"
Thus the Aino agree with the Druids in regarding mistletoe as a cure
for almost every disease, and they agree with the ancient Italians
that applied to women it helps them to bear children. Again, the
Druidical notion that the mistletoe was an "all-healer" or panacea
may be compared with a notion entertained by the Walos of
Senegambia. These people "have much veneration for a sort of
mistletoe, which they call _tob;_ they carry leaves of it on their
persons when they go to war as a preservative against wounds, just
as if the leaves were real talismans (_gris-gris_)." The French
writer who records this practice adds: "Is it not very curious that
the mistletoe should be in this part of Africa what it was in the
superstitions of the Gauls? This prejudice, common to the two
countries, may have the same origin; blacks and whites will
doubtless have seen, each of them for themselves, something
supernatural in a plant which grows and flourishes without having
roots in the earth. May they not have believed, in fact, that it was
a plant fallen from the sky, a gift of the divinity?"
This suggestion as to the origin of the superstition is strongly
confirmed by the Druidical belief, reported by Pliny, that whatever
grew on an oak was sent from heaven and was a sign that the tree had
been chosen by the god himself.
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