Superstitions and Facts connected with Trees. 647 



The quince was considered by the ancients to be the emblem of 

 love, happiness, and fruitfulness ; it was dedicated to Venns, and the 

 temples of that goddess at Cyprus and Paphos were decorated with 

 it. The nuptial chambers ©f the Greeks and Eomans were decorated 

 with the fruit ; and the bride and bridegroom also ate of it as soon as 

 the marriage ceremony was performed. It also has been supposed to 

 be the golden fniit of the Hesperides ; and a statue of Hercules dis- 

 covered at Rome, with a quince in one of the hands, has been 

 referred to as a proof. The Farnese Hercules has, however, apples 

 in hand. It has also been alleged that the golden fruit thrown by 

 Hippouenes to Atalanta, and the fruit of the forbidden tree, which 

 the Jewish traditions expressly describe as golden, were quinces. 



The walnut tree was dedicated to Diana, and the festivals of that 

 goddess were held beneath its shade, and the Greeks and Romans 

 strewed walnuts at their weddings. Collinson, in his " History of 

 Somersetshire," speaking of the Glastonbury thorn, mentions that there 

 also grew in the abbey churchyard, on the north side of St. Josepli's 

 Chapel, a miraculous walnut tree, which never budded forth before 

 the feast of St. Barnabas, and on that very day shot forth its leaves 

 and flourished like other trees of the same species. He adds that this 

 tree was much sought after by the credulous ; and that Queen Anne, 

 and many of the nobility of the realm, even when the times of monkish 

 superstition had ceased, gave large sums of money for small cuttings 

 from the original. 



The Scythians used the willow for divining rods, and the Druids 

 are said to have made huge figures of basketwork of it, which on 

 great occasions were tilled with criminals and set fire to ; but some 

 contend that these baskets were formed of the twigs of the oak. The 

 legendary origin of the weeping willow, according to the Arabian 

 story tellers, is as follows : — " They say that after David had married 

 Bath-sheba he was one day playing on his harp, when he found two 

 strangers opposite to him, though he had given strict orders that no 

 one should invade his privacy. These strangers were angels, who 

 made him convict himself of his crime, nearly in the same manner 

 as it is related in Holy Writ. Forthwith he threw himself upon the 

 floor and shed tears of bitter repentance. The tears from his eyes 

 formed two streams, which ran from the closet into the ante-room, and 

 thence into the garden. Where they sank into the ground there 

 sprang up two trees, the weeping willow and the frankincense tree; the 

 first weeps and mourns, and the second is incessantly shedding big 

 tears in memory of the sincere repentance of David." The branches 

 of one of the weeping willows on the banks of the Euphrates are 

 said to have caught the .crown from the head of Alexander the Great, 

 when he passed under the tree in a boat on that river, a circumstance 

 which made the Babylonish diviners predict his early death. W. R. 



