"
In Ben Jonson's "New Inn" (i. 1), it is thus noticed:--
"I had
No medicine, sir, to go invisible,
No fern-seed in my pocket."
Brand [11] was told by an inhabitant of Heston, in Middlesex, that when
he was a young man he was often present at the ceremony of catching the
fern-seed at midnight, on the eve of St. John Baptist. The attempt was
frequently unsuccessful, for the seed was to fall into a plate of its
own accord, and that too without shaking the plate. It is unnecessary to
add further illustrations on this point, as we have had occasion to
speak elsewhere of the sundry other magical properties ascribed to the
fern-seed, whereby it has been prominently classed amongst the mystic
plants. But, apart from the doctrine of signatures, it would seem that
the fern-seed was also supposed to derive its power of making invisible
from the cloud, says Mr. Kelly, [12] "that contained the heavenly fire
from which the plant is sprung." Whilst speaking, too, of the
fern-seed's property of making people invisible, it is of interest to
note that in the Icelandic and Pomeranian myths the schamir or
"raven-stone" renders its possessor invisible; and according to a North
German tradition the luck-flower is enbued with the same wonderful
qualities.
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