great pestilence in Padua was preceded by the same phenomenon. [2]
Shakespeare speaks of this superstition:--
"'Tis thought the king is dead; we will not stay,
The bay-trees in our county are all withered."
Lupton, in his "Notable Things," tells us that,"If a fir-tree be touched, withered, or burned with lightning, it
signifies that the master or mistress thereof shall shortly die."
It is difficult, as we have already noted in a previous chapter, to
discover why some of our sweetest and fairest spring-flowers should be
associated with ill-luck. In the western counties, for instance, one should
never take less than a handful of primroses or violets into a farmer's
house, as neglect of this rule is said to affect the success of the ducklings
and chickens. A correspondent of Notes and Queries (I. Ser. vii. 201)
writes:--"My gravity was sorely tried by being called on to settle a
quarrel between two old women, arising from one of them having given
one primrose to her neighbour's child, for the purpose of making her
hens hatch but one egg out of each set of eggs, and it was seriously
maintained that the charm had been successful." In the same way it is
held unlucky to introduce the first snowdrop of the year into a house,
for, as a Sussex woman once remarked, "It looks for all the world like a
corpse in its shroud." We may repeat, too, again the familiar adage:--
"If you sweep the house with blossomed broom in May,
You are sure to sweep the head of the house away."
And there is the common superstition that where roses and violets
bloom in autumn, it is indicative of some epidemic in the following year;
whereas, if a white rose put forth unexpectedly, it is believed in
Germany to be a sign of death in the nearest house; and in some parts of
Essex there is a current belief that sickness or death will inevitably ensue
if blossoms of the whitethorn be brought into a house; the idea in
Norfolk being that no one will be married from the house during the
year. Another ominous sign is that of plants shedding their leaves, or of
their blossoms falling to pieces. Thus the peasantry in some places affirm
that the dropping of the leaves of a peach-tree betokens a murrain; and
in Italy it is held unlucky for a rose to do so. A well-known illustration of
this superstition occurred many years ago in the case of the unfortunate
Miss Bay, who was murdered at the piazza entrance of Covent Garden
by Hackman (April 1779), the following account of which we quote from
the "Life and Correspondence of M. G. Lewis":-- "When the carriage was