safeguard, persons are recommended to make a magic circle, in the
centre of which they should stand with elder-berries gathered on St.
John's Night. By so doing the mystic fern seed may be obtained, which
possesses the strength of thirty or forty men. In Germany, too, a species
of wild radish is said to reveal witches, as also is the ivy, and saxifrage
enables its bearer to see witches on Walpurgis Night.
But, in spite of plants of this kind, witches somehow or other
contrived to escape detection by the employment of the most subtle
charms and spells. They generally, too, took the precaution of avoiding
such plants as were antagonistic to them, displaying a cunning ingenuity
in most of their designs which it was by no means easy to forestall.
Hence in the composition of their philtres and potions they infused the
juices of the most deadly herbs, such as that of the nightshade or
monkshood; and to add to the potency of these baleful draughts they
considered it necessary to add as many as seven or nine of the most
poisonous plants they could obtain, such, for instance, as those
enumerated by one of the witches in Ben Jonson's "Masque of Queens,"
who says:--
"And I ha' been plucking plants among
Hemlock, Henbane, Adder's Tongue;
Nightshade, Moonwort, Libbard's bane,
And twice, by the dogs, was like to be ta'en."
Another plant used by witches in their incantations was the sea or
horned poppy, known in mediaeval times as Ficus infernolis; hence it is
further noticed by Ben Jonson in the "Witches' Song":
"Yes, I have brought to help our vows,
Horned poppy, cypress boughs,
The fig tree wild that grows on tombs,
And juice that from the larch tree comes."
Then, of course, there was the wondrous moonwort (Botrychium
lunaria), which was doubly valuable from its mystic virtue, for, as
Culpepper[22] tells us, it was believed to open locks and possess other
magic virtues. The mullein, popularly termed the hag-taper, was also in
request, and the honesty (Lunaria biennis), "in sorceries excelling," was
equally employed. By Scotch witches the woodbine was a favourite
plant,[23] who, in effecting magical cures, passed their patients nine
times through a girth or garland of green woodbine.
Again, a popular means employed by witches of injuring their
enemies was by the briony. Coles, in his "Art of Simpling," for instance,
informs us how, "they take likewise the roots of mandrake, according to