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the Tabernacles. Incombination with Horse-radish, the plant, boiled
for a decocition, is said to be serviceable in cases of dropsy ; and its
boughs are often used in this country for flogging chilblains.------
Butcher’s Broom has been used and claimed by the Earls of Sutherland
as the distinguishing badge of their followqirs and clan. The
present Duke retains it, and every Sutherland volunteer still wears
a sprig of Butcher’s Broom in his bonnet on field days.------
Butcher’s Broom is under the dominion of Mars.
B u t t e r c u p s .— See Ranunculus.
C A B B A G E .—A Grecian legend recounts that the Cabbage
{Brassica) sprang from the tears of Lycurgus, Prince of Thrace,
whom Dionysus had bound to a Vine-stock as a punishment for
the destrucition of Vines of which the Prince had been guilty.
Perhaps this ancient legend may account for the belief that the
Cabbage, like the Laurel, is inimical to the V in e ; and it may also
have given rise to the employment by the Egyptians and the
Greeks of this vegetable as a most powerful remedy for the intoxication
produced by the fruit of the Vine. Bacon, in his Sylva Syl-
varum, says: “ So the Colewort (Cabbage) is not an enemy (though
that were anciently received) to the Vine onely; but it is an enemy
to any other plant, because it draweth strongly the fattest juyce
of the earth.” He also tells us that “ it is reported that the shrub
called Our Ladie’s Seal (which is a kinde of Briony) and Coleworts,
set neare together, one or both will die.” Gerarde says that the
Greeks called the Cabbage Amethustos, “ not onely because it
driveth away drunkennesse, but also for that it is like in colour to the
pretious stone called the Amethyst.” The ancient lonians, in
their oaths, invoked the Cabbage. Nicander calls the Cabbage a
sacred plant. ^In Scotland, young women determine the figure
and size of their future husbands by drawing Cabbages, blindfolded,
on Hallowe’en. In some country places, the housewife
considers it a lucky omen if her Cabbages grow “ double,” i.e., with
two shoots from one root; or “ lucker,” that is, with the leaves spreading
open. A Cabbage stalk or stump is a favourite steed upon
which the “ good people,” or fairies, are wont to travel in the air. Mr.
Croker, in his ‘ Fairy Legends of Ireland,’ relates that at Dundaniel,
a village near Cork, in a pleasant outlet called Blackrock, there
lived not many years ago a gardener named Crowley, who was
considered by his neighbours as under fairy control, and suflered
from what they termed “ the falling sickness” resulting from the
fatigue attendant on the journeys which he was compelled to ta k e ;
being forced to travel night after night with the eood people on one
of his own Cabbage-stumps. The Italian expressions, “ Go among
the Cabbages,” and “ Go hide among the Cabbages,” mean to die.
In the North, however, children are told that “ Baby was fetched out
of the Cabbage-bed.” In Jersey, the Palm Cabbage is much cultivated,
and reaches a considerable height. In L a Vendee, the Csesarean
Cow Cabbage grows sixteen feet high. Possibly these gigantic
Cabbages may have given rise to the nursery tales of some of the
continental states, in which the young hero emulates the exploits of
the English Jack and his Bean-stalk, by means of a little Cabbage,
which grows larger and larger, and finally, becoming colossal,
reaches the sk ie s.-— In England, there is a nursery legend
which relates how the three daughters of a widow were one day
sent into the kitchen garden to protedt the Cabbages from the
ravages of a grey horse which was continually stealing them.
Watching their opportunity, they caught him by the mane and
would not be shaken off; so the grey horse trotted away to a
neighbouring hill, dragging the three girls after him. Arrived at
the hill, he commanded it to open, and the widows’ daughters found
themselves in an enchanted palace. A tradition in the Havel
country. North Germany, relates that one Christmas Eve a peasant
felt a great desire to eat Cabbage, and having none himself, he
slipped into a neighbour’s garden to cut some. Just as he had
filled his basket, the Christ Child rode past on his white horse, and
said: “ Because thou hast stolen on the holy night, thou shalt
immediately sit in the moon with thy basket of Cabbage.” The
culprit was immediately wafted up to the moon, and there, as the
man in the moon, he is still undergoing his penalty for stealing
Cabbages on Christmas E v e . To dream of cutting Cabbages
denotes jealousy on the part of wife, husband, or lover, as the case
may be. To dream of anyone else cutting them portends an
attempt by some person to create jealousy in the loved one’s mind.
To dream of eating Cabbage implies sickness to loved ones and loss
of money. Cabbages are plants of the Moon.
C A C T U S .—The Cadti are for the most part natives of South
America, where their weird and grotesque columns or stems, devoid
of leaves, dot with green the arid plains of New Barcelona or the
dark hillsides of Mexico and California. They often attain the
height of fifty feet, and live to such an age as to have gained the
name of “ imperishable statues.” Standing for centuries, they
have been seledted to mark national boundaries, as for instance,
between the English and French possessions in the Island of St.
Christopher, West Indies, and they are also employed as hedges to
lanes and roadv/ays. In the arid plains of Mexico and Brazil, the
Ca6ti serve as reservoirs of moisture, and not only the natives, by
probing the fleshy stems with their long forest knives, supply themselves
with a cool and refreshing juice, but even the parched cattle
contrive to break through the skin with their hoofs, and then to
suck the liquid they contain. The splendid colours of the Cacflus
flowers are in vivid contrast with the ugly and ungainly stems.-----
There are sundry local legends and superstitions about these plants
of the desert. A certain one poisons every white spot on a horse, but
not one of any other colour. Another, eaten by horses, makes them
lazy and imbecile. The number of known genera is eighteen.