Plant Lore, Legends, and Lyrics: Embracing the Myths, Traditions, Superstitions, and Folk-Lore of the Plant KingdomFolkard, Richard
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Plant Lore, Legends, and Lyrics: Embracing the Myths, Traditions, Superstitions, and Folk-Lore of the Plant Kingdom
Folkard, Richard
Plants -- Folklore
favourite steed upon which the “good people,” or fairies, are wont
to travel in the air. Mr. Croker, in his ‘Fairy Legends of Ireland,’
relates that at Dundaniel, a village near Cork, in a pleasant outlet
called Blackrock, there lived not many years ago a gardener named
Crowley, who was considered by his neighbours as under fairy control,
and suffered from what they termed “the falling sickness” resulting
from the fatigue attendant on the journeys which he was compelled to
take; being forced to travel night after night with the good people
on one of his own Cabbage-stumps.----The Italian expressions, “Go
among the Cabbages,” and “Go hide among the Cabbages,” mean to die. In
the North, however, children are told that “Baby was fetched out of
the Cabbage-bed.”----In Jersey, the Palm Cabbage is much cultivated,
and reaches a considerable height. In La Vendée, the Cæsarean Cow
Cabbage grows sixteen feet high. Possibly these gigantic Cabbages
may have given rise to the nursery tales of some of the continental
states, in which the young hero emulates the exploits of the English
Jack and his Bean-stalk, by means of a little Cabbage, which grows
larger and larger, and finally, becoming colossal, reaches the
skies.----In England, there is a nursery legend which relates how the
three daughters of a widow were one day sent into the kitchen garden
to protect the Cabbages from the ravages of a grey horse which was
continually stealing them. Watching their opportunity, they caught him
by the mane and would not be shaken off; so the grey horse trotted away
to a neighbouring hill, dragging the three girls after him. Arrived
at the hill, he commanded it to open, and the widows’ daughters found
themselves in an enchanted palace.----A tradition in the Havel country,
North Germany, relates that one Christmas Eve a peasant felt a great
desire to eat Cabbage, and having none himself, he slipped into a
neighbour’s garden to cut some. Just as he had filled his basket, the
Christ Child rode past on his white horse, and said: “Because thou hast
stolen on the holy night, thou shalt immediately sit in the moon with
thy basket of Cabbage.” The culprit was immediately wafted up to the
moon, and there, as the man in the moon, he is still undergoing his
penalty for stealing Cabbages on Christmas Eve.----To dream of cutting
Cabbages denotes jealousy on the part of wife, husband, or lover, as
the case may be. To dream of anyone else cutting them portends an
attempt by some person to create jealousy in the loved one’s mind. To
dream of eating Cabbage implies sickness to loved ones and loss of
money.----Cabbages are plants of the Moon.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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