165 
An old manuscript of the time of Elizabeth adjures us to 
“ Gather Fearne-seed on Midsomer Eve and weare it about con- 
tinually.”’ 
Culpeper in his Herbal, 1653, tells us it is the seed of the 
saanrs fern seen sa ie Filix-femina of modern botany). 
n the Zatler says he could not walk the street with- 
out seeing “ ae sign of the doctor who had discovered the female 
fernseed.”’ 
Sayings like this about fernseed often simply indicate impos- 
sibility of occurrence ; so, if we pass halfway round the world to 
Malacca, we find the Malays saying that you can discover 
hidden treasure beneath it if you can find a bloss n th 
lemon-grass. nother equivalent Malay saying is of the nest of 
a certain bird; if you had it, it will make you invisible. But 
that particular bird does not build a nest. 
urning now to i oie plants having associations with the 
fairies, we may first form a group of those associated with special 
bushes among which they rise. It is a wild rambling a which 
the dark leaves of the hawthorn and brier, with its delicate 
small white flowers. 
In Devonshire it is supposed to be under the special protec- 
tion of those little ai fairies which are elsewhere called 
pixies, but there, piskies ; so in Devonshire the name the plant 
itself bears is piskies, and the wanderer along the green lanes 
may see in its wee white blossoms the small faces of pixies peer- 
ing out to spy him from the hedge, as if to coax him into their 
retreats. If the beauty of the starry blossom really enters into 
his soul and he puts out his hand and picks it, so say the Devon- 
shire people, then he has come within the pixies’ power, for the 
gatherer of the plant will surely be pixy-led, as they say, led on 
by irresistible influence to dance with the pixies in some secluded 
dell 
