The Wild I need not let the subject delay me now, ex- 

 Apple. ce pt to say that in the North-West Highlands 

 I have heard the blackthorn called Bron 

 Lochlannach, the Northman's woe, literally 

 Norse or Norland Sorrow or Mourning, . . . 

 a legendary designation to which there is, I 

 believe, a North-German analogue. The idea 

 here is that the blackthorn sprang from the 

 blood of the slain Norse invaders, the ' pagans 

 from Lochlin ' of mediaeval Gaelic story. In 

 many parts of the kingdom it is looked on 

 askance, and cut sprays of it brought into a 

 house are considered as a menace of ill, as a 

 death-token even ; and it has been surmised 

 that this is due to some confused memory of a 

 druidical or other early symbolism of the com- 

 mingling of winter and summer, in other 

 words of life and death, in the blackthorn's 

 blossom-strewn leafless branches. It may be 

 so, but does not seem to me likely, for by far 

 the greater part of flower and tree folklore 

 has little to do with such subtle conceptions. 

 Too many of these are as vague and fantastical 

 as that legend which says that one must not 

 taste of the root of the peony if a woodpecker 

 be in sight, or else the penalty may be blind- 

 ness : a safe prognostication ! 



It is that other thorn which holds us now, 

 that lovely torch of blossom which has taken 



126 



