THE THISTLE. 



As plants were among the objects most 

 familiar to primitive man, they naturally 

 came to be considered good or evil, ac- 

 cording as their properties were found to 

 be beneficial or injurious. The imag- 

 inative and pure reverence, however, 

 which originally linked plant life with 

 the personifications of natural phenom- 

 ena, soon degenerated into a superstitious 

 worship and became associated with the 

 mummery of various kinds of impostors. 

 The plants, through the manipulations of 

 the quacks and witches, who largely com- 

 posed the fraternity of the early herbal- 

 ists, became endowed with powers to kill 

 or heal, to control the weather, to gain or 

 hold friends, and many other associa- 

 tions that have clung to them ever since. 

 The Thistle appears to have been espe- 

 cially favored in this regard. It appears 

 that an eagle had stolen the sacred Soma 

 from the Hindu tree of life. Barely had 

 he departed with the immortalizing 

 draught before he was overtaken by a 

 lightning bolt and stretched lifeless upon 

 the earth. From the eagle's feathers 

 sprang up the bramble, while the Thistle 

 grew from his claws. About this time 

 Loki, the evil spirit of the Norse Asgard, 

 passed that way, bent upon mischief. The 

 unpleasant qualities of the two plants at 

 once appealed to him. Loki immediately 

 gathered the seed and proceeded to sow 

 them in the fields of his enemies, the re- 

 sult being that all the good seed was 

 killed. This Aryan myth has given rise 

 to the expression, ''Sowing wild oats," 

 and is believed to be the origin of the 

 biblical story of the tares and the wheat, 

 coming into Hebrew literature by means 

 of the Indo-Tranians at the time of the 

 Israelitish exile. 



Now, Thor observed what Loki had 

 clone ; so he hurled his lianinicr at the 

 braml)lcs and a bolt of lightning at -the 

 Tliistlcs. For tliis reason (lie Ihislle blos- 

 soms arc colored red and the plants be- 

 came licjhtning plants. Rut the end was 

 not yet. The l)cantifnl goddess Freya, 



seeing the Thistles drooping under the 

 chastisement of the god, took compassion 

 and gave them to drink of the mead from 

 the sacred goat of Valhalla, by virtue of 

 which the plants became invested with 

 immortality. Thus it came to pass that 

 the Thistle has a dual life. It is a light- 

 ning plant, in which, in common with 

 similar forms, like the vervain, the hazel, 

 and the ash is never injured by light- 

 ning or approached by serpents. On the 

 other hand, it being a protege of Freya, 

 the goddess of Love, it straightway be- 

 came a powerful. love charm, and doubt- 

 less has done much execution in Cupid's 

 lists. 



The Thistle group is the most primitive 

 of the Composite family, and it bears evi- 

 dence of a vast evolutionary history. 

 There are one hundred and seventy-five 

 living species which are distributed over 

 Europe, Asia, Africa, North and South 

 America. The plants seem able to adapt 

 themselves to almost any conditions, and 

 their unpleasant spines are found bid- 

 ding defiance to the reindeer near the 

 Arctic circle, as well as successfully meas- 

 uring strength with the prickly cactus 

 and acacias of the tropics. On our own 

 prairies only plants thus armed stand 

 much show to survive the herds of cat- 

 tle that wander over them, and this pro- 

 tection, together with their great produc- 

 tiveness, have rendered Thistles such a 

 nuisance and menace to agricultural in- 

 terests as to necessitate legislative action 

 looking to their extermination. The Rus- 

 sian and Canada thistles are the worst 

 offenders, and where they once obtain a 

 foothold they, as a rule, remain. The 

 unpleasant qualities of the Thistle, how- 

 ever, served to bring about its adoption 

 as the national emblem of Scotland. The 

 story relates that during the eighth cen- 

 tury the invading Danes, while stealing 

 up to the Scotch camp under cover 

 of darkness, passed over a patch of 

 cotton thistle, and the sudden cries 

 of the ir.jurcd men warned the guards, 



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