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Darkness came down like a swoop. The fern was shaken; the upper dish flew into pieces; the pewter one melted; the skull emitted a cry, and eyes glared in its sockets; lights broke; beautiful children were seen walking in their holiday clothes, and graceful female forms sung mournful and enchanting airs. The men stood terrified and fascinated; and Bangle, gazing, bade 'God bless 'em.' A crash followed as if all the timber in the kloof was being splintered and torn up; strange and horrid forms appeared from the thickets; the men ran as if sped on the wind. They separated and lost each other.
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Chirrup was found on the White Moss, raving mad and chasing the wild birds; as for poor Bangle, he found his way home over hedge and ditch, running with supernatural and fearful speed--the skull's eyes glaring at his back, and the nether jaw grinning and jabbering frightful and unintelligible sounds. He had preserved the seed, however, and, having taken it from the skull, he buried the latter at the cross road from whence he had taken it. He then carried the spell out, and his proud love stood one night by his bedside in tears. But he had done too much for human nature--in three months after she followed his corpse, a real mourner, to the grave.
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are presented in other countries, which throw additional light upon some of the incidents in Bamford's story. He says:--
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Besides the powers already mentioned, fern has others which distinctly mark its affinity with thunder and lightning. 'In places where it grows the devil rarely practises his glamour. He shuns and abhors the house and the place where it is, and thunder, lightning and hail rarely fall there.'[28] This is in apparent contradiction with the Polish superstition, according to which the plucking of fern produces a violent thunderstorm; but it is a natural superstition, that the hitherto rooted and transformed thunderbolt resumes its pristine nature, when the plant that contained it is taken from the ground. In the Thuringian forest fern is called _irrkracet_, or bewildering weed (from _irren_, to err, go astray), because whoever treads on it unawares loses his wits, and knows not where he is. In fact, he is in that condition of mind which we English call 'thunderstruck,' and which Germans, Romans, and Greeks have agreed in denoting by exactly corresponding terms. He has been crazed by a shock from the lightning with which the fern is charged like a Leyden jar. Instances of a similar phenomenon occur in the legends of India and Greece.
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sprites on this momentous occasion, are suggestive of the legend of the
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Baldr. Longfellow says,--
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Now the glad, leafy Midsummer, full of blossoms and songs of nightingales is come! Saint John has taken the flowers and festival of heathen Balder. It appears that Freyja, in exacting an oath from all created things never to harm this
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inadvertently overlooked one of the lightning plants. It was an arrow formed from the branch of the mistletoe, flung by the hand of the blind Hodr or Helder, with which Baldr was struck dead. Baldr, says the legend, was buried in the true Scandinavian fashion. His body was placed by the Æsir on a funeral pyre, raised on the deck of a ship, and whilst the former was in flames the latter was floated seaward. The
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St. John's-wort seems to have superseded the mistletoe in the modern tradition. As both were
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to be readily detected. Singularly enough, the St. John's-wort (Hypericum), of which there are several species found in Lancashire, is generally confounded in these traditions with the _Osmunda Regalis_, or royal fern, or, as it is sometimes improperly styled, the
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which, of course, is an absurdity, as expressing neither more nor less than the flowering non-flowering plant! The name is said to be of Saxon origin, Osmunda being one of the appellations of Thor, who, as we have previously seen, was the
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The sporules are very numerous and minute. The common St. John's-wort (_Hypericum Vulgare._ Lin.) bears a yellow flower, and produces, of course, regular seeds. Hill, in his
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British Herbal, published in 1756, says,
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A tincture of the flower made strong in white wine is recommended greatly by some against melancholy; but of these qualities we speak with less certainty, though they deserve a fair trial.
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Flora Symbolica, says,--
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Vervain, or wild verbena, has been the floral symbol of enchantment from time immemorial.
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In some country districts this small insignificant flower still retains a portion of its old renown, and old folks tie it round the neck to charm away the ague; with many it still has the reputation of securing affection from those who take it to those who administer it; and still in some parts of France do the peasantry continue to gather the vervain, with ceremonies and words known only to themselves; and to express its juices under certain phases of the moon. At once the doctors and conjurors of their village, they alternately cure the complaints of their masters or fill them with dread; for the same means which relieve their ailments enable them to cast a spell on their cattle and on the hearts of their daughters. They insist that this power is given to them by vervain, especially when the damsels are young and handsome. The vervain is still the plant of spells and enchantments, as it was amongst the ancients.
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It is also a highly significant fact that the marvellous root (St. John's-wort) is said to be connected with fern; for the johnsroot or john's hand is the root of a species of fern (_Polypodium Filix mas._ Lin.), which is applied to many superstitious uses. The fern has large pinnate fronds, and is thus related to the mountain ash and the mimosæ. In fact, says Kuhn, it were hardly possible to find in our climate a plant which more accurately corresponds in its whole appearance to the original signification of the Sanscrit name parna as leaf and feather. Nor does the relationship between them end here, for fern, Anglo-Saxon _fearn_, Old German _faram_, _farn_, and Sanscrit _parna_, are one and the same word. It is also worthy of note that whereas one of the German names of the rowan means boarash (eberesche), so also there is a fern (_Polypodium Filix arboratica_) which is called in Anglo-Saxon _eoferfarn_, _eferfarn_, that is boar-fern. In all the Indo-European mythologies the boar is an animal connected with storm and lightning.
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Sketches of Lancashire Life and Localities, mentions a curious fact relative to this famous
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Boggart Ho' Clough, which is not without its significance. He says he was informed that a lawyer, anxious to describe the locality in a legal document, had found, on referring to some old title deeds, that a
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The lawyer very naturally adopted this as the true origin of the name. Yet Mr. Waugh informs us that the
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Yes; Sam Bamford has! I put similar questions about an hour afterwards to the maid at the
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Bell public-house, in Moston Lane, which, to my surprise, elicited exactly similar responses. I pressed this girl still further on the subject; and at length she frankly said,--
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I don't think any body, as I know, has sin a boggart i'th clough except Bamford, 'bout it be Edwin Waugh. Ye've heard of him, no doubt!