So highly were branches and blossoms from the Glastonbury thorn esteemed that Bristol merchants exported large quantities. The Puritans, in Elizabeth's reign, cut down one of its stems, and the other was demolished during the "Great Rebellion." Collinson says, "It is strange to see how much this tree was sought after by the credulous; and, though a common thorn, Queen Anne, King James, and many of the nobility of the realm, even when the times of monkish superstition had ceased, gave large sums of money for small cuttings from the original."
Some authorities regard this Christmas flowering thorn as a variety of the cratægus monogyna, or common hawthorn, probably brought by the early crusaders from Palestine. If this be true, it throws some light on the origin of the reverence in which it was held by the pilgrims to the shrine of St. Joseph at Glastonbury.
The sacred character of the white thorn especially, appears to have become interwoven with a great variety of superstitious belief. A writer in the Quarterly Review for July, 1863, treating of "Sacred Trees and Flowers," says, "The white thorn is one of the trees most in favour with the small people" [the fairies]; "and both in Brittany and in some parts of Ireland it is held unsafe to gather even a leaf from certain old and solitary thorns which grow in sheltered hollows of the moorland, and are the fairies' trysting places. But no 'evil ghost' dares to approach the white thorn." The writer attributes this peculiar sanctity of the white thorn to the belief that the crown placed in derision on the head of Christ, previous to his crucifixion, was made from branches of this tree; and, doubtless, at the present day, such may be mainly the case, although, as the writer himself observes, modern botanical researches have taught us that the fact "cannot have been so." Kelly says we know more than even this; "we know that the white thorn was a sacred tree before Christianity existed, so that we must needs invert the statement of the writer in the Quarterly, and conclude that the ancient sanctity of the aubépine, or white thorn, was what gave rise to the mediæval belief." He further contends that the excerpt relied upon by the writer, from Sir John Mandeville, who flourished in the earlier portion of the fourteenth century, shows on its face that the old wanderer was "an unconscious witness to the enduring vitality of the Aryan tradition that invested the hawthorn with the virtues of a tree sprung from the lightning."
The passage referred to is curious. Sir John says, "Then was our Lord ylad into a gardyn ... and there the Jews scorned hym, and maden hym a croune of the braunches of the albespyne, that is white thorn, that grew in the same gardyn, and seten yt on hys heved.... And, therefore, hath the white thorn many virtues. For he that beareth a braunch on hym thereof, no thondere, no ne manner of tempest may dere [hurt] him; ne in the hows that yt is ynne may non evil ghost entre."
The knowledge of the traditionary faith in the sanctity of this tree invests with considerable interest the eagerness of children, resident in populous towns, to obtain a sprig of hawthorn blossom from any stranger returning from the country with a few branches of this May trophy. I have had scores of applications of this class for the small branches which I have carried in my hand from Old Trafford to Manchester. But, of course, children exhibit a similarly eagerly desire to obtain possession of flowers, and especially wild flowers, of every class. Longfellow has beautifully said:—
In the cottage of the rudest peasant,
In ancestral homes whose crumbling towers,
Speaking of the Past unto the Present,
Tell us of the ancient games of Flowers;
In all places, then, and in all seasons,
Flowers expand their light and soul-like wings,
Teaching us, by most persuasive reasons,
How akin they are to human things;
And with child-like, credulous affection,
We behold their tender buds expand;
Emblems of our own great resurrection,
Emblems of the bright and better land.
Amongst the other virtues ascribed to dew gathered on May-day morning, its supposed power over the complexion yet finds believers. Old Pepys, in his most interesting, if sometimes stupid, diary, says:—"My wife away down with Jane and W. Hewer to Woolwich, in order to a little ayre, and to lay there to-night, and so to gather May dew to-morrow morning, which Mrs. Turner hath taught her is the only thing in the world to wash her face with; and I am contented with it." Kelly says: "The Aryan idea, that the rain clouds were cows, has been well preserved among the Northern nations.... It is a very common opinion that rain and dew, the milk of the heavenly cows, are capable of increasing the milk of the earthly cows; hence a dewy May morning is welcomed as giving promise of a good dairy year." Mannhardt speaks of a practice in North Germany of tying a May bush to the tail of the leading cow on May-day morning, in order that she may brush up the potent dew, and so increase the contents of her udder. But the strangest faith in the potency of May-dew is related by Sir John Mandeville. The quaint old traveller seriously assures us that in Ethiopia there are male and female diamonds that enter into matrimonial relationship and have offspring! Nay, he declares that he himself has "often tymes assayed it," and found that the precious stones do grow year by year, on one condition, namely, that they be well wetted with May-dew! He says:—
"And ther be sume of the gretnesse of a bene, and sume als grete as an haselle note. And thei ben square and poynted of here owne kinde, bothe aboven and benethen, withouten worchinge of mannes hond. And thei growen to gedre, male and femele. And thei ben norysscht with the dew of Hevene. And thei engendren comounly, and bryngen forthe smale children, that multiplyen and growen alle the yeer. I have often tymes assayed, that gif a man kepe hem with a litylle of the roche, and wete hem with May dew ofte sithes, thei schulle growe everyche yeer; and the small wole waxen grete."
Sir Kenelm Digby, two centuries ago, in a letter to the younger Winthorp, governor of New England, expresses his great faith in the efficacy of dew in the cure of deliriums, frenzies, and manias; but he does not intimate any preference for dew gathered on May-day. All dew does not appear, however, to have possessed these curative qualities. Some, indeed, was of a malignant or deadly character. Ariel, in "the Tempest," speaks of "the deep nook" in the harbour
where once,
Thou call'dst me up at midnight to fetch dew
From the still-vext Bermothes.