Folklore has often bestowed flowers with the power of good fortune, hope and joy. Most probably because the blooming of new flowers meant spring and summer were on the way, meaning another winter had been and gone.
Arguably, the most celebrated flower of good- fortune is the
clover. Each clover leaf represents different attributes; the first leaf symbolises hope, the second represents faith, third for love, fourth for luck. However, the four-leaved clover is impossibly rare to find.
To the lucky finder, it was believed to give protection from
witchcraft and the power to break enchantments. It was also rumoured to grant the finder the ability to see fairies. As we can see from a letter sent by an 11-year-old girl to the newspaper
St. Nicholas Magazine in 1877.
“Did the fairies ever whisper in your ear, that a four-leaf clover brought good luck to the finder?” -Madge Child.
A poem called ‘The Secret of It’ by Susan Coolidge, published in 1886, also highlighted the power that fairies bestowed the clover.
In Cambridgeshire, there was also a superstition that if a girl put a four-leafed clover in their shoe, she would marry the first man she met. However, this could be slightly risky and –luckily- was not contractually binding.
The Secret of it, by Susan Coolidge
ALL the long spring-time it grew and it grew
‘Mid the clovers green on the cool hill-crest.
And it smiled at the sun; and it never knew
That it was different from the rest,
Until one night when the moon had power,
And the rest of the clovers were sleeping fast,
The fairies came at the fairy hour
And spied the leaves as they flitted past.
Swiftly they wove a mystical ring,
And danced and chanted a wonderful spell,
And the four-leaved clover, listening,
Learned the secret of power, and learnt it well.
And, proudly silent, it raised its head
And stood ‘mid its three-leaved brotherhood,
And waited for some one, fairy-led,
To find the charm and to prove it good.
It waited bravely and waited long,
Till, all on a golden autumn day,
Sweet Effie, singing a careless song,
Through the hill-side meadow took her way.
Her eyes, like stars in the evening blue,
Were quick as the fire-flies flashing light;
And she spied the clover where it grew,
And plucked it quickly and held it tight.
Where shall dear Effie her treasure put,
That the charmed spell be not undone?
Shall it be in the leaves of her Bible shut?
To wither and dry as time goes on?
Shall her purse receive it? Thieves may steal!
Or her locket? The slender string may break!
And the sweet girl-heart is quick to feel
That “luck” is naught for her own sole sake.
She looks at her sister’s wedding-ring;
Shall she twist it over the circlet fine,
To be of some good and beautiful thing
To the happy young wife a pledge and sign?
Or, over the door, as a guarding charm,
Shall she fasten it high, that the fairy kin
May hover and watch and keep from harm
All going out and all coming in?
And then, her mind made up, she goes
Across the room where the baby lies,
As fragrant-fair as a new-born rose,
With a world of wonder in his eyes.
She slips the clover into his shoe,
The dear little shoe so soft and small,
And tightly ties the ribbon blue
Round the pink-white ankle,- that is all!
And the cover smiled in its hidden nest,
And it bent itself to its destined task,
To work the spell of the charmed behest;
What better fate could a clover ask?
The baby laughed, and the baby crowed;
And Effie she smiled; and neither knew
The fortunate gift that the leaves bestowed,
Nor all that the fairies meant to do.
Bewitching Britain 