Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 3, 1892.djvu/189

Rh near Bamberg. During the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries we have many similar records in Germany.

In England, too, the legend of the flowering tree of Yuletide is known. Until the year 1753 the old reckoning according to the Julian calendar had been used, by which the New Year commenced on the 25th of March. As all other civilised states had already adopted the Gregorian calendar, the alteration of the New Year, and the change from the old to the new calendar, was accomplished without opposition on the part of the people in England. It was only in Buckinghamshire that a rebel rising threatened, and the cause of this was an old belief which was threatened by the new calendar.

In the old English legend Joseph of Arimathæa plays a part. His figure is also connected with the story of the Holy Grail, which was widespread all through the Middle Ages. Of Joseph of Arimathaæ it is told, that he once planted a staff on Christmas Eve which he had cut years ago from a hawthorn. It immediately took root and put forth leaves, and the next day was covered with blossoms. For many years this bush used to be in full bloom on Christmas night, and any cutting taken from it had the same miraculous power. Many of the bushes had withered and died in the course of centuries. Only one had survived, which stood on a mound in the churchyard of the Abbey of Glastonbury. In the reign of Charles I, it was still the custom to have a stately procession on Christmas Day, and to bring a branch of Glastonbury thorn, plucked the preceding night and always in full bloom, to the King and Queen. At the time of the civil war between the King and Parliament this wonderful bush was burned during an attack on the abbey. But not even then was the miraculous plant quite exterminated: a cutting had been planted some time before in Quainton in Buckinghamshire, and it also blossomed every Christmas night, although it was covered with blossoms in early summer