Stray Leaves from a Border Garden 
instance when I heard thunder and saw snow at the same 
time. A Danish cure for toothache is to put an Elder- 
twig in the mouth and then poke it into a wall, saying, 
“ Depart, evil spirit.” I think it was in a copy of Ander- 
sen’s “ Fairy Tales ” I once saw a gruesome picture of the 
Spirit Toothache, gaunt and thin and white, like a claw- 
fingered skeleton. 
June 17. — Still very hot. The pink Pyrethrums are all 
out, and look so pretty ; also the French turban Ranunculus, 
like the daintiest and freshest cream-coloured rosettes. 
The lane I call Sweetbriar Lane I sometimes think I must 
rechristen May Lane, it is so gorgeous with sweet white 
bloom. Gawin Douglas, the delightful old Bishop of 
Dunkeld, in his too little known lovely description of May, 
says, “ the bloomed Hawthorn clad his pykis all.” The 
Greeks had a pretty fashion of decking the altars at 
weddings with Hawthorn-blossoms, and the bride generally 
wore a wreath of Hawthorn. I remember being told it was 
unlucky to bring May into the house— Bring May in, bring 
Death in ” ; another reason against it urged to me was, that 
out of a house whereto Hawthorn-bloom is brought no 
daughters will be asked to go. This last superstition also 
clings to Peacocks’ feathers. In India it is thought very 
unlucky to bring them into the house at all, yet I love them, 
and have great bunches of them. 
June 19. — It is twenty-six days to-day since we have had 
a drop of rain — the longest successive period of drought for 
fifty-four years, except in the year 1869, when it was twenty- 
nine days. The farmers are all lamenting they have had to 
sow Turnips three and four times over, and the fruit-blossom 
is all dropping off. This evening we heard faintly across 
the little river the sound of a violin and concertina, evidently 
labourers dancing reels at the far-off farmsteading. It 
sounded so pretty in the evening quiet ! 
June 20.— -Between 2 and 3 o’clock this morning a 
Thrush was singing beautifully in a far-away, sweet trilling 
voice, but in the extreme stillness of the night I heard 
every note that the “ throstly cock ” sang. With the waking 
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