But the question at once presents itself, For what reason did the Celtic Druids employ the much venerated mistletoe? This question becomes of deep significance in the light of the learning shed by Godfrey Higgins and General Vallencey upon the derivation of the Druids from Buddhistic or Brahminical origin.
“Ajasson enumerates the following superstitions of ancient Britain, as bearing probable marks of an Oriental origin: ... the ceremonials used in cutting the plants.”—(“Mistletoe,” Pliny, Bohn, lib. 30, cap. 6, footnote.)
That the mistletoe was regarded as a medicine, and a very potent one, is easy enough to show. All the encyclopædias admit that much; but the accounts that have been preserved of the ideas associated with this worship are not complete or satisfactory.
“The mistletoe, which they (the Druids) called ‘all-heal,’ used to cure disease.”—(McClintock and Strong’s Encyclopædia, quoting Stukeley.)
“The British bards and Druids had an extraordinary veneration for the number three. ‘The mistletoe,’ says Vallencey, in his ‘Grammar of the Irish Language,’ ‘was sacred to the Druids, because not only its berries, but its leaves also, grow in clusters of three united to one stock. The Christian Irish held the Seamroy sacred in like manner, because of three leaves united to one stock.’”—(Brand, “Popular Antiquities,” London, 1872, vol. i, p. 109, article “St. Patrick’s Day.”)
“Within recent times the mistletoe has been regarded as a valuable remedy in epilepsy (query, on the principle of similia similibus?) and other diseases, but at present is not employed.... The leaves have been fed to sheep in time of scarcity of other forage (which shows at least that it is edible).”—(Appleton’s American Encyclopædia.)
“Seems to possess no decided medical properties.”—(International Encyclopædia.)
“It is now perhaps impossible to account for the veneration in which it was held and the wonderful qualities which it was supposed to possess.”—(“The Druids,” Rev. Richard Smiddy, Dublin, 1871, p. 90.)
Pliny mentions three varieties. Of these “the hyphar is useful for fattening cattle, if they are hardy enough to withstand the purgative effect it produces at first; the viscum is medicinally of value as an emollient, and in cases of tumors, ulcers, and the like.”
Pliny is also quoted as saying that it was considered of benefit to women in childbirth,—“in conceptum feminarum adjuvare si omnino secum habeant.”[26] Pliny is also authority for the reverence in which the mistletoe growing on the robur (Spanish roble, or evergreen oak) was held by the Druids. The robur, he says, is their sacred tree, and whatever is found growing upon it, they regard as sent from heaven and as the mark of a tree chosen by God.—(Encyclopædia Britannica.)
Brand (“Popular Antiquities,” London, 1849, vol. i. article “Mistletoe”) cites the opinion of various old authors that mistletoe was regarded “as a medicine very likely to subdue not only the epilepsy, but all other convulsive disorders.... The high veneration in which the Druids were held by the people of all ranks proceeded in a great measure from the wonderful cures they wrought by means of the mistletoe of the oak.... The mistletoe of the oak, which is very rare, is vulgarly said to be a cure for wind-ruptures in children; the kind which is found upon the apple is said to be good for fits.”
“The Persians and Masagetæ thought the mistletoe something divine, as well as the Druids.”—(“Antiquities of Cornwall,” 1796, p. 63.)
After telling of the use of this plant among the Druids and their mode of gathering it, Fosbroke adds: “Mistletoe was not unknown in the religious ceremonies of the ancients, and was supposed to have magical and medicinal properties.”—(Fosbroke, Cyclopædia of Antiquities, vol. ii. p. 1047, article “Mistletoe,” London, 1843.)
Mr. W. Winwood Reade mentions, in his “Veil of Isis” (London, 1861), at page 69, that the missolding or mistletoe of the oak, still called in Wales “all-iach,” or “all-heal,” was the sovereign remedy of the Druids; and at page 71 he adds that a powder from its berries was considered a cure for sterility. He describes the effect of mistletoe as that of a strong purgative.—(Personal letter from Frank Rede Fowke, Esq., South Kensington Museum, London, England, June 18, 1888.)
“The Druids named it Uil-loc or All-Heal, because they said it promoted increase of species or prevented sterility.”—(“Rivers of Life,” Forlong, vol. ii. p. 331.)
“We shall probably never hear the whole truth in regard to this ancient religion (Druidism); for, as Mr. Davies says, ‘most of the offensive ceremonies must have been either retrenched or concealed,’ as the Roman laws and edicts had for ages (before the Bardic writings) restrained the more cruel and bloody sacrifices, and at the time of the Bards nothing remained but symbolic rites.”—(“Rivers of Life,” Forlong, vol. ii. p. 331.)
The plant (mistletoe) is one of world-wide fame. Masagetæ, Skythians, and the most ancient Persians called it the “Healer,” and Virgil calls it a “branch of gold;” while Charon was dumb in presence of such an augur of coming bliss; it was “the expectancy of all nations, longe post tempore visum, as betokening Sol’s return to earth.”—(“Rivers of Life,” Forlong, vol. i. p. 81.)
Borlase sees much similarity between the Magi and our Druids, and Strabo did the same. “Both carried in their hands, during the celebration of their rites, a bunch of plants; that of the Magi was of course the Hom, called Barsom,—Assyrian and Persepolis sculptures substantiate this. The Hom looks very much like the Mistletoe, and the learned Dr. Stukeley thinks that this parasite is meant as being on the tree mentioned by Isaiah, vi. 13.”—(“Rivers of Life,” Forlong, vol. i. p. 43.)
“But yet it shall be a tenth, and it shall return and shall be eaten; as a teil tree and as an oak, whose substance is in them, when they cast their leaves; so the holy seed shall be the substance thereof.”—(Isaiah, vi. 13.)
“The mistletoe wreath marks in one sense Venus’s temple, for any girl may be kissed if caught under its sprays,—a practice, though modified, which recalls to us that horrid one mentioned by Herodotus, where all women were for once at least the property of the man who sought them in Mylitta’s temple.”—(“Rivers of Life,” Forlong, London, 1883, vol. i. p. 91.)
The following are Frazer’s views on this subject: “The mistletoe was viewed as the seat of life of the oak. The conception of the mistletoe as the seat of life of the oak would naturally be suggested to primitive people by the observation that while the oak is deciduous, the mistletoe which grows on it is evergreen. In winter, the sight of its fresh foliage among the bare branches must have been hailed by the worshippers of the tree as a sign that the divine life which had ceased to animate the branches yet survived in the mistletoe, as the heart of the sleeper still beats when his body is motionless. Hence, when the god had to be killed, when the sacred tree had to be burnt, it was necessary to begin by breaking off the mistletoe, for so long as the mistletoe remained intact, the oak (so people thought) was invulnerable,—all the blows of their knives and axes would glance harmless from its surface. But once tear from the oak its sacred heart, the mistletoe, and the tree nodded to its fall.”—(“The Golden Bough,” James G. Frazer, M. A., London, 1890, vol. ii. pp. 295, 296.)
This train of reasoning would be irrefutable, as it is most logical, were we in a position to be able to say that the excision of the fungus was followed by the felling of the tree; but, unfortunately, that is just what we are not able to determine. As a surmise, there is no impropriety in believing that such excision may have marked the oak for destruction at some future day; but there is no authority that we can produce at this time to justify anything more than a surmise in the premises. That the sacred character of the oak was due to the properties discovered in the mistletoe is quite likely in view of all the facts already presented.
O’Curry, who appears to have known all that was to be learned on the subject of Druidism, admits that the world is in possession of very little that is reliable; he inclines to the view that Druidism was of Eastern origin. (See “Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish,” Eugene O’Curry, London, Edinburgh, Dublin, and New York, 1873.) He contends that “the Sacred Wand” of the Druids was made of the yew, and not of the oak or mistletoe.—(Idem, vol. ii. p. 194.)
Vallencey did not believe that the Persians were acquainted with the mistletoe; at least, he could not find any name for it in Persian.—(See Major Charles Vallencey, “Collectanea de Rebus Hibernicis,” Dublin, 1774, vol. ii. p. 433.)
“In Cambodia, when a man perceives a certain parasitic plant growing on a tamarind-tree, he dresses in white and taking a new earthen pot climbs the tree at mid-day. He puts the plant in the pot and lets the whole fall to the ground. Then in the pot he makes a decoction which renders him invulnerable.”—(Aymonier, “Notes sur les Coûtumes, etc., des Cambodgiens,” quoted in “The Golden Bough,” vol. ii. p. 286, footnote.)
“It was that only which is found upon the oak which the Druids employed; and being a parasitic plant, the seeds of which are not sown by the hand of man, it was well adapted for the purposes of superstition.”—(“Philosophy of Magic,” Salverte, vol. i. p. 229.)
Much testimony may be adduced to show that the mistletoe was valued as an aphrodisiac, as conducive to fertility, as sacred to love, and, in general terms, an excitant of the genito-urinary organs, which is the very purpose for which the Siberian and North American medicine-men employed the fungus, and perhaps the very reason for which both fungus and mistletoe were excluded from the Brahminical dietary.
Brand shows that mistletoe “was not unknown in the religious ceremonies of the ancients, particularly the Greeks,” and that the use of it, savoring strongly of Druidism, prevailed at the Christmas service of York Cathedral down to our own day.—(See in Brand, “Popular Antiquities,” London, 1849, vol. i. p. 524.)
The merry pastime of kissing pretty girls under the Christmas mistletoe seems to have a phallic derivation. “This very old custom has descended from feudal times, but its real origin and significance are lost.” (“Appleton’s American Encyclopædia.”) Brand shows that the young men observed the custom of “plucking off a berry at each kiss.” (Vol. i. p. 524.) Perhaps, in former times, they were required to swallow the berry. The deductions of a recent writer merit attention:—
“The mistletoe was dedicated to Mylitta, in whose worship every woman must once in her life submit to the sexual embrace of a stranger. When she concluded to perform this religious duty in honor of her acknowledged deity, she repaired to the temple and placed herself under the mistletoe, thus offering herself to the first stranger who solicited her favors. The modern modification of the ceremony is found in the practice among some people of hanging the mistletoe, at certain seasons of the year, in the parlor or over the door, when the woman entering that door, or found standing under the wreath, must kiss the first man who approaches her and solicits the privilege.” (“Phallic Worship,” Robert Allen Campbell, C. E., St. Louis, Mo., 1888, p. 202.)
A writer in “Notes and Queries” (Jan. 3, 1852, vol. v. p. 13) quotes Nares to the effect that “the maid who was not kissed under it at Christmas would not be married in that year.” But another writer (Feb. 28, 1852, same volume) points out that “we should refer the custom to the Scandinavian mythology, wherein the mistletoe is dedicated to Friga, the Venus of the Scandinavians.”[27]
Grimm speaks of Paltar (Balder) being killed by the stroke of a piece of mistletine, but ventures upon no explanation.—(“Teutonic Mythology,” vol. i. p. 220, article “Paltar.”)
“Within the sanctuary at Nemi grew a certain tree of which no branch might be broken. Only a runaway slave was allowed to break off, if he could, one of its boughs. Success in the attempt entitled him to fight the priest in single combat, and if he slew him he reigned in his stead with the title of King of the Wood (Rex Nemorensis.) Tradition averred that the fatal branch was that ‘golden bough’ which at the Sibyl’s bidding, Æneas plucked before he essayed the perilous journey to the world of the dead.”—(“The Golden Bough,” Frazer, vol. i. p. 4, article “The Arician Grove.”)
“A plant associated with the death of one of their greatest and best-beloved gods must have been supremely sacred to all of Teutonic blood; and yet this opinion of its sacredness was shared by the Celtic nations.” (Grimm, “Teutonic Mythology,” vol. iii. p. 1205.) “Our herbals divide mistletoe into those of the oak, hazel, and pear tree; and none of them must be let touch the ground.”—(Idem, p. 1207.)
Another writer (“Notes and Queries,” 2d series, vol. iv. p. 506) says: “As it was supposed to possess the mystic power of giving fertility and a power to preserve from poison, the pleasant ceremony of kissing under the mistletoe may have some reference to this belief.”
In vol. iii. p. 343, it is stated: “A Worcestershire farmer was accustomed to take down his bough of mistletoe and give it to the cow that calved first after New Year’s Day. This was supposed to insure good luck to the whole dairy. Cows, it may be remarked, as well as sheep, will devour mistletoe with avidity.”
And still another (in 2d series, vol. vi. p. 523) recognizes that “the mistletoe was sacred to the heathen Goddess of Beauty,” and “it is certain that the mistletoe, though it formerly had a place among the evergreens employed in the Christian decorations, was subsequently excluded.” This exclusion he accounts for thus: “It is also certain that, in the earlier ages of the church, many festivities not at all tending to edification (the practice of mutual kissing among the rest) had gradually crept in and established themselves, so that, at a certain part of the service, ‘statim clerus, ipseque populus per basia blande sese invicim oscularetur.’”
This author cites Hone, Hook, Moroni, Bescherelle, Ducange, and others. Finally (in the 3d series, vol. vii. p. 76), an inquirer asks, “How came it in Shakspeare’s time to be considered ‘baleful,’ and, in our days, the most mirth-provoking of plants?” And still another correspondent, in the same series (vol. vii. p. 237), claims that “mistletoe will produce abortion in the female of the deer or dog.”
“Sir John Ollbach, in his dissertation concerning mistletoe, which he strongly recommends as a medicine very likely to subdue not only the epilepsy, but all other convulsive disorders, observes that this beautiful plant must have been designed by the Almighty for other and more noble purposes than barely to feed thrushes or to be hung up superstitiously in houses to drive away evil spirits. He tells (p. 12) that ‘the high veneration in which the Druids were anciently held by the people of all ranks proceeded in a great measure from the wonderful cures they wrought by means of the mistletoe of the oak; this tree being sacred to them, but none so that had not the mistletoe upon them.’ Mr. F. Williams, dating from Pembroke, Jan. 28, 1791, tells us, in the ‘Gentleman’s Magazine’ for February that year, that ‘“Guidhel,” mistletoe, a magical shrub, appeared to be the forbidden tree in the middle of the trees of Eden; for, in the Edda, the mistletoe is said to be Balder’s death, who yet perished through blindness and a woman.’”—(Brand, “Popular Antiquities,” London, 1872, vol. i. p. 519, article “Evergreen-decking at Christmas.”)
That an infusion or decoction of the plant was once in use may be gathered from the fact narrated by John Eliot Howard: “Water, in which the sacred mistletoe had been immersed, was given to or sprinkled upon the people.”—(“The Druids and their Religion,” John Eliot Howard, in “Transactions of Victoria Institute,” vol. xiv. p. 118, quoting “Le gui de chêne et les Druides,” E. Magdaleine, Paris, 1877.)
Montfaucon says of the Druids: “Ils croient que les animaux stériles deviennent féconds en buvant de l’eau de gui.”—(“L’antiquité Expliquée, Paris, 1722, tome 2, part 2, p. 436, quoting and translating Pliny.)
“The misselto, or ‘Uil-ice,’ was required to be taken, if possible, from the Jovine tree when in its prime; but it was rare to find it on any oak. If obtained from one about thirty-five years old, and taken in a potion, it conferred fertility on men, women, and children.”—(“Rivers of Life,” Forlong, vol. ii. p. 355.)
Eugene O’Curry speaks of the Irish Druids having a “drink of oblivion,” the composition of which has not, however, come down to us. (See “Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish,” vol. ii. p. 198.) O’Curry calls this drink of oblivion a “Druidical charm,” and a “Druidical incantation.”—(Idem, vol. ii. p. 226.)[28]
See notes in this monograph on the Hindu Lingam.
An American writer says that among the Mound-builders the mistletoe was “the holiest and most rare of evergreens,” and that when human sacrifices were offered to sun and moon the victim was covered with mistletoe, which was burnt as an incense. (Pidgeon, “Dee-coo-dah,” New York, 1853, p. 91 et seq.) Pidgeon claimed to receive his knowledge from Indians versed in the traditions and lore of their tribes.[29]
Mrs. Eastman presents a drawing of what may be taken as the altar of Haokah, the anti-natural god of the Sioux, in which is a representation of a “large fungus that grows on trees” (query, mistletoe?), which, if eaten by an animal, will cause its death.[30]
That the Mexicans had a reverence for the mistletoe would seem to be assured. They had a mistletoe festival. In October they celebrated the festival of the Neypachtly, or bad eye, which was a plant growing on trees and hanging from them, gray with the dampness of rain; especially did it grow on the different kinds of oak.[31] The informant says he can give no explanation of this festival.
It may be interesting to detect vestiges of Druidical rites tenaciously adhering to the altered life of modern civilization.
In the department of Seine-et-Oise, twelve leagues from Paris (says a recent writer), when a child had a rupture (hernia) he was brought under a certain oak, and some women, who no doubt earned a living in that trade, danced around the oak, muttering spell-words till the child was cured,—that is, dead.—(“Notes and Queries,” 5th series, vol. vii. p. 163.)
It has already been shown that the Druids ascribed this very medical quality to the mistletoe of the oak.
“In Brittany a festival for the mistletoe is still kept.... The people there call it ‘touzon ar gros,’—‘the herb of the cross.’”—(“Commonplace Book,” Buckle, vol. ii. of his Works, p. 440, London, 1872.)
Mistletoe has been burned in England in love divinations.—(See Brand, “Popular Antiquities,” London, 1872, vol. iii. p. 358, article “Divination by Flowers.”)
Frommann enumerates mistletoe among “Recentiorum ad fascinum remedia.... Viscum corylinum et tiliaceum” (hazel or filbert and linden trees). The genitalia of the bewitched person were anointed with an ointment prepared from the hazel mistletoe to untie “ligatures.” (See Frommann, “Tractatus de Fascinatione,” Nuremberg, 1675, pp. 938, 957, 958, 965.)
“We find that persons in Sweden who are afflicted with the falling sickness carry with them a knife having a handle of oak mistletoe, to ward off attacks. A piece of mistletoe hung round the neck would ward off other sicknesses. We have Culpepper’s authority for saying ‘it is excellent good for the grief of the sinew, itch, sores, and tooth-ache, the biting of mad dogs, and venemous beasts, and that it purgeth choler very gently.’ Grimm notes that it was with a branch of mistletoe that Balder was killed.... The Kadeir Taliasin says that the mistletoe was one of the ingredients in the awen a gwybodeu, or water of inspiration, science, and immortality, which the goddess Kod prepared in her cauldron. Witches were thought to have no power to hurt those who bore mistletoe round their neck. Sir Thomas Browne speaks of the virtues of mistletoe in cases of epilepsy.”—(“Folk-Medicine,” Black, London, 1883, p. 196.)
The same belief in Waters of Life, science, immortality, etc., seems to obtain among the Slav nations, who also speak in their myths of “the crazy weed,” which may, perhaps, be classified with the weed of the Borgie well, which, as we have seen, “set a’ the Camerslang fo’k wrang i’ th’ head.”—(See “Myths and Folk-Tales of the Russians, Western Slavs, and Magyars,” Jeremiah Curtin, Boston, Mass., 1890.)
The mistletoe, especially that from the linden and the oak, was enumerated by Etmuller among the cures for epilepsy (“tiliaceum et quercinum”); others recommended that from the elder or willow. For the same disease, on the same page, “zibethum” was prescribed. (See Etmuller, “Opera Omnia,” Lyons, 1690, vol. i. p. 198: “Comment. Ludovic.”)
The mistletoe of the juniper, gathered in the month of May, was good for eye-water. “Maio mense instar musci adnascitur inservit aquæ ophthalmicæ.”—(Etmuller, vol. i. p. 84, “Schroderi Dilucidati Phytologia.”)
Fungi of different kinds dried were used as styptics.—(Idem, p. 70.)
The fungus of the oak was especially good for this purpose.—(Idem, p. 127.)
The mistletoe of the oak was regarded as of special value in all uterine troubles, hemorrhages, suppression of the menses, etc.—(Idem, p. 127.)
In the Myth of Kale-wala a young maiden is represented as becoming pregnant by eating a berry. (See “Myth, Ritual, and Religion,” Andrew Lang, London, 1887, vol. ii. p. 179.)
We may ask the question, what kind of a berry this was. Reference may also be had to what Lang has to say on the mythical conceptions alleged to have been induced by juniper and other berries.—(Idem, p. 180.)
The “mistletoe of the oake” was administered internally against “epilepsie.”—(“Most Excellent and Most Approved Remedies,” London, 1654, p. 14.)
“A ring made of mistletoe is esteemed in Sweden as an amulet.”—(“Folk-Medicine,” Black, p. 173.)
In Murrayshire, Scotland, “at the full moon in March, the inhabitants cut withies of the mistletoe or ivy, make circles of them, keep them all the year, and pretend to cure hectics and other troubles with them.”—(Brand, “Popular Antiquities,” vol. iii. p. 151, article “Moon.”)
“In North Germany, where the old Teutonic cult still lingers, the villagers run about on Christmas, striking the doors and windows with hammers, and shouting, ‘Guthyl! Guthyl!’—plainly the Druidical name for mistletoe used by Pliny. In Holstein, the people call the mistletoe ‘the branch of spectres;’ ... they think it cures fresh wounds and ensures success in hunting.” Stukeley is quoted to show that the veneration for the plant prevailed at the Cathedral of York down to the most recent times.—(Encyclopædia Metropolitana.)
“Misseltoe of the oake drunk cureth certainly this disease” (epilepsy).—(“The Poor Man’s Physician,” John Moncrief, Edinburgh, 1716, p. 71.)
Still another writer reckons it a specific in epilepsy; also in apoplexy, vertigo, to prevent convulsions, and to assist children in teething, being worn round their necks. “We have accounts of strange superstitious customs used in gathering it, and that if they are not complied with it loses its virtue. This is by some conjectured to be the golden bough which Æneas made use of to introduce him to the Elysian regions, as is beautifully described in Virgil’s sixth Æneid.”—(“Complete English Dispensatory,” John Quincy, M.D., London, 1730, p. 134.)
Culpepper wrote that the mistletoe, especially that growing upon the oak, was beneficial in the falling sickness, in apoplexy, and in palsy; also as a preventive of witchcraft; in the last-named case it should be worn about the neck. He did not seem to know anything of the origin of these ideas and practices.—(See Richard Culpepper, “The English Physician,” London, 1765, p. 217.)
Pomet, in his “History of Drugs,” London, 1737, describes agaric as an excrescence “found on the larch, oak, etc.... The best agaric is that from the Levant;” only that “which the antients used to call the female should be used in medicine.” It was prescribed in “all distempers proceeding from gross humors and obstructions,”—such as epilepsy, vertigo, mania, etc.; and this partly on the sympathetic or similia similibus principle.
In one of the preparations for epilepsy, said by Beckherius to have been recommended by Galen, occurs “Agaricus Viscus Querci.”—(See Danielus Beckherius, “Medicus Microcosmus,” London, 1660, p. 208.)
“When found growing on the oak, the mistletoe represented man.”—(Opinion of the French writer Reynaud, in his article “Druidism,” quoted in the Encyclopædia Britannica.)
Notwithstanding this abundant proof, which might, if necessary, be swollen in volume, of the survival in domestic medicine, as well as in medical practice of a more pretentious character, of the use of the mistletoe, more particularly in cases of epilepsy, there is no instance of its employment noticed in “Saxon Leechdoms.”
The explanation may be found in the fact that that compilation was rather exponential of the knowledge still possessed by the monks of classical therapeutics than of the skill attained by the Saxons themselves; there are pages of quotations from Sextus Placitus and other authorities, but scarcely anything to show that the ideas of the Saxons themselves were represented.
Other curious instances of survival present themselves in the linguistics of the subject. The French word “gui,” meaning mistletoe, is not of Latin, but of Druidical derivation, and so the Spanish “aguinaldo,” meaning Christmas or New Year’s present, conserves the cry, slightly altered, of the Druid priest to the “gui” at the opening of the new year.
“Aguillanneuf, et plus clairement, ‘au gui, l’an neuf,’ ou bien encore, ‘l’anguil l’an neuf.’”—(Le Roux de Lincy, Livre des Proverbes Français, 1848, Paris, tome 1, p. 2, quoted in Buckle’s “Commonplace Book,” vol. ii. p. 440.)
“The next business was to arrange for the collection of the sacred plant, and bards were sent forth in all directions to summon the people to the great religious ceremony. The words of the proclamation are believed to survive in the custom which prevails, especially at Chartres, the old metropolis of the Druids, of soliciting presents on the New Year, with the words ‘au gui l’an neuf.’”—(“Le Gui de Chêne et les Druides,” Magdaleine, quoted by John Elliot Howard, in “Victoria Society Transactions,” vol. xiv.)
“The Celtic name for the oak was ‘gue,’ or ‘guy.’”—(Brand, Pop. Ant., vol. i. p. 458.)
A writer in “Notes and Queries” shows (vol. ii. p. 163) that the word mistletoe is “le gui” in French; the continental Druid was called Gui, or a Guy, from “cuidare,” whence “Guide.” At the present day, while the mistletoe itself is a charm, the name is a term of opprobrium,—guy, in English.
M. C. H. Gaidoz takes exception to this interpretation. In his opinion, the words “aguinaldo” and “à gui l’an neuf” are to be derived from the Latin “ad calendas.”—(Personal letter, dated Paris, France, March 11, 1889.)