Shakespeare calls it "the baleful mistletoe," perhaps in allusion to the Scandinavian legend that it was with an arrow made of mistletoe and wielded by the blind god Hoder that Balder was slain, or to the tradition that it was once a tree from which the wood of Christ's cross was formed, or possibly with reference to the popular belief that mistletoe berries are poisonous, or to the connection of the plant with the human sacrifices of the Druids.
Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (1999), p. 779.
