This view is confirmed
by a German story in which a hunter is said to have procured
fern-seed by shooting at the sun on Midsummer Day at noon; three
drops of blood fell down, which he caught in a white cloth, and
these blood-drops were the fern-seed. Here the blood is clearly the
blood of the sun, from which the fern-seed is thus directly derived.
Thus it may be taken as probable that fern-seed is golden, because
it is believed to be an emanation of the sun's golden fire.
Now, like fern-seed, the mistletoe is gathered either at Midsummer
or at Christmas--that is, either at the summer or at the winter
solstice--and, like fern-seed, it is supposed to possess the power
of revealing treasures in the earth. On Midsummer Eve people in
Sweden make divining-rods of mistletoe, or of four different kinds
of wood one of which must be mistletoe. The treasure-seeker places
the rod on the ground after sundown, and when it rests directly over
treasure, the rod begins to move as if it were alive. Now, if the
mistletoe discovers gold, it must be in its character of the Golden
Bough; and if it is gathered at the solstices, must not the Golden
Bough, like the golden fern-seed, be an emanation of the sun's fire?
The question cannot be answered with a simple affirmative.
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