The Chrissenmas to Mayday 
This Queen of Spain’s daughter is said to have been 
Joanna of Castile, who, with her husband, Philip the Fair 
of Austria, visited her sister, Katherine of Aragon, in 1505, 
at Windsor. 
This old nursery song was illustrated in a charming 
manner by Walter Crane, showing the princess of Spain in 
a mob cap and a lovely orange brocade, and the singer as a 
dear little rustic maid in a lilac sun-bonnet. By the way, 
there are still sun-bonnets, lilac and otherwise, to be seen 
on our Border in summer-time, and also worn by the 
women in winter when sorting potatoes in the bleak wind- 
swept fields. How pretty a nut alley is ! I know an old 
garden where there is a lovely verdant bowling-green 
sheltered by a nut alley so old that the trees arch over 
one’s head, and one can quite imagine plots for the 
restoration of the well-beloved Chevalier being laid in its 
seclusion. The hazel, used as a divining-rod for water, is 
now becoming well known on the Border, but it was not so 
formerly. I have several times known instances of travel- 
ling diviners coming this way from the South, and it is not 
so very long ago that the diviner had to be introduced on 
the sly, to save him, and likewise his employer, from being 
torn in pieces by the indignant country folk, who declared 
that all such persons must be emissaries of the Devil. 
There is no doubt the wand does turn in the hands of 
some people and not with others, but hitherto there is no 
real explanation of the wherefor. Holly, willow and thorn 
have all been used, but hazel is, I think, preferred, though 
it is said the virtue does not lie in the wood. I have tried 
myself with orthodox forked hazel-rods but all to no 
purpose, while with other people the rod has been most 
active, turning up at once. Water was certainly found 
where the prophet indicated, and he also foretold correctly 
the depth down and the amount. But he could not 
explain the curious mystery. In one case the diviner 
claimed thkt the power had been in his family a long time 
and descended from father to son. He showed with pride 
testimonials that he had found water in many different 
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