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appear about Lady-tide. The full flowering takes place about the Visitation, July 2. The young plants flower about the Assumption, August 15. Seedlings of the same year will flower about the Nativity of Our Lady, September 8, and they continue to flower through the whole period, including November 21 and December 8, thus blowing on all the Virgin's Feasts. Thus say the old writers, and the fact is true. The early botanists in our monastery gardens, the inventors of religious emblems, called this plant therefore, Marygold. Cold winters frequently kill the old Marygold plants, and then no flowers are to be seen till the young seedlings appear. Shakspeare thus describes the plant closing its flowers:

The Marygold, that goes to bed with the sun,
And with him rises weeping.

Willsford says, quaintly: "The marigold not only presages stormy weather, by closing or contracting together its leaves, but turns towards the sun's rays all the day, and in the evening shuts up shop."

The garden marigold grows naturally in the vineyards of France, the cornfields of Italy, and the orchards, fields, and gardens of Silesia. It was esteemed for its dazzling splendour long before its uses were discovered: it is a common ingredient in soups, and is said, by old Gerard, greatly to comfort the heart and the spirits. Kersey mentions a marigold apple, striped like a marigold.

The marigold was also the name of an old gold coin. Cowley, in his Cutter of Coleman-street, 1663, has "five hundred marigolds in a purse."

All Fools' Day.

April is usually considered to have been named from Aperire, to open; either from the opening of the buds, or of the bosom of the earth, in producing vegetation. The Saxons called it Oster, or Easter monath, in which month the feast of the Saxon goddess Eastre, Eoster, or Easter, is said to have been celebrated.

The Rev. Peter Roberts, in his Cambrian Popular Antiquities, traces the custom of "making April Fools," by catching and sending persons on sleeveless errands, to the festival which was held at the time of the vernal equinox, or "first day of the first month" of the Jews, on which day Noah sent the raven out of the ark upon its bootless expedition.

M. Gustavus A. Myers, in a communication to Notes and Queries, 2nd S. No. 8, quotes L. Apulei Metamorphoseos, referring to the celebration of the god Risus, and asks was the Roman festival called Hilaria, or Hilaria Matris Deum, the same? This, according to Macrobius (Saturnalia, i. 21), was on the eighth day before the calends (or 1st) of April, corresponding to the 25th of March; and the sports indulged in on that occasion are referred to by Flavius Vopiscus, and commented upon by Salmasius; and upon their authority described by Smith, in his Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, under the head of Hilaria; they bear a strong resemblance as well to the ancient celebration described by Apuleius as to that which prevailed in modern times. The worship of the god Risus may have been very generally abandoned in these matterof-fact days; but the readers of Apuleius well know that Lucius

having accepted Byrrhæna's invitation, was made the subject of as pretty an April fool's trick as has probably ever since been practised. The poet Moore, in his Diary, thus refers to a custom which may indicate the way a fool was supposed to show that his head was turned: April 1st. Made Bessy turn her cap awry in honour of the day." To send a lad to a druggist's for "a penn'orth of hazel oil" insures him castigation with a hazel-stick. After twelve o'clock, the lines are :—

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April fool's gone past,

You're the biggest fool at last;
When April fool comes again,
You'll be the biggest fool then.

St. Herbert's Day.

St. Herbert, the Hermit, has left his name to the island which he inhabited in Derwentwater. He had his yearly festival here in Romish times on the 18th of April, the vicar of Crosthwaite used to perform mass in his chapel on the island, to the joint honour of the Hermit and St. Cuthbert, for they had been friends while they lived, and after death their memories were not divided. Forty days' indulgence was granted to every one who devoutly attended. What a happy holiday must that have been for all these vales; and how joyous, on a fine spring day, must the lake have appeared with boats and banners from every chapelry; and how must the chapel have adorned that little isle, giving a human and religious character to the solitude! Its ruins are still there, in such a state of dilapidation that they only make the island, mere wilderness as it now becomes, more melancholy!—Southey.

St. George's Day.

St. George, the guardian saint of England, is said to have suffered martyrdom in Cappadocia, in the time of Diocletian, after long protracted and accumulated torments, commemorated in the following

verses:

Carcere, cæde, siti, vinclis, fame, frigore, flammis,
Confessus Christum, duxit ad astra caput.

(In imprisonment, scourging, thirst, chains, hunger, cold, and fire, he confessed Christ, then soared to the stars.) It was regarded as a proof of his high merit, that, though he suffered in the East, he should be so revered in the West; nevertheless, his fame has not escaped criticism, even at the hands of persons little disposed to be severe in their examination of the histories of saints. His acts were condemned by Pope Gelasius, in the fifth century, as forgeries of the Arians: and more sceptical inquirers have suspected that the ancient representation of him as killing a dragon who lies in watch for a beautiful virgin, has reference to the expulsion of Athanasius from Alexandria by George the

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Arian Bishop of Cappadocia, in the time of the Emperor Constantius; and that the virgin represents the city of Alexandria; the possession of whose see was the prize of the conflict. The scene of the combat is placed, even by the more orthodox legends, in Libya; but according to their received explanation, the dragon is the devil, and the virgin some town or province, imploring the aid of St. George against his wiles.-(Neale's Feasts and Fasts.) His Festival is kept on the 23rd of April. The true history of St. George has lately been illustrated by Mr. Hogg, in a paper read by him to the Royal Society of Literature; wherein he calls attention to the numerous errors into which even learned writers had fallen with regard to this personage: he likewise describes an inscription, which had been copied during the previous year, by Mr. Cyril Graham, at Ezra, the ancient Zorava, from the walls of a very ancient church dedicated to this saint; but evidently from its structure originally a heathen temple. The date of this inscription appears to be A.D. 346, during the reign of Constantius Chlorus. Mr. Hogg points out that most of the errors respecting St. George have arisen from a confusion which has been made, even in early times, between the real St. George of Syria and George of Cappadocia, who was murdered at Alexandria in A.D. 361, and who has no claim to canonization. Mr. Hogg further states, that there is little room for doubt that the genuine St. George was born in Syria, and suffered the death of a martyr during the reign of Diocletian, A.D. 287.

When the English Crusaders went into the East, they found St. George received among the Christians as a warrior saint, and adopted him as the patron of soldiers. Edward III. at the battle of Calais, in the year 1349, joined to England's guardian St. Edward the Confessor, the name of St. George; and invoked both to his arms: next year the Order of the Garter was established, dedicated to St. George, whose emblem is preserved in its rich jewel: hence the chapel of the order at Windsor is dedicated to St. George; and its grand festivals are held in St. George's Hall, in Windsor Castle.

Archbishop Chicheley, in 1415, directed St. George's Day to be kept "by a double service, and as a greater double feast," with as much solemnity as Christmas Day: yet the courts of law did not observe this day, though it was kept with much solemnity at Court, especially by the Knights of St. George. After 1786, St. George's Day is omitted from the list of holidays observed in the Stationers' Almanack; and the custom of printing that day, Lammas Day, and some other festivals, with a red letter, is discontinued.

The sign of St. George, so common at inns in England, originated in the respect generally paid to our patron Saint. Brand mentions that all persons formerly affected to wear blue coats on St. George's Day: :

On St. George's Day, when blue is worn,

The harebells blue the fields adorn.

In Leicester, the Riding of the George was one of the principal

solemnities of the town on this day; and St. George's horse, harnessed, used to stand in St. George's Chapel, St. Martin's Church, Leicester. At Dublin, the pageant was fuller; an Emperor and Empress, with Knights and maidens, being the principal personages; and St. George's Chapel being hung with black, and provided with rushes, cushions, &c.

All this [says Fosbroke] refers to the legend, that the city of Sylene being infested with a dragon in the marsh, and the sheep failing, which had been given two a-day, to prevent his hurting the people, an ordinance substituted the children and young people, to be chosen by lot, whether rich or poor. The King's daughter was drawn; and St. George happening to pass by, when she was on her way to be devoured, fought and killed the dragon. (The fight is cleverly commemorated by Pistrucci, upon the sovereigns and double sovereigns of George IV.)

St. George is represented with the dragon, exactly as on the signs, in the stained glass at Sodbury, in Gloucestershire: but Selden says that the dragon is only symbolical.

An old poet thus versifies the weather characteristic of the month :

May never was the month of love,

For May is full of flowers;

But rather April wet by kind,

For Love is full of showers.

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The Cuckoo.

The Cuckoo begins to sing early in the season with the interval of a minor third; the bird then proceeds to a major third, next to a fourth, then a fifth, after which his voice breaks without attaining a minor sixth. Heywood, in his epigram "Of Use," 1587, alludes to this remarkable change of note in the cuckoo :

In Aprill, the Koocoo can sing her song by note,

In June, of tune she cannot sing a note;

At first, koocoo, koocoo, sing still can she do;

At last, kooke, kooke, kooke, six kookes to one koo.

The cuckoo may be said to have done much for musical science, because from this bird has been derived the minor scale, whose origin has puzzled so many, the cuckoo's couplet being the minor third sung downwards.

The popular belief in Norfolk is, that whatever you are doing the first time you hear the cuckoo, you will do most frequently all the year. Another is, that an unmarried person will remain single as many years as the cuckoo, when first heard, utters its call. Milton says, in his sonnet to the nightingale :

Thy liquid notes, that close the eye of day,

First heard before the shallow cuckoo's bill,
Portend success in love.

Gamekeepers believe that hawks, in the spring, turn into cuckoos,

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and reassume their proper form when they cease to be heard. belief must have prevailed in Sweden, for Linnæus says: "In falconem transformari perperam aperitur."

Palm Sunday.

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In the Roman Catholic Church, Palm Sunday is the first day of the Holy Week; and at Rome, palms are blessed by the Pope, to exemplify St. John xii. 12, 13: When they [the people] heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem, they took branches of palm-trees, and went forth to meet him." The day was sometimes called Osanna (from the hosannas sung when our Lord entered Jerusalem and the Temple); and Osanna was also a name applied by the Jews to branches of palm, olive, and willow, carried in procession. The boughs of various trees are borne upon Palm Sunday in France, according to Bescherelle, simply as substitutes in default of palm branches. In England and Scotland, however, and apparently in Germany, a particular kind of willow is specially used for Palm Sundays, on account of the peculiar beauty of its yellow blossoms, or catkins, called in German, weiden-palme (willow-palms).

These so-called palms are fronds of the real date-bearing palm, and twigs of the olive-tree, which the people take home in their hands from church. The ceremony of bearing palms in England was retained till the second year of the reign of Edward VI.; and it was formerly a proverbial saying, "He who hath not a palm in his hand on Palm Sunday must have his hand cut off." The custom still lingers in some rural districts, though not as a religious observance.

Palm was formerly used for decorating our churches upon Palm Sunday; and, to this day, the weavers of Spitalfields emerge from their murky dwellings into the open country of Essex to gather palm, and thus inhale fresh air in a recreation which is not altogether without its sanctifying association.

In Roman Catholic times, the yew was also generally used in England for palms, blessed, and borne in procession on Palm Sunday; and in many Roman Catholic churches and chapels in England it is employed still for the same purpose: in others, the sallow is preferred, and in others, laurel, box, or broom. In Ireland the branches of the yew are used instead of palm, and sprigs of yew are worn in their caps and hats by the peasantry, for the whole of Passion Week up to Easter Sunday; and "the blessed palm," i.e. yew, is placed beside the crucifix, at the head of the bed. Throughout Ireland the yew is called "palm" by the peasantry, and even by some persons of good education. And this use of the tree is thought to have led to the yew being planted in churchyards, so as to be grown in consecrated ground, and to be at hand.

Every Palm Sunday, the day on which the battle of Towton was fought, a rough figure called the Red Horse, on the side of a hill in Warwickshire, is scoured out. This is suggested to be done in com

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