Part 30 (1/2)
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 woodp.e.c.k.e.r, 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-gra.s.s.” 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 ill.u.s.trations 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 partners.h.i.+p with the bramble and the bat, and they freighted a large s.h.i.+p 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 pa.s.sing 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 cla.s.sic stories of its divine origin, writes:--
”Tis said, as Cupid danced among the G.o.ds, he down the nectar flung, Which, on the white rose being shed, made it for ever after red.”
A pretty origin has been a.s.signed 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 refres.h.i.+ng 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 s.h.i.+nes 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, PaG.o.da Sin, one of the wives of Vishnu, was discovered in a rose--a not inappropriate locality.
Like the rose, many plants have been extensively a.s.sociated with sacred legendary lore, a circ.u.mstance 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 s.h.i.+raz, 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 a.s.sisted 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 a.s.sociate 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 clas.h.i.+ng 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 cla.s.sical 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 a.s.sociated 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 cl.u.s.tered 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 cl.u.s.tered 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 const.i.tution, has long been an agent of superst.i.tion, and been a.s.sociated 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 G.o.d, 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 s.h.i.+rt, 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.