pfant Isore, Isfcge^/, anil Tsijric/-, 3 ■! i 



The man now became aware that he was invisible, and a thought 

 struck him that possibly he might have got Fern-seed in his 

 shoes, for he felt as if there was sand in them. So he took them off, 

 and shook out the Fern-seed, and as he did so he became visible 

 again to everybody. 



A belief in the mystic power of Fern-seed to make the gatherer 

 walk invisible is still extant. The English tradition is, that the 

 Fern blooms and seeds only at twelve o'clock on Midsummer night 

 — St. John's Eve — ^just at the precise moment at which the Saint 

 was born — 



"But on St. John's mysterious night, 



Sacred to many a wizard spell, 

 The hour when first to human sight 

 Confest, the mystic Fern-seed fell." 



In Dr. Jackson's Works (1673) ^^e read that he once ques- 

 tioned one of his parishioners as to what he saw or heard when he 

 watched the falling of the Fern-seed, whereupon the man informed 

 him that this good seed is in the keeping of Oberon (or Elberich), 

 King of the Fairies, who would never harm anyone watching it. 

 He then said to the worthy docftor, " Sir, you are a scholar, and I 

 am none. Tell me, what said the angel to our Lady ; or what con- 

 ference had our Lady with her cousin Elizabeth, concerning the 

 birth of St. John the Baptist ? " Finding Doc5tor Jackson unable 

 to answer him, he told him that " the angel did foretell John Bap- 

 tist should be born at that very instant in which the Fern-seed — at 

 other times invisible — did fall : intimating further that this saint of 

 God had some extraordinary vertue from the time or circumstance 

 of his birth." 



To catch the wonder-working seed, twelve pewter plates must 

 be taken to the spot where the Fern grows : the seed, it is affirmed, 

 will pass through eleven of the plates, and rest upon the twelfth. 

 This is one account : another says that Midsummer night is the 

 most propitious time to procure the mystic Fern-seed, but that the 

 seeker must go bare-footed, and in his shirt, and be in a religious 

 state of mind. 



In ancient days it was thought the demons watched to convey 

 away the Fern-seed as it fell ere anyone could possess themselves 

 of it. A writer on Brittany states that he remembers to have heard 

 recounted by one who had gathered Fern-seed, that whilst he was 

 prosecuting his search the spirits grazed his ears, whistling past 

 tliem like bullets, knocking off his hat, and hitting him with it all 

 over his body. At last, when he thought that he had gathered 

 enough of the mystic seed, he opened the case he had been putting 

 it into, and lo ! it was empty. The Devil had evidently had the 

 best of it. 



M. Marmier, in his Legendes des Plantcs, writes: — "It is on 

 Midsummer night that you should go and seek the Fern-seed: he 

 who is fortunate enough to find it will indeed be happy. He will 



