184 
PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 
You will find in many of the published accounts of Bristol 
Cathedral the statement that the carving round one of the 
Berkeley recesses represents the Mistletoe, and is the only 
example of the plant in English church architecture. This is 
a mistake. The plant in question is a branch of maple with its 
winged fruit pods, distorted at some partial restoration by an 
ignorant craftsman to the resemblance of the berry and twin 
leaves of the Mistletoe. For centuries after the religious cere- 
monies of the Druids had ceased the Mistletoe passed out of use 
at Yule-tide, and it is only within the last 200 years that any 
reference is made in literature to the shrub as a decoration at 
jthat season. 
Interest in the plant has been kept alive by many of the 
minor poets, but I cannot find that they make more than a pass- 
ing allusion to it, such as is recognised by every one. 
Its mode of growth, " 'twixt heaven and earth," exercised the 
minds of the Elizabethan writers. Shakespeare alludes to it 
but once, and, describing it as i( the baleful mistletoe," shows 
that he recognised its pernicious growth. Tennyson calls it 
" the sacred bush," and the early herbalists tell of its wonderful 
medicinal virtues, which, however, have lost their esteem in 
modern science, and the viscid fruit is now chiefly used in making 
fly-papers. 
Some of you may recall a picture by Turner in the National 
Gallery, painted about 1834, that was inspired by the plant. It 
is named " The Golden Bough," and depicts in gorgeous colours 
a small lake amidst Italian mountain scenery, with some grace- 
ful female figures moving about in joyous life. One of these 
has just cut with a sickle a bough from a stone pine, and holds it 
aloft to catch the rays of the sun, which turn it to the brightest 
gold. The whole picture was inspired by a passage in Virgil, 
that compares such an illumined bough in the Inferno to the 
Mistletoe, which, as you know, often assumes a yellowish hue 
in winter time ; and the fanciful name of " Tree of pure gold " 
still clings to it amongst the Welsh. 
In Scandinavian history the Mistletoe has always had a mystic 
and religious meaning. In some of the poems of that country, 
written before the people gave up their many Pagan gods to 
adopt Christianity, an account is given of the death of Balder, 
chief of all the gods, killed by an arrow made from a bough 
of Mistletoe. He was under the protection of the spirits of the 
earth and air, fire and water, who had promised that, through 
them, no harm should come to their god, but the Mistletoe, 
which sprung from none of these, had been overlooked, and so 
was used as a weapon by the spirit of evil to prevail against his 
enemy. But the enchantments of the gods were all-powerful, 
and through them Balder was brought back to life, and to pre- 
vent further mischief from the Mistletoe the plant was henceforth 
placed under the control of the Goddess of Love. 
