FOREST AND FIELD MYTHS. 



563 



had souls of their own ; that either a demon lived 

 within the stem, or that human souls, after death, 

 might take up their residence within it. The life 

 of a tree, also, might be linked with that of a 

 man, and the man's health and fortunes might be 

 affected by an action done to the tree. Thus the 

 tremulousness of a shrew-ash might be connected 

 with a man's ague ; and the disease might be 

 cured by immuring a living shrew-mouse in the 

 tree, which was then supposed to take back its 

 communicated malady; and thus, according to a 

 widely-spread German belief, if an invalid is 

 passed through a split tree, which is then bound 

 up, the man and the tree enter into sympathetic 

 relations with each other. If the tree flourishes, 

 so will the man ; if it withers, he will die. But 

 if he dies while the tree lives on, his soul will in- 

 habit it. If the tree, says Rugen tradition, is 

 afterward cut down, and used for ship-building, 

 the dead man's ghost becomes the haunting pa- 

 tron of the ship. Under these circumstances it is 

 not wonderful that trees should sometimes bleed 

 when wounded. Thus, on one occasion, when a 

 musician cut a piece of wood from a tree, into 

 which a girl had been metamorphosed by her 

 angry mother, blood flowed from the wound. 

 And when he had shaped it into a fiddle-bow, and 

 played with it upon his fiddle before her mother, 

 such a sad wail made itself heard that the moth- 

 er repented of her hasty deed. As trees are of- 

 ten emblems of, and are connected with, a human 

 being's life and fortunes, they were often intro- 

 duced into birth and marriage feasts. In Sweden 

 many families took their names from their sa- 

 cred and thus associated trees. The three fami- 

 lies of Linnaeus (or Linne), Lindelius, and Tili- 

 ander, were all called after the same tree, an an- 

 cient linden or lime which grew at Jonsboda 

 Lindergard. When the Lindelius family died 

 out, one of the old lime's chief boughs withered ; 

 after the death of the daughter of the great 

 Linnaeus, the second main bough bore leaves no 

 more ; and, when the last of the Tiliander family 

 expired, the tree's active life came to an end, 

 though the dead trunk still exists, and is highly 

 honored. 1 



Sometimes travelers, when starting on a jour- 

 ney, linked their existence with that of a tree, 

 just as Satu, in the oldest of tales, the Egyptian 

 story of the Two Brothers, left his heart behind 

 him in an acacia. For trees were often sup- 

 posed to exercise a beneficial influence on human 



1 Dr. Mannhardt quotes, as his authorities for this 

 statement, Hylten-Cavallius, "Varend," i., 144 ; "Pas- 

 sarge, "Schweden," p. 217. i 



life. As Vard-trad, Guardian-trees, they were 

 the homes of a spirit or genius, who led and 

 guarded the men over whom they kept watch. In 

 the Sailors' Quarter of Copenhagen, according to 

 H. Steffens, each house has its protecting elder- 

 tree, which is religiously guarded and watched ; 

 and similar trees have for centuries been con- 

 nected with Lettish homes. In one Livonian par- 

 ish, a certain Pastor Carlbom is said to have hewn 

 down eighty such guardian-trees in a single fort- 

 night of the year 1836. It was a tree of this kind 

 which a poor Tyrolese peasant (a story tells) rev- 

 erenced so much that he refused to sell it. At 

 length there came a storm which blew it down ; 

 and amid its roots the reverent proprietor found 

 a rich treasure. Similar to the Watch-tree was 

 also the Botra, or Abode-tree, a holy tree honored 

 by sacrifices, and tenanted by elves. Sometimes 

 these are tiny beings, whose linen may be seen, in 

 fine weather, hanging out on the branches to dry. 

 Sometimes they are of the ordinary human dimen- 

 sions. One of the latter kind, says a Czech story, 

 was a nymph who appeared by day among men, 

 but always went back to her willow by night. 

 She married a mortal, bare him children, and lived 

 happily with him, till at length he cut down her 

 willow-tree; that moment his wife died. Out of 

 the willow was made a cradle which had the power 

 of instantly lulling to sleep the babe she had left 

 behind her; and, when the babe became a child, 

 it was able to hold converse with its dead mother 

 by means of a pipe, cut from the twigs growing 

 on the stump which once had been that mother's 

 home. 



From the idea that trees had their peculiar 

 spirits seems to have arisen, Dr. Mannhardt thinks, 

 a belief in wood-spirits in general. Each copse, 

 or wood, or forest, was supposed to have its own 

 denizens, sometimes green of hue and mossy of 

 hide, at other times capable of passing muster as 

 mortal men and women. These female spirits 

 were usually supposed to lead joyous lives, but 

 some of them were liable to be chased and slain 

 by the terrible Wild Huntsman, who, on stormy 

 nights, might be heard tearing at full gallop through 

 the forest. A further generalization may have led 

 to the belief in a genius of tree-life, and of all 

 vegetable life ; a genius who was closely connect- 

 ed with growth and fertility, and to whom, there- 

 fore, reverence was to be paid, especially at the 

 times when foliage, and flowers, and fruits, are 

 most impressive to the mind of man. Wijh those 

 seasons are connected many surviving rites of 

 time-bonored descent. In many of these the gen- 

 ius of vegetation is symbolized under the form 



