MISTLETOE TRIBE 91 



verdui-e is in the woods save that of the holly or fir, or some other evergreen 

 tree. 



There is little reason to doul it that our Mistletoe was the plant reverenced 

 by the Druids ; but as an allied parasitic plant {Loranthus europmis) is very 

 commonly found in the south of Europe to grow on the oak, and as our 

 Mistletoe rarely occurs on that tree, some botanists have supposed the 

 Loranthus to be the ancient plant. Those who hold this opinion consider 

 that as this latter plant is not now wild in Britain, it was eradicated entirely 

 when Druidism was suppressed, in order that every vestige of the wonderful 

 superstition might be removed. Professor Burnett, who does not at all agree 

 with this theory, remarks: "The Mistletoe, although seldom found on the 

 oak, is not exclusively a parasite of other trees, and its rarity on the former 

 not improbably led to the preference which the old botanists, as well as the 

 Druids, gave to Viscus quercus, the Mistletoe of the oak, over the Fiscus 

 oxyacanthi, the Mistletoe of the hawthorn, when these plants were held in 

 much repute in medicine. Hence the very circumstance of a search being- 

 made for quercine Mistletoe, in an age when these islands were covered with 

 forests of oak, is opposed to the idea of the Loranthus being the plant in 

 question. Had it then been indigenous here, the oak would have been its 

 common if not exclusive habitat ; and this confirms the belief that the Viscum 

 was the branch which the Druids went with such solemnity to cut." To our 

 own minds, the fact that the Mistletoe can be planted, and will thrive, on the 

 oak, renders it much more likely that it should have been the chosen plant, 

 than that in times when forests were so numerous, and the means of access 

 to distant parts of the country so difficult, the Druids could have succeeded 

 m wholly extirpating the Loranthus, even had they wished to do so. The 

 Mistletoe which Mr. Dovaston saw in Anglesey might have grown on the 

 oak without artificial help, as it still does in some parts of England. The 

 Society of Arts many years since offered a premium for the discovery of the 

 Mistletoe on the oak, and had a specimen sent them from an oak in Gloucester- 

 shire ; and Mr. Jesse mentions having received a piece of Mistletoe from an 

 oak near Godalming, in Surrey. The latter writer remarks that this question 

 of the Mistletoe and Loranthus is not one merely of our times. It excited 

 attention three hundred years ago ; for Belon, when travelling in Macedonia, 

 speaks of a Mistletoe Avhich grew on the oaks there, and observed that ther6 

 was not a single oak-tree on the road between Mount Athos and Tricala on 

 which the plant did not grow, though he says it was different from that which 

 attaches itself to the apple, pear, and other trees. In all probability it was 

 the Loranthus europceus that the traveller saw. 



The connection of the Mistletoe with the most ancient traditions of 

 Scandinavia and other European countries must ever invest the plant with 

 an interest derived from association. We know, indeed, little of the Druids 

 or their worship, though their vast monuments, their cairns and cromlechs, 

 are scattered over our country, and are remnants of its worship ere its history 

 began. 



It is from Pliny, chiefly, that we gather the little which is known of the 

 use made by the Druids of the Mistletoe. This ancient naturalist, in the 

 words of his translator. Dr. Philemon Holland, says : " And forasmuch as we 



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