Plant lore, legends, and lyrics : Embracing the myths, traditions, superstitions, and folk-lore of the plant kingdom / by Richard Folkard, jun.

  • Folkard, Richard
Date:
1884
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Plant lore, legends, and lyrics : Embracing the myths, traditions, superstitions, and folk-lore of the plant kingdom / by Richard Folkard, jun. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    174/656 page 136
    CHAPTER XII. (^oirriecfeiL cjDitR a*f^ eKnimaf/. HE association of trees and birds has been the theme of the most ancient writers. The Skalds have sung how an Eagle sat in stately majesty on the topmost branch of Yggdrasill, whilst the keen-eyed Hawk hovered around. The Vedas record how the Pippala of the Hindu Paradise was daily visited by two beauteous birds, one of which fed from its celestial food, whilst its com- panion poured forth delicious melody from its reed-like throat. On the summit of the mystic Soma-tree were perched two birds, the one engaged in expressing the immortalising Soma-juice, the other feeding on the Figs which hung from the branches of the sacred tree. A bird, bearing in its beak a twig plucked from its favourite tree, admonished the patriarch Noah that the waters of the flood were subsiding from the deluged world. In olden times there appears to have been a notion that in some cases plants could not be germinated excepting through the direct intervention of birds. Thus Bacon tells us of a tradition, current in his day, that a bird, called a Missel-bird, fed upon a seed which, being unable to digest, she evacuated whole; and that this seed, falling upon boughs of trees, put forth the Mistletoe. A similar story is told by Tavernier of the Nutmeg. “It is observ- able,” he says, “ that the Nutmeg-tree is never planted: this has been attested to me by several persons who have resided many y03_j;s 1X1 the islands of Bonda. I have been assured that when the nuts are ripe, there come certain birds from the islands that lie towards the South, who swallow them down whole, and evacuate them whole likewise, without ever having digested them. These nuts being then covered with a viscous and glutinous matter,
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