"Chamberlain. Nay, by my faith, I think you are more beholding to the night
than to fern-seed for
your walking invisible."
In Ben Jonson's "New Inn" (i. 1), it is thus noticed:--"I had
No medicine, sir, to go invisible,
No fern-seed in my pocket."
Brand [11] was told by an inhabitant of Heston, in Middlesex, that
when he was a young man he was often present at the ceremony of
catching the fern-seed at midnight, on the eve of St. John Baptist. The
attempt was frequently unsuccessful, for the seed was to fall into a plate
of its own accord, and that too without shaking the plate. It is
unnecessary to add further illustrations on this point, as we have had
occasion to speak elsewhere of the sundry other magical properties
ascribed to the fern-seed, whereby it has been prominently classed
amongst the mystic plants. But, apart from the doctrine of signatures, it
would seem that the fern-seed was also supposed to derive its power of
making invisible from the cloud, says Mr. Kelly, [12] "that contained the
heavenly fire from which the plant is sprung." Whilst speaking, too, of
the fern-seed's property of making people invisible, it is of interest to
note that in the Icelandic and Pomeranian myths the schamir or "raven-
stone" renders its possessor invisible; and according to a North German
tradition the luck-flower is enbued with the same wonderful qualities. It
is essential, however, that the flower be found by accident, for he who
seeks it never finds it. In Sweden hazel-nuts are reputed to have the
power of making invisible, and from their reputed magical properties
have been, from time immemorial, in great demand for divination. All
those plants whose leaves bore a fancied resemblance to the moon were,
in days of old, regarded with superstitious reverence.The moon-daisy,
the type of a class of plants resembling the pictures of a full moon, were
exhibited, says Dr. Prior, "in uterine complaints, and dedicated in pagan
times to the goddess of the moon." The moonwort (Botrychium lunaria),
often confounded with the common "honesty" (Lunaria biennis) of our
gardens, so called from the semi-lunar shape of the segments of its frond,
was credited with the most curious properties, the old alchemists
affirming that it was good among other things for converting quicksilver
into pure silver, and unshoeing such horses as trod upon it. A similar
virtue was ascribed to the horse-shoe vetch (Hippocrepis comosa), so
called from the shape of the legumes, hence another of its mystic
nicknames was "unshoe the horse."