A SYMBOL OF THE EVER-LIVING TREE OF THE WORLD'S LIFE.
In parts of Germany, when at evenings the clouds rise and bear some resemblance to a great tree,—that is, when there is, as it were, a pillar of vapor between the horizon and the overreaching canopy of cloud,—the peasants call it "Abraham's Tree," or "Adam's Tree," says a writer in the Cornhill Magazine for December. A mackerel sky provokes the saying: "We shall have wind; Adam's tree is putting forth leaves." If the leaves appear in the afternoon, it is a sign of fine weather; if early in the morning, of storm. The serpent who gnaws the roots of the Yggdrasill seeks the destruction of the universe. When the roots are eaten through, the tree will fall over, the end of all things has come. The representation, so common, of the serpent at the foot of the cross, was of course of Christian signification; but it came into Christian iconography quite as much from the early identification of the cross with the world-tree of heathen mythology. The old English Maypole is the same tree, bursting into beauty and foliage in the Spring. As our Anglo-Saxon forefathers regarded, with the Norsemen, the ash as the world-tree, and the ash is deciduous, they kept the festival of its restoration to vitality. The Germans took the evergreen silver-fir as the symbol of the ever-living tree of the world's life. Yet they also kept some festival analogous to our May-day. On Palm Sunday, in some Catholic parts of Germany,—we have seen it in the Black Forest,—people carry poles wreathed with flowers, and fluttering with colored ribands, to church, and have them blessed, and then set them up against the gables of their houses, a sure protection against lightning and fire.
