24 



THE MUSEUM. 



the flower of immortality amaranth 

 was strewed over the graves of old 

 Greece, and Homer relates that the 

 Thessalonians wore crowns of it at the 

 burial of Achilles. Wreaths of it are 

 still worn, and are hung over doors 

 and windows by Swiss peasants on As- 

 cension Day. Milton speaks of 



"Immortal amaranth, a flower which once 

 In Paradise, fast by the Tree of Life, 

 Began to bloom; but soon for man's offense, 

 To heaven removed, where first it grew, 



there grows 

 And flowers aloft shading the Fount of 



Life." 



And his anglels are 



"Crowned with amaranth and gold." 



From being the flower of immortal- 

 ity, amaranth became, by a natural 

 association of ideas, the flower of 

 death. In a beautiful poem by Long- 

 fellow, "The Two Angels," it crowns 

 the brows of Azrael, the Death Angel, 

 while the Angel of Life wears a wreath 

 of asphodels or daffodils, the flowers 

 of life. Because perhaps death is as 

 strong as love, amaranth is an anti- 

 dote for the love-philtre. Yet who 

 would expect to find the flower hymn- 

 ed of many poets on the coarse crouch- 

 ing weed which invades the bean- 

 patch, or disfigures the gravel paths, 

 once our pride.'' 



The plantain, or rib grass, that per- 

 sistent intruder upon our lawns, was 

 once highly esteemed as a healer of 

 wounds, and hence in some parts of 

 England it was known as "wonder- 

 weed." Moreover, whoever will 

 search beneath its leaves at high noon 

 on midsummer's day may find a rare 

 coal there. And with this coal under 

 the pillow, on midsummer's night, the 

 fortunate finder will surely see in a 

 dream the face of his or her future 

 sweetheart. Thence it came about, 

 perhaps, that in the north of England 



the spikes of the rib-wort plantain 

 were used as love charms. 



In English folk-medicine thistles 

 play a creditable part. The blessed 

 thistle is so called because it was an 

 antidote to vemon. The melancholy 

 thistle, a recently arrived immigrant 

 from the Old World, was a sure cure 

 for that vague but distressful malady, 

 "the blues." In rural England the 

 thistle is, or was, used in love divina- 

 tion. "When anxious to ascertain 

 who loved her most," says a Thistle- 

 ton Dyer, "a young woman would 

 take three or four heads of thistles, 

 cut off their points, and assign to each 

 thistle the name of an admirer, laying 

 them under her pillow. On the fol- 

 lowing morning the thistle which had 

 put forth a fresh sprout will denote the 

 man who loves her most." The pretty 

 little Canada thistle, now rapidly re- 

 solving itself into a nuisance, is, as its 

 name shows, an immigrant from the 

 North. It has probably travelled, 

 with its forbears, from northern 

 France, as it abounds in Normandy. 



The nettle, like the thistle, is con. 

 nected with much wonder lore, folk- 

 lore and tradition. Moreover, the 

 family in times gone by has been not 

 only famous but useful. Its name is 

 derived from the passive partciple of a 

 verb common to most Indo-European 

 languages which means "to sew." 

 Closely allied words are "needle,"' 

 "net," and "knit." Nettle would 

 seem to mean "that with which we 

 sew;" and indicates that this plant sup- 

 plied the thread used in former times 

 by the German and Scandanavian na- 

 tions. "We know this to have been 

 a fact," says Moncure D. Conway, "in 

 the Scotland of the last century. 

 Scotch cloth is only the housewifery of 



