THE COMMON NETTLE. 5 



for the purpose in the same manner as those of flax 

 and hemp, to the last of which, as before stated, the 

 nettle is allied. The French make a peculiar and 

 excellent paper from these fibres. In America, 

 where the nettle is one of the weeds which so sin- 

 gularly and so constantly follow the "footsteps of 

 the whites/' it is manufactured into linen ; as it is 

 in Siberia, also. The natives of Kamschatka use it 

 to form their fishing lines ; and in Hindustan the 

 delicate and far-famed "grass-cloth" (Ghu Ma), is 

 woven from the fibres of an indigenous nettle ; 

 while the old German name for muslin, nessel- 

 tuch (nettle-cloth), shews, as Schleiden observes, 

 how general must formerly have been the use of 

 this substance. This name recalls to us the tale of 

 Hans Christian Andersen, of the loving sister, who 

 trod out, with her naked and tender feet, the sting- 

 ing nettle-plants, in order to prepare the fibres with 

 which to spin the web, that alone could restore to 

 their human forms, the brothers who had been meta- 

 morphosed by the spells of witchcraft. It raises re- 

 collections of the old legend of the Rhine Castle of 

 Eberstein, and of the hard-hearted castellan, who 

 refused to let his little maiden marry until she had 

 spun her own wedding-shirt, and his winding-sheet, 

 from the nettles which grew on her father's grave, 

 though he would never allow her time to weed or 

 adorn it ; of how her heart was almost broken so 

 the story goes as she brooded over her, apparently, 

 interminable woes ; until a good, little, old woman 

 the ancestress, it is to be supposed, of all the 

 thrifty spinners and knitters of modern Germany 



