carry a bay leaf in his mouth from morning till night. One of the
remarkable virtues of the fruit of the balm was its prolonging the lives of
those who partook of it to four or five hundred years, and Albertus
Magnus, summing up the mystic qualities of the heliotrope, gives this
piece of advice:--"Gather it in August, wrap it in a bay leaf with a wolf's
tooth, and it will, if placed under the pillow, show a man who has been
robbed where are his goods, and who has taken them. Also, if placed in a
church, it will keep fixed in their places all the women present who have
broken their marriage vow." It was formerly supposed that the cucumber
had the power of killing by its great coldness, and the larch was
considered impenetrable by fire; Evelyn describing it as "a goodly tree,
which is of so strange a composition that 'twill hardly burn."
In addition to guarding the homestead from ill, the hellebore was
regarded as a wonderful antidote against madness, and as such is
spoken of by Burton, who introduces it among the emblems of his
frontispiece, in his "Anatomie of Melancholy:"--
"Borage and hellebore fill two scenes,
Sovereign plants to purge the veins
Of melancholy, and cheer the heart
Of those black fumes which make it smart;
To clear the brain of misty fogs,
Which dull our senses and Soul clogs;
The best medicine that e'er God made
For this malady, if well assay'd."
But, as it has been observed, our forefathers, in strewing their floors
with this plant, were introducing a real evil into their houses, instead of
an imaginary one, the perfume having been considered highly
pernicious to health.
In the many curious tales related of the mystic henbane may be
quoted one noticed by Gerarde, who says: "The root boiled with vinegar,
and the same holden hot in the mouth, easeth the pain of the teeth. The
seed is used by mountebank tooth-drawers, which run about the
country, to cause worms to come forth of the teeth, by burning it in a
chafing-dish of coles, the party holding his mouth over the fume thereof;
but some crafty companions, to gain money, convey small lute-strings
into the water, persuading the patient that those small creepers came out
of his mouth or other parts which he intended to cure." Shakespeare, it
may be remembered, alludes to this superstition in "Much Ado About
Nothing" (Act iii. sc. 2), where Leonato reproaches Don Pedro for sighing
for the toothache, which he adds "is but a tumour or a worm." The notion
is still current in Germany, where the following incantation is
employed:--