Author: Charles Montgomery Skinner

Publisher: Theclassics.Us

Published: 2013-09

Total Pages: 88

ISBN-13: 9781230318691

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1915 edition. Excerpt: ...flower, was carried to Europe in the sixteenth century and brought to this country by the Puritans. It grows wild in southern Asia and southwestern Europe, but with us, who have known it as prince's feather and duck's bills, and also as laylock and blow-pipe tree, because pipe-stems were made from its smaller branches, it is a loved occupant of the garden; and what more beautiful than a lane of lilacs in May with heavy heads nodding over the walk and dripping dew and perfume T Though picked for May festivals it was introduced charily indoors, for to many it was a flower of ill luck--a result of the association of its purple color with the hues of mourning. An old proverb declares that she who wears lilacs will never wear a wedding ring, and to send a spray of lilac to a fianc6 was a delicate way of asking that the engagement be broken. An English nobleman having ruined a trusting girl and caused her death of a broken heart, a mound of lilac blooms was placed upon her grave by friends, who averred that in the morning the flowers had become white, though when put upon the grave they were rosy mauve. This, the first white lilac, is pointed out to-day in the churchyard of a hamlet on the Wye, in Hartfordshire. LINDEN To the old Germans, the lime, or linden, was a holy tree, yet a haunt of dwarfs and fairies; and under it the dragons lay so often, for the shade, or for some protecting property, that they became known as lindenworms. The custom of magistrates of sitting beneath it to give sentence also lent importance to the lime and caused it to be known as the tree of judgment. In the mythology of the north, when Sigurd, after killing the dragon Fafnir, bathes in its blood, a linden leaf falls on his shoulder and makes it vulnerable to...