FERN SEED 



solstice will have taken place), as I spudded away at the 

 fern, thirstily and perspiringly, my haunting iteration was 

 alternately of images wide as the poles asunder. One 

 was of those puzzling lines, in Boileau's heroicomic 

 poem Le Lutrin, anent the barber who 



. . . d'une main leg&re 

 Tient un verre de vin qui rit dans la fougere. 



The other was of Gadshill boast : " We steal as in a castle, 

 cock-sure : we have the receipt of fern-seed " ~ which 

 irresistibly, by concatenation, brought in the image of 

 my dear if disreputable old friend Falstaff and how he 

 would have " larded the lean earth " as he spudded along. 

 Now it occurs to me that if the receipt of fern-seed as 

 handed down by tradition is in any way correct, this is the 

 last day when this fern massacre can be of any use, as 

 far as Villino Loki is concerned, to prevent its propa- 

 gation for this year. Is not to-morrow St. John's Eve,- 

 and is not that the date upon which the invisible seed 

 which once successfully gathered will confer upon the 

 gatherer the power of invisibility drops upon the soil ? 

 The harvest, it seems, must be made " in the dark of the 

 moon/' at the exact turning of midnight, and received in a 

 pewter plate/ without regard to the beguiling pranks of 

 fairy or goblin, who, naturally enough, are jealous of the 

 acquisition by mere mortals of this essential attribute of 

 their order. The receipt does not state how the pewter- 

 harvested seed, being invisible, is to be bottled up or other- 

 wise preserved for use when required. 

 This, by the way, is a fairly typical instance of the manner 

 in which our mediaeval superstitions were shrouded in 



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