“Woe, woe for Cytherea, he hath perished, the lovely Adonis.
A tear the Paphian sheds for each blood-drop of Adonis,
And tears and blood on the earth are turned to flowers.
The blood brings forth the rose; the tears, the wind-flower;
Woe, woe for Cytherea, he hath perished, the lovely Adonis!”[172]
Shakespeare, it will be remembered, gives to the anemone the magical power of producing love.[173]
The legendary lore of the East contains traditions similar to those above mentioned, of which it will be sufficient to cite the following:—The Burmese believe that the Canna Indica or Indian shot sprang from the sacred blood of the Buddha. His evil-minded brother-in-law, incensed at not being allowed to hold a separate assembly of his own, rolled down a rock upon the teacher from a lofty hill. A fragment bruised the Buddha’s toe, and drew from it a few drops of blood, from which the sacred plant arose.[174]
In another class of legends, more characteristic of mediaeval than of classical mythology, the soul of the dead person was believed to pass into a tree. They are, in fact, cases rather of metempsychosis than of metamorphosis. A legend current in Cornwall tells how, after the loss of her lover, Iseult died broken-hearted, and was buried in the same church with Tristram, but by the king’s decree at some distance from him. Soon ivy sprang from either grave, and each branch grew and grew until it met its fellow at the crown of the vaulted roof, and there clasped it and clung to it as only ivy can.[175] In another version the plants that sprang from the graves of the lovers were a rose and a vine. The same idea is met with in the familiar ballad of Fair Margaret and Sweet William.
Margaret was buried in the lower chancèl,
And William in the higher;