“Living mortals hearing them run mad.”

Hence, various precautions were adopted.  According to Pliny, “When they intended to take up the root of this plant, they took the wind thereof, and with a sword describing three circles about it, they digged it up, looking towards the west.”  Another old authority informs us that he “Who would take it up, in common prudence should tie a dog to it to accomplish his purpose, as if he did it himself, he would shortly die.”  Moore gives this warning:—­

  “The phantom shapes—­oh, touch them not
    That appal the maiden’s sight,
  Look in the fleshy mandrake’s stem,
    That shrieks when plucked at night.”

To quote one or two more illustrations, we may mention the famous lily at Lauenberg, which is said to have sprung up when a poor and beautiful girl was spirited away out of the clutches of a dissolute baron.  It made its appearance annually, an event which was awaited with much interest by the inhabitants of the Hartz, many of whom made a pilgrimage to behold it.  “They returned to their homes,” it is said, “overpowered by its dazzling beauty, and asserting that its splendour was so great that it shed beams of light on the valley below.”

Similarly, we are told how the common break-fern flowers but once a year, at midnight, on Michaelmas Eve, when it displays a small blue flower, which vanishes at the approach of dawn.  According to a piece of folk-lore current in Bohemia and the Tyrol, the fern-seed shines like glittering gold at the season, so that there is no chance of missing its appearance, especially as it has its sundry mystic properties which are described elsewhere.

Professor Mannhardt relates a strange legend current in Mecklenburg to the effect that in a certain secluded and barren spot, where a murder had been committed, there grows up every day at noon a peculiarly-shaped thistle, unlike any other of its kind.  On inspection there are to be seen human arms, hands, and heads, and as soon as twelve heads have appeared, the weird plant vanishes.  It is further added that on one occasion a shepherd happened to pass the mysterious spot where the thistle was growing, when instantly his arms were paralysed and his staff became tinder.  Accounts of these fabulous trees and plants have in years gone been very numerous, and have not yet wholly died out, surviving in the legendary tales of most countries.  In some instances, too, it would seem that certain trees like animals have gained a notoriety, purely fabulous, through trickery and credulity.  About the middle of the last century, for instance, there was the groaning-tree at Badesly, which created considerable sensation.  It appears that a cottager, who lived in the village of Badesly, two miles from Lymington, frequently heard a strange noise behind his house, like a person in extreme agony.  For about twenty months this tree was an object of astonishment, and at last the owner of the tree, in order to discover