In a curious tract, published in the reign of Elizabeth, entitled "Plaine Percevall, the Peacemaker," the following passage occurs:—"I thinke the mad slave hath tasted on a fernstalke, that he walkes so invisible."
Fairies, of course, possessed the power of rendering themselves visible, or otherwise, at pleasure. Oberon, in A Midsummer Night's Dream, says:—
But who comes here?
I am invisible, and I will
Overhear their conference.
Spirits of any class, of course, possessed this power, and its complement, that of being visible, at pleasure. Prospero, in the Tempest, says to Ariel:—
Go make thyself like to a nymph o' the sea;
Be subject to no sight but mine; invisible
To every eyeball else.
All ferns, according to German authorities, and especially the "seed" thereof, possessed the quality usually described as "luck bringing." According to Panzer, the devil was compelled to fulfil the wish of any person in possession of the seed of this plant; and Meier tells us that in Swabia the peasants believe that the possession of this seed, obtained from his Satanic majesty between the hours of eleven and twelve o'clock on Christmas night, will enable one man to do the work of twenty or thirty others not so favoured. Browne, in his "Britannia's Pastorals," speaks of "the wonderous one night seeding ferne;" and Richard Bivot, in his "Pandæmonium," published in 1648, quaintly informs us that "much discourse hath been about gathering of fern seed (which is looked upon as a magical herb) on the night of Midsummer-eve; and I remember I was told of one who went to gather it, and the spirits whisk't by his ears like bullets, and sometimes struck his hat and other parts of his body; in fine, although he apprehended he had gotten a quantity of it, and secured it in papers, and a box besides, when he came home he found all empty."
Kelly says,—"The summer solstice is a favourite season for gathering plants of the lightning tribe, and particularly the springwort and fern. It is believed in the Oberpfalz that the springwort, or St. John's-wort (johanniswurzel) as some call it, can only be found among the fern on St. John's night. It is said to be of a yellow colour, and to shine in the night like a candle; which is just what is said of the mandrake in an Anglo-Saxon manuscript of the tenth or eleventh century. Moreover, it never stands still, but hops about continually, to avoid the grasp of men. Here, then, in the luminosity and power of nimble movement attributed to the springwort, we have another remarkable tradition signifying the transformation of the lightning into the plant."
The following translation from a German poem, beautifully illustrates the Teutonic form of this superstition:—
The young maid stole through the cottage door,
And blushed as she sought the plant of power.
"Thou silver glow-worm, O lend me thy light,
I must gather the mystic St. John's-wort to-night;
The wonderful herb whose leaf will decide
If the coming year shall make me a bride!"
And the glow-worm came
With his silvery flame,
And sparkled and shone
Through the night of St. John.
And soon as the young maid her love-knot tied
With noiseless tread
To her chamber she sped,
Where the spectral moon her white beams shed,
"Bloom here, bloom here, thou plant of power,
To deck the young bride in her bridal hour!"
But it drooped its head, that plant of power,
And died the mute death of a voiceless flower;
And a withered leaf on the ground it lay,
More meet for a burial than a bridal day.
And when a year was passed away,
All pale on her bier the young maid lay!
And the glow-worm came
With its silvery flame,
And sparkled and shone
Through the night of St. John;
And they closed the cold grave o'er the maid's cold clay.
Vernaleken says the Slavocks believe that any person approaching too near to the fern, at the time of its "efflorescence," will be overcome by drowsiness, and that beings of a supernatural character will successfully resist any attempt to lay hands on the plant. Bivot has a statement to a somewhat similar effect.