FERNS, AND THEIR ALLIES. 33 



at the precise moment at which John the Baptist was 

 born. In Dr. Jackson's works (1673) we read that he 

 once questioned one of his parishioners as to what he 

 saw or heard when he watched the falling of the fern 

 seed, whereupon the man informed him that this 

 good seed is in the keeping of Oberon, King of the 

 Fairies, who would never harm any one watching it. 

 He then said to the worthy doctor, " Sir, 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 Elisabeth, concerning the birth of 

 St. John the Baptist ? " Poinding Dr. Jackson unable 

 to answer him, he told him that the angel did 

 foretell John Baptist should be born at that very 

 instant in which the fern seed — at other times invisible 

 — did fall ; intimating further that this saint of God 

 had some extraordinary virtue from the time or 

 circumstance of his birth. 



Enough has been said to show the kind of 

 romance which was current amongst illiterate and 

 superstitious people with regard to ferns, and espe- 

 cially as to the dispersion of the spores, or seed, 

 some two hundred years ago, the relics of which 

 superstition even extended to much later times. 

 The freedom with which ferns are planted in the 

 gardens, and cherished in the domiciles, of "all sorts 

 and conditions of men," lead to the conclusion that 

 no suspicions lurk in the minds of the most unedu- 

 cated that they are unlucky, albeit it is stated that 

 in olden times, when witches mounted the clouds 

 and rode the winds on broomsticks, it was the Moon^ 

 fern which made the saddle of their fleet steeds. 



D 



