160 
THE ROYAL FERN. 
ferryman returned to his cottage, when a company of 
Danes rushed in; hut they hurt him not, for they 
knew that he could do them service. During the day 
and night did Osmund row backwards and forwards 
across the river (or the lake ?), ferrying troops of 
those fierce men. When the last company was put 
on shore, Osmund, kneeling beside the river’s bank, 
returned heartfelt thanks to Heaven for the preser- 
vation of his wife and child. Often in after-years did 
Osmund speak of that day’s peril ; and his fair child, 
grown up to womanhood, called the tall Fern by her 
father’s name/’ So says the heart- thrilling legend, 
touching, in its conclusion, even to the scientific 
botanist, accounting for the name of the stateliest of 
our Ferns. There is another supposition, however, 
that the name is derived from os and mund , Saxon 
words for house and strength or peace, though what 
house- strength or house-peace has to do with the 
Flowering Fern it is difficult to say. Why not even 
a third guess, hardly likely to be farther off than the 
others, that it has something to do with Osmonds — 
in old Saxon iron ore , for is it not found in the iron 
countries, in Durham and in South Wales, and in our 
own iron district of Cumberland, if not nearer than 
Loch Tyne and the river of the ferryman ? Whatever 
the origin, however, of the name given it by Linnaeus, 
the Royal Osmund is indeed the grandest of our Ferns, 
under all circumstances a handsome plant, but espe- 
cially beautiful when, in very luxuriant growth, its 
fronds, loaded at their tips by the fertile panicles, are 
bent down gracefully until they almost reach the sur- 
