hlang eher ins Feuer hinleufft,
Ehe sie durch seinen Schatten schleyfft.'

'I have been by ancients told,
The Ash tree hath this gift of old,
That snake may never 'neath it stay,
The shadow drives it, e'en, away.
Sooner a snake in fire would dash,
Than through the shadow of an Ash.'

There is yet another strange superstition connected with the Ash, which
one hardly cares to grapple with--so vast is the mass of obscure myths
and doctrines which it involves. Let it suffice to say, that from
tradition and monuments, in vast variety, it appears that in very
ancient times the Passing Through anything was a ceremony of deepest
significance and solemnity. To go through a door, to put on a ring, to
pass between upright stones (as for instance, the _dolmen_, or those of
the serpent circle of Stonehenge), to wear armlets, all referred to
going from death into life, from ignorance to knowledge, from an
unregenerate condition to reconciliation. It referred to the life
passing into the womb and coming forth as birth. Going into an ark and
quitting it, was one form of this Passing Through. Caves were also very
holy, because they furnished apt illustrations of it. Spring was
typified as going down into the womb or cave or ark or casket or goblet
of the earth, and coming forth or being poured out again in fresh
beauty. Hence it came that marriage was surrounded in earliest times by
symbols of _transit_, or Passing Through. Lovers plighted their troth in
Great Britain, as is yet done in some remote districts of Scandinavia,
by joining their clasped hands through holes in the so-called Odin
stones. As the Regenerate in the mysteries were obliged to pass through
passages in rocks, it was naturally enough believed that those who were
ill might be benefited in like manner. Of course the Ash--the tree of
Odin and of all the gods--was hallowed in popular belief by healing
virtues; and Evelyn tells us that 'the rupture, to which many children
are obnoxious, is healed by passing the infant through a wide cleft made
in the hole or stem of a growing Ash tree. It is then carried a second
time round the Ash, and caused to repass the same aperture as before.'
This act of being borne or passing around a stone or stick against the
course of the sun, is a ceremony common to certain rites among almost
all nations. It was known to Druids and Hindoos--traces of it may be
found even among the debased Fetishism which lingers among Am