she could assign was that Joe, "had helped Mr. Todd's gardener to cut
down the old hawthorn tree on the lawn; and there's them that says
that's a very bad thing to do;" adding how she "fleeched him not to touch
it, but the master he offered him six shillings if he'd help in the job, for
the other men refused." The same belief prevails in Brittany, where it is
also "held unsafe to gather even a leaf from certain old and solitary
thorns, which grow in sheltered hollows of the moorland, and are the
fairies' trysting-places."[6]
Then there is the mistletoe, which, like the hazel and the white-thorn,
was also supposed to be the embodiment of lightning; and in
consequence of its mythical character held an exalted place in the
botanical world. As a lightning-plant, we seem to have the key to its
symbolical nature, in the circumstance that its branch is forked. On the
same principle, it is worthy of note, as Mr. Fiske remarks[7] that, "the
Hindu commentators of the Veda certainly lay great stress on the fact
that the palasa is trident-leaved." We have already pointed out, too, how
the red colour of a flower, as in the case of the berries of the mountain-
ash, was apparently sufficient to determine the association of ideas. The
Swiss name for mistletoe, donnerbesen, "thunder besom," illustrates its
divine origin, on account of which it was supposed to protect the
homestead from fire, and hence in Sweden it has long been suspended in
farm-houses, like the mountain-ash in Scotland. But its virtues are by no
means limited, for like all lightning-plants its potency is displayed in a
variety of ways, its healing properties having from a remote period been
in the highest repute. For purposes also of sorcery it has been reckoned
of considerable importance, and as a preventive of nightmare and other
night scares it is still in favour on the Continent. One reason which no
doubt has obtained for it a marked degree of honour is its parasitical
manner of growth, which was in primitive times ascribed to the
intervention of the gods. According to one of its traditionary origins, its
seed was said to be deposited on certain trees by birds, the messengers of
the gods, if not the gods themselves in disguise, by which this plant
established itself in the branch of a tree. The mode of procedure, say the
old botanists, was through the "mistletoe thrush." This bird, it was
asserted, by feeding on the berries, surrounded its beak with the viscid
mucus they contain, to rid itself of which it rubbed its beak, in the course
of flying, against the branches of trees, and thereby inserted the seed
which gave birth to the new plant. When the mistletoe was found
growing on the oak, its presence was attributed specially to the gods,
and as such was treated with the deepest reverence. It was not, too, by
accident that the oak was selected, as this tree was honoured by Aryan
tradition with being of lightning origin. Hence when the mistletoe was
found on its branches, the occurrence was considered as deeply
significant, and all the more so as its existence in such a locality was held
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