name they commonly give to the ague) very bad.’ ‘Ay,’ says I, ‘I have that.’ ‘Wad ye like to be shot on’t?’ says he. ‘Ay, that wud I,’ says I. ‘Why then,’ says he, ‘thou mun do as I tell thee. Dost thou see yon espin-tree t’other side o’ the field, ther?” ‘Ay, dif I,’ says I. ‘Why then, ma lass, thou mun gang along to where thou sees ma coat lying yonder, and thou’lt fin’ a knife in ma pocket, and thou mun tak t’ knife and cut off a long lock o’ thy heer (and lang and black ma heer were then, ye may believe me); and then thou mun gan to t’ espin-tree, and thou mun tak a greet pin and wrap thy heer around it, and thou mun pin it t’it bark o’ t’ espin-tree; and while thou’st daeing it thou mun say, ‘Espin-tree, espin-tree, I prithee to shak an shiver insted o’ me.’ An it’ll come to pass ’at thou’lt niver hae t’ shakking more, if thou nobbut gans straight home, and niver speaks to naebody till thou gets theer.’ Sae I did as he tell’t me, but if ye believe me I were sorely flayed; but howsomever t’auld man cured me that way, and I’ve niver had t’ shakking fra that day to this.”
I suppose that the ceaseless trembling of the aspen-leaves, even when all around is still, is suggestive of mystery; for certain it is that this tree comes forward a good deal in the Folk-Lore of different nations. The Bretons explain the phenomenon by averring that the cross was made from its wood,[1] and that the trembling marks the shuddering of sympathetic horror.[2] The
- ↑ The Legenda Aurea asserts that the cross was made of four kinds of wood: the palm, the cypress, the olive, and the cedar.—S. B. G.
- ↑ Mrs. Hemans came across this belief in Denbighshire, and therefore called it a Welsh legend, on which De Quincey (in his essay on Modern Superstition) remarks that it is not simply Welsh but European, or, rather, co-extensive with Christendom. I have met with some verses which, after telling how other trees were passed by in the choice of wood for the cross, describes the hewing down of the aspen and the dragging it from the forest to Calvary:—
On the morrow stood she trembling
Still when not a breeze is stirring,
At the awful weight she bore,
When the sun in midnight blackness
Darkened on Judea’s shore.
When the mist sleeps on the hill,
And all other trees are moveless,
Stands the aspen trembling still.
