Pter/s. 
33 
That hour when heaven’s breath is still — 
I’ll seek the shaggy fern-clad hill, 
Where time has delved a dreary dell, 
Befitting best a hermit’s cell ; 
And watch, ’mid murmurs muttering stern, 
The seed departing from the fern. 
Ere wakeful demons can convey 
The wonder-working charm away, 
And tempt the blows from arm unseen, 
Should thoughts unholy intervene.” 
Occasionally, however, though rarely, another date was selected ; Mr. Kelly* tells us that in 
Swabia they say that fern-seed brought by the devil between eleven and twelve o’clock on 
Christmas night enables a man to do as much work as twenty or thirty ordinary men. 
In France it was formerly believed that internal disorders of all kinds would be cured if 
the patient wore on his person a girdle of ferns, gathered at midnight on St. John’s eve, and so 
arranged as to form the mystic letters HVTY. The use of this girdle was condemned by a 
Synod held at Bordeaux in 1600; and a similar assembly at Ferrara in 1612 censured any one 
who should collect either ferns or fern-seed on the night preceding the day of St. John Baptist. 
Turner, our earliest writer upon English plants, gives the evidence of a German contemporary 
to show that ferns really did produce seed on Midsummer eve, but there is an amusing air of 
mystery about his account. Premising that a “ Christen Phisicion, named Hieronymus Tragus, 
doth not onlye saye that Feme hath sede, but wrytith that he founde upon mydsomer even 
sede upon Brakes,” he proceeds to translate his words as follows : — 
“ Although that all they that have writen of herbes have affyrmed and holden that the Brake hath nether sede 
nor frute : yet have I dyvers tymes proved the contrarye whiche thinge I will testefye here in this place for there 
sakes that be studentes in the knowledge of herbes. I have foure yeres together one after an other upon the vigill 
of saynt John the Baptiste (whiche we call in Englishe mydsomer even) soughte for this sede of Brakes upon the 
nyghte, and indede I founde it earlye in the mornynge before the daye brake; the sede was small blacke and lyke unto 
poppye. I gatherid it after this maner : I laide shetes and mollen leaves underneth the brakes whiche receyved the 
sede that was by shakynge and beatynge broughte oute of the branches and leaves. Manye brakes in some places 
had no sede at all, but in other places agayne a man shall fynde sede in everye brake, so that a man maye gather 
a hundred oute of one brake alone, but I went aboute this busynes, all figures, conjurynges, saunters, charmes, 
wytchcrafte, and sorseryes sett a syde, takynge wyth me two or three honest men to bere me companye 
Sometyme when I soughte the sede I founde it and sometyme I founde it not. Sometyme I founde muche and 
sometyme lytle ; but what shoulde be the cause of this diversyte or what nature meaneth in this thinge, surelye I 
can not tel.” 
That “ figures, conjurynges,” and the like, were associated with the gathering of fern-seed 
we gather from a very explicit account of the modus operandi formerly pursued in Staffordshire. 
Having arrived at a suitable spot, a circle was drawn round the would-be gatherer, in which 
the twelve signs of the zodiac were inscribed ; twelve pewter plates, one within another, were then 
to be placed under the fern, and the following distich recited : — 
“ In the holy name of Jesus may I be freed 
From every harm while gathering Fern-seed.” 
After this, silence was to be observed until one o’clock, nor must the circle be quitted ; the seed 
will then be found in the twelfth plate, having passed through the eleven others. 
In Surflet’s “ Countrie Farme” (1600) there is a passage which shows that fern-seed could 
be collected at home, without the necessity of exposure to the perils which sometimes attacked 
* “ Curiosities of Indo-European Tradition and Folk-lore,” p. 193. 
