ON THE WHITE CLOVEE. 
343 
trefoil of Ireland, for it does not arrive at perfection until con- 
siderably after the 1 7 tli of March, or St. Patrick’s Day. The 
term Shamrock seems to be a general application for all trefoils 
or three-leaved plants, both in ancient and modern poetry and 
prose. Piers, in speaking- of the early spring-time in Ireland, 
says, “ For then the milk becomes plenty, and butter and new 
cheese, and curds and shamrocks, are the food of the meaner 
sort all this season and Wither, in his “ Abuses Stript and 
Whipt,” written in 1613, says : — 
“ And for my cloathing in a mantle goe 
And feed on shamroots as the Irish doe.” 
This notion of using the shamrock as food renders it more 
probable that the oxalis was meant than the clover, although 
either might have been devoured by the starving peasantry so 
graphically described by Spenser, in his “ View of the State of 
Ireland.” He says : — 
“ Out of every corner of the woods and glynnes they come creeping forth 
upon their hands, for their legs could not hear them ; they looked like 
anatomies of death, they spoke like ghosts crying out of their graves, they 
did eat the dead carrions, and if they found a plot 0 f watercresses or sham- 
rocks, there they flocked as to a feast.” 
An Irish friend of ours who sticks to the oxalis, which is a 
lover of woods and shady places, as the veritable shamrock, 
quotes the “ Irish Hudibras” against our Trifolium 
“ Within a wood near to this place 
There grows a hunch of tliree-leayed grass 
Called hy the hoglanclers, ‘ sham rogues,’ 
A present for the queen of shoges (spirits).” 
However, Irishmen now-a-days are for the most part content 
to mount a sprig of clover on St. Patrick’s Day, for the 
cultivation which has brought in the more useful plant has in a 
great measure driven out the more poetical oxalis. 
In all ages there has been a sort of mystic reverence surround- 
ing the notion of a Trinity, and this idea seems embodied by tiro 
imaginative and poetical Irish in the triple leaflet. Whenever 
this sacred leaf is found to depart from its usual form, and to 
produce four leaflets, its mystic power is said to be greatly 
enhanced, and the fortunate finder of the leaf is sure of good 
fortune for life. Its power in dispelling illusions will account 
for the story of the maiden who, on returning from milking, 
saw the fairies dancing gaily on every rising ground, though 
her companions could discern nothing, and would not believe 
her until it was discovered that accidentally a four-leaved trefoil 
had got into her shoe, and had overcome the “ illusion or 
defect of sight,” which prevents ordinary mortals from seeing 
