, too, it should
be remembered, the choice of flowers for dedication to certain saints
originated either in their medical virtues or in some old tradition
which was supposed to have specially singled them out for this honour.

Footnotes:

1. Sanscrit for lotus.

2. Hindu poem, translated by Sir William Jones.

3. "Flower-lore," p. 118.

4. Folkard's "Plant Legends," p. 245.

5. "Flower-lore," p. 120.

6. _Quarterly Review_, cxiv. 231.

7. "Flower-lore," p. 2.

8. Ibid.

9. _Quarterly Review_, cxiv. 235.

10. Ibid., p. 239.

11. "Flower-lore."

12. Folkard's "Plant Legends," p. 44.

13. Folkard's "Plant Legends," p. 395.

14. "Flower-lore," p. 13.

15. _Fraser's Magazine_, 1870, p. 714.

16. "Flower-lore," p. 14.

17. "Flower-lore," p. 14.

18. _Quarterly Review_, cxiv. 233; "Flower-lore," p. 15.

19. See Baring-Gould's "Myths of the Middle Ages."

20. "Flower-lore," p. 12.

21. See chapter on Folk-Medicine.

CHAPTER XX.

PLANT SUPERSTITIONS.

The superstitious notions which, under one form or another, have
clustered round the vegetable kingdom, hold a prominent place in the
field of folk-lore. To give a full and detailed account of these
survivals of bygone beliefs, would occupy a volume of no mean size, so
thickly scattered are they among the traditions and legendary lore of
almost every country. Only too frequently, also, we find the same
superstition assuming a very different appearance as it travels from one
country to another, until at last it is almost completely divested of
its original dress. Repeated changes of this kind, whilst not escaping
the notice of the student of comparative folk-lore, are apt to mislead
the casual observer who, it may be, assigns to them a particular home in
his own country, whereas probably they have travelled, before arriving
at their modern destination, thousands of miles in the course of years.

There is said to be a certain mysterious connection between certain
plants and animals. Thus, swine when affected with the spleen are
supposed to resort to the spleen-wort, and according to Coles, in his
"Art of Simpling," the ass does likewise, for he tells us that, "if the
asse be oppressed with melancholy, he eates of the herbe asplemon or
mill-waste, and eases himself of the swelling of the spleen." One of the
popular names of the common sow-thistle (_Sonchus oleraceus_) is
hare's-palace, from the shelter it is supposed to afford the har