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.
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