The tendency of English newspapers to bedeck themselves every now and again with rank absurdities copied from American rubbish-sheets is a disease. On no subject outside the field of natural history and medicine would any editor dream of printing the stuff which does duty as “news” in regard to these departments—stuff which has not even the semblance of being carefully concocted, but yet is found “good enough” to circulate as serious information.
Another antediluvian monster, much larger than the mammoth, was reported in a London evening paper at the end of November 1907. The article devoted to it is a mass of absurdity, a burlesque of a genuine note on the subject. It appears that the most ordinary thing happened at Los Angeles, California, namely, that some workmen, in driving a tunnel, unearthed some fossil bones. We are not surprised to learn (though it is announced as a marvel) that the bones were those of a mastodon (of which you may see a whole skeleton in Cromwell-road), and those of the extinct American elephant called Elephas columbi. This very commonplace occurrence was certainly not worth recording in a London daily paper. So it is elaborately dressed up with details intended to “fetch” the innocent reader. The writer says Elephas columbi is as much larger than the Siberian mammoth as that is larger than the horse of to-day. The truth is that Elephas columbi and the mammoth are as nearly as possible of the same size. To writer goes on to tell of a “fossil horse,” found at the same place, “a wonderful two-toed animal marked by his cloven hoof.” That is cool impudence; it is precisely “the double hoof” which none of the horse tribe possess, but all the deer, cattle, and sheep do. He next tells us that elephants and mastodons were never found together before, but supposed to have shunned each other’s company. This is an invention; their remains are found side by side all over Europe. Then suddenly the surprising statement is made, like a bolt from the blue, “England ceases to be the Mother Country and Germany the Fatherland to us,” and the pre-eminence of America in providing the biggest thing on earth is declared to have been already manifest “when the world rose out of chaos.” It is satisfactory to be told that England is not the Mother Country of this silliness; but whether the world which solemnly prints and reads it can be said to have yet “risen out of chaos” must be regarded as doubtful.
23. Mistletoe and Holly
Christmas things and customs comprise much that has great interest from a scientific point of view. Our modern celebration of Christmas in England is a combination of the Christian festival of the Nativity with that of the Epiphany, and that of St. Nicholas, who long ago was substituted for the sea god Neptune, of classical mythology, by sea-faring folk. Santa Claus—or Saint Nicholas—has his festival at the beginning of December, but he has been carried over to Christmas Day, and appears as “Father Christmas” in modern celebrations. There is no great antiquity about this part of the tradition which we try to keep alive at Christmas. The making of Christmas Day and Christmastide into a special children’s festival is, on the other hand, a moving back of the festival of the Epiphany, when gifts were brought to the child Christ by wise men of the East. In Rome I have assisted in celebrating our Twelfth Night under the name “Befani,” at a great illuminated public fair, near the Pantheon, where children are taken to buy toys.
There has been in England also a similar moving back of the very ancient—even prehistoric—celebrations of the New Year to Christmas, and hence it is that the mysterious and sacred “mistletoe” of the Druids is mingled in our houses with the less significant but beautiful holly as a decoration. The Christian Church, however, did not, and does not, sanction the introduction of mistletoe into the sacred edifice, and not many years ago those who loved and truly understood tradition would not permit mistletoe to be mixed with holly even in the private house at Christmastide. Mistletoe, it was held, could not be rightly introduced until the new year. The new year, however, of the Druids differed in date from that of the later calendar, and fell in what is to us the second week of March.
The holly tree, with its splendid red berries and shining, prickly leaves, is a beautiful decorative plant, very hardy and abundant: it was used by the old Romans in their “Saturnalia,” a feast which nearly coincided with the Christmas of the new religion. There is a species of holly in South America the leaves of which are made into tea by the Indians, the Paraguay tea or matté. This tea is an unpleasant, bitter decoction, devoid of aroma, if I may judge from samples which I have tasted in London. “Ilex” is the botanical name of the genus to which both our holly-tree and the Paraguay tea belong, but it must not be confused with the evergreen oak to which the name Quercus ilex is given on account of the resemblance of its leaves to those of a holly.
The mistletoe (or mistil-tan, the pale branch, in Anglo-Saxon) is a pale-coloured, small-flowered member of a great family of parasitic plants, the Loranthaceæ. They all live upon trees, and draw a part of their nourishment from the juices of the tree into which their rootlets penetrate. The tropical allies of the mistletoe are very beautiful plants, with fine bunches of brilliantly-coloured flowers and broad handsome green leaves. Our mistletoe is most commonly found parasitic on apple trees and poplar trees. It occurs on nearly all our trees, but is very rare on the oak. A careful inquiry some time ago resulted in the discovery of only seven oaks in all England on which mistletoe was growing. The Druids took their sacred mistletoe from the sacred oak tree on account of its rarity. To them it was a charm against infertility and sterility, and, according to Pliny, was cut and distributed at the new year with great ceremony and the sacrifice of heifers. Its paired white berries contain a viscid fluid which gives it its botanical name Viscum album—and causes the seeds to adhere to the beaks of birds—and thus to be transported to a distance and introduced by the birds’ attempts to wipe their beaks into the cracks of the bark of trees, in which the seeds germinate.
The white-berried mistletoe is the only English kind, and red mistletoe seems altogether out of character. But a red-berried species (Viscum cruciatum) is parasitic on the olive tree in Spain, North Africa, and Syria. Curiously enough, though the white-berried mistletoe is excommunicated by the Western Christian Church on account of its use in pagan worship, the red-berried mistletoe was gathered from olive trees in the Garden of Gethsemane and in the enclosure of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem by Sir Joseph Hooker, the great botanist. The red-berried mistletoe was successfully raised from seed on young olive trees six years ago in this country by the Hon. Charles Ellis, of Frensham, near Haslemere, and was figured at that time by Hooker.
The mistletoe has an evil name in Scandinavian mythology. Baldur, the beautiful, the Sun-god, was made, like Achilles, invulnerable to spears and arrows cut from whatever tree grows on earth. All things had taken an oath not to hurt him, and the gods of Walhalla amused themselves by throwing all sorts of darts and clubs at him—none could hurt him. At last the blind god Höder, who loved the beautiful Baldur none the less because he himself was weakly and sightless, also ventured to throw a dart at his invulnerable friend. It sped home, pierced Baldur’s heart, and killed him. The dart was made of mistletoe, a tree that does not grow on earth, but lives as a parasite high up on other trees, and had taken no oath to spare Baldur. It had been put into the blind god’s hand in a friendly helpful sort of way by a designing female, who was really the evil spirit Loki in disguise. What is the allegory? Does the mistletoe dart stand for calumny? Is the mistletoe associated with calumny because it is a parasite in high places? If one must choose between the mistletoe myth of Norsemen and Briton—the latter, which survives in the power accorded to the mistletoe to license, even to command, by its mere overhead existence, the giving and taking of unexpected kisses and of expected ones, too, is certainly the more cheerful and suitable to the hopeful enterprise of New Year.