CHAPTER XXI
FLOWERS OF MYSTERY
"Let thy upsoaring vision range at large
This garden through: for so by ray divine
Kindled, thy ken a magic flight shall mount."
—Cary's Translation of Dante.
Bogies and fairies, a sense of eeriness, came to every garden-bred child of any imagination in connection with certain flowers. These flowers seemed to be regarded thus through no special rule or reason. With some there may have been slight associations with fairy lore, or medicinal usage, or a hint of meretriciousness. Sometimes the child hardly formulated his thought of the flower, yet the dread or dislike or curiosity existed. My own notions were absolutely baseless, and usually absurd. I doubt if we communicated these fancies to each other save in a few cases, as of the Monk's-hood, when we had been warned that the flower was poisonous.
I have read with much interest Dr. Forbes Watson's account of plants that filled his childish mind with mysterious awe and wonder; among them were the Spurge, Henbane, Rue, Dogtooth Violet, Nigella, and pink Marsh Mallow. The latter has ever been to me one of the most cheerful of blossoms. I did not know it in my earliest childhood, and never saw it in gardens till recent years. It is too close a cousin of the Hollyhock ever to seem to me aught but a happy flower. Henbane and Rue I did not know, but I share his feeling toward the others, though I could not carry it to the extent of fancying these the plants which a young man gathered, distilled, and gave to his betrothed as a poison.
There has ever been much uncanny suggestion in the Cypress Spurge. I never should have picked it had I found it in trim gardens; but I saw it only in forlorn and neglected spots. Perhaps its sombre tinge may come now from association, since it is often seen in country graveyards; and I heard a country woman once call it "Graveyard Ground Pine." But this association was not what influenced my childhood, for I never went then to graveyards.