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.