228 BRAMBLES AND BAY LEAVES. 



" The stubble is yellow, the corn is green, 



Now to the brocken the witches go; 

 The mighty multitude here may be seen 



Gathering, wizard and witch, below, 

 Sir Urean, he sitteth aloft in the air; 



Hey over stock ! and hey over stone ! 



'Twixt witches and incubi what shall be done ! 

 Tell it who dare ! tell it who dare ! " 



Goethe. 



If thou fearest the witches, reader, go and find the fern-seed, and 

 render thyself invisible. Nay, do not smile, there are witches now 

 tormenting the wicked and the idle. Man's very heart is torn asunder 

 by them, when he forgets to do his duty. Bovet tells us of one who 

 went to gather fern-seed, and the evil spirits whisked about his ears 

 like bullets, and sometimes struck his hat and other parts of his body. 

 And, although he believed he had secured a quantity in papers, and a 

 box full besides, he found all empty. If he had gone with a true heart, 

 and walking upright in God's sunshine, they could no more have dared 

 to check him, than to assail an angel. That this power of invisibility 

 may be obtained by means of fern-seed, we have the authority of the 

 great poet himself, who knew all the mysteries of heaven and earth, 

 "We have a recipe of fern-seed — we walk invisible." A similar 

 illustration occurs in Beaumont and Fletcher — " Why, did you think 

 that you had Gyges' ring, or the herb that gives invisibility ? " And 

 Ben Jonson says — " I had no medicine. Sir, to go invisible ; no fern- 

 seed in my pocket." If the fern was gathered on the night of St, 

 John, no end of mysteries might be performed by it ; diseases might 

 be cured, evil influences prevented; witches utterly quashed, and the 

 future destiny of the individual reqdered most certain. Dioscorides 

 esteems it the best of all charms against witchcraft, and Bovet ex- 

 presses his firm conviction that these "are of the devil's own contri- 

 ving ; that having once ensnared men to an obedience to his rules, he 

 may with more facility oblige them to a stricter vassalage." Pliny 

 tells us, in a mysterious manner, that it must be extremely valuable 

 against the bites of serpents, for those creatures are seldom, if ever, 

 found beneath it. One species of fern, Polipodium vulgare, was con- 

 sidered by the old writers on herbs as a certain specific against me- 

 lancholy ; and children placed upon a bed of green fern would cer- 

 tainly be cured of the rickets. 



Beautiful indeed, and teeming with rich poetry, are those super&ti- 



