“There’s a crying at my window, and a hand upon my door, And a stir among the Yarrow that’s fading on the floor, The voice cries at my window, the hand on my door beats on, But if I heed and answer them, sure hand and voice are gone.”
Johnston[97] says: “Tansy and Milfoil were reckoned amongst plants averse to fascination; but we must retrograde two centuries to be present at the trial of Elspeth Reoch, who was supernaturally instructed to cure distempers by resting on her right knee while pulling ‘the herb callit malefour’ betwixt her mid-finger and thumbe, and saying of, ‘In nomen Patris, Filii, et Spiritus Sancti.’”
[97] “Botany of the Eastern Borders” (1853).
Johnston gathers his information from Dalzell on the “Darker Superstitions of Scotland.”
Wormwood is in some parts of Europe called the “Girdle of St John,” it has so much power against evil spirits. Cumin is much disliked by a race of Elves in Germany, called the Moss-People. Dyer[98] tells us that the life of each one is bound up with the life of a tree, and if the inner bark of this is loosened, the elf dies. Therefore their precept is:--
“Peel no tree, Relate no dream, Bake no cumin in bread, So will Heav’n help thee in thy need.”
On one occasion when a loaf baked with Cumin was given as an offering to a forest-wife, she was heard screaming--
“They’ve baken for me Cumin bread That on this house brings great distress.”
The unhappy giver at once began to go downhill, and was soon reduced to abject misery! Elecampane is in Denmark called Elf-Dock. Flax-flowers are a protection against sorcery. “Flax[99] is supposed to be under the protection of the goddess Hulda, but the plant’s blue blossom is more especially the flower of Bertha, whose blue eyes shine in its calyx, and whose distaff is filled by its fibres.... It was the goddess Hulda who first taught mortals the art of growing flax, of spinning, and of weaving it.... Between Kroppbühl and Unterlassen, is a cave which is believed by the country people to have been the entrance to Queen Hulda’s mountain palace. Twice a year she passed through the valley, scattering blessings around her path--once in summer, when the blue flowers of the Flax were brightening the fields, and again during the mysterious “twelve nights” immediately preceding our Feast of Epiphany, when, in ancient days, gods and goddesses were believed to visit the earth.” The Bohemians have a belief that if seven-year-old children dance among flax, they will become beautiful. From the little Fairy-Flax “prepared and manufactured by the supernatural skill, the ‘Good People’ were wont in the olden time to procure their requisite supplies of linen,” writes Johnston.