PLANTS 



225 



last sheaf of rye in the field as a tribute to the 

 Roggenwulf. The French and German custom of 

 the Harvest May, in which a branch or tree decked 

 with ears of corn is carried home in the last wagon 

 from the harvest-field and hung on the roof of the 

 farmhouse till next year, is closely cognate with 

 the eiresione of ancient Greece, and suggests a par- 

 allel with some of our own old harvest customs. 



Sympathetic affinities between plant and animal 

 life strongly impress the primitive imagination ; we 

 find them playing an important part in many 

 cosmogonies, as in the Iranian account of how the 

 first human pair grew up as a single tree, the 

 fingers or twigs of each one folded over the other's 

 ears, till the time came when they were separated, 

 and infused by Ahuramazda with distinct human 

 souls. Other mythical cosmogonic trees that need 

 only be named are the heavenly fig-tree of the 

 Vedas, and the ash-tree Yggdrasil of Norse mytho- 

 logy. In some places trees are informed when 

 their owner dies, and an apology formally made to 

 them by the woodcutter l>efore he fells them ; and 

 very one is familiar with the custom of planting 

 a tree at the birth of a child, and the notion of a 

 sympathetic relation subsisting throughout life 

 betwixt the two. The trees planted by Queen 

 Victoria on her visit to an English town, and the 

 Trees of Lil>erty planted to mark a new political 

 regime, convey unconsciously a survival of the same 

 sympathetic symbolism. The belief that a child's 

 nckets can be cured by passing him through a 

 cleft ash-tree still lingers olistinately in corners 

 of England, and stories of trees giving forth 

 human groans and exuding human blood are 

 common in folk-tales everywhere. Even so late 

 as 1870, in Oxfordshire, a gvpsy woman told how 

 Fair Rosamond was changed into a ' Holy Briar,' 

 which bleeds if one plucks a twig. Families, as 

 well as individuals, have tutelary or guardian 

 trees, and Hyten-Cavallius, for example, tells us 

 that the three families of Linmeus (or l.hmc'-i, 

 Lindelius, and Tiliander were all called after the 

 same tree, an ancient linden or lime which grew 

 at Jonsboda Lindergord. When the Lindelius 

 family died out one of the old lime's chief boughs 

 withered ; after the death of the daughter of the 

 great I.inii.-i-ns the second main lx>ugh fittingly 

 bore leaves no more; and when the last of the 

 Tiliander family expired the tree's active life came 

 to an end, though the dead trunk still exists and 

 is highly honoured. 



We see then how natural is the notion of sym- 

 bolising the genius of vegetation under the form 

 of a tree, and thus, as has been shown, we 

 find gome hint at the real philosophy under- 

 lying the joyous old-world May-day usages, tlie 

 Maypole decked with streamers, round which 

 young men and maidens danced in chorus, and 

 not less the high ceremonies attending the harvest- 

 home. Even our Christmas-tree, which originally 

 made its way into England and France prin- 

 i pally through the influence of Prince Albert 

 arid the Duchess Helen of Orleans, is really nothing 

 but a survival of an ancient German custom of 

 heathen origin, and we may safely disregard the 

 foolish theory of its being Christian because the 

 24th of December chances to be consecrated to 

 Adam and Eve. One legend relates how Adam 

 brought from Paradise a fruit or slip from the Tree 

 of Knowledge, from which sprang the tree from 

 which the Cross was made an example of a pro- 

 cess of myth-making after the fact to which we 

 owe not a few beliefs and customs not understood. 

 But many plants have received a kind of religious 

 consecration from the name of some saint whose 

 festival fell on the day on which they were 

 gathered. And Christianity, like Buddhism, early 

 showed a marvellous adaptability in the way 



171 



in which it adopted popular rites of an earlier 

 religion, and subtly rebaptised them as its own. 

 Many remnants of primitive superstitions survive 

 in the local English names of plants and flowers, 

 chiefly in connection with the fairies, the devil, 

 the \ irgin, and the Cross, and we have a great 

 wealth of association from one cause or other 

 between saints and flowers, as St Agnes with the 

 Christmas rose, St Joseph of Arimatliea -with the 

 Glastonbury thorn, St Patrick with the shamrock, 

 the Virgin with the white lily, just as Thor had his 

 oak-tree, Venus her myrtle, the Indians the lotus, 

 and the Druids the mistletoe. Again, historical per- 

 sonages and families are frequently associated with 

 particular flowers it is enough merely to name 

 the orange-lily, the red and white roses, the fleur- 

 de-lis, the planta genista, and the violet. Family 

 and clan crests frequently take this form, as the 

 fir, holly, juniper; also national badges, as the 

 rose, thistle, shamrock. More curious and inter- 

 esting, although obscure, are the notions of magical 

 properties connected as persistently with some 

 plants as medicinal properties are with others. 

 Most prominent in European folklore are the elder, 

 the thorn, and the rowan or mountain -ash ; but 

 strange properties are still ascribed to the rosemary, 

 vervain, St John's wort, mandrake, asphodel, and 

 to fern-seed ; and many flowers lend themselves 

 through some obscure inherent fitness to special 

 methods of divination. The doctrine of Signatures 

 (q.v.), of such importance in the history of medi- 

 cine, opens up a special chapter of sympathetic 

 magic, involving the belief that plants bore by 

 nature marks indicating plainly for what diseases 

 they were medicinally useful. The trees of Para- 

 dise, of Chaldn-an and other cosmogonies, the 

 oracular oaks of Dodona, those trees of healing 

 spiritually allegorised in the Apocalypse, the 

 trees of Liberty of the French Revolution, and the 

 trees round which an Indian bride and bride- 

 groom walk hand in hand, point as unmistakably 

 to a real sympathetic affinity between the human 

 and the vegetable world as did the Dryads, Fauns, 

 and Satyrs of the ancient Hellenic mythology, 

 with their analogues our own elves and fairies of 

 the woods, the transformation-myths, the Orpheus 

 whose Ivre laid its charm on beasts and trees alike, 

 or the Pan at the report of whose death all nature 

 mourned aloud. 



See W. Mannhardt, Ropyentrulf vnd JJor/ffenhvnd 

 (Danzig, 1865), Die Korndtimanen (Berl. 1868), Der 

 Baumkultut der Germanen vnd ihrer Jfachbantamme 

 (Berl. 1875), Antike Wuld- vnd Feldkulte (Berl. 1877), 

 and the posthumous Mytholoiiiiche Forschunyen ( Strassb. 

 1884 ) ; A. de Gubernatis, La Mythologie del f /antes 

 (2 vols. Paris, 1878-82); M. von Strantz, Die Blumen 

 in Xiii/e unit Qechichte (Berl. 1875); H. Pfannen- 

 schmid, Oermanitche Erntefettc im heidn. u. Cltrift/. 

 Cultuf ( Hanover, 1878 ) ; Rev. Hilderic Friend, Flower* 

 and Flower-lore (1884); V. Jahn, Die Deutsehen Opfrr- 

 nebrduche bet Ac/en bau vnd Viehzvcht (Breslau, 1884); 

 and J. G. Frazer, The Golden Bouiih ( 2 vols. 1890 ). Tlie 

 last work contains a distinct contribution of the greatest 

 value to a scientific knowledge of the worship of vegeta- 

 tion, but it seems pro)>able that a serviceable enough 

 theory has been carried too far, and at any rate m. ti y 

 of its conclusions remain to be tested by the fresh gener- 

 alisations of a later day. Its starting-point is the mysteri- 

 ous utory of the Arician lake, well known through 

 Turner's picture and the allusion in Macaulay's Lay of 

 the Battle of Luke Regiltm. The lake occupies the site of 

 the ancient sanctuary of Diana Nemorensis. In its grove 

 grew a sacred tree, from which whoever succeeded in 

 breaking off 'the Golden Bough' had tlie right to 

 challenge the priest of the sanctuary to single combat, 

 and, if victorious, to reign in his stead. Mr Frazer sees 

 here a survival of ancient tree-worship, the priest being 

 an incarnation of the spirit of the tree, which passed 

 continuously on his being killed into a new and more 

 vigorous incarnation. He finds it also an evidence of 



