Yet, again,
he says that mistletoe was supposed, like vinegar and an egg, to be
an excellent means of extinguishing a fire.
If in these latter passages Pliny refers, as he apparently does, to
the beliefs current among his contemporaries in Italy, it will
follow that the Druids and the Italians were to some extent agreed
as to the valuable properties possessed by mistletoe which grows on
an oak; both of them deemed it an effectual remedy for a number of
ailments, and both of them ascribed to it a quickening virtue, the
Druids believing that a potion prepared from mistletoe would
fertilise barren cattle, and the Italians holding that a piece of
mistletoe carried about by a woman would help her to conceive a
child. Further, both peoples thought that if the plant were to exert
its medicinal properties it must be gathered in a certain way and at
a certain time. It might not be cut with iron, hence the Druids cut
it with gold; and it might not touch the earth, hence the Druids
caught it in a white cloth. In choosing the time for gathering the
plant, both peoples were determined by observation of the moon; only
they differed as to the particular day of the moon, the Italians
preferring the first, and the Druids the sixth.
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