10 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE 



the thorny cross of Calvary.' This association with the 

 person of our Lord was held to give it many virtues, 

 preserving the wearer thereof, not merely from the perils 

 of the storm, but from all the wiles and malevolence of 

 ghostly visitants. In many parts of rural England it is 

 yet held an ill-omened thing to chop a hawthorn down, 

 and, with strange inconsequence, it is held unlucky to bring 

 its blossoms into the house, unless, perchance, the evil of 

 gathering it was deemed more potent than the good that 

 accrued from its possession." 



Few of our plants excel the hawthorn in wealth of 

 literary association. Chaucer tells us how for the May-day 

 festival all went forth into the fields 



To fetch the flowres freshe, and braunche and blome, 

 Fresh garlandes of the hawthorne 



being specially sought. The old poet revelled in " the 

 month of Maie," and found in it a theme on which he 

 delighted to dwell. In one of his poems he bids us mark 



The faire blooming of the hawthorne tree, 

 Who, finely cloathed in a robe of white, 

 Fills full the wanton eye with May's delight. 



' Then was our Lord yled into a gardyn, and there the Jewes scorned 

 hym, and maden hjon a crown of the braunches of the Albiespyne, that is 

 Whitethorn, that grew in the same gardyn, and settin yt vpon hys hed. — Sir 

 John Maundeville. 



^ Many of the old beliefs concerning plants were passing strange. 

 Googe tells us, for instance, in 1 577, that " Basyll is an hearbe that is vsed 

 to be set for the excellent sauoure that it hath : it is also good for the potte : 

 it is sowed in March and April and delighteth in sonny ground. Basyl is 

 best watred at noone. Theophrastus sayth that it prospreth best when it 

 is sowed with curses." What is to be the objective of these imprecations 

 we do not learn, they should have some definite target, and it could scarcely 

 be the plant itself. 



