Through the silent watches of the night The snowflakes fast and faster fall; And with swift and magic deftness, Spread a spotless mantle over all. Behold the landscape clothed in white, Decked with crystals’ shining light; See the towering fir trees bending low, With their load of sparkling snow. —Berton Mercer, “Winter.” THE THISTLE. As plants were among the objects most familiar to primitive man, they naturally came to be considered good or evil, according as their properties were found to be beneficial or injurious. The imaginative and pure reverence, however, which originally linked plant life with the personifications of natural phenomena, soon degenerated into a superstitious worship and became associated with the mummery of various kinds of impostors. The plants, through the manipulations of the quacks and witches, who largely composed the fraternity of the early herbalists, became endowed with powers to kill or heal, to control the weather, to gain or hold friends, and many other associations that have clung to them ever since. The Thistle appears to have been especially favored in this regard. It appears that an eagle had stolen the sacred Soma from the Hindu tree of life. Barely had he departed with the immortalizing draught before he was overtaken by a lightning bolt and stretched lifeless upon the earth. From the eagle’s feathers sprang up the bramble, while the Thistle grew from his claws. About this time Loki, the evil spirit of the Norse Asgard, passed that way, bent upon mischief. The unpleasant qualities of the two plants at once appealed to him. Loki immediately gathered the seed and proceeded to sow them in the fields of his enemies, the result being that all the good seed was killed. This Aryan myth has given rise to the expression, “Sowing wild oats,” and is believed to be the origin of the biblical story of the tares and the wheat, coming into Hebrew literature by means of the Indo-Iranians at the time of the Israelitish exile. Now, Thor observed what Loki had done; so he hurled his hammer at the brambles and a bolt of lightning at the Thistles. For this reason the thistle blossoms are colored red and the plants became lightning plants. But the end was not yet. The beautiful goddess Freya, seeing the Thistles drooping under the chastisement of the god, took compassion and gave them to drink of the mead from the sacred goat of Valhalla, by virtue of which the plants became invested with immortality. Thus it came to pass that the Thistle has a dual life. It is a lightning plant, in which, in common with similar forms, like the vervain, the hazel, and the ash is never injured by lightning or approached by serpents. On the other hand, it being a protege of Freya, the goddess of Love, it straightway became a powerful love charm, and doubtless has done much execution in Cupid’s lists.