234 OUR WILD FLOWERS AND 



class of superstitions always associated with certain plants in the 

 ballads that pleased our rude forefathers : 



" They built a ship without delay. 

 With masts of the Roan-tree, 

 With fluttering sails of silk so fine. 

 And set her on the sea." 



" The Queen look'd out at her bower window 

 To see what she could see : 

 Then she espied a gallant ship 

 Sailing upon the sea. 



" When she beheld the silken sails. 

 Full glancing in the sun, 

 To sink the ship she sent away 

 Her witch -wives every one. 



" The spells were vain : the hags return'd 

 To the Queen in sorrowful mood. 

 Crying that Witches have no power 

 Where there is Roan-tree wood." 



But his sisters loved best to hear their gentle brother discourse of the 

 Fairies — the prettiest creations of the pastoral muse — and with which 

 he had peopled every knowe and dean amidst the heaths around 

 them * ; and, mayhaps, he had borrowed some of those features he 

 saw in them from one of the companions that joined their company 

 on the way to school, and whom he was apt to call a little fairy. You 

 know that the Fairies are a pretty sort of spirits, moonshine revellers, 

 dressed in green f, or yellow skirted ; and although they cannot raise 

 themselves to the size immense of a worser sort of spirits, yet they 

 can otherwise 



" colour, shape, or size 



Assume, as likes them best."+ 



Their especial pleasure is, on moonlit summer nights, to assemble 

 together 



" on hill, in dale, forest or mead, 



By paved fountain, or by rushy brook ;" 



and play bo-peep amidst the blossomed flowers. Some of you may 

 have seen the exquisitely fanciful picture by Noel Paton of Oberon 

 and Titania with their attendants, who sport in every conceivable 

 figure and position, hiding in one blossom, sucking nectar from 



* " There must still be many alive, who in childhood have been taught 

 to look with wonder on knolls and patches of ground left uncultivated, 

 because, whenever a ploughshare entered the soil, the elementary spirits 

 were supposed to testify their displeasure by storm and thunder." Sir W. 

 Scott's Demonology, p. 89. "We almost, &c." Ibid. p. 184. 



t " About mill-dams, and green brae faces. 

 Both elrich elfs, and brownies stayed, 

 And green-gowned fairies daunced and played." — Cleland. 



X See Keightley's Faiiy Mythology. Bohn, Lond. 1850. 



