CORYLTJS. 187 



And it is a popular belief that when the Oak leafs before the Ash, 

 there will be fine weather in harvest, and an abundant crop. The 

 rhyme is less explicit in its meaning : — 



" If the Oaft 'jj before the Ash, 

 Then you 'II only get a splash. 

 If the Ash precedes the Oak, 

 Then you may expect a soak." 



But one gentleman would set aside the augury, for he asserts that 

 the Oak "always exhibits foliage before the Ash;" in which asser- 

 tion I think he is wrong. See Notes and Queries, v. p. 581 ; and vi. 

 pp. 50, 71, and 241. 



The pretty galls which grow upon the leaves so abundantly are 

 called oa&sbcrrufi. Children eat them when they are immature, and 

 have the look of cranberries ; but they deem them poisonous when 

 they are old and large. The larger galls upon the buds are named 

 oafe;:appIe£i ; and these are sometimes applied as a cure for toothache. 

 The acorn is named the oafemut. 



In a work by Radulf de Diceto, dean of London in 1183, De Mi- 

 rabilibus Anglise, as quoted by Leland in his Collectanea, i. 166, is 

 the following relation : — " In the forest of Chiviot there grows a very 

 large tree, not unlike a willow in its leaves and bark, which, at the 

 height of a man from the ground, is divided into two great branches. 

 One of these branches flourishes in the summer season, putting forth 

 leaves, &c. like other trees, and bears acorns not unlike the oak ; but 

 at the approach of winter, it loses not only its acorns and leaves, but 

 also its very bark, and so remains naked and excoriated, like a dead 

 withered stick, till on the return of summer, it recovers again its 

 bark and leaves and acorns. In like manner, as this branch vege- 

 tates in summer, so the other vegetates in winter ; and as this grows 

 dry and withered in winter, so the other assumes the same appear- 

 ance in the summer months." An individual, who lived in Wooler 

 in 1769, went in search of this tree, but unfortunately he could not 

 find it. " I have made," says the honest man, who calls himself 

 Tetralogus, " many long and laborious searches after it upon those 

 mountains, but, alas ! in vain ; whence I conclude it is no longer an 

 inhabitant of those venerable hoary hills." Newcastle Literary Ee- 

 gister, or Weekly Miscellany, 1769, p. 175. 



531. CoRYLUS AVELLANA. Ci)e ?^a^fX t Cl^t put^huMj. Deans. 

 — Hazel supplies the peasant with his walking-stick, and the rustic 

 angler with his fishing-rod. To go agathering nuts in the autumn 

 is a favourite employ with young people. To find a cluster of nine, — 

 " a ninesome bobbin," — is fortunate, for it is a love-charm to dream 

 upon, and it has its prophetic suggestions. Hazels do well when they 

 produce a good crop every alternate year ; and between the hazel 

 and the corn crop the husbandman has noted a sympathetic corre- 

 spondence. The time of ripening is the same ; and the barrenness 

 or plenty of the one indicates a corresponding want or abundance of 

 the other. The catkins are called, in Berwickshire, fta^ftpalmji. 



