sunrise, is deemed a proteaion against thunderstorms. This last
plant is especially hateful to evil spirits, and in days gone by
was called Fuga dcemomm, dispeller of demons. In Russia, a plant,
called the Certagon, or Devil-chaser, is used to exorcise Satan or
his fiends if they torment an afflicted mourner; and in the same
country the Prikrit is a herb whose peculiar province it is to
destroy calumnies with which mischief-makers may seek to interfere
with the consummation of lovers’ bliss. Other plants induce
concord, love, and sympathy, and others again enable the owner
to forget sorrow.
Plants connected with dreams and visions have not hitherto
received much notice; but, nevertheless, popular belief has attributed
to some few—and notably the Elm, the Four-leaved
Clover, and the Russian Son-tmva—the subtle power of procuring
dreams of a' prophetic nature. Numerous plants have been
thought by the superstitious to portend certain results to the
sleeper when forming the subjea of his or her dreams. Many
examples of this belief will be found scattered through these pages.
The legends attached to fiowers may be divided into four
classes—the mythological, the ecclesiastical, the historical, and the
poetical. For the first-named we are chiefiy indebted to Ovid, and
to the Jesuit René Rapin, whose Latin poem De Hortorum Ctdtura
contains much curious plant lore current in his time. His legends,
like those of Ovid, nearly all relate to the transformation by the
gods of luckless nymphs and youths into fiowers and trees, which
have since borne their names. Most of them refer to the blossoms of
bulbous plants, which appear in the early Spring; and, as a rule,
white fiowers are represented as having originated from tears, and
pink or red fiowers from blushes or blood. The ecclesiastical
legends are principally due to the old Catholic monks, who, while
tending their fiowers in the quietude and seclusion of monastery gardens,
doubtless came to associate them with the memory of some
favourite saint or martyr, and so allowed their gentle fancy to
weave a pious fiaion wherewith to perpetuate the memory of the
saint in the name of the fiower. For many of the historical legends
we are also indebted to monastic writers, and they mostly
pertain to favourite sons and daughters of the Church. Amongst
what we have designated poetical legends must be included the
numerous fairy tales in which fiowers and plants play a not unimportant
part, as well as the stories which connecfi plants with
the doings of Trolls, Elves, Witches, and Demons. Many such
legends, both English and foreign, will be found introduced in the
following pages.
It has recently become the fashion to explain the origin of
myths and legends by a theory which makes of them mere symbols
of the phenomena appertaining to the solar system, or metaphors
of the four seasons and the different periods in a day’s span.
Thus we are told that, in the well-known story of the transformation
of Daphne into a Laurel-bush, to enable her to escape the
importunities of Apollo (see p. 404), we ought not to conceive the
idea of the handsome passionate god pursuing a coy nymph until in
despair she calls on the water-gods to change her form, but that, on
the contrary, we should regard the whole story as simply an allegory
implying that “ the dawn rushes and trembles through the
sky, and fades away at the sudden appearance of the bright sun.”
So, again, in the myth of Pan and Syrinx (p. 559), in which the
Satyr pursues the maiden who is transformed into the Reed from
which Pan fashioned his pipes, the meaning intended to be conveyed
is, we are told, that the blustering wind bends and breaks
the swaying Rushes, through which it rustles and whistles. Prof.
De Gubernatis, in his valuable work L a Mythologie des Plantes, gives
a number of clever explanations of old legends and myths, in accordance
with the “ S o la r ” theory, which are certainly ingenious,
if somewhat monotonous. Let us take, as an example, the German
story of the Watcher of the Road, which appears at page 326. In
this tale a lovely princess, abandoned for a rival by her attracftive
husband, pines away, and at last desiring to die if only she can be
sure of going somewhere where she may always watch for him, is
transformed into the waj^side Endive or Succory. Here is the
Professor’s explanation:—“ Does not the fatal rival of the young
princess, who cries herself to death on account of her dazzling
husband’s desertion, and who even in death desires still to gaze on
him, symbolise the humid night, which every evening allures the
sun to her arms, and thus keeps him from the love of his bride, who