ty of rose-legends of this kind in different
countries, the universal popularity of this favourite blossom having
from the earliest times made it justly in repute; and according to the
Hindoo mythologists, Pagoda Sin, one of the wives of Vishnu, was
discovered in a rose--a not inappropriate locality.

Like the rose, many plants have been extensively associated with sacred
legendary lore, a circumstance which frequently explains their origin. A
pretty legend, for instance, tells us how an angel was sent to console
Eve when mourning over the barren earth. Now, no flower grew in Eden,
and the driving snow kept falling to form a pall for earth's untimely
funeral after the fall of man. But as the angel spoke, he caught a flake
of falling snow, breathed on it, and bade it take a form, and bud and
blow. Ere it reached the ground it had turned into a beautiful flower,
which Eve prized more than all the other fair plants in Paradise; for
the angel said to her:--

"This is an earnest, Eve, to thee,
That sun and summer soon shall be."

The angel's mission ended, he departed, but where he had stood a ring of
snowdrops formed a lovely posy.

This legend reminds us of one told by the poet Shiraz, respecting the
origin of the forget-me-not:--"It was in the golden morning of the early
world, when an angel sat weeping outside the closed gates of Eden. He
had fallen from his high estate through loving a daughter of earth, nor
was he permitted to enter again until she whom he loved had planted the
flowers of the forget-me-not in every corner of the world. He returned
to earth and assisted her, and they went hand in hand over the world
planting the forget-me-not. When their task was ended, they entered
Paradise together; for the fair woman, without tasting the bitterness of
death, became immortal like the angel, whose love her beauty had won,
when she sat by the river twining the forget-me-not in her hair." This
is a more poetic legend than the familiar one given in Mill's "History
of Chivalry," which tells how the lover, when trying to pick some
blossoms of the myosotis for his lady-love, was drowned, his last words
as he threw the flowers on the bank being "Forget me not." Another
legend, already noticed, would associate it with the magic spring-wort,
which revealed treasure-caves hidden in the mountains. The traveller
enters such an opening, but after filling his pockets with gold, pays no
heed to the fairy's voice, "Forget not