40 WILD FLOWERS OF 



it distastefully. SHAKSPEARE has branded it as 

 "baleful,' and DRTDEN thus associates it with 

 melancholy abstraction. 



" I lean my head upon the mossy bark, 

 And look just of a piece as I grew from it ; 

 My uncomb'd locks, matted like Mistletoe, 

 Hang o'er my hoary face." 



The decorative effect of our domestic hearths* gar- 

 landed with holly, ivy, and mistletoe, during the festival 

 of Christmas, cannot fail to be exciting, derived as the 

 custom is from time-honoured antiquity, and recalling 

 cherished, though perhaps forgotten, feelings of holi- 

 days and happiness. The original idea appears to 

 have been to decorate houses and temples at the winter 

 season with every kind of evergreen* and mistletoe 

 among the rest ; that the sylvan spirits, supposed to 

 be devoted to the woods, should be tempted to reside 

 for a period in the abodes of men, and so protect them 

 from evil. "Why mistletoe became so particularly 

 regarded, appears to have arisen from a superstition 

 extending back as far as druidical times, when the 

 young bride wore a branch of mistletoe suspended 

 from her neck, which was supposed (as it was consi- 

 dered a remedy against barrenness,!) to ensure an 

 offspring, numerous as the spotless berries produced 

 by the plant itself. So that formerly it seems to have 

 been the exact converse of the dreaded willow ; for 



* It must be remembered that while our houses may be garlanded with 

 anythi?ig green, the Mistletoe is properly excluded from sacred adornment. 

 Purity of thought requires this in a structure dedicated to divine worship. 

 The holly, bay, laurustinus, and ivy, have no associations incompatible 

 with prayerful thoughts ; but the Mistletoe has other remembrances, and 

 has always been considered a profane plant, from having been dedicated 

 to the Scandinavian Venus, and so wrapt up in mythological fable, 



+ Matth. Comm. in Dioscorides. 



