This with the loudest bounce me sore amazed,
That with a flame of brightest colour blazed.
As blazed the Nut, so may thy passion grow;
For ’twas thy Nut that did so brightly glow.”
In Bohemia, on Christmas Eve, girls fix coloured wax lights in the shells of the first parcel of Nuts they have opened that day, light them all at the same time, and set them floating in the water, after mentally giving to each the name of a wooer. He whose lighted bark first approaches the girl will be her future husband. If an unwelcome suitor seems likely to be first in, the girl endeavours to retard the shell by blowing against it, and by this means the favourite’s bark usually wins. Should, however, one of the lights be perchance blown out, it is accounted a portent of death.——The instrument used by the nutter in robbing the Hazel of its fruit seems to have been formerly regarded as opprobrious, and as suggestive of a thief: thus, in the ‘Merry Wives of Windsor,’ Nym says: “If you run the Nut-hook’s humour on me,” or, in other words, “If you call me a thief.” Again, in ‘Henry IV.,’ Part II., Doll Tearsheet cries out to the beadle: “Nut-hook, Nut-hook, you lie!”——In Sussex, there is a proverb current: “As black as the De’il’s nutting bag;” and it is held to be dangerous to go out nutting on Sunday, for fear of meeting the Evil One, who haunts the Nut-bushes, and sometimes appears to nutters in friendly guise, and holds down the branches for them to strip.——In bygone times, it was believed that a spirit of a weird and sinister character inhabited a Nut-grove.——There is a superstition that the ashes of the shells of Hazel-nuts have merely to be applied to the back of a child’s head to ensure the colour of the iris in the infant’s eyes turning from grey to black.——In Germany, Nuts are placed in tombs, as being emblematic of regeneration and immortality. Searchers in the old tombs of Wurtemburg sometimes found Pumpkins and Walnuts, but always a number of Nuts.——In some countries, Hazel-nuts are supposed to be endowed with the power of discovering or attracting wealth. Thus, in Russia, there is a belief that anyone carrying a Nut in his house will make money; and on this account many of the Russian peasantry invariably carry a double Nut in their purses. In fairy tales, we often find good fairies using Nuts as their carriages: as, in ‘Romeo and Juliet,’ Mercutio speaks of Queen Mab arriving in a Nut-shell.——There is a legend that St. Agatha every year crosses the sea from Catania to Gallipoli on a Nut-shell, which she employs as a boat.——Authorities on the subject say that to dream that you see Nut-trees, and that you crack and eat their fruit, signifies riches and content gained with toil and pain. Clusters of Nuts imply happiness and success: to dream of gathering Nuts is a bad omen; and to dream of finding Nuts that have been hid signifies the discovery of treasure.
NYMPHÆA.—The Nymphæa cœrulea is the Lily of the Nile, the Lotus of ancient Egypt; but not the Sacred Bean, which was the Nelumbium speciosum. (See [Lotus] and [Nelumbo]).——According to German tradition, the Undines often conceal themselves from mortal gaze under the form of Nymphæas.——This beautiful Water-lily was deemed by the Frisians to have a magical power. Dr. Halbertsma has stated that, when a boy, he remembers people were extremely careful in plucking and handling them; for if anyone fell with such a flower in his possession, he became immediately subject to fits.——The Wallachians have a superstition that every flower has a soul, and that the Water-lily is the sinless and scentless flower of the lake, which blossoms at the gates of Paradise to judge the rest, and that she will enquire strictly what they have done with their odours.
OAK.—Rapin tells us that among the ancients there were many conjectural reports as to the origin of the Oak, and the country which first knew the sacred tree: but the popular tradition which met with most credence, he considers, was as follows:—
“When Jupiter the world’s foundation laid,
Great earth-born giants heaven did invade;
And Jove himself—when these he did subdue—