2o6 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE 



earlier days the greater part of our land was covered with 

 forest, and that the far greater number of oak-trees then 

 than now would give corresponding increase of possibility 

 of finding oak-grown mistletoe. Some writers declare that 

 it was not the mistletoe at all, but another parasitic plant 

 of the same family, the Loranthus Europaus, that was 

 really the sacred plant. This is a common enough plant 

 on the Continent, growing on oak and other trees, but it 

 is not found in England. This hard fact of its non- 

 occurrence here certainly appears at first glance a fatal blow 

 to the Loranthus theory, but those who uphold the belief get 

 over the awkward fact by asserting that on the suppression 

 of Druidism, every vestige of this plant, owing to its 

 association with the old pagan rites, was extirpated, and so 

 England knows it no more. This extirpation, however, 

 would be an exceedingly difficult operation, even when we 

 have made full allowance for new-born religious zeal. If 

 we could imagine the Archbishop of Canterbury thundering 

 forth anathemas against the foxglove, for instance, as 

 a plant wholly diabolic, and, stranger still, carrying the 

 whole nation with him in his denunciations, the doom 

 of Digitalis Satanica would be by no means sealed, and 

 it would be altogether premature to conclude that the time 

 had come when its name should be erased from our Flora. 



Vullamy, in his Grammar of the Irish Language^ asserts 

 that the Druid veneration for the mistletoe arose from 

 reverence for the number three, not only the berries of the 

 plant, he declares, growing in triplets, but also the leaves. 

 One weak point in this statement is that there appears to 

 be no proof forthcoming from him or any other writers as 

 to this sacredness amongst the Druids of the number three, 



