the river should be the totem of a clan in India.(927) Again, the view that the mistletoe owes its mystic character partly to the fact of its not growing on the ground is confirmed by a parallel superstition about the mountain-ash or rowan-tree. In Jutland a rowan that is found growing out of the top of another tree is esteemed “exceedingly effective against witchcraft: since it does not grow on the ground witches have no power over it; if it is to have its full effect it must be cut on Ascension Day.”(928) Hence it is placed over doors to prevent the ingress of witches.(929) Similarly the mistletoe in Germany is still universally considered a protection against witchcraft, and in Sweden, as we saw, the mistletoe which is gathered on Midsummer Eve is attached to the ceiling of the house, the horse stall, or the cow’s crib, in the belief that this renders the Troll powerless to injure man or beast.(930) The view that the mistletoe was not merely the instrument of Balder’s death, but that it contained his life, is countenanced by the analogy of a Scottish superstition. Tradition ran that the fate of the family of Hay was bound up with the mistletoe of a certain oak. “While the mistletoe bats on Errol’s oak, And that oak stands fast, The Hays shall flourish, and their good gray hawk Shall not flinch before the blast. “But when the root of the oak decays, And the mistletoe dwines on its withered breast, The grass shall grow on the Earl’s hearthstone, And the corbies craw in the falcon’s nest.” “A large oak with the mistletoe growing on it was long pointed out as the tree referred to. A piece of the mistletoe cut by a Hay was believed to have magical virtues. ‘The oak is gone and the estate is lost to the family,’ as a local historian says.”(931) The idea that the fate of a family, as distinct from the lives of its members, is bound up with a particular plant or tree, is no doubt comparatively modern. The older view probably was that the lives of all the Hays were in this particular mistletoe, just as in the Indian story the lives of all the ogres are in a lemon; to break a twig of the mistletoe would then have been to kill one of the Hays. Similarly in the island of Rum, whose bold mountains the voyager from Oban to Skye observes to seaward, it was thought that if one of the family of Lachlin shot a deer on the mountain of Finchra, he would die suddenly or contract a distemper which would soon prove fatal.(932) Probably the life of the Lachlins was bound up with the deer on Finchra, as the life of the Hays was bound up with the mistletoe on Errol’s oak.