Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 16, 1905.djvu/525

 Correspondence. 467

on the chalets ; and as far as I could judge they seem to be peculiar to the Val de Morgins.

The astrantia major is called " master-wort " in some botanical books. Is this name connected with the legend told to me at Morgins? The likeness of the spiraea flower to a lock of hair suggests the interesting question whether it was once nailed up as a substitute for real hair, such as is hung on trees as a propitiatory sacrifice to the wood-fiend in New Zealand and Malabar, or in Slavonic countries as a " representative sacrifice," according to Dr. Tylor. I should be grateful to any reader who could supply information from the folk-lore of plants bearing upon both the astrantia or the spircea, or could throw any light upon these flower-crosses.

Lucy E. Broadwood.