PLANTS IN WITCHCRAFT. 829 



hernia, for instance, the young men collect for some weeks before- 

 hand as many worn-out brooms as they can lay their hands on. 

 These, after dipping in tar, they light — running with them from 

 one bonfire to another — and when burned out they are placed in 

 the fields as charms against blight.* The large ragwort — known 

 in Ireland as the " fairies' horse " — has long been sought for by 

 witches when taking their midnight journeys. Burns, in his 

 " Address to the Deil," makes his witches " skim the muirs and 

 dizzy crags'' on "rag-bred nags" with "wicked speed." The 

 same legendary belief prevails in Cornwall, in connection with 

 the Castle Peak, a high rock to the south of the Logan stone. 

 Here, writes Mr. Hunt,t "many a man and woman too, now 

 quietly sleeping in the churchyard of St. Levan, would, had they 

 the power, attest to have seen the witches flying into the Castle 

 Peak on moonlight nights, mounted on the stems of the ragwort." 

 Among other plants used for a similar purpose were the bul- 

 rush and reed, in connection with which may be quoted the Irish 

 tale of the rushes and cornstalks that " turn into horses the mo- 

 ment you bestride them." X In Germany * witches were said to 

 use hay for transporting themselves through the air. 



When engaged in their various occupations they often consid- 

 ered it expedient to escape detection by assuming invisibility, and 

 for this object sought the assistance of certain plants, such as the 

 fern-seed. In Sweden, hazel-nuts were supposed to have the 

 power of making invisible, and it may be remembered how, in 

 one of Andersen's stories, the elfin princess has the faculty of 

 vanishing at will by putting a wand in her mouth. || But these 

 were not the only plants supposed to confer invisibility, for Ger- 

 man folk-lore tells us how the far-famed luck-flower was endowed 

 with the same wonderful property ; and by the ancients the helio- 

 trope was credited with a similar virtue, but which Boccaccio, in 

 his humorous tale of Calandrino in the " Decameron," applies to 

 the so-called stone : " Heliotrope is a stone of such extraordinary 

 virtue that the bearer of it is effectually concealed from the sight 

 of all present." Dante, in his " Inferno," xxiv, 92, further alludes 

 to it: 



" Amid this dread exuberance of woe 

 Ean naked spirits winged with horrid fear, 

 Nor hope had they of crevice where to hide, 

 Or heliotrope to charm them out of view." 



In the same way, the agate was said to render a person in- 



* See Thorpe's "Northern Mythology," 1852, iii, 21, 13Y. 



f "Popular Romances of the West of England," 1871, p. 830. 

 X Grimm's " Teutonic Mythology," iii, 1084. 



* See Thorpe's " Northern Mythology," iii, 208, 209. 



U See Yardley's "Supernatural in Romantic Fiction," 1880, pp. 131, 132. 



