earts. A branch of the dried herb used to
asperge a banquet-hall made the guests more convivial[692]

The ritual used in gathering these plants--silence, various tabus,
ritual purity, sacrifice--is found wherever plants are culled whose
virtue lies in this that they are possessed by a spirit. Other plants
are still used as charms by modern Celtic peasants, and, in some cases,
the ritual of gathering them resembles that described by Pliny.[693] In
Irish sagas plants have magical powers. "Fairy herbs" placed in a bath
restored beauty to women bathing therein.[694] During the _Tain_
Cuchulainn's wounds were healed with "balsams and healing herbs of fairy
potency," and Diancecht used similar herbs to restore the dead at the
battle of Mag-tured.[695]

FOOTNOTES:

[659] Sacaze, _Inscr. des Pyren._ 255; Hirschfeld, _Sitzungsberichte_
(Berlin, 1896), 448.

[660] _CIL_ vi. 46; _CIR_ 1654, 1683.

[661] D'Arbois, _Les Celtes_, 52.

[662] Lucan, _Phar._ Usener's ed., 32; Orosius, v. 16. 6; Dio Cass.
lxii. 6.

[663] Pliny, xvi. 44. The Scholiast on Lucan says that the Druids
divined with acorns (Usener, 33).

[664] Max. Tyr. _Diss._ viii. 8; Stokes, _RC_ i. 259.

[665] Le Braz, ii. 18.

[666] Mr. Chadwick (_Jour. Anth. Inst._ xxx. 26) connects this high god
with thunder, and regards the Celtic Zeus (Taranis, in his opinion) as a
thunder-god. The oak was associated with this god because his
worshippers dwelt under oaks.

[667] Helbig, _Die Italiker in der Poebene_, 16 f.

[668] Mannhardt, _Baumkultus_; Frazer, _Golden Bough_{2} iii. 198.

[669] Frazer, _loc. cit._

[670] Evans, _Arch. Rev._ i. 327 f.

[671] Joyce, _SH_ i. 236.

[672] O'Curry, _MC_ i. 213.

[673] _LL_ 199_b_; _Rennes Dindsenchas_, _RC_ xv. 420.

[674] _RC_ xv. 455, xvi. 279; Hennessey, _Chron. Scot._ 76.

[675] Keating, 556; Joyce, _PN_ i. 499.

[676] Wood-Martin, ii. 159.

[677] D'Arbois, _Les Celtes_, 51; Jullian, 41.

[678] Cook, _Folk-Lore_, xvii. 60.

[679] See Sebillot, i. 293; Le Braz, i. 259; _Folk-Lore Journal_, v.
218; _Folk-Lore Record_, 1882.

[680] Val. Probus, _Comm. in Georgica_, ii. 84.

[681] Miss Hull, 53; O'Ourry, _MS. Mat._ 465. Writing tablets, made from
each of the trees when they were cut down, sprang together and could not
be separated.

[682] _Stat. Account_, iii. 27; Moore, 151; Sebillot, i. 262, 270.

[683] Dom Martin, i. 124; _Vita S. Eligii_, ii. 16.

[684] _Acta Sanct._ (Bolland.), July 31; Sulp. Seve