The oak, long famous for its supernatural strength and power, has
been much employed in folk-medicine. A German cure for ague is to
walk round an oak and say:--
"Good evening, thou good one old;
I bring thee the warm and the cold."
Similarly, in our own country, oak-trees planted at the junction of
cross-roads were much resorted to by persons suffering from ague, for
the purpose of transferring to them their complaint, [11] and elsewhere
allusion has already been made to the practice of curing sickly children
by passing through a split piece of oak. A German remedy for gout is to
take hold of an oak, or of a young shoot already felled, and to repeat
these words:--
"Oak-shoot, I to thee complain,
All the torturing gout plagues me;
I cannot go for it,
Thou canst stand it.
The first bird that flies above thee,
To him give it in his flight,
Let him take it with him in the air."
Another plant, which from its mystic character has been used for
various complaints, is the elder. In Bohemia, three spoonsful of the water
which has been used to bathe an invalid are poured under an elder-tree;
and a Danish cure for toothache consists in placing an elder-twig in the
mouth, and then sticking it in a wall, saying, "Depart, thou evil spirit."
The mysterious origin and surroundings of the mistletoe have invested it
with a widespread importance in old folk-lore remedies, many of which
are, even now-a-days, firmly credited; a reputation, too, bestowed upon
it by the Druids, who styled it "all-heal," as being an antidote for all
diseases. Culpepper speaks of it as "good for the grief of the sinew, itch,
sores, and toothache, the biting of mad dogs and venomous beasts;"
while Sir Thomas Browne alludes to its virtues in cases of epilepsy. In
France, amulets formed of mistletoe were much worn; and in Sweden, a
finger-ring made of its wood is an antidote against sickness. The
mandrake, as a mystic plant, was extensively sold for medicinal
purposes, and in Kent may be occasionally found kept to cure
barrenness; [12] and it may be remembered that La Fontaine's fable, La
Mandragore, turns upon its supposed power of producing children.
How potent its effects were formerly held may be gathered from the very
many allusions to its mystic properties in the literature of bygone years.
Columella, in his well-known lines, says:--