he withering of plants has long been regarded ominous, and, according
to a Welsh superstition, if there are faded leaves in a room where a
baby is christened it will soon die. Of the many omens afforded by the
oak, we are told that the change of its leaves from their usual colour
gave more than once "fatal premonition" of coming misfortunes during the
great civil wars; and Bacon mentions a tradition that "if the oak-apple,
broken, be full of worms, it is a sign of a pestilent year." In olden
times the decay of the bay-tree was considered an omen of disaster, and
it is stated that, previous to the death of Nero, though the winter was
very mild, all these trees withered to the roots, and that a great
pestilence in Padua was preceded by the same phenomenon. [2] Shakespeare
speaks of this superstition:--

"'Tis thought the king is dead; we will not stay,
The bay-trees in our county are all withered."

Lupton, in his "Notable Things," tells us that,

"If a fir-tree be touched, withered, or burned with lightning, it
signifies that the master or mistress thereof shall shortly die."

It is difficult, as we have already noted in a previous chapter, to
discover why some of our sweetest and fairest spring-flowers should be
associated with ill-luck. In the western counties, for instance, one
should never take less than a handful of primroses or violets into a
farmer's house, as neglect of this rule is said to affect the success of
the ducklings and chickens. A correspondent of _Notes and Queries_ (I.
Ser. vii. 201) writes:--"My gravity was sorely tried by being called on
to settle a quarrel between two old women, arising from one of them
having given one primrose to her neighbour's child, for the purpose of
making her hens hatch but one egg out of each set of eggs, and it was
seriously maintained that the charm had been successful." In the same
way it is held unlucky to introduce the first snowdrop of the year into
a house, for, as a Sussex woman once remarked, "It looks for all the
world like a corpse in its shroud." We may repeat, too, again the
familiar adage:--

"If you sweep the house with blossomed broom in May,
You are sure to sweep the head of the house away."

And there is the common superstition that where roses and violets bloom
in autumn, it is indicative of some epidemic in the following year;
whereas, if a white rose put forth unexpectedly, it is believed in
Germany to be a sign of death in the nearest