Now, like fern-seed, the mistletoe is gathered either at Midsummer or Christmas(946)—that is, at the summer and winter solstices—and, like fern-seed, it is supposed to possess the power of revealing treasures in the earth. On Midsummer Eve people in Sweden make divining-rods of mistletoe or of four different kinds of wood, one of which must be mistletoe. The treasure-seeker places the rod on the ground after sundown, and when it rests directly over treasure, the rod begins to move as if it were alive.(947) Now, if the mistletoe discovers gold, it must be in its character of the Golden Bough; and if it is gathered at the solstices, must not the Golden Bough, like the golden fern-seed, be an emanation of the sun’s fire? The question cannot be answered with a simple affirmative. We have seen that the primitive Aryans probably kindled the midsummer bonfires as sun-charms, that is, with the intention of supplying the sun with fresh fire. But as this fire was always elicited by the friction of oak wood,(948) it must have appeared to the primitive Aryan that the sun was periodically recruited from the fire which resided in the sacred oak. In other words, the oak must have seemed to him the original storehouse or reservoir of the fire which was from time to time drawn out to feed the sun. But the life of the oak was conceived to be in the mistletoe; therefore the mistletoe must have contained the seed or germ of the fire which was elicited by friction from the wood of the oak. Thus, instead of saying that the mistletoe was an emanation of the sun’s fire, it would be more correct to say that the sun’s fire was regarded as an emanation of the mistletoe. No wonder, then, that the mistletoe shone with a golden splendour, and was called the Golden Bough. Probably, however, like fern-seed, it was thought to assume its golden aspect only at those stated times, especially midsummer, when fire was drawn from the oak to light up the sun.(949) At Pulverbatch, in Shropshire, it was believed within living memory that the oak-tree blooms on Midsummer Eve and the blossom withers before daylight.(950) This fleeting bloom of the oak, if I am right, could originally have been nothing but the mistletoe in its character of the Golden Bough. As Shropshire borders on Wales, the superstition may be Welsh in its immediate origin, though probably the belief is a fragment of the primitive Aryan creed. In some parts of Italy, as we saw,(951) peasants still go out on Midsummer morning to search the oak-trees for the “oil of St. John,” which, like the mistletoe, heals all wounds, and is doubtless the mistletoe itself in its glorified aspect. Thus it is easy to understand how a title like the Golden Bough or the “tree of pure gold,” so little descriptive of the real appearance of the plant, should have held its ground as a name for the mistletoe in Italy and Wales, and probably in other parts of the Aryan world.(952)