3.  “Flower-lore,” p. 118.

4.  Folkard’s “Plant Legends,” p. 245.

5.  “Flower-lore,” p. 120.

6. Quarterly Review, cxiv. 231.

7.  “Flower-lore,” p. 2.

8.  Ibid.

9. Quarterly Review, cxiv. 235.

10.  Ibid., p. 239.

11.  “Flower-lore.”

12.  Folkard’s “Plant Legends,” p. 44.

13.  Folkard’s “Plant Legends,” p. 395.

14.  “Flower-lore,” p. 13.

15. Fraser’s Magazine, 1870, p. 714.

16.  “Flower-lore,” p. 14.

17.  “Flower-lore,” p. 14.

18. Quarterly Review, cxiv. 233; “Flower-lore,” p. 15.

19.  See Baring-Gould’s “Myths of the Middle Ages.”

20.  “Flower-lore,” p. 12.

21.  See chapter on Folk-Medicine.

CHAPTER XX.

PLANT SUPERSTITIONS.

The superstitious notions which, under one form or another, have clustered round the vegetable kingdom, hold a prominent place in the field of folk-lore.  To give a full and detailed account of these survivals of bygone beliefs, would occupy a volume of no mean size, so thickly scattered are they among the traditions and legendary lore of almost every country.  Only too frequently, also, we find the same superstition assuming a very different appearance as it travels from one country to another, until at last it is almost completely divested of its original dress.  Repeated changes of this kind, whilst not escaping the notice of the student of comparative folk-lore, are apt to mislead the casual observer who, it may be, assigns to them a particular home in his own country, whereas probably they have travelled, before arriving at their modern destination, thousands of miles in the course of years.

There is said to be a certain mysterious connection between certain plants and animals.  Thus, swine when affected with the spleen are supposed to resort to the spleen-wort, and according to Coles, in his “Art of Simpling,” the ass does likewise, for he tells us that, “if the asse be oppressed with melancholy, he eates of the herbe asplemon or mill-waste, and eases himself of the swelling of the spleen.”  One of the popular names of the common sow-thistle (Sonchus oleraceus) is hare’s-palace, from the shelter it is supposed to afford the hare.  According to the “Grete Herbale,” “if the hare come under it, he is sure that no beast can touch hym.”  Topsell also, in his “Natural History,” alludes to this superstition:—­“When hares are overcome with heat, they eat of an herb called Latuca leporina, that is, hare’s-lettuce, hare’s-house, hare’s-palace; and there is no disease in this beast the cure whereof she does not seek for in this herb.”