings, the
nightingale:--
'Sings darkling, and, in shadiest covert hid,
Tunes her nocturnal lay.'"
Of the numerous stories connected with the origin of the mistletoe, one
is noticed by Lord Bacon, to the effect that a certain bird, known as
the "missel-bird," fed upon a particular kind of seed, which, through
its incapacity to digest, it evacuated whole, whereupon the seed,
falling on the boughs of trees, vegetated and produced the mistletoe.
The magic springwort, which reveals hidden treasures, has a mysterious
connection with the woodpecker, to which we have already referred. Among
further birds which are in some way or other connected with plants is
the eagle, which plucks the wild lettuce, with the juice of which it
smears its eyes to improve its vision; while the hawk was supposed, for
the same purpose, to pluck the hawk-bit.
Similarly, writes Mr. Folkard, [1] pigeons and doves made use of
vervain, which was termed "pigeon's-grass." Once more, the cuckoo,
according to an old proverbial rhyme, must eat three meals of cherries
before it ceases its song; and it was formerly said that orchids sprang
from the seed of the thrush and the blackbird. Further illustrations
might be added, whereas some of the many plants named after well-known
birds are noticed elsewhere.
An old Alsatian belief tells us that bats possessed the power of
rendering the eggs of storks unfruitful. Accordingly, when once a
stork's egg was touched by a bat it became sterile; and in order to
preserve it from the injurious influence, the stork placed in its nest
some branches of the maple, which frightened away every intruding
bat. [2] There is an amusing legend of the origin of the bramble:--The
cormorant was once a wool merchant. He entered into partnership with the
bramble and the bat, and they freighted a large ship with wool. She was
wrecked, and the firm became bankrupt. Since that disaster the bat
skulks about till midnight to avoid his creditors, the cormorant is for
ever diving into the deep to discover its foundered vessel, while the
bramble seizes hold of every passing sheep to make up his loss by
stealing the wool.
Returning to the rose, we may quote one or two legendary stories
relating to its origin. Thus Sir John Mandeville tells us how when a
holy maiden of Bethlehem, "blamed with wrong and slandered," was doomed
to death by fire, "she made her prayers to our Lord that He would help
her, as she was not guilty of that sin;" whereupon the fire was suddenly
quenched, and the burning brands became red "roseres," and the brands
that were not kindled became white "roseres" full of roses. "And these
were the first roseres and roses, both white and red, that ever any man
soughte." Henceforth, says Mr. King,[3] the rose became the flower of
martyrs. "It was a basket full of roses that the martyr Saint Dorothea
sent to the notary of Theophilus from the garden of Paradise; and roses,
says the romance, sprang up all over the field of Ronce-vaux, where
Roland and the douze pairs had stained the soil with their blood."
The colour of the rose has been explained by various legends, the Turks
attributing its red colour to the blood of Mohammed. Herrick, referring
to one of the old classic stories of its divine origin, writes:--
"Tis said, as Cupid danced among the gods, he down the
nectar flung,
Which, on the white rose being shed, made it for ever after red."
A pretty origin has been assigned to the moss-rose (_Rosa muscosa_):--
"The angel who takes care of flowers, and sprinkles upon them the dew in
the still night, slumbered on a spring day in the shade of a rosebush,
and when she awoke she said, 'Most beautiful of my children, I thank
thee for thy refreshing odour and cooling shade; could you now ask any
favour, how willingly would I grant it!' 'Adorn me then with a new
charm,' said the spirit of the rose-bush; and the angel adorned the
loveliest of flowers with the simple moss."
A further Roumanian legend gives another poetic account of the rose's
origin. "It is early morning, and a young princess comes down into her
garden to bathe in the silver waves of the sea. The transparent
whiteness of her complexion is seen through the slight veil which covers
it, and shines through the blue waves like the morning star in the azure
sky. She springs into the sea, and mingles with the silvery rays of the
sun, which sparkle on the dimples of the laughing waves. The sun stands
still to gaze upon her; he covers her with kisses, and forgets his duty.
Once, twice, thrice has the night advanced to take her sceptre and reign
over the world; twice had she found the sun upon her way. Since that day
the lord of the universe has changed the princess into a rose; and this
is why the rose always hangs her head and blushes when the sun gazes on
her." There are a variety of rose-legends of this kind in different
countries, the universal popularity of this favourite blossom having
from the earliest times made it justly in repute; and according to the
Hindoo mythologists, Pagoda Sin, one of the wives of Vishnu, was
discovered in a rose--a not inappropriate locality.
Like the rose, many plants have been extensively associated with sacred
legendary lore, a circumstance which frequently explains their origin. A
pretty legend, for instance, tells us how an angel was sent to console
Eve when mourning over the barren earth. Now, no flower grew in Eden,
and the driving snow kept falling to form a pall for earth's untimely
funeral after the fall of man. But as the angel spoke, he caught a flake
of falling snow, breathed on it, and bade it take a form, and bud and
blow. Ere it reached the ground it had turned into a beautiful flower,
which Eve prized more than all the other fair plants in Paradise; for
the angel said to her:--
"This is an earnest, Eve, to thee,
That sun and summer soon shall be."
The angel's mission ended, he departed, but where he had stood a ring of
snowdrops formed a lovely posy.
This legend reminds us of one told by the poet Shiraz, respecting the
origin of the forget-me-not:--"It was in the golden morning of the early
world, when an angel sat weeping outside the closed gates of Eden. He
had fallen from his high estate through loving a daughter of earth, nor
was he permitted to enter again until she whom he loved had planted the
flowers of the forget-me-not in every corner of the world. He returned
to earth and assisted her, and they went hand in hand over the world
planting the forget-me-not. When their task was ended, they entered
Paradise together; for the fair woman, without tasting the bitterness of
death, became immortal like the angel, whose love her beauty had won,
when she sat by the river twining the forget-me-not in her hair." This
is a more poetic legend than the familiar one given in Mill's "History
of Chivalry," which tells how the lover, when trying to pick some
blossoms of the myosotis for his lady-love, was drowned, his last words
as he threw the flowers on the bank being "Forget me not." Another
legend, already noticed, would associate it with the magic spring-wort,
which revealed treasure-caves hidden in the mountains. The traveller
enters such an opening, but after filling his pockets with gold, pays no
heed to the fairy's voice, "Forget not the best," _i.e.,_ the spring-wort,
and is severed in twain by the mountain clashing together.
In speaking of the various beliefs relative to plant life in a previous
chapter, we have enumerated some of the legends which would trace the
origin of many plants to the shedding of human blood, a belief which is
a distinct survival of a very primitive form of belief, and enters very
largely into the stories told in classical mythology. The dwarf elder is
said to grow where blood has been shed, and it is nicknamed in Wales
"Plant of the blood of man," with which may be compared its English name
of "death-wort." It is much associated in this country with the Danes,
and tradition says that wherever their blood was shed in battle, this
plant afterwards sprang up; hence its names of Dane-wort, Dane-weed, or
Dane's-blood. One of the bell-flower tribe, the clustered bell-flower,
has a similar legend attached to it; and according to Miss Pratt, "in
the village of Bartlow there are four remarkable hills, supposed to have
been thrown up by the Danes as monumental memorials of the battle fought
in 1006 between Canute and Edmund Ironside. Some years ago the clustered
bell-flower was largely scattered about these mounds, the presence of
which the cottagers attributed to its having sprung from the Dane's
blood," under which name the flower was known in the neighbourhood.
The rose-coloured lotus or melilot is, from the legend, said to have
been sprung from the blood of a lion slain by the Emperor Adrian; and,
in short, folk-lore is rich in stories of this kind. Some legends are of
a more romantic kind, as that which explains the origin of the
wallflower, known in Palestine as the "blood-drops of Christ." In bygone
days a castle stood near the river Tweed, in which a fair maiden was
kept prisoner, having plighted her troth and given her affection to a
young heir of a hostile clan. But blood having been shed between the
chiefs on either side, the deadly hatred thus engendered forbade all
thoughts of a union. The lover tried various stratagems to obtain his
fair one, and at last succeeded in gaining admission attired as a
wandering troubadour, and eventually arranged that she should effect her
escape, while he awaited her arrival with an armed force. But this plan,
as told by Herrick, was unsuccessful:--
"Up she got upon a wall,
Attempted down to slide withal;
But the silken twist untied,
She fell, and, bruised, she died.
Love, in pity to the deed,
And her loving luckless speed,
Twined her to this plant we call
Now the 'flower of the wall.'"
The tea-tree in China, from its marked effect on the human constitution,
has long been an agent of superstition, and been associated with the
following legend, quoted by Schleiden. It seems that a devout and pious
hermit having, much against his will, been overtaken by sleep in the
course of his watchings and prayers, so that his eyelids had closed,
tore them from his eyes and threw them on the ground in holy wrath. But
his act did not escape the notice of a certain god, who caused a
tea-shrub to spring out from them, the leaves of which exhibit, "the
form of an eyelid bordered with lashes, and possess the gift of
hindering sleep." Sir George Temple, in his "Excursions in the
Mediterranean," mentions a legend relative to the origin of the
geranium. It is said that the prophet Mohammed having one day washed his
shirt, threw it upon a mallow plant to dry; but when it was afterwards
taken away, its sacred contact with the mallow was found to have changed
the plant into a fine geranium, which now for the first time came into
existence.
Footnotes:
1. "Plant-Lore Legends and Lyrics."
2. Folkard's "Plant Lore Legends and Lyrics," p. 430.
3. "Sacred Trees and Flowers," _Quarterly Review_, cxiv. 239.
CHAPTER XXIII.
MYSTIC PLANTS.
The mystic character and history of certain plants meet us in every age
and country. The gradual evolution of these curious plants of belief
must, no doubt, partly be ascribed to their mythical origin, and in many
cases to their sacred associations; while, in some instances, it is not
surprising that, "any plant which produced a marked effect upon the
human constitution should become an object of superstition." [1] A
further reason why sundry plants acquired a mystic notoriety was their
peculiar manner of growth, which, through not being understood by early
botanists, caused them to be invested with mystery. Hence a variety of
combinations have produced those mystic properties of trees and flowers
which have inspired them with such superstitious veneration in our own
and other countries. According to Mr. Conway, the apple, of all fruits,
seems to have had the widest and most mystical history. Thus, "Aphrodite
bears it in her hand as well as Eve; the serpent guards it, the dragon
watches it. It is the healing fruit of the Arabian tribes. Azrael, the
Angel of Death, accomplishes his mission by holding it to the nostrils,
and in the prose Edda it is written, 'Iduna keeps in a box apples which
the gods, when they feel old age approaching, have only to taste to
become young again.'" Indeed, the legendary mythical lore connected with
the apple is most extensive, a circumstance which fully explains its
mystic character. Further, as Mr. Folkard points out,[2] in the popular
tales of all countries the apple is represented as the principal magical
fruit, in support of which he gives several interesting illustrations.
Thus, "In the German folk-tale of 'The Man of Iron,' a princess throws a
golden apple as a prize, which the hero catches three times, and carries
off and wins." And in a French tale, "A singing apple is one of the
marvels which Princess Belle-Etoile and her brothers and her cousin
bring from the end of the world." The apple figures in many an Italian
tale, and holds a prominent place in the Hungarian story of the Iron
Ladislas.[3] But many of these so-called mystic trees and plants have
been mentioned in the preceding pages in their association with
lightning, witchcraft, demonology, and other branches of folk-lore,
although numerous other curious instances are worthy of notice, some of
which are collected together in the present chapter. Thus the nettle and
milfoil, when carried about the person, were believed to drive away
fear, and were, on this account, frequently worn in time of danger. The
laurel preserved from misfortune, and in olden times we are told how the
superstitious man, to be free from every chance of ill-luck, was wont to
carry a bay leaf in his mouth from morning till night.
One of the remarkable virtues of the fruit of the balm was its
prolonging the lives of those who partook of it to four or five hundred
years, and Albertus Magnus, summing up the mystic qualities of the
heliotrope, gives this piece of advice:--"Gather it in August, wrap it
in a bay leaf with a wolf's tooth, and it will, if placed under the
pillow, show a man who has been robbed where are his goods, and who has
taken them. Also, if placed in a church, it will keep fixed in their
places all the women present who have broken their marriage vow." It was
formerly supposed that the cucumber had the power of killing by its
great coldness, and the larch was considered impenetrable by fire;
Evelyn describing it as "a goodly tree, which is of so strange a
composition that 'twill hardly burn."
In addition to guarding the homestead from ill, the hellebore was
regarded as a wonderful antidote against madness, and as such is spoken
of by Burton, who introduces it among the emblems of his frontispiece,
in his "Anatomie of Melancholy:"--
"Borage and hellebore fill two scenes,
Sovereign plants to purge the veins
Of melancholy, and cheer the heart
Of those black fumes which make it smart;
To clear the brain of misty fogs,
Which dull our senses and Soul clogs;
The best medicine that e'er God made
For this malady, if well assay'd."
But, as it has been observed, our forefathers, in strewing their floors
with this plant, were introducing a real evil into their houses, instead
of an imaginary one, the perfume having been considered highly
pernicious to health.
In the many curious tales related of the mystic henbane may be quoted
one noticed by Gerarde, who says: "The root boiled with vinegar, and the
same holden hot in the mouth, easeth the pain of the teeth. The seed is
used by mountebank tooth-drawers, which run about the country, to cause
worms to come forth of the teeth, by burning it in a chafing-dish of
coles, the party holding his mouth over the fume thereof; but some
crafty companions, to gain money, convey small lute-strings into the
water, persuading the patient that those small creepers came out of his
mouth or other parts which he intended to cure." Shakespeare, it may be
remembered, alludes to this superstition in "Much Ado About Nothing"
(Act iii. sc. 2), where Leonato reproaches Don Pedro for sighing for the
toothache, which he adds "is but a tumour or a worm." The notion is
still current in Germany, where the following incantation is employed:--
"Pear tree, I complain to thee
Three worms sting me."
The henbane, too, according to a German belief, is said to attract rain,
and in olden times was thought to produce sterility. Some critics have
suggested that it is the plant referred to in "Macbeth" by Banquo (Act
i. sc. 3):--
"Have we eaten of the insane root
That takes the reason prisoner?"
Although others think it is the hemlock. Anyhow, the henbane has long
been in repute as a plant possessed of mysterious attributes, and Douce
quotes the subjoined passage:--"Henbane, called insana, mad, for the use
thereof is perillous, for if it be eate or dronke, it breedeth madness,
or slowe lykeness of sleepe." In days gone by, when the mandrake was an
object of superstitious veneration by reason of its supernatural
character, the Germans made little idols of its root, which were
consulted as oracles. Indeed, so much credence was attached to these
images, that they were manufactured in very large quantities for
exportation to various other countries, and realised good prices.
Oftentimes substituted for the mandrake was the briony, which designing
people sold at a good profit. Gerarde informs us, "How the idle drones,
that have little or nothing to do but eat and drink, have bestowed some
of their time in carving the roots of briony, forming them to the shape
of men and women, which falsifying practice hath confirmed the error
amongst the simple and unlearned people, who have taken them upon their
report to be the true mandrakes." Oftentimes, too, the root of the
briony was trained to grow into certain eccentric shapes, which were
used as charms. Speaking of the mandrake, we may note that in France it
was regarded as a species of elf, and nicknamed _main de gloire_; in
connection with which Saint-Palaye describes a curious superstition:--
"When I asked a peasant one day why he was gathering mistletoe, he told
me that at the foot of the oaks on which the mistletoe grew he had a
mandrake; that this mandrake had lived in the earth from whence the
mistletoe sprang; that he was a kind of mole; that he who found him was
obliged to give him food--bread, meat, and some other nourishment; and
that he who had once given him food was obliged to give it every day,
and in the same quantity, without which the mandrake would assuredly
cause the forgetful one to die. Two of his countrymen, whom he named to
me, had, he said, lost their lives; but, as a recompense, this _main de
gloire_ returned on the morrow double what he had received the previous
day. If one paid cash for the _main de gloire's_ food one day, he would
find double the amount the following, and so with anything else. A
certain countryman, whom he mentioned as still living, and who had
become very rich, was believed to have owed his wealth to the fact that
he had found one of these _mains de gloire_." Many other equally curious
stories are told of the mandrake, a plant which, for its mystic
qualities, has perhaps been unsurpassed; and it is no wonder that it was
a dread object of superstitious fear, for Moore, speaking of its
appearance, says:--
"Such rank and deadly lustre dwells,
As in those hellish fires that light
The mandrake's charnel leaves at night."
But these mandrake fables are mostly of foreign extraction and of very
ancient date. Dr. Daubeny, in his "Roman Husbandry," has given a curious
drawing from the Vienna MS. of Dioscorides in the fifth century,
representing the Goddess of Discovery presenting to Dioscorides the root
of the mandrake (of thoroughly human shape), which she has just pulled
up, while the unfortunate dog which had been employed for that purpose
is depicted in the agonies of death.
Basil, writes Lord Bacon in his "Natural History," if exposed too much
to the sun, changes into wild thyme; and a Bavarian piece of folk-lore
tells us that the person who, during an eclipse of the sun, throws an
offering of palm with crumbs on the fire, will never be harmed by the
sun. In Hesse, it is affirmed that with knots tied in willow one may
slay a distant enemy; and according to a belief current in Iceland, the
_Caltha palustris_, if taken with certain ceremonies and carried about,
will prevent the bearer from having an angry word spoken to him. The
virtues of the dittany were famous as far back as Plutarch's time, and
Gerarde speaks of its marvellous efficacy in drawing forth splinters of
wood, &c., and in the healing of wounds, especially those "made with
envenomed weapons, arrows shot out of guns, and such like."
Then there is the old tradition to the effect that if boughs of oak be
put into the earth, they will bring forth wild vines; and among the
supernatural qualities of the holly recorded by Pliny, we are told that
its flowers cause water to freeze, that it repels lightning, and that if
a staff of its wood be thrown at any animal, even if it fall short of
touching it, the animal will be so subdued by its influence as to return
and lie down by it. Speaking, too, of the virtues of the peony, he thus
writes:--"It hath been long received, and confirmed by divers trials,
that the root of the male peony dried, tied to the necke, doth helpe the
falling sickness, and likewise the incubus, which we call the mare. The
cause of both these diseases, and especially of the epilepsie from the
stomach, is the grossness of the vapours, which rise and enter into the
cells of the brain, and therefore the working is by extreme and subtle
alternation which that simple hath." Worn as an amulet, the peony was a
popular preservative against enchantment.
Footnotes:
1. _Fraser's Magazine_ 1870, p. 709.
2. "Plant Lore Legends and Lyrics," p. 224.
3. See Miss Busk's "Folk-lore of Rome."