The Book of Herbs, Rosalind Northcote [best books to read for self development TXT] 📗
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And no less brave the bell-wether doth go.
Nep or Cat-mint is said to have a great attraction for cats. Of which there is this old rime:—
If you sow it, the catts won’t know it.[104]
[104] Coles.
The weasel, with a grand knowledge of counter-poisons, “arms herself with eating of Rue,” before fighting a serpent. Folkard says that in the north of England there is a tradition that when hops were first planted there, nightingales also made their first appearance, and he adds that both have long since disappeared, north of the Humber. In other parts of England there is an idea (quite a false one) that nightingales will only sing where cowslips flourish. The cuckoo is connected with both plants and minerals. In some parts of Germany, Mr Friend writes, the call of the cuckoo is thought to reveal mines, and the cuckoo’s bread, the purple orchis, grows most abundantly where rich veins of metal lie beneath. There is a story about the plantain, a plant with a most interesting legendary history, in which the cuckoo appears. Once the Plantain or Waybread was a maiden, always watching for her absent lover, and at last she was changed into the plant that almost always grows by the road-side. And now every seventh year the plantain becomes a bird, either the Cuckoo or the Cuckoo’s servant, the Dinnick.
The Yellow Rattle is sometimes called Gowk’s Siller, and Gowk may mean either the Cuckoo or a fool, so they may quarrel for it. Johnston seems to think that the siller belongs rather to the fool, for he remarks: “the capsules rattle when in seed... being like the fool unable to conceal its wealth.” The Swallow restored sight to the eyes of her young, when any evil had befallen them, by the help of Celandine. And it was for this reason, says Gerarde, that the flower gained its name, Chelidonium, swallow-herbe, and not because it “first springeth at the coming of the swallows or dieth when they goe away.”... Celsus doth witnesse that it will restore “the sight of the eies of divers young birds... and soonest of all of the sight of the swallow.” The eagle, when he wishes his sight to be particularly keen, rubs his eyes with the wild Lettuce, and the hawk follows his example, but chooses Hawkweed with equal success. Doves and pigeons find that Vervain cures dimness of vision and goldfinches and linnets and some other birds turn to eyebright. “The purple and yellow spots which are upon the flowers of eyebright very much resemble the diseases of the eyes or bloodshot.”[105] There is a very wide belief in a magic plant called Spring-wort or Spring-wurzel of which Folkard gives an interesting description. “Pliny,” he says, “records the superstition concerning it, almost in the same form in which it is now found in Germany. If anyone touches a lock with it, the lock, however strong, must yield. In Switzerland it is carried in the right pocket to render the bearer invulnerable to dagger or bullet; and in the Hartz mountains it is said to reveal treasures. One cannot easily find it oneself, but generally the wood-pecker (according to Pliny also the raven, in Switzerland, the Hoopoe, in the Tyrol, the swallow) will bring it under the following circumstances. When the bird has temporarily left its nest this must be stopped up with wood. The bird then flies away to find the Spring-wurzel and will open the nest by touching it with the root. Meantime a fire or a red cloth must be placed near by, which will so frighten the bird that it will let the magical root fall.” Le petit Albert, to procure Spring-wort suggests tying up a magpie’s nest with new cords, but merely says that she brings une herbe to release her nestlings, without giving its name.
[105] “Adam in Eden,” Coles.
Several legends are attached to the Wood-pecker. Amongst others there is an idea that the root of the Peony is good for epilepsy, but should a Wood-pecker be in sight when the patient tastes it he would be forthwith struck blind! In Piedmont there is a little plant called the Herb of the Blessed Mary, which is fatal to birds, and there it is said that when young wild birds are caught and caged their parents bring them a sprig of it, that death rather than imprisonment may be their lot. De Gubernatis speaks of an oriental bird of greater resource, the Paperone, for when his little ones are imprisoned he seeks and brings a root which breaks the iron bars and releases them. Parkinson tells of an Indian herb which “cast to the birds causeth as many as take it to fall downe to the ground as being stoned for a time, but if any take it too greedily it will kill them, if they bee not helped by cold water put on their heads, but Dawes above all other birds are soonest kild thereby.” There is a suggestion of comedy in this picture of a seventeenth century herbalist in a foreign land pouring cold water on the heads of wild birds.
FENNEL
“The raven, when he hath killed the chameleon, and yet perceiving he is hurt and poisoned by him, flyeth for remedy to the Laurell,” which “represseth and extinguisheth the venom,” says Pliny.[106] The elephant, under the same circumstances, recovers himself by eating “wild Olive, the only remedy he hath of this poison.... The storke, feeling himself amisse, goeth to the herbe Organ for remedy,” and Parkinson quotes Antigonas as saying that ring-doves cured their wounds with the same plant. Stock-doves, jays, merles, blackbirds and ousels recover “their appetite to meate,” by eating bay leaves; and ducks, geese and other waterfowl seek endive or chicory. Of course, chickweed and goosegrass have gained their names as the result of similar observations, more modern, and possibly more accurate. Elder-berries are eaten by birds, but they are said to have serious effects on chickens.
[106] Philemon Holland’s Translation.
Lizards cure themselves of the biting of serpents with calaminth, and the tortoise cautiously eats a “kind of sauorie or marjerome” before the battle. Sir Francis Bacon mentions that, “the snake loveth fennel; that the toad will be much under sage; that frogs will be in cinquefoil”; though he unromantically doubts that the virtue of these herbs is the cause of these preferences. Turner also remarks on the toad’s liking for sage, and says: “Rue is good to be planted among Sage, to prevent the poison which may be in it by toads frequenting amongst it, but Rue being amongst it they will not come near it.” A toad recovers itself by means of the plantain from the poison of the spider, and Bullein[107] tells us of the frog’s fondness for the Scabiosa, under whose leaves they will “shadow themselves from the heate of the daie, poppyng and plaiying under these leaves, which to them is a pleasant Tent or Pavillion.” The reputed venom of toads was sometimes said to be sucked from camomile, of all plants!
[107] Bullein’s “Bulwarke; or, Booke of Simples,” 1562.
Pliny wrote of the serpent, that waking in the spring, she finds that during the winter her sight has become “dim and dark, so that with the herbe Fennell she comforteth and anointeth her eies,” and having cast her coat, “appeareth fresh, slick and yong again.”
If camomile furnishes venom for toads, it seems to provide nourishment for fishes. William Browne says of some nymphs:—
Brings nutriment for fish, the camomile.
Isaac Walton observes that, “Parsley and Garden earth recovers and refreshes sick fish.” The Alder or Aul is indirectly connected with trout in a Herefordshire rhyme:—
Then that fish is in season in the River Wye.
Among other counsels Piscator speaks of the perch’s tastes. “And he hath been observed by some not usually to bite till the mulberry-tree buds—that is to say, till extreme frosts be past in the spring.... Some think [of grayling] that he feeds on water-thyme, and smells of it at his first taking out of the water.” A pike has a liking for lavender, and the directions for trying for this fish with a dead bait begin: “Dissolve gum of ivy in oil of spike [lavender], and then anoint the bait with it. Wheat boiled in milk and flavoured with Saffron is a choice bait for Roach and Grayling, and Mulberries and those Blackberries which grow upon briars, be good baits for Chubs and Carps.” Gerarde says that Balm rubbed over hives will keep the bees there, and cause others to come to them, and Parkinson thought that the “leaves or rootes of Acorus (sweet-smelling Flagge) tyed to a hive” would have the same effect.
To turn to the herbs prescribed by men for beasts, we find that Spenser alludes to two of them:—
And terebinth good for gotes.
July—Shepheard’s Calendar.
A marginal note suggests that the latter meant the “turpentine tree.” “The tree that weepeth turpentine” is mentioned by Drayton, and we may suppose that both poets referred to the same tree, the Silver Fir (Pinus picra). Melampode was hellebore or bear’s foot, a very important plant, and it was much used in magic. A cynical French verse says:—
On l’a dédie a maints poètes.
Once people blessed their cattle with it to keep them from evil spells, and “for this purpose it was dug up with certain attendant mystic rites: the devotees first drawing a circle round the plant with a sword, and then turning to the east and offering a prayer to Apollo and Æsculapius for leave to dig up the root.”[108] In the old French romance, Les Quatre Fils Aymon, the sorcerer, Malagis or Maugis, when he wishes to make his way, unchallenged, through the enemy’s camp, scatters powdered hellebore in the air as he goes. Both the Black and the White Hellebore, Parkinson says, are known to be very poisonous, and the white hellebore was used by hunters to poison arrows, with which they meant to kill “wolves, foxes, dogs,” etc. Black Hellebore was used to heal and not to hurt, and “a piece of the roote being drawne through a hole made in the eare of a beast troubled with cough, or having taken any poisonous thing, cureth it, if it be taken out the next day at the same houre.” This writer believes that White Hellebore would be equally efficacious in such a case, but Gerarde recommends the Black Hellebore only as being good for beasts. He says the old Farriers used to “cut a slit in the dewlap and put in a bit of Beare-foot, and leave it there for daies together.” Verbascum thapsis was called Bullock’s Lungwort, from the resemblance of its leaf to a dewlap, and on the Doctrine of Signatures was therefore given to cattle suffering from pneumonia.
[108] Timbs.
Samoclas, or Marchwort, was a strange herb which used to be put in the drinking-troughs of cattle and swine to preserve their health. But to obtain this desirable result it had to be “gathered fasting, and with the left hand, without looking back, when it was being plucked.”[109] Gervase Markham
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