Towards the middle of the seventeenth century a great army of locusts invaded the fields in the neighborhood of the town of Mixco, in Guatemala. So numerous were they as for a time to obscure the light of the sun, and to break the branches of the trees whereon they clung; and they speedily devoured the corn and other crops. Moreover, they covered the highways and startled the traveling mules by their fluttering movements. By order of the magistrates, the people of the country assembled in the fields with trumpets and other instruments in order to scare away the unwelcome visitors. Idols were brought out, especially pictures of the Virgin and of St. Nicholas Tolentine. From the country regions near and far came the Spanish farmers to the town of Mixco, with propitiatory offerings for the saint, and all brought with them loaves of bread to be blessed. These loaves they carried back to their farms, and either threw into their cornfields or buried beneath their hedges, hoping by this method to protect their crops from the locusts.[482] The mountain ash, or rowan-tree (the Scotch _roun-tree_), is thought to have derived its name from the Latin word _runa_, an incantation, because of its employment in magical arts. Woe to the witch who is touched by a branch of this tree in the hand of a christened man![483] Much has been written concerning the folk-lore of the mountain ash, and it is indeed a powerful rival of the horse-shoe in its talismanic virtues, though not as a luck-bringer. But for the protection of cattle from the incursions of witches, not even the horse-shoe may assume to usurp the rowan’s prestige. Branches of this favorite tree, when hung over the stalls of cows or wreathed about their horns, are potent to avert the evil glances or contact, whether of witches or malicious fairies. And their efficacy is enhanced if the farmer is careful to repeat at regular intervals the following fervent petition:— From Witches and Wizards, and long-tailed Buzzards, and creeping things that run in hedge-bottoms, good Lord, deliver us! Jamieson, in his “Scottish Dictionary,” remarks that this practice of twining the rowan about the horns of cows bears a certain resemblance to an ancient custom of the Romans in their _Palilia_, or feast celebrated at the end of April, whose object was the preservation of the flocks. He says:— The Shepherd, in order to purify his sheep, was in the dusk of the evening to bedew the ground around them with a wet branch, then to adorn the fold with leaves and _green branches_ and to cover the door with garlands.