And on her brest a chorle paintid ful even
Bearing a bush of Thornis on his bake
Which for his theft might climb no ner the heven.”
Allusion is here made to the Man in the Moon, bearing a Thorn-bush on his shoulders—one of the most widely-diffused superstitions still extant. It is curious that, in several legends respecting this inhabitant of the Moon, he is represented as having been engaged, when on earth, in gardening operations. Kuhn relates a tradition in the Havel country. One Christmas Eve, a peasant felt a great desire to eat a Cabbage; and, having none himself, he slipped stealthily into his neighbour’s garden to cut some. Just as he had filled his basket, the Christ Child rode past on his white horse, and said: “Because thou hast stolen in the holy night, thou shalt immediately sit in the Moon with thy basket of Cabbage.” At Paderhorn, in Westphalia, the crime committed was not theft, but hindering people from attending church on Easter-Day, by placing a Thorn-bush in the field-gate through which they had to pass. In the neighbourhood of Wittingen, the man is said to have been exiled to the Moon because he tied up his brooms on Maunday Thursday; and at Deilinghofen, of having mown the Grass in his meadows on Sunday. A Swabian mother at Derendingen will tell her child that a man was once working in his vineyard on Sunday, and after having pruned all his Vines, he made a bundle of the shoots he had just cut off, laid it in his basket, and went home. According to one version, the Vine-shoots were stolen from a neighbour’s Vineyard. When taxed either with Sabbath-breaking or with the theft, the culprit loudly protested his innocence, and at length exclaimed: “If I have committed this crime, may I be sent to the Moon!” After his death this fate duly befell him, and there he remains to this day. The Black Forest peasants relate that a certain man stole a bundle of wood on Sunday because he thought on that day he should be unmolested by the foresters. However, on leaving the forest, he met a stranger, who was no other than the Almighty himself. After reproving the thief for not keeping the Sabbath-day holy, God said he must be punished, but he might choose whether he would be banished to the Sun or to the Moon. The man chose the latter, declaring he would rather freeze in the Moon than burn in the Sun; and so the Broom-man came into the Moon with his faggot on his back. At Hemer, in Westphalia, the legend runs that a man was engaged in fencing his garden on Good Friday, and had just poised a bundle of Thorns on his fork when he was at once transported to the Moon. Some of the Hemer peasants, however, declare that the Moon is not only inhabited by a man with a Thorn-bush and pitchfork, but also by his wife, who is churning, and was exiled to the Moon for using a churn on Sunday. According to other traditions, the figure in the Moon is that of Isaac bearing the faggot on his shoulders for his own sacrifice on Mount Moriah; or Cain with a bundle of Briars; or a tipsy man who for his audacity in threatening the Moon with a Bramble he held in his hand, was drawn up to this planet, and has remained there to the present day.
CHAPTER XV.
Plant Symbolism and Language.
The antiquity of floral emblems probably dates from the time when the human heart first beat with the gentle emotions of affection or throbbed with the wild pulsations of love. Then it was that man sought to express through the instrumentality of flowers his love of purity and beauty, or to typify through their aid the ardour of his passionate desires; for the symbolism of flowers, it has been conjectured, was first conceived as a parable speaking to the eye and thence teaching the heart.
Driven, in his struggle for existence, to learn the properties of plants in order to obtain wholesome food, man found that with the beauty of their form and colour they spoke lovingly to him. They could be touched, tasted, handled, planted, sown, and reaped: they were useful, easily converted into simple articles of clothing, or bent, twisted, and cut into weapons and tools. Flowers became a language to man very early, and according to their poisonous, soothing, or nutritious qualities, or on account of some peculiarities in their growth or shape which seemed to tell upon the mysteries of life, birth, and death, he gave them names which thenceforth became words and symbols to him of these phenomena.