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In the same way many flowers have been associated with the Virgin herself. Thus, there is "Our Lady's tresses," and a popular name for the maiden-hair fern and quaking-grass is "Virgin's hair." The lilies of the valley are her tears, and a German nickname for the lungwort is "Our Lady's milk-wort."
The palace garden descended, terrace by terrace, to the rocks, being, indeed, less a garden than what is called a villa in the Liguria, and a podere in Tuscany, a fascinating mixture of vine, olive, maize, flowers, and corn. A fountain in marble, lined with maiden-hair, played at the junction of each flight of steps.
By the help of Doctor Bolter and Adam Gray, a large cask had been cut in half, and decorated on the outsides and edges with rough bark, in whose interstices were planted orchids, and the pretty maiden-hair fern; while upon these being both mounted upon a short rough stump, they formed a couple of rustic vases of huge size, standing just inside the broad verandah, on either side of the entrance door, and looked, when filled with water, and supplied with aquatic plants, no slight additions to the beauty of the place.
Emotional and yet simple, that nature is, to a certain extent, appealed to by the refined. The sordid and vulgar have no attractions for it. There is no language more poetical than the Arabic language, where "snow" is called "hair of the mountain" and "rainbow" is "bride of the rain." "Red mullet" is "the sultan of fishes": "maiden-hair fern" is translated by "little cane of the well."
No blossoms blew among all this greenery; only by that sign and by the wet, perspiring earth might one know that it was autumn on those hills. The clean ooze and dew started a little stream which ran, choked with maiden-hair, to the trail, and formed a pool. Some philanthropic camper had driven a nail into the rock and hung there a tin cup. "How good the water looks!" she said.
Some were the giant tree-ferns, tall as trees, others uncurled snaky stems from masses of rusty-colored matting, and everywhere was spread the delicate lace of the uu-fenua, a maiden-hair beside which the florist's offering is clumsy and insignificant.
The banks were fringed with graceful alders and poison-oak bushes, vivid in crimson and yellow leaves, while delicate maiden-hair ferns grew in miniature forests between the crevices of the rocks; yet, with the practicality of Chinese human nature, Hop Yet used all this beauty for a dish-pan and refrigerator!
If the flow be bilious, treat the patient with syrup of maiden-hair; epithynium, polypody, borage, buglos, fumitary, hart's tongue and syrups, bisantius, which must be made without vinegar, else it will assist the disease instead of nature, for melancholy is increased by the use of vinegar, and both Hippocrates, Silvius and Avenzoar reject it as injurious for the womb, and therefore not to be used internally in uterine diseases.
Give a lying-in woman, immediately after delivery, oil of sweet almonds and syrup of maiden-hair mixed together. Some prefer oil of walnuts, provided it be made of nuts that are very good; but it tastes worse than the other at best. This will lenify the inside of the intestines by its unctuousness, and by that means bring away that which is contained in them more easily.
Now, Ali Khan, strike out of the road. You know the way." So we struck up into the glorious pine woods, mountains all about us. Here and there as we climbed higher was a little bank of forgotten snow, but spring had triumphed and everywhere was the waving grace of maiden-hair ferns, banks of violets and strangely beautiful little wild flowers.
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