the United States the leaves have been
successfully employed as an infusion to check female fluxes, and
haemorrhages, also to hasten childbirth by stimulating the womb when
labour is protracted to the exhaustion of the mother. In Scotland
the plant is almost unknown, and is restricted to one locality only.

The Druids regarded the Mistletoe as the soul of their sacred tree--
the oak; and they taught the people to believe that oaks on which it
was seen growing were to be respected, because of the wonderful
cures which the priests were then able to effect with it, particularly
of the falling sickness. The parasite was cut from the tree with a
golden sickle at a high and solemn festival, using much ceremonial
display, it being then credited with a special power of "giving
fertility to all animals." Ovid said, "Ad viscum cantare Druidoe
solebant."

Shakespeare calls it "The baleful Mistletoe," in allusion to the
Scandinavian legend, that Balder, the god of peace, was slain with
an arrow made of Mistletoe. He was restored to life at the request of
the other gods and goddesses. The mistletoe was afterwards given to
[349] be kept by the goddess of love; and it was ordained in
Olympus that everyone who passed under it should receive a kiss, to
show that the branch was the emblem of love, and not of death.

Persons in Sweden afflicted with epilepsy carry with them a
knife having a handle of oak mistletoe, which plant they call
Thunder-besom, connecting it with lightning and fire. The thrush is
the great disseminator of the parasite. He devours the berries
eagerly, and soils, or "missels" his feet with their viscid seeds,
conveying them thus from tree to tree, and getting thence the name
of missel thrush.

In Brittany the plant is named _Herbe de la croix_, and, because the
crucifix was made from its wood when a tree, it is thought to have
become degraded to a parasite.

When Norwood, in Surrey, was really a forest the Mistletoe grew
there on the oak, and, being held as medicinal, it was abstracted for
apothecaries in London. But the men who meddled with it were said
to become lame, or to fall blind with an eye, and a rash fellow who
ventured to cut down the oak itself broke his leg very shortly
afterwards. One teaspoonful of the dried leaves, in powder, from the
appletree Mistletoe, taken in acidulated water twice a day, will cure
chronic giddiness. Sculptured sprays and berries, with leaves of
Mistletoe, fill the spandri