Midsummer to Michaelmas 
stream in the shadow of an old Lime-tree, with their long 
fair hair flowing over their shoulders. They looked like Dryads 
or Wood-nymphs. The Harebells are out now in masses 
by the roadsides and Golden Ragwort, called Fizzgigs in the 
Merse, purple Vetch, yellow Crowfoot, and wild Rasps. The 
smaller Canterbury Bells are now looking lovely, and I 
have a Pyramidalis with 2 1 splendid blue spires. Clarkia 
elegans is in bloom, and is certainly a most elegant little bush. 
The Plume Poppies ( Bocconias ) and Ox-eyes ( Bupthalmiums ) 
are looking very handsome. The Strawberries are over ; 
they do not seem to have lasted as long as usual this year. 
In Bavaria there is a delightful idea that to ensure plenty of 
milk the farmer must tie a basketful of Wild Strawberries to 
each cow’s head, between the horns, lest the Elves cause 
the milk to dry up. The Strawberry was one of the plants 
dedicated to the Virgin in some places. 
August 4. — The Phloxes are beginning ; they are delight- 
ful old-fashioned flowers, but still, to me, too autumnal to be 
real joys. The Red Flax is in flower, rather late, I think, 
owing to the drought. Flax or Lint ( Linum usitatissimum ) 
used to be grown in the days of Turner (about 1550) 
“ very plentuously in the north parte of England,” and it 
was grown in the nineteenth century for use by the farmers, 
who paid some part of their retainers’ wages in kind with 
it. There are places hereabouts whose name tells of this 
old cultivation, such as Linthill and Lintlaw. On the 
moors the Linum catharticum was called Fairy Lint, and 
it was said to be used by the Fairies to make linen. There 
are many curious superstitions about Flax. In Thuringia, 
if a maiden at her wedding puts a bit of Flax in her shoe 
she is ensured against poverty. Another German idea is, if 
you sprinkle a sickly baby with Flax-seed on Midsummer’s 
Day, the child being laid naked on the grass, as the seeds 
rooting grow tall and strong so will the baby flourish. In 
Bohemia there is a fancy that seven-year-old children 
become beautiful by dancing among growing Flax. In 
Brittany, on St. John’s Eve, lovers — the women bearing 
Flax-flowers and the men green Wheat-ears — used to gather 
217 
