The Swiss
name for mistletoe, _donnerbesen_, "thunder besom," illustrates its
divine origin, on account of which it was supposed to protect the
homestead from fire, and hence in Sweden it has long been suspended in
farm-houses, like the mountain-ash in Scotland. But its virtues are by
no means limited, for like all lightning-plants its potency is displayed
in a variety of ways, its healing properties having from a remote period
been in the highest repute. For purposes also of sorcery it has been
reckoned of considerable importance, and as a preventive of nightmare
and other night scares it is still in favour on the Continent. One
reason which no doubt has obtained for it a marked degree of honour is
its parasitical manner of growth, which was in primitive times ascribed
to the intervention of the gods. According to one of its traditionary
origins, its seed was said to be deposited on certain trees by birds,
the messengers of the gods, if not the gods themselves in disguise, by
which this plant established itself in the branch of a tree. The mode of
procedure, say the old botanists, was through the "mistletoe thrush."
This bird, it was asserted, by feeding on the berries, surrounded its
beak with the viscid mucus they contain, to rid itself of which it
rubbed its beak, in the course of flying, against the branches of trees,
and thereby inserted the seed which gave birth to the new plant.
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