pfaaf/ anil Si»Irel/-. 14I 



The Wren is also credited with employing plants for acts of 

 similar charity. In Reed's old plays, we read — 



" Call for the Robin Redbreast and the Wren, 

 Since o'er shady groves they hover, 

 And with leaves and flow'rs do cover 

 The friendless bodies of unburied men." 



A writer in one of our popular periodicals* gives another 

 quaint quotation expressive of the tradition, from Stafford's ' Niobe 

 dissolved into a Nilus': "On her (the Nightingale) smiles Robin in 

 his redde livvrie ; who sits as a coroner on the murthred man ; and 

 seeing his body naked, plays the sorrie tailour to make him a 

 Mossy rayment." 



The Missel or Missel-Thrush is sometimes called the Mistletoe- 

 Thrush, because it^feeds upon Mistletoe berries. Lord Bacon, in 

 Sylva Sylvarum, refers (as already noted) to an old belief that the 

 seeds of Mistletoe will not vegetate unless they have passed 

 through the stomach of this bird. 



The Peony is said to cure epilepsy, if certain ceremonies are 

 duly observed. A patient, however, must on no account taste the 

 root, if a Woodpecker should happen to be in sight, or he will 

 be certain to be stricken with blindness. 



Among the many magical properties ascribed to the Sprcng- 

 wurzel (Spring-wort), or, as it is sometime called, the Blasting-root, 

 is its power to reveal treasures. But this it can only do through 

 the instrumentality of a bird, which is usually a green or black 

 W^oodpecker (according to Pliny, also the Raven ; in Switzerland, 

 the Hoopoe ; in the Tyrol, the Swallow). In order to become 

 possessed of a root of this magical plant, arrangements must be 

 made with much care and circumspecftion, and the bird closely 

 watched. When the old bird has temporarily left its nest, access 

 to it must be stopped up by plugging the hole with wood. The 

 bird, finding this, will fly away in search of the Spring-wort, and 

 returning, will open the nest by touching the obstru(5tion with the 

 mystic root. Meanwhile a fire or a red cloth must be spread out 

 closely, which will so startle the bird, that it will let the root fall 

 from its bills, and it can thus be secured. Pliny relates of the 

 Woodpecker, that the hen bird brings up her young in holes, and 

 if the entrance be plugged up, no matter how securely, the old bird 

 is able to force out the plug with an explosion caused by the plant. 

 Aubrey confounds the Moonwort with the Springwort. He says: — 

 " Sir Benet Hoskins, Baronet, told me that his keeper at his parke 

 at Morehampton, in Herefordshire, did, for experiment's sake, 

 drive an iron naile thwert the hole of the Woodpecker's nest, there 

 being a tradition that the damme will bring some leafe to open it. 

 He layed at the bottome of the tree a cleane sheet, and before 

 many hours passed, the naile came out, and he found a leafe lying by 

 it on the sheete. They say the Moonewort will doe such things." 



• ' All the Year Round,' Vol. xiii. 



