hology," [8] relates how a man in Westphalia was looking on
Midsummer night for a foal he had lost, and happened to pass through a
meadow just as the fern-seed was ripening, so that it fell into his
shoes. In the morning he went home, walked into the sitting-room and sat
down, but thought it strange that neither his wife nor any of the family
took the least notice of him. "I have not found the foal," said he.
Thereupon everybody in the room started and looked alarmed, for they
heard his voice but saw him not. His wife then called him, thinking he
must have hid himself, but he only replied, "Why do you call me? Here I
am right before you." At last he became aware that he was invisible,
and, remembering how he had walked in the meadow on the preceding
evening, it struck him that he might possibly have fern-seed in his
shoes. So he took them off, and as he shook them the fern-seed dropped
out, and he was no longer invisible. There are numerous stories of this
kind; and, according to Dr. Kuhn, one method for obtaining the fern-seed
was, at the summer solstice, to shoot at the sun when it had attained
its midday height. If this were done, three drops of blood would fall,
which were to be gathered up and preserved--this being the fern-seed. In
Bohemia, [9] on old St. John's Night (July 8), one must lay a communion
chalice-cloth under the fern, and collect the seed which will fall
before sunrise. Among some of the scattered allusions to this piece of
folk-lore in the literature of our own country, may be mentioned one by
Shakespeare in "I Henry IV." (ii. 1):--

"_Gadshill_. We have the receipt of fern-seed, we walk invisible----[10]

"_Chamberlain_. Nay, by my faith, I think you are more beholding
to the night than to fern-seed for your walking invisible."

In Ben Jonson's "New Inn" (i. 1), it is thus noticed:--

"I had
No medicine, sir, to go invisible,
No fern-seed in my pocket."

Brand [11] was told by an inhabitant of Heston, in Middlesex, that when
he was a young man he was often present at the ceremony of catching the
fern-seed at midnight, on the eve of St. John Baptist. The attempt was
frequently unsuccessful, for the seed was to fall into a plate of its
own accord, and that too without shaking the plate. It is unnecessary to
add further illustrations on this point, as we have had occasion to
speak elsewhere of the sundry other magical properties ascribed to the
fern-seed, w