An Ingredient in Love Potions 181 



hedge at the top of the home-field. They are most vora- 

 cious birds and literally cram their crops with this hard 

 fruit. Squirrels and mice enjoy the nuts in Hazel Corner, 

 and the thrushes and pigeons feed on the peggles which 

 cover the great hawthorn bush there so thickly as to give 

 it a reddish tint. There is a difference even in this fruit : 

 on some bushes the peggles consist mainly of the internal 

 stone, the edible coating being of the thinnest. On others 

 the stone is embedded in a thick mellow covering affording 

 twice as much food. Like other products of the hedge, 

 they are supposed to be improved by frost. 



Farther down the highway hedge, by the gateway, a 

 large elder bush, or rather tree, bears a profusion of berries. 

 Blue-black sloes adhere to — they do not hang on — the 

 blackthorn bushes : in places the boughs are loaded with 

 them. Here and there crabs cling to the tough crab tree, 

 whose bark has a dull gloss on it, something like dark 

 polished leather. Bunches of red berries shine on the 

 woodbine : fruit growing in bunches usually depends, but 

 these are often on the upper side of the stalk ; and the 

 latter bloom shows by them — flower and fruit at the same 

 time. The berry has a viscous feel. 



Larger berries — some red, some green, on the same 

 bunch — cluster on the vines of the bryony. The white 

 bryony, whose leaf is not unlike that of the grape, has a 

 magical reputation, and the cottage folk believe its root to 

 be a powerful ingredient in love potions, and also poisonous. 

 They identify it with the mandrake. If growing in or 

 close to a churchyard its virtues are increased, for, though 

 becoming fainter as they lengthen, the shadows of the old 

 superstitions linger still. Red nightshade berries — not the 

 deadly nightshade, but the ' bitter-sweet ' — hang sullenly 

 among the bushes where this creeping plant has trailed 



