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Among the hyacinths, the violets, the white-thorn, was a multitude of nameless little flowers, those flowers of the lowly which grow from nomadic seed scattered everywhere along the roads. Gazing at the slender, pale blue and bright pink blossoms, with all the delicate shades that flowers invented before colorists, many and many a time during that week Desiree took her excursion again.
So, holding each others hands, they came into the womens room, where the mother and the daughter sat together weaving gold upon English cloth and singing a weaving song. They sang of Doette the fair who sits alone beneath the white-thorn, and round about her blows the wind. She waits for Doon, her friend, but he tarries long and does not come. This was the song they sang.
Referring to the May blossom of the white-thorn, an old proverb says, with a faulty rhyme: "May come early or May come late 'Tis sure to make the old cow quake." May Day has always been the customary date for turning out cattle to grass, but people forget that old May Day was nearly a fortnight later, which makes a great difference as to warmth and keep at that time of year.
But leaving the hazel with its host of superstitions, we may notice the white-thorn, which according to Aryan tradition was also originally sprung from the lightning. Hence it has acquired a wide reverence, and been invested with supernatural properties. Like, too, the hazel, it was associated with marriage rites.
No wonder if in the hollows of the old trees there are so many wild bees' nests. And among the flowers rise curious green, brown and red capsules, the ripe seed-vessels of bulbous plants which bloom in spring. On this flowery region follows more forest; but here the willows and poplar are mixed with wild apple-trees, and white-thorn forms the underwood. The island is higher here.
At length it fell out that, as they were going one day hand in hand through the forest of Breceliande, they found a bush of white-thorn, which was laden with flowers; and they seated themselves under the shade of this white-thorn, upon the green grass, and Merlin laid his head upon the damsel's lap, and fell asleep.
Down by the hazel bushes she hastened, nor noticed that the evening shadows fell; on past the birch groves she ran, nor noticed that the dew fell fast. No one did May Margaret meet until she reached a white-thorn tree. There, up from the grass on which he lay, sprang Hynde Etin. 'What do ye seek in the wood, May Margaret? said he. 'Is it flowers, or is it for dew ye seek this bonny night of May?
I remember that the wood was as sweet from the scent of the white-thorn and the lilacs and a thousand other sweet and fresh things as though some heavenly censer swung there.
Nursed amidst the grandeur of mountain scenery, he has stooped to have a nearer view of the daisy under his feet, or plucked a branch of white-thorn from the spray: but in describing it, his mind seems imbued with the majesty and solemnity of the objects around him the tall rock lifts its head in the erectness of his spirit; the cataract roars in the sound of his verse; and in its dim and mysterious meaning, the mists seem to gather in the hollows of Helvellyn, and the forked Skiddaw hovers in the distance.
When they had arrived within two miles of the little town in which Mat Kavanagh was fixed, they turned off into a deep glen, a little to the left; and, after having seated themselves under a white-thorn which grew on the banks of a rivulet, they began to devise the best immediate measures to be taken. "Boys," said Tim Dolan, "how will we manage now with this thief of a schoolmaster, at all?
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