Evelyn, alluding to this custom, says it is thought better to beat the Nuts off than to gather them from the tree by hand. “In Italy,” he tells us, “they arm the tops of long poles with nails and iron for the purpose, and believe the beating improves the tree, which I no more believe than I do that discipline would reform a shrew.”——The Brahmans of the Himalaya observe a festival called the Walnut Festival, Akrot-ka-pooja, at which, after offering a sacrifice, the priest, with a few companions, takes his place in the balcony of the temple, and all the young men present pelt them liberally with Walnuts and green Pine-cones, which the group in the balcony rapidly collect and return in plentiful volleys.——To dream of Walnuts portends difficulties and misfortunes in life: in love affairs, such a vision implies infidelity and disappointment.
Water Lily.—See [Nymphæa].
Waybread.—See [Plantain].
WHORTLEBERRY.—Whort or Whortleberry (the Anglo-Saxon Heorutberge is another name for the Bilberry or Blaeberry, (Vaccinium Myrtillus). A species of Whortleberry, called Ohelo (Vaccinium reticulatum), is found in Hawaii, springing up from the decomposed lava of the volcanoes of that island. Its flame-coloured berries are sacred to Pélé, the goddess of the volcano, and in heathen days no Hawaiian dared taste one till he had offered some to the goddess, and craved her permission to eat them. Miss Gordon Cumming relates that when Mr. Ellis visited the island in 1822, he and his trusty friends rejoiced on discovering these large juicy berries, but the natives implored them not to touch them lest some dire calamity should follow. Though themselves faint and parched, they dared not touch one till they reached the edge of the crater, where, gathering branches loaded with the tempting clusters, they broke them in two, and throwing half over the precipice, they called Pélé’s attention to the offering, and to the fact that they craved her permission to eat of her Ohelos. (See also [Bilberry].)
WIDOW’S FLOWER.—The Indian or Sweet Scabious (Scabiosa atropurpurea) is called by the Italians Fior della Vedova, and by the French Fleur de Veuve, or Widow’s Flower. Phillips says of these flowers that they present us with “corollas of so dark a purple, that they nearly match the sable hue of the widow’s weeds; these being contrasted with anthers of pure white gives the idea of its being an appropriate bouquet for those who mourn for their deceased husbands, and this we presume gave rise to the Italian and French name of Widow’s Flower.”
WILLOW.—The Willow seems from the remotest times to have been considered a funereal tree and an emblem of grief. So universal is the association of sadness and grief with the Willow, that “to wear the Willow” has become a familiar proverb. Under Willows the captive Children of Israel wept and mourned in Babylon. Fuller, referring to this melancholy episode in their history, says of the Willow:—“A sad tree, whereof such as have lost their love make their mourning garlands; and we know that exiles hung their harps on such doleful supports. The very leaves of the Willow are of a mournful hue.” Virgil remarks on
“The Willow with hoary bluish leaves;”
and Shakspeare, when describing the scene of poor Ophelia’s death, says:—
“There is a Willow grows ascant the brook,
That shows his hoar leaves in the grassy stream.”