Joseph of Arimathea and the ambitious High Priests, can I remember well. Our Lady was beautiful and conformed to the painter's ideals, but in speech was weaker than one expected. Yet one and all these peasants lived in their parts and made the Passion real.

Of incidents in the play I shall describe only two. One was piteous, the other horrifying. Christ was being mocked; of all the Passion scenes I felt this most; a meditation never brings the full indignity of that night scene before one. And in that horrible cruelty the most unworthy act was the plucking of Christ's beard; one should indeed be harder than crag of Ida to look on unmoved; the poor prisoner with tied hands must swing helplessly responsive to the ruffianly jerk; truly "a worm and no man." The other scene was the piercing of the side on the cross. It was too real. The Saviour had spoken his last words and was hanging dead. The centurion stood beneath the cross and drove his lance into the side; out spurted the blood, and some of it fell to the ground, some stained with a long trickle that sacred body. It was so unexpected, so vividly real that one must utter an involuntary cry of horror. These two scenes made a special impression on me because they went beyond what I had imagined to be the reality. All the rest was real, and I have now a Passion for a life-long meditation.

And how did it all end? In bursts of "Alleluias "; glory is the realm which best of all the arts, music, depicts. But there was also a tableaux: the Risen Christ of the Easter Morning, with all the agents of evil on his left and the faithful of God on his right; a plain blunt contrast made all the blunter by flaring Roman candles arranged in the centre of the scene. It was an appropriately frank ending that had the undying vigour of medievalism in it.

The Brixlegg Play has a simple history; for doubtless its history will be expected in this article. These people, the whole country, have been playing plays for centuries. The neighbouring Erl, that will have its Passicn Piay in 1915, is of more ancient standing than Oberammergau. The people have had their "Three Kings" Plays at Christmas, and their Nicholaus mummeries from time immemorial. And at one of these Christmas plays in their inn a priest was present struck by their talent, he cried aloud, "Bravo, Brixleggers! Ye have strength to venture on the Passion; with such spirit Our Lord's

great Passion-story could not but be moving in its telling." That was in 1867; the priest lives as a Church prelate in Salzburg, and the play lives on in Brixlegg to prove that he was right. Brother Willram's motto for the Passionsbuch tells the whole secret of the play and its success :

Ein ernestes, schlichtes Bauernspiel

In derber Volkskunst Rahmen
Ze gt es der Welt ein hohes Ziel
Und mahnt es nachzuahmen.

D. Ua F.

WILDFLOWERS OF MAY AND JUNE

SOME two short months ago we might have said with the poet,

Now fades the last long streak of snow,

Now burgeons every maze of quick

About the flowering squares, and thick

By ashen roots the violets blow.

So rapid has been the silent march of Spring that another of his verses may serve to paint Nature in her present Summer glory :

And brushing ankle deep in flowers,

We heard behind the woodbine veil
The milk that bubbled in the pail,
And buzzings of the honied hours.

It will be our pleasant task to brush for a time through the grassy fields and along the edges of the ripening meadows, taking care not to trespass too far into the uncut hay, and, on the other hand, not to slip down into the deep bramble-covered ditch by which we are making our way. Ankle-deep we shall have been, during almost the whole journey, and at times even lost completely in some more favoured corner, in the wealth of creepers and taller plants. So let us get on our strong boots and least ornamented hat, for woe to anything that catches upon the sharp spines of the blackberry-bushes or in the long trailing sprays of the hedge-roses. But first let us note, and on a piece of paper to take with us if necessary, one or two things to remember about flowers in general. First the coloured part of the flower, what we ourselves usually mean VOL. XLII.-No. 492

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when we say flower, is known as the corolla. It may be all of one piece and deeply cut, as in the primrose; or it may consist of many separate pieces put into the top of the stem, as in the butter-cup. Secondly: the smaller green things that come out from the stem just under the corolla, are the sepals. They enclose the whole flower when it is in bud, as may be seen plainly in roses and buttercups. Thirdly next inside the corolla, sometimes one or two, sometimes twenty or more, are the stamens. Pick a buttercup, and you will see them at once, the little yellow things that form a crowded ring all round the central green globe. Their yellow heads are the anthers; they are hollow and filled with pollen. Fourthly: the centre portion of the flower is the pistil. In the primrose it is in the form of a pin, the head being known as the stigma, the pillar as the style. It is the reproductive part of the plant. The pollen gets on to the stigma from the anthers, goes down through the style into the seed vessel beneath, where it fertilizes the seeds. There may be more than one pistil on each flower.

Now let us go through this gate and down along the hedge, with the brown ripe meadow grass rustling and glooming on our right. We hardly advance more than a few paces before we come upon three or four flowers, which seem at first wholly unlike, but which are, nevertheless, of the same botanical family or class. The first is at our feet, on the side of the path. It is the beautiful Veronica Chamaedrys, or Germander Speedwell, its small corolla rivalling in the intensity of its blueness the darkest of Summer skies or seas. You will find it almost black at times. Pick it carefully, for the corolla is all one piece, though seemingly fourfold, and easily falls off. Notice the two lines of hair running down the stem, which change sides regularly at each pair of leaves. From the centre of the corolla, which is a tiny white ring, come out two stamens with black anthers. The anthers are just bursting, and with their streak of white pollen, resemble the three-cornered hats of older days. It is a very common flower in grassy places. Down in the ditch itself is its brother, the Veronica Beccabunga, or Brooklime, with a corolla of almost equal beauty, though smaller. Its leaves are oblong, very unlike those of the Germander, and of a fresh green hue. Its succulent stems, too, are different. These are, perhaps, the most beautiful representatives of a large family; and happy the person who, like the maiden in Tennyson's "Seadreams," has a "clear germander eye." Opposite, on the sandy part of the bank, is a tall plant

with drooping finger-like flowers, and leaves like coarse primrose leaves. It is the Purple Foxglove, and belongs to the same tribe as the Speedwells. It is unlike them in external appearance but the botanist discovers similarity. This is a truly glorious plant, sometimes ornamenting country roadsides for miles; sometimes lifting its red towers of fire among the hillside rocks. Notice how the spotted flowers come out first at the base of the spike, while the upper portions are still in bud. The usual height of the Foxglove is two or three feet, but in the sunny southern parts of Kerry and Cork it frequently reaches a height of six or seven feet. The name is sometimes derived from the likeness of its tubular corollas to glove-fingers, fairy's glove. But a more poetical derivation is from folk's gleown, or fairy's chimes. Now turn to the meadow border for a moment and find the Rhinanthus Crista-galli, or Yellow Rattle, with its spike of funnily shaped flowers, beneath which in their inflated pouches you may hear the seeds rattle when the wind blows. It is a relation of the Speedwells and the Foxglove.

However, we did not come out to stand in one place all day, so let us go farther down, to that bend where there is an inextricable tangle of Blackberry bushes, Sloe-bushes, Guelder roses, and Furze. The tall plant so thickly growing from the bottom of the ditch, with long leaves set opposite one another in the stem and heart-shaped at the base, and dense spikes of purple flowers, is the Purple Loose-strife, or, "Lythrum Salicaria." Examine the peculiar arrangement of its twelve stamens. Quite near it is another tall, purplish or roseflowered plant, not unlike it in some respects, the Great Hairy Willow-herb, a small relative of which we may find on our garden banks, or along the base of a garden wall. The leaves and stems of the Great Hairy Willow-herb are covered with thick down. Its flowers grow in loose clusters. It is also called "Codlins and Cream," but its first name will be more familiar to many who remember the lines they surely must have learnt long ago on their downward journey from haunts of coot and hern :

With many a curve my banks I fret
By many a field and fallow,

And many a fairy foreland set

With willow-weed and mallow.

We need not move from where we are to find a very beautiful

member of the Bedstraw family, the white-flowered Water Bedstraw, a weak-stemmed, straggling plant, like most of its relations. Its leaves are arranged in whorls, or wheel-shaped layers, at different distances along the stem. Two other Bedstraws ought to be well known to us. One is the common Cleavers, whose stems and seed-vessels cling on to our arms whenever we thrust them into a hedge; the other has much smaller green leaves, and looks as though it were covered with thick golden pepper. This is Yellow, or Lady's Bedstraw. It covers banks and waysides with its sweet-smelling flowers. A lovely member of the same family is the sweet Woodruff, common on road banks, and under trees, which, when dried, keeps its perfume of new-made hay for a considerable time. If we turn again to the meadow we are certain to see the tall white Meadow Daisies, some with yellow centres, some with velvety brown. They are composites. If you pull off the white straps and the yellow centres you will find each is a separate flower containing stamens or pistils. You will see also, especially near the ditch, or in marshy places, the torn red flowers of Ragged Robin. In Latin it is called "Lychnis Flos-cuculi," because it is in bloom when the cuckoo is in full song. You may, too, find some late specimens of what we ordinarily call Cuckoo-Flower, the Cardamine Pratensis, or Lady's Smock. It is a plant, with crossshaped corollas of pale lilac and deeply-cut dark green leaves. With a number of others, it has retained its English name from the ages of Faith-Lady's Smock being Our Lady's Smock, as Lady's Mantle is Our Lady's Mantle, Lady's Slipper Our Lady's Slipper, Virgin-bower, the Virgin's Bower, and so on.

We must now scramble over the ditch as best we can, for a number of floral treasures await us in the wood at the other side. The whole ground is carpeted with Hyacinths, blue, pink, and white, filling the glades with a translucent glow. When God weaves the coverings for the earth, His footstool, the effect is very sublime, indeed; whether it be a green sward spangled with hosts of golden Dandelions and Silver Daisies, or this azure purplish pinkish white of the wild Hyacinth, or the dark bronze-gold, and the reds, purples, and browns of Furze and Heather. Keats calls the wild Hyacinth "shaded hyacinth" and "sapphire queen of the mid-May." Let the reader decide whether he means that it loves the shade, as it certainly does, or refers to its wide range of tint extending from deep purple and blue through rose colour to pure white. He seems, however, to have been