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among ruins and in waste places, and being unsavoury and
offensive to to the senses.
“ By the witches’ tower,
Where Hellebore and Hemlock seem to weave
Round its dark vaults a melancholy bower
For spirits of the dead at night’s enchanted hour.”
The Hebrew prophet Hosea says of this sinister plan t: “ Judgment
springeth up as Hemlock in the furrows of the field.” At the end
of Summer the dead stalks of the Hemlock rattle in the wind, and
are called by country folk Kecksies, an old English word applied to
the dry hollow stalks of umbelliferous plants. Formerly the Hemlock
was called Kex. Astrologers assign the plant to Saturn.
H EM P .—Herodotus speaks of Hemp [Cannabis sativa) as a
novelty in his time, lately introduced into Thrace from Scythia.------
A curious prophecy relating to English kings and queens, and the
prosperity of England, has been preserved by Lord Bacon, who heard
of it when Queen Elizabeth was “ in the fiower of her age” :—
When Hempe is spun,
England’s done.”
“ Whereby it was generally conceived that, after the princes had
reigned, which had the principal letters of that word Hempe
(which were Henry, Edward, Mary, Philip, and Elizabeth), England
should come to utter confusion, which is verified in the change of
the name; for that the king’s style is now no more of England, but
of Britain.” In some parts of the country, on Midsummer Eve,
but in Derbyshire on St. Valentine’s Eve, as the clock strikes
twelve, young women desirous of knowing their future husbands
go into a churchyard, and run round the church, scattering Hemp-
seed, and repeating the while, without stopping, these lines:—
“ I sow Hemp-seed : Hemp-seed I sow :
He that loves me the best
Come after me and mow.”
The sowing of Hemp-seed is performed by maidens, at midnight,
on Midsummer E v e in Cornwall, on St. Martin’s night in Norfolk,
and on All Hallow E v e in Scotland; the incantation being completed
by the recital of the following or similar lines:—
“ Hemp-seed I sow thee,
Hemp-seed grow thee :
And he who will my true-love be
Come after me and show thee.”
The figure of the girl’s lover, it is then supposed, will appear and
run after her. In the poem of ‘ The Cottage Girl,’ the rite of
sowing Hemp-seed is thus described :—
“ To issue from beneath the thatch,
With trembling hand she lifts the latch,
And steps, as creaks the feeble door,
With cautious feet the threshold o’e r ;
Lest, stumbling on the horseshoe dim.
Dire spells unsinew ev’ry limb.
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“ Lo ! shudd’ring at the solemn deed,
She scatters round the magic seed,
And thidce repeats., ‘ The seed I sow,
My true-love’s scythe the crop shall mow.’
Straight, as her frame fresh horrors freeze,
Her true love with his scythe she sees.
“ And next, she seeks the Yew-tree shade,
Where he who died for love is laid;
There binds, upon the verdant sod
By many a moonlight fairy trod,
The Cowslip and the Lily-wreath
She wove her Hawthorn hedge beneath;
And whisp’ring, ‘ Ah ! may Colin prove
As constant as thoU wast to love ! ’
Kisses, with pale lip full of dread,
The turf that hides his clay-cold head! ”
Perhaps the origin of this custom of Hemp-sowing is the facit that
from Hemp is made cord, which is used to bind, attach, or secure
an objecit. The Sicilians, indeed, employ Hemp as a charm to
secure the affecffion of those they love. De Gubernatis tells us
that, on Friday (the day consecrated to the remembrance of our
Lord’s Passion), they take a Hempen thread, and twenty-five
needlefuls of coloured silk; and at midnight they plait this, saying:
“ Chistu ^ cdmiava di Christu,
S ervip i aitaccaH a chistu!
Forthwith they go to the church with the plait in their hands, and
enter at the moment of the Consecration : then they tie three knots
in the plait, previously adding a little of the hair of the loved one ;
after which they invoke all evil spirits to entice the person beloved
towards the person who craves his or her love. In Piedmont,
there is a belief that Hemp spun on the last day of Carnival will
bring bad luck. On that day, in some distriffis, the following ceremony
is gone through to divine what sort of Hemp crop may be
expecfied:—A bonfire is lighted, and the direction of the fiames is
attentively watched : if the fiames mount straight upwards, the
crop will be good; but if they incline either way, it will be ’bad.
In the C6tes-du-Nord, France, there is a belief that Hemp
enrages those who have been bitten by dogs. When fowls eat
Hemp-seed, they cease to lay, and commence to sit. It is customary
to leave the finest sprig of Hemp, that the bird St. Martin
may be able to rest on it. The Egyptians prepare an intoxicating
substance from Hemp, called Hashish. This they roll into
balls the size of a Chesnut, and after having swallowed a few of
these, they experience ecstatic visions. The Arabians concodt
a preparation of Hemp, which produces the most varied hallucinations,
so _ that those who are intoxicated by it imagine that
they are fiying, or that they are changed into a statue, that their
head is cut off, that their limbs stretch out to immense lengths, or
that they can see, even through stone wails, “ the colour of the
thoughts of others” and the words of their'neighbours. In the
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