374 THE MISTLETOE IN HEREFORDSHIRE. 
site for the due celebration of the feast of Ceridwen,* and there we 
find the Mistletoe mentioned as one of the ingredients of the celebrated 
** Mystical Cauldron,” always prepared with the most careful and ela- 
borate ceremony. From this cauldron, Genius, Inspiration, Science, 
and Immortality were supposed to be derived. “It purified the vo- 
taries of Druidism for the celebration of certain mystical rites,—a flood 
which has the gif? of Dovy/d, or the tree of pure gold, which becomes 
of a fructifying quality, when that brewer gives it a boiling who pre- 
sided over the cauldron of the five plants.” t 
There is no mention in the poem of any particular tree from which 
the Mistletoe was to be gathered nor of the ceremony requisite for 
doing so, but there can be little doubt, from other authorities, that it 
must have been from the Oak. ‘Nor must the admiration of the 
Gauls for the Mistletoe be unnoticed,” says Pliny; “the Druids (thus 
they call their chief priests) hold nothing in greater veneration than the 
Mistletoe and the tree on which it grows, provided only that it be the 
Oak. They select groves of Oak-trees standing by themselves, and 
perform no sacred ceremonies without green Oak-foliage. Indeed, they 
truly believe that whenever the Mistietoe grows upon the Oak it has been 
sent from heaven, and they consider it a sign of a chosen tree.{ But 
the Mistletoe is very rarely found upon the Oak. When it is disco- 
vered they proceed to collect it with very great devotion and ceremony, 
and especially on the sixth day of the moon. This period of the 
moon’s age, when it has sufficient size without having attained the half 
of its fulness, makes the beginning of their months and years, and of 
an age, which consists but of thirty years.” (C. Plinii Nat. Hist. lib. 
xvi. c. Ré 
s poem, Mr. Davies Bab from internal evidence, dates “long before the 
sixth cen ney. in an age — ritons were acquainted with the Romans, but 
whilst Rome ure as t be 
+ “Pren Pur 
t Mr. Davies, in his * Celtic Researches,’ says eo “the Apple was the "nis — 
sacred tree to the spa and that orchards were planted in the vicinity of the sacred 
grove ” (Mr. Lees in * va base! 1851, p. 857.) But in his * Botanical gea 
Out’ it is said, that ‘Mistletoe m the Hazel was — d the Druids, next to 
that from the Oak, but on sede miferi I know n 
