John’s blood; smear this blood on your shirt just over your heart, and no mad dog will bite you.(169) In the Mark of Brandenburg the same blood, procured in the same manner and rubbed on the barrel of a gun, will make every shot from that gun to hit the mark.(170) According to others, St. John’s blood is found at noon on St. John’s Day, and only then, adhering in the form of beads to the root of a weed called knawel, which grows in sandy soil. But some people say that these beads of red juice are not really the blood of the martyred saint, but only insects resembling the cochineal or kermes-berry.(171) “About Hanover I have often observed devout Roman Catholics going on the morning of St. John’s day to neighbouring sandhills, gathering on the roots of herbs a certain insect (_Coccus Polonica_) looking like drops of blood, and thought by them to be created on purpose to keep alive the remembrance of the foul murder of St. John the Baptist, and only to be met with on the morning of the day set apart for him by the Church. I believe the life of this insect is very ephemeral, but by no means restricted to the twenty-fourth of June.”(172) (M44) Yet another plant whose root has been thought to yield the blood of St. John is the mouse-ear hawkweed (_Hieracium pilosella_), which grows very commonly in dry exposed places, such as gravelly banks, sunny lawns, and the tops of park walls. “It blossoms from May to the end of July, presenting its elegant sulphur-coloured flowers to the noontide sun, while the surrounding herbage, and even its own foliage, is withered and burnt up”;(173) and these round yellow flowers may be likened not inaptly to the disc of the great luminary whose light they love. At Hildesheim, in Germany, people used to dig up hawkweed, especially on the Gallows’ Hill, when the clocks were striking noon on Midsummer Day; and the blood of St. John, which they found at the roots, was carefully preserved in quills for good luck. A little of it smeared secretly on the clothes was sure to make the wearer fortunate in the market that day.(174) According to some the plant ought to be dug up with a gold coin.(175) Near Gablonz, in Bohemia, it used to be customary to make a bed of St. John’s flowers, as they were called, on St. John’s Eve, and in the night the saint himself came and laid his head on the bed; next morning you could see the print of his head on the flowers, which derived a healing virtue from his blessed touch, and were mixed with the fodder of sick cattle to make them whole.(176) But whether these St. John’s flowers were the mouse-ear hawkweed or not is doubtful.(177)