which was imprisoned a
suicide. In German folk-lore[30] the soul is supposed to take the form
of a flower, as a lily or white rose; and according to a popular belief,
one of these flowers appears on the chairs of those about to die. In the
same way, from the grave of one unjustly executed white lilies are said
to spring as a token of the person's innocence; and from that of a
maiden, three lilies which no one save her lover must gather. The sex,
moreover, it may be noted, is kept up even in this species of
metempsychosis[31]. Thus, in a Servian folk-song, there grows out of the
youth's body a green fir, out of the maiden's a red rose, which entwine
together. Amongst further instances quoted by Grimm, we are told how,
"a child carries home a bud which the angel had given him in the wood,
when the rose blooms the child is dead. The Lay of Eunzifal makes a
blackthorn shoot out of the bodies of slain heathens, a white flower by
the heads of fallen Christians."

It is to this notion that Shakespeare alludes in "Hamlet," where Laertes
wishes that violets may spring from the grave of Ophelia (v. I):

"Lay her in the earth,
And from her fair and unpolluted flesh
May violets spring."

A passage which is almost identical to one in the "Satires" of Persius
(i. 39):

"E tumulo fortunataque favilla,
Nascentur violae;"

And an idea, too, which Tennyson seems to have borrowed:

"And from his ashes may be made,
The violet of his native land."

Again, in the well-known story of "Tristram and Ysonde," a further
reference occurs: "From his grave there grew an eglantine which twined
about the statue, a marvel for all men to see; and though three times
they cut it down, it grew again, and ever wound its arms about the image
of the fair Ysonde[32]." In the Scottish ballad of "Fair Margaret and
Sweet William," it is related--

"Out of her breast there sprang a rose,
And out of his a briar;
They grew till they grew unto the church top,
And there they tied in a true lovers' knot."

The same idea has prevailed to a large extent among savage races. Thus,
some of the North-Western Indians believed that those who died a natural
death would be compelled to dwell among the branches of tall trees. The
Brazilians have a mythological character called Mani--a child who died
and was buried in the house of her mother. Soon a plant sprang out of
the grave, which grew, flourished, and bore fruit. This plant, says Mr.