The only cause she could
assign was that Joe, "had helped Mr. Todd's gardener to cut down the old
hawthorn tree on the lawn; and there's them that says that's a very bad
thing to do;" adding how she "fleeched him not to touch it, but the
master he offered him six shillings if he'd help in the job, for the
other men refused." The same belief prevails in Brittany, where it is
also "held unsafe to gather even a leaf from certain old and solitary
thorns, which grow in sheltered hollows of the moorland, and are the
fairies' trysting-places."[6]
Then there is the mistletoe, which, like the hazel and the white-thorn,
was also supposed to be the embodiment of lightning; and in consequence
of its mythical character held an exalted place in the botanical world.
As a lightning-plant, we seem to have the key to its symbolical nature,
in the circumstance that its branch is forked. On the same principle, it
is worthy of note, as Mr. Fiske remarks[7] that, "the Hindu commentators
of the Veda certainly lay great stress on the fact that the palasa is
trident-leaved." We have already pointed out, too, how the red colour of
a flower, as in the case of the berries of the mountain-ash, was
apparently sufficient to determine the association of ideas.
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