eculiar cases were changed into plants, finds a place in many of the
modern plant-legends. Thus there is the well-known story of the wayside
plantain, commonly termed "way-bread," which, on account of its so
persistently haunting the track of man, has given rise to the German
story that it was formerly a maiden who, whilst watching by the wayside
for her lover, was transformed into this plant. But once in seven years
it becomes a bird, either the cuckoo, or the cuckoo's servant, the
"dinnick," as it is popularly called in Devonshire, the German
"wiedhopf" which is said to follow its master everywhere.

This story of the plantain is almost identical with one told in Germany
of the endive or succory. A patient girl, after waiting day by day for
her betrothed for many a month, at last, worn out with watching, sank
exhausted by the wayside and expired. But before many days had passed, a
little flower with star-like blossoms sprang up on the spot where the
broken-hearted maiden had breathed her final sigh, which was henceforth
known as the "Wegewarte," the watcher of the road. Mr. Folkard quotes an
ancient ballad of Austrian Silesia which recounts how a young girl
mourned for seven years the loss of her lover, who had fallen in war.
But when her friends tried to console her, and to procure for her
another lover, she replied, "I shall cease to weep only when I become a
wild-flower by the wayside." By the North American Indians, the plantain
or "way-bread" is "the white man's foot," to which Longfellow, in
speaking of the English settlers, alludes in his "Hiawatha":--

"Wheresoe'er they move, before them
Swarms the stinging fly, the Ahmo,
Swarms the bee, the honey-maker;
Wheresoe'er they tread, beneath them
Springs a flower unknown among us,
Springs the white man's foot in blossom."

Between certain birds and plants there exists many curious traditions,
as in the case of the nightingale and the rose. According to a piece of
Persian folklore, whenever the rose is plucked, the nightingale utters a
plaintive cry, because it cannot endure to see the object of its love
injured. In a legend told by the Persian poet Attar, we are told how all
the birds appeared before Solomon, and complained that they were unable
to sleep from the nightly wailings of the nightingale. The bird, when
questioned as to the truth of this statement, replied that his love for
the rose was the cause of his grief. Hence this supposed love o