This last legend belongs to a large class.  The staff of Adam, which was created in the twilight of the approaching Sabbath, was bestowed on him in Paradise and handed down successively to Enoch and the line of Patriarchs.  After the death of Joseph it was set in Jethro’s garden, and there grew untouched, till Moses came and got his rod from it.  In another form of the legend it is Seth who gets a branch of the Tree of Life, and from this Moses afterwards obtains his rod of power.  These Rabbinical stories seem in later times to have been developed into the Christian legends of the wood destined to form the Cross, such as they are told in the Golden Legend or by Godfrey of Viterbo, and elaborated in Calderon’s Sibila del Oriente.  Indeed, as a valued friend who has consulted the latter for me suggests, probably all the Arbre Sec Legends of Christendom bore mystic reference to the Cross.  In Calderon’s play the Holy Rood, seen in vision, is described as a Tree:—­

    ——­“cuyas hojas,
  Secas mustias y marchitas,
  Desnudo el tronco dejaban
  Que, entre mil copas floridas
  De los arboles, el solo
  Sin pompa y sin bizaria
  Era cadaver del prado.”

There are several Dry-Tree stories among the wonders of Buddhism; one is that of a sacred tree visited by the Chinese pilgrims to India, which had grown from the twig which Sakya, in Hindu fashion, had used as a tooth-brush; and I think there is a like story in our own country of the Glastonbury Thorn having grown from the staff of Joseph of Arimathea.

["St Francis’ Church is a large pile, neere which, yet a little without the Citty, growes a tree which they report in their legend grew from the Saint’s Staff, which on going to sleepe he fixed in the ground, and at his waking found it had grown a large tree.  They affirm that the wood of its decoction cures sundry diseases.” (Evelyn’s Diary, October, 1644.)—­H.  C.]

In the usual form of the mediaeval legend, Adam, drawing near his end, sends Seth to the gate of Paradise, to seek the promised Oil of Mercy.  The Angel allows Seth to put his head in at the gate.  Doing so (as an old English version gives it)—­

                                       —­“he saw a fair Well,
  Of whom all the waters on earth cometh, as the Book us doth tell;
  Over the Well stood a Tree, with bowes broad and lere
  Ac it ne bare leaf ne rind, but as it for-olded were;
  A nadder it had beclipt about, all naked withouten skin,
  That was the Tree and the Nadder that first made Adam do sin!”

The Adder or Serpent is coiled about the denuded stem; the upper branches reach to heaven, and bear at the top a new-born wailing infant, swathed in linen, whilst (here we quote a French version)—­

  “Les larmes qui de lui issoient
  Contreval l’Arbre en avaloient;
  Adonc regarda l’enfant Seth
  Tout contreval de L’ARBRE SECQ;
  Les rachines qui le tenoient
  Jusques en Enfer s’en aloient,
  Les larmes qui de lui issirent
  Jusques dedans Enfer cheirent.”