1859.] CHAPTERS ON BRITISH BOTANY. 209 



poetry has been preserved in Triads, it is only reasonable to infer 

 that they, the ancient Druids and Welsh bards, had observed a 

 plant so plentiful as the Trefoil, and which was so well adapted 

 for teaching mysteries. The ancient bards relate that wherever 

 the goddess Olwen trod on the ground, immediately four white 

 Trefoils sprang up. 



In the legendary history of the life of St. Patrick, the Apostle 

 of Ireland, it is related that when the then heathen Irish refused 

 to admit the doctrine of the Trinity of persons in the Godhead, 

 the preacher took a blade or leaf of white Clover, or Shamrocl(, 

 and showed the simple people that the doctrine of the unity of 

 substances or essence and of a plurality of persons was illustrated 

 by a natural fact ; that the three leaflets of Clover were all of the 

 same nature and organization, and that they all constituted but 

 one leaf. 



There is probably as much, and no more truth in this legend 

 than there is in the virtues ascribed to the mystic plants of 

 Druidism ; still it supplies a proof that the plant was not unno- 

 ticed in these early times. 



It is probably now too late to inquire what the Druids or Bards 

 meant by the mysterious three, one of the grand secrets incul- 

 cated by the hierophants of ancient Britain, the form of which 

 is only retained in the Triads {Tribanau) of the Welsh, as it is 

 embodied in the Hindoo trinity of Bramah, Vishnoo, and Sheva. 

 The Trefoil was a mystic plant of later times, and probably its 

 superstitious uses are still known in some remote parts. 



A Trefoil with four leaves — or blades, as they are called in the 

 northern parts of the island — was believed to be, not very long ago, 

 as efficient a preventive of the malice of good neighbours, or fairy 

 folk, as the Rowan was a certain specific against the cantraips of 

 witches, warlocks, and all the other members of the infernal alli- 

 ance. The following story will illustrate the popular belief in a 

 four-bladed Clover-leaf. A conjuror, at a fair, was exhibiting, to 

 the wonderment of a large concourse, a cock drawing a couple of 

 spars large enough for masts to a first-rate three-decker. A man 

 was passing, who had on his back a bundle of Clover-grass, in 

 which there happened to be a four-bladed leaf of Trefoil. He 

 saw things as they really were, not as they appeared to those over 

 whom the magician had cast his glamour and spell. The man 

 with the birn (bundle) of grass asked what they were looking at. 



N. S. VOL. III. 2 E 



