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uary 6th, Bertha’s ae that fernseed could be secured, when it 
would come “wrapped in a chalice cloth, and would confer on 
one the strength of ae or forty men. It would enable one to 
discover hid treasure and unlock anything he wishes.” 
Isewhere it was believed to be on St. John’s Eve, midsummer 
rie June 24th, that the fern arrived at its great mystery, and put 
rth at dusk a small blue flower, which soon disappeared; and 
= wonderful seed, quickly ripening, fell from the plant at mid- 
nig 
and catch the falling seed in a white napkin; elves will whisk 
about your ears, as Aubrey tells us they did around one who 
undertook it in his time. 
Fernseed was thus sought for in England, France, Germany, 
the Tyrol, Bohemia and Russia ; — in Russia still, In England 
the name wishseed grew up for 
The vitality of the belief has eee it across the Atlantic, and 
I have found it surviving, half doubted but still half credited, 
among people on the New England coas 
Many believed that it was the King of the Fairies himself who 
held sway over fernseed ; in the seventeenth century in England 
one Dean Jackson found that a certain peasant had confided to a 
the falling of fernseed at midnigh ean questioned the 
peasant and pretended that the est must have been under 
the devil’s power, to which the peasant protested, and said: 
peas: 
“Why do you think that the devil hath aught to do with that 
— he I now will do me no harm, although I should watch it 
again.” asant added that it was long ago foretold by an 
angel that = lake the Baptist’s birth should occur at the moment 
that the fernseed fell. 
It is quite natural, therefore, that we should read in an ancient 
Romish calendar for June 23~24 that about this time “fern is in 
great estimation with the vulgar, on account of its seed.” 
Ben Jonson alludes to this belief in the New Inn, one saying: 
‘«T had no medicine, Sir, to ug invisible, 
No Fermseed in my pocket. 
