2o8 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE 



that the moone be just six daies old, because shee is thought 

 then to be of great power and force sufficient. They call it 

 in their language All-Heale, for they have an opinion that 

 it cureth all maladies soever, and when they are about to 

 gather it, after they have well and duly prepared their 

 sacrifices and festival! cheare vnder the said tree, they 

 bring hither two young bullocks milke white, such as 

 never yet drew at plough or waine, which done, the Priest 

 arrayed in a surplesse or white vesture, climbeth vp into 

 the tree, and with a golden hook or bill cutteth it off, and 

 they beneath receive it in a white souldiours cassocke or 

 coat of armes : then fall they to kill the beastes aforesaid 

 for sacrifice, mumbling many oraisons and praying devoutly 

 that it would please God to blesse this gift of his to the 

 good of all those to whom he had given it. So vain 

 and superstitious are many nations in the world, and often- 

 times in such frivolous and foolish things as these." 



The mistletoe was known to the Anglo-Saxons as the 

 mistiltan, a word derived from mistl^ different, and tan, 

 a twig, indicating its parasitic nature, and its unlikeness 

 to the tree upon which it is found, and it appears to us 

 distinctly interesting that amidst the momentous changes, 

 social, political, and religious, that have taken place since 

 Anglo-Saxon days this word should have been handed 

 down, generation after generation, practically unchanged. 

 In Germany it is the Mistel, and in France the gui de 

 chene, the latter name asserting a distinctive association 

 with the oak that facts, as we have seen, do not 

 bear out. 



The mistletoe igrows very freely in many districts in 

 the south and west of England, but the home production 



