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271
The Folk-lore of Plants
·
T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
256
CHAPTER
XXII.
PLANTS
AND
THEIR
LEGENDARY
HISTORY.
Many
of
the
legends
of
the
plant-world
have
been
incidentally
alluded
to
in
the
preceding
pages.
Whether
we
review
their
mythological
history
as
embodied
in
the
traditionary
stories
of
primitive
times,
or
turn
to
the
existing
legends
of
our
own
and
other
countries
in
modern
times,
it
is
clear
that
the
imagination
has
at
all
times
bestowed
some
of
its
richest
and
most
beautiful
fancies
on
trees
and
flowers.
Even,
too,
the
rude
and
ignorant
savage
has
clothed
with
graceful
conceptions
many
of
the
plants
which,
either
for
their
grandeur
or
utility,
have
attracted
his
notice.
The
old
idea,
again,
of
metamorphosis,
by
which
persons
under
certain
peculiar
cases
were
changed
into
plants,
finds
a
place
in
many
of
the
modern
plant-legends.
Thus
there
is
the
well-known
story
of
the
wayside
plantain,
commonly
termed
"way-bread,"
which,
on
account
of
its
so
persistently
haunting
the
track
of
man,
has
given
rise
to
the
German
story
that
it
was
formerly
a
maiden
who,
whilst
watching
by
the
wayside
for
her
lover,
was
transformed
into
this
plant.
But
once
in
seven
years
it
becomes
a
bird,
either
the
cuckoo,
or
the
cuckoo's
servant,
the
"dinnick,"
as
it
is
popularly
called
in
Devonshire,
the
German
"wiedhopf"
which
is
said
to
follow
its
master
everywhere.
This
story
of
the
plantain
is
almost
identical
with
one
told
in
Germany
of
the
endive
or
succory.
A
patient
girl,
after
waiting
day
by
day
for
her
betrothed
for
many
a
month,
at
last,
worn
out
with
watching,
sank
exhausted
by
the
wayside
and
expired.
But
before
many
days
had
passed,
a
little
flower
with
star-like
blossoms
sprang
up
on
the
spot
where
the
broken-hearted
maiden
had
breathed
her
final
sigh,
which
was
henceforth
known
as
the
"Wegewarte,"
the
watcher
of
the
road.
Mr.
Folkard
quotes
an
ancient
ballad
of
Austrian
Silesia
which
recounts
how
a
young
girl
mourned
for
seven
years
the
loss
of
her
lover,
who
had
fallen
in
war.
But
when
her
friends
tried
to
console
her,
and
to
procure
for
her
another
lover,
she
replied,
"I
shall
cease
to
weep
only
when
I
become
a
wild-flower
by
the
wayside."
By
the
North
American
Indians,
the
plantain
or
"way-bread"
is
"the
white
man's
foot,"
to
which
Longfellow,
in
speaking
of
the
English
settlers,
alludes
in
his
"Hiawatha":--
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