Plant Lore, Legends, and Lyrics: Embracing the Myths, Traditions, Superstitions, and Folk-Lore of the Plant KingdomFolkard, Richard
History
Plant Lore, Legends, and Lyrics: Embracing the Myths, Traditions, Superstitions, and Folk-Lore of the Plant Kingdom
Folkard, Richard
Plants -- Folklore
The blind man to whom our Saviour restored his sight said, at first,
“I see men walking as if they were trees!” one Anastasius of Nice,
however, has recorded that, oppositely, he had seen trees walk as if
they were men. Bishop Fleetwood remarks that this Anastasius, being
persuaded that by miraculous means our neighbours’ trees may be brought
into our own field, relates that a heretic of Zizicum, of the sect of
the Pneumatomachians, had, by the virtue of his art, brought near to
his own house a great Olive-tree belonging to one of his neighbours,
that he and his disciples might have the benefit of the freshness of
the shade to protect them from the heat of the sun. By this art, also,
it was that the plantation of Olives, belonging to Vectidius, changed
its place.
Maundevile has preserved a record of a tree of miraculous origin, that
in his time grew in the city of Tiberias. The old knight writes:--“In
that cytee a man cast an brennynge [a burning] dart in wratthe after
oure Lord, and the hed smote in to the eerthe, and wex grene, and it
growed to a gret tree; and yit it growethe, and the bark there of is
alle lyke coles.”
[Illustration: Miraculous Tree of Tiberias. From _Maundevile’s
Travels_.]
Among flowers, the Rose--the especial flower of martyrdom--has been
the most connected with miracles. Maundevile gives it a miraculous
origin, alleging that at Bethlehem the faggots lighted to burn an
innocent maiden were, owing to her earnest prayers, extinguished and
miraculously changed into bushes which bore the first Roses, both
white and red. According to monastic tradition, the martyr-saint
Dorothea sent a basket of Roses miraculously to the notary Theophilus,
from the garden of Paradise. The Romish legend of St. Cecilia relates
that after Valerian, her husband, had been converted and baptised by
St. Urban, he returned to his home, and heard, as he entered it, the
most enchanting music. On reaching his wife’s apartment, he beheld
an angel standing near her, who held in his hand two crowns of Roses
gathered in Paradise, immortal in their freshness and perfume, but
invisible to the eyes of unbelievers. With these the angel encircled
the brows of Cecilia and Valerian, and promised that the eyes of
Tiburtius, Valerian’s brother, should be opened to the truth. Then he
vanished. Soon afterwards Tiburtius entered the chamber, and perceiving
the fragrance of the celestial Roses, but not seeing them, and knowing
that it was not the season for flowers, he was astonished, yielded to
the fervid appeal of St. Cecilia, and became a Christian.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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