308 WILD FLOWERS. 



ledge of such arts or sciences as materially influence 

 its comfort or its happiness ; and to the perversion 

 of this ineffaceable aspiration for the rendering of 

 worship we may trace, in every age, in every land, 

 the dark fables with which early history is enve- 

 loped. Demigods, genii, fairies, and elves of every 

 description, attest the constancy of this feeling of 

 dependence on a superior being, which is, as it were, 

 a natural instinct of the uninstructed, but riot un- 

 endowed, mind, which, as yet, looks not up to the 

 true " cause of every cause." 



The origin of flax-dressing is one of the economic 

 arts which, from its great industrial importance, has 

 been thus attributed to supernatural teaching. And 

 it is said that even yet the Irish peasantry repeat 

 the mythical story of its introduction into their 

 island by the " dwellers on the Shahbna mountain." 

 These genii, who bear the generic name of Mann. 

 are said to have been " long, long ago," foreigners 

 from far-off lands, whose families settled on this 

 mountain, and first instructed the natives in the art 

 of shiris, or ouris, i. e., the management of flax and 

 hemp, as well as of cattle and tillage. In lapse of 

 time these mann became invisible and supernatural 

 beings, who still, however, exercised a kind of help- 

 ful supervision over the arts they had introduced. 

 The word ouris is even yet applied by the peasants 

 of the west, to the meetings of women at each 

 other's houses for the purpose of carding the stock 

 of wool or spinning the crop of flax.* And at no 



* Meetings similar to the carding gatherings of the Sar- 

 dinians, or the " Bees " of the Americans. 



