In Russia they say that if you succeed
in catching the wondrous bloom of the fern at midnight on Midsummer
Eve, you have only to throw it up into the air, and it will fall
like a star on the very spot where a treasure lies hidden. In
Brittany treasure-seekers gather fern-seed at midnight on Midsummer
Eve, and keep it till Palm Sunday of the following year; then they
strew the seed on the ground where they think a treasure is
concealed. Tyrolese peasants imagine that hidden treasures can be
seen glowing like flame on Midsummer Eve, and that fern-seed,
gathered at this mystic season, with the usual precautions, will
help to bring the buried gold to the surface. In the Swiss canton of
Freiburg people used to watch beside a fern on St. John's night in
the hope of winning a treasure, which the devil himself sometimes
brought to them. In Bohemia they say that he who procures the golden
bloom of the fern at this season has thereby the key to all hidden
treasures; and that if maidens will spread a cloth under the
fast-fading bloom, red gold will drop into it.
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