THE MISTLETOE IN HEREFORDSHIRE. 375 
The grand ceremony of cutting the Mistletoe from the Oak was the 
New Year’s Day festival of the ancient Britons, and it was held on the 
sixth day of the moon, as near the 10th of March as the age of the 
moon permitted. The New Year's Day festival of our forefathers would 
have fallen this present year on the 14th of March. The exact pro- 
ceedings of the Druids on this great annual festival are thus described 
by Pliny :—“ Calling the Mistletoe, in their manner of speaking, a 
cure-all (or all-heal), and having got the sacrifices and the good things 
for the feast all properly ready under the tree, they lead up two white 
bulls, and begin by tying them by their horns to the tree. The Arch- 
Druid, clothed in a white robe, then mounts the tree and cuts the Mis- 
tletoe with a golden sickle. It is caught, as it falls, in a white cloth. 
Then they offer up the victims as a sacrifice, praying that God would 
make his gift prosperous to those to whom it had been presented. 
They believed it would give fruitfulness to all barren animals, and 
would act asa remedy against all poisons.” The animals were killed, 
cut up, and cooked ; meantime prayers were offered up, hymns were 
sung, and the heaven-born plant, thus carefully saved from pollution 
by any tough of the earth, was distributed in small sprigs amongst the 
people, as a sacred relie for the new year, a charm to ensure fecundity, 
a panacea against every disease, a remedy for poisons, and a safe pro- 
tection against witchcraft and the possession of the devil. Many a good 
wife travelled for days, perchance, on a pillion behind her husband, 
through bogs and fords, and over wide tracts of uncultivated land and 
primeval forest, to attend this festival, leading a sumpter-horse laden 
with their offerings to the priesthood and all the good things they could 
muster for the festival,—venison and salmon, roasted. bustards and 
boars’ hams, with cakes and other delicacies, not forgetting some well- 
filled skins of metheglin or mead,—happy in being able, as a recom- 
pense for so much toil, to procure from the hand of the Arch-Druid, 
for herself and her husband, so many blessings in the coming year. 
The memory of the Druidical ceremonies is still kept up in Normandy, 
as they give Mistletoe to each other on New Year's Day, Ly saying, 
* Au gui l'an neuf," and in Picardy they add the word “ plantez,” to 
wish a plentiful and prosperous new year to each other. 
The Mistletoe has entered into the mythology of other nations be- 
sides the Britons and Gauls. The fact of its great peculiarity in ripen- 
ing its fruit and thus coming to its perfection in the winter solstice has 
