Ask and Oak. 87 



always tender in popular legend and folk-lore. The 

 irregularity of its blossoming has found record in 

 popular rhyme, which bases on it a weather forecast. 



" If the oak's before the ash 



Then we're sure to have a splash ; 

 If the ash comes 'fore the oak, 

 Then we're sure to have a soak." 



It is pre-eminently the tree of weird fear and charm. 

 It is a lightning-tree very often to be avoided. It is 

 to be conciliated only by certain dues. 



" Beware the ash, 

 It counts the flash," 



is an ancient saw, in which the old idea of the lightning 

 tree survives. Then it surrenders its charm. Amid 

 the tree-myths, we find that some of the early men 

 traced descent from it, and used it as their totem ; so 

 it is a tree to be reverenced as well as feared. Dr. 

 George MacDonald, in that fine romance " Phantastes," 

 where, without learned pretension, he plays fancifully 

 with a great many such ideas, has this, among many 

 other things, about the ash, put into the mouth of the 

 fairy mother : 



" Trust the Oak," said she, " trust the Oak and the 

 Elm and the great Beech. Take care of the Birch, 

 for though she is honest, she is too young not to be 

 changeable. But shun the Ash and the Alder; for the 

 Ash is an ogre. You will know him by his thick 

 fingers ; and the Alder will smother you with her web 

 of hair, if you let her near you at night." 



The whole romance is in this spirit, and the fairy 

 needs to give the hero a charm against the ash : 



" But now I must tie some of my hair about you, 

 and then the Ash will not touch you." 



