Little girls also split the stalks of the flower, and, dipping them in cold water, produce "curls," with which they adorn themselves. This usage, too, is German.
We may speak of the trifling lore of one or two other flowers. A buttercup is held against one child's chin by another, and a bright reflection is supposed (prosaically enough) to indicate a fondness for butter!
It was formerly said in New England that the heart's-ease (Viola tricolor) represented a "step-mother sitting on two chairs." The petals being turned up, the step-mother is seen to have two chairs, her children one each, and her step-children only one between them.
That this flower represents an unkind step-mother is stated in a Low-German rhyme of the fifteenth century; and step-mother is also an English name for the heart's-ease. There is another reason for the title besides that we have given. In Switzerland the flower is considered a type of malice, because the older the flower is the more yellow and "jealous" it becomes. Thus we have another striking example of the original similarity of English and German usage.
Boys in the spring are fond of blowing on the fresh blades of grass, with which they can make a loud but harsh trumpeting. This practice, in Germany, is mentioned at the beginning of the thirteenth century.
It is the custom still for boys to make whistles in the spring from the loosened bark of the willow; but they do not guess that this was originally a superstitious rite, the pipe cut from a tree which grows in the water being supposed to have the power of causing rain. The Swiss children, though unconsciously, still invoke the water-spirit as they separate the bark from the wood:
Franz, Franz,
Lend me your pipe.
No. 44.
Counting Apple-seeds.
The following rhyme, used in New England at the beginning of the present century, remains unchanged in a single word, except the omission of the last three lines.