Stray Leaves from a Border Garden 
He made himself a pair of holy beads : 
The fifty aves were of gooseberries ; 
The paternosters and the holy creeds, 
Were made of red and goodly fair ripe cherries : 
Blessing his marigold with ave-maries 
And on a staff made of a fennel stalk, 
The beadroll hangs, while he along did walk ; 
And with the flower monkshood makes a cowl, 
And of gray dock got himself a gown, 
And, looking like a fox or holy fool, 
He barbs his little beard and shaves his crown ; 
And in his pilgrimage goes up and down : 
And with a wabret leaf he made a wallet 
With scrip, to beg his crumbs and pick his sallet. 
A Wabret-leaf is old Scotch for a Plantain-leaf, from the 
Anglo-Saxon waybrede. 
William Lawson, that delightful old-time gardener, says, 
“ Store of bees in a dry and war me Beehouse, comely made 
of Firboordes, to sing and sit and feede upon your 
Flowers and sprouts, make a pleasant noyse and Sight.” 
Certainly a garden without Bees would be almost as bad as 
a garden without Birds. The other day, as I was leaning 
over the little gate by the Gardener’s cottage, a man came 
by who told the Gardener’s wife if she wished a fine swarm 
of bees, her husband would find one in the village poor- 
house, which, for want of use, is nigh a ruin. To-day I 
find the swarm is snugly installed in a tea-box close to the 
Carnation-bed. 
To be beeheadit was an old Scots term for being 
unsettled. 
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