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who besmeared with blood a veil which the virgin dropped in her
flight. Soon afterwards Pyramus reached the spot, and finding
the bloody ved, concluded that Xhisbe had been torn to pieces.
Overcome with grief, he stabbed himself with his sword; and
Ihisbe , shortly returning, and beholding her lover in his death
throes, threw herself upon the fatal weapon. With her last breath
she prayed that her ashes should be mingled with her lover’s in one
urn, and that the fruit of the white Mulberry-tree, under which the
tragedy occurred, should bear witness of their constancy by ever
after assuming the colour of their blood.
“ The prayer which dying Thisbe had preferred
Both gods and parents with compassion heard.
The whiteness of the Mulberry soon fled,
And ripening, saddened in a dusky red ;
While both their parents their lost children mourn,
And mix their ashes in one golden vnnA—Ffisden.
Lord Bacon tells us that in Calabria Manna falls upon the leaves
of Mulberry-trees during the night, from whence it is afterwards
colledfed.- Pliny called the Mulberry the wisest of trees, because
It IS late in unfolding its leaves, and thus escapes the
dangerous frosts of early spring. To this day, in Gloucestershire,
the country folks have a saying that after the Mulberry-tree has
shown Its green leaves there will be no more frost. At Gioiosa
m Sicily, on the day of St. Nicholas that saint is believed to bless
the sea and the land, and the populace sever a branch from a
Mulberry-tree and preserve it for one year as a branch of good
augury. In Germany, at Iserlohn, the mothers, to deter the
children from eatmg the Mulberries, sing to them that the Devil
requires them for the purpose of blacking his boots. According
to Gerarde, “ Hegesander, mAtheneus, affirmeth that the Mulberry"^
tree in his time did not bring forth fruit in twenty yeares together,
and that so great a plague of the gout then raigned, and raged so
generally, as not onely men, but boies, wenches, eumiches, and
women were troubled with that disease.” A Mulberry-tree
planted by Milton in the garden of Christ’s College, Cambridge, has
been reverentially preserved by successive college gardeners. The
Mulberry planted by Shakspeare in Stratford-on-Avon was recklessly
cut down in 1 759; but ten years later, when the freedom of
the town was presented to Garrick, the document was enclosed in
a casket made from the wood of the tree. A cup was also wroiitot
from It, and at the Shakspeare Jubilee, Garrick, holding this cup
aloft, sang the following lines composed by himself:__
“ Behold this fair goblet, ’twas carved from the tree
Which, O my sweet Shakspeare, was planted by thee;
As a relic I kiss it, and bow at the shrine ; ’
What comes from thy hand must be ever divine!
All shall yield to the Mulberry-tree;
Bend to the blest Mulberry;
Matchless was he who planted thee;
And thou, like him, immortal shall be.”
1 ■■ll
To dream of Mulberries is of good import: they denote marriage,
many children, and all sorts of prosperity: they are particular^
ffivourable to sailors and farmers.— Among the hill tribes of
Burmah, the Mulberry-tree is regarded as sacred, and receives a
fend of worship.— A Chinese folk-lore tale records that in the
Tse dynasty, one Chang Ching, going out at night, saw a woman
m the south corn^ of his house. She beckoned him to come to
her, and sa id : “ This is your honour’s Mulberry-ground, and I
am a shen (fairy); if you will make next year, in the middle of the
first moon, some thick congee and present it to me, I will engage
to make your Mulberry-trees a hundred times more productive ”
Ching made the congee, and afterwards had a great crop of silkworms.
Hence came the Chinese custom of making thickened
congee on the fifteenth of the first month.
1 (Verhascum.) was formerly employed
by wizards and witches in their incantations. The plant is
known as the Flannel-flower from its stem and large leaves being
covered with wool, which is often plucked off for tinder The
Great M f e in (V. T h f sus) was called by the old Romans Candela
regta, and Cafelana, because they used the stalks dipped in suet
torches; the modern Romans call the
plant Light of the Lord. In England, the White Mullein was
termed Candle-week-flower ; and the Great Mullein’s tall tapering
spikes of yellow flowers suggested, at a period when candles were
burnt in churches, the old names of Torches, Hedge-taper Hinh-
taper, and Hig-taper, which became corrupted into Ha¿-taper
from a belief that witches employed the plant in working thei^
spells. - The little Moth Mullein (V. Blattaria) derives its specific
name irom Uatta,^ a cockroach, it being particularly disliked bv
that troublesome insecff. Gerarde explains its English prefix bv
stating that moths and butterflies, and all other small flies and bats
resort_ to the place where these herbs are laid or strewed ^
Mullein IS known by country people as Bullock’s Lungwort a de-
cocffion of the leaves being considered very efficacious in céses of
cough : probably we are indebted to the Romans for this specific for
they attnbuted extraordinary properties to the Mullein as a remedv
ior coughs. (See also H a g - t a p e r ).
M U GW O R T .—The old Latin name Tor this species of
Wormwood was Artemisia, mater herbarum; and, according to
Gerarde, the plant was so named after Artemisia, the wife of
Mausolus, King of Caria, who adopted it for her own herb.
“ That with the yellow crown, named from the queen
Who built the Mausoleum.”— ‘Amaryttthus.’
Other authorities say that Artemisia is derived from Artemis one
of the names of Diana, and that the plant was named after'that
goddess, on account of its being used in bringing on precocious!
puberty. Among the ancients, the Mugwort had a reputation for
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