accomplish his purpose, as if he did it himself, he would shortly die."
Moore gives this warning:--
"The phantom shapes--oh, touch them not
That appal the maiden's sight,
Look in the fleshy mandrake's stem,
That shrieks when plucked at night."
To quote one or two more illustrations, we may mention the famous
lily at Lauenberg, which is said to have sprung up when a poor and
beautiful girl was spirited away out of the clutches of a dissolute baron.
It made its appearance annually, an event which was awaited with much
interest by the inhabitants of the Hartz, many of whom made a
pilgrimage to behold it. "They returned to their homes," it is said,
"overpowered by its dazzling beauty, and asserting that its splendour
was so great that it shed beams of light on the valley below." Similarly,
we are told how the common break-fern flowers but once a year, at
midnight, on Michaelmas Eve, when it displays a small blue flower,
which vanishes at the approach of dawn. According to a piece of folk-
lore current in Bohemia and the Tyrol, the fern-seed shines like glittering
gold at the season, so that there is no chance of missing its appearance,
especially as it has its sundry mystic properties which are described
elsewhere.
Professor Mannhardt relates a strange legend current in Mecklenburg
to the effect that in a certain secluded and barren spot, where a murder
had been committed, there grows up every day at noon a peculiarly-
shaped thistle, unlike any other of its kind. On inspection there are to be
seen human arms, hands, and heads, and as soon as twelve heads have
appeared, the weird plant vanishes. It is further added that on one
occasion a shepherd happened to pass the mysterious spot where the
thistle was growing, when instantly his arms were paralysed and his
staff became tinder. Accounts of these fabulous trees and plants have in
years gone been very numerous, and have not yet wholly died out,
surviving in the legendary tales of most countries. In some instances, too,
it would seem that certain trees like animals have gained a notoriety,
purely fabulous, through trickery and credulity. About the middle of the
last century, for instance, there was the groaning-tree at Badesly, which
created considerable sensation. It appears that a cottager, who lived in
the village of Badesly, two miles from Lymington, frequently heard a
strange noise behind his house, like a person in extreme agony. For
about twenty months this tree was an object of astonishment, and at last
the owner of the tree, in order to discover the cause of its supposed
sufferings, bored a hole in the trunk. After this operation it ceased to
groan, it was rooted up, but nothing appeared to account for its strange