of the myosotis for his lady-love, was drowned, his last words as he threw the flowers on the bank being “Forget me not.”  Another legend, already noticed, would associate it with the magic spring-wort, which revealed treasure-caves hidden in the mountains.  The traveller enters such an opening, but after filling his pockets with gold, pays no heed to the fairy’s voice, “Forget not the best,” i.e., the spring-wort, and is severed in twain by the mountain clashing together.

In speaking of the various beliefs relative to plant life in a previous chapter, we have enumerated some of the legends which would trace the origin of many plants to the shedding of human blood, a belief which is a distinct survival of a very primitive form of belief, and enters very largely into the stories told in classical mythology.  The dwarf elder is said to grow where blood has been shed, and it is nicknamed in Wales “Plant of the blood of man,” with which may be compared its English name of “death-wort.”  It is much associated in this country with the Danes, and tradition says that wherever their blood was shed in battle, this plant afterwards sprang up; hence its names of Dane-wort, Dane-weed, or Dane’s-blood.  One of the bell-flower tribe, the clustered bell-flower, has a similar legend attached to it; and according to Miss Pratt, “in the village of Bartlow there are four remarkable hills, supposed to have been thrown up by the Danes as monumental memorials of the battle fought in 1006 between Canute and Edmund Ironside.  Some years ago the clustered bell-flower was largely scattered about these mounds, the presence of which the cottagers attributed to its having sprung from the Dane’s blood,” under which name the flower was known in the neighbourhood.

The rose-coloured lotus or melilot is, from the legend, said to have been sprung from the blood of a lion slain by the Emperor Adrian; and, in short, folk-lore is rich in stories of this kind.  Some legends are of a more romantic kind, as that which explains the origin of the wallflower, known in Palestine as the “blood-drops of Christ.”  In bygone days a castle stood near the river Tweed, in which a fair maiden was kept prisoner, having plighted her troth and given her affection to a young heir of a hostile clan.  But blood having been shed between the chiefs on either side, the deadly hatred thus engendered forbade all thoughts of a union.  The lover tried various stratagems to obtain his fair one, and at last succeeded in gaining admission attired as a wandering troubadour, and eventually arranged that she should effect her escape, while he awaited her arrival with an armed force.  But this plan, as told by Herrick, was unsuccessful:—­

  “Up she got upon a wall,
  Attempted down to slide withal;
  But the silken twist untied,
  She fell, and, bruised, she died. 
  Love, in pity to the deed,
  And her loving luckless speed,
  Twined her to this plant we call
  Now the ‘flower of the wall.’”