Pagina 179 di 788

Of mushrooms51 there were plenty: the lads gathered the

fair-cheeked fox-mushrooms, so famous in the Lithuanian songs as

the emblem of maidenhood, for the worms do not eat them, and,

marvellous to say, no insect alights on them; the young ladies

hunted for the slender pine-lover, which the song calls the

colonel of the mushrooms.52 All were eager for the orange-agaric;

this, though of more modest stature and less famous in song, is

still the most delicious, whether fresh or salted, whether in

autumn or in winter. But the Seneschal gathered the toadstool

fly-bane.