Part 20 (1/2)
According to a piece of Breton lore, the selago, or ”cloth of gold,”
cannot be cut with steel without the sky darkening and some disaster taking place:--
”The herb of gold is cut; a cloud Across the sky hath spread its shroud To war.”
On the other hand, if properly gathered with due ceremony, it conferred the power of understanding the language of beast or bird.[2] As far back as the time of Pliny, we have directions for the gathering of this magic plant. The person plucking it was to go barefoot, with feet washed, clad in white, after having offered a sacrifice of bread and wine. Another plant which had to be gathered with special formalities was the magic mandragora. It was commonly reported to shriek in such a hideous manner when pulled out of the earth that,
”Living mortals hearing them run mad.”
Hence, various precautions were adopted. According to Pliny, ”When they intended to take up the root of this plant, they took the wind thereof, and with a sword describing three circles about it, they digged it up, looking towards the west.” Another old authority informs us that he ”Who would take it up, in common prudence should tie a dog to it to accomplish his purpose, as if he did it himself, he would shortly die.”
Moore gives this warning:--
”The phantom shapes--oh, touch them not That appal the maiden's sight, Look in the fleshy mandrake's stem, That shrieks when plucked at night.”
To quote one or two more ill.u.s.trations, we may mention the famous lily at Lauenberg, which is said to have sprung up when a poor and beautiful girl was spirited away out of the clutches of a dissolute baron. It made its appearance annually, an event which was awaited with much interest by the inhabitants of the Hartz, many of whom made a pilgrimage to behold it. ”They returned to their homes,” it is said, ”overpowered by its dazzling beauty, and a.s.serting that its splendour was so great that it shed beams of light on the valley below.”
Similarly, we are told how the common break-fern flowers but once a year, at midnight, on Michaelmas Eve, when it displays a small blue flower, which vanishes at the approach of dawn. According to a piece of folk-lore current in Bohemia and the Tyrol, the fern-seed s.h.i.+nes like glittering gold at the season, so that there is no chance of missing its appearance, especially as it has its sundry mystic properties which are described elsewhere.
Professor Mannhardt relates a strange legend current in Mecklenburg to the effect that in a certain secluded and barren spot, where a murder had been committed, there grows up every day at noon a peculiarly-shaped thistle, unlike any other of its kind. On inspection there are to be seen human arms, hands, and heads, and as soon as twelve heads have appeared, the weird plant vanishes. It is further added that on one occasion a shepherd happened to pa.s.s the mysterious spot where the thistle was growing, when instantly his arms were paralysed and his staff became tinder. Accounts of these fabulous trees and plants have in years gone been very numerous, and have not yet wholly died out, surviving in the legendary tales of most countries. In some instances, too, it would seem that certain trees like animals have gained a notoriety, purely fabulous, through trickery and credulity. About the middle of the last century, for instance, there was the groaning-tree at Badesly, which created considerable sensation. It appears that a cottager, who lived in the village of Badesly, two miles from Lymington, frequently heard a strange noise behind his house, like a person in extreme agony. For about twenty months this tree was an object of astonishment, and at last the owner of the tree, in order to discover the cause of its supposed sufferings, bored a hole in the trunk. After this operation it ceased to groan, it was rooted up, but nothing appeared to account for its strange peculiarity. Stories of this kind remind us of similar wonders recorded by Sir John Maundeville, as having been seen by him in the course of his Eastern travels. Thus he describes a certain table of ebony or blackwood, ”that once used to turn into flesh on certain occasions, but whence now drops only oil, which, if kept above a year, becomes good flesh and bone.”
Footnotes:
1. Laing's ”History of Scotland,” 1800, ii. p. II.
2. ”Flower-lore,” p. 46.
CHAPTER XVI.
DOCTRINE OF SIGNATURES.
The old medical theory, which supposed that plants by their external character indicated the particular diseases for which Nature had intended them as remedies, was simply a development of the much older notion of a real connection between object and image. Thus, on this principle, it was a.s.serted that the properties of substances were frequently denoted by their colour; hence, white was regarded as refrigerant, and red as hot. In the same way, for disorders of the blood, burnt purple, pomegranate seeds, mulberries, and other red ingredients were dissolved in the patient's drink; and for liver complaints yellow substances were recommended. But this fanciful and erroneous notion ”led to serious errors in practice,” [1] and was occasionally productive of the most fatal results. Although, indeed, Pliny spoke of the folly of the magicians in using the catanance (Greek: katanhankae, compulsion) for love-potions, on account of its shrinking ”in drying into the shape of the claws of a dead kite,” [2] and so holding the patient fast; yet this primitive idea, after the lapse of centuries, was as fully credited as in the early days when it was originally started. Throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, for instance, it is noticed in most medical works, and in many cases treated with a seriousness characteristic of the backward state of medical science even at a period so comparatively recent. Crollius wrote a work on the subject; and Langham, in his ”Garden of Health,” published in the year 1578, accepted the doctrine. Coles, in his ”Art of Simpling”
(1656), thus describes it:--
”Though sin and Satan have plunged mankind into an ocean of infirmities, yet the mercy of G.o.d, which is over all His workes, maketh gra.s.se to growe upon the mountains and herbes for the use of men, and hath not only stamped upon them a distinct forme, but also given them particular signatures, whereby a man may read even in legible characters the use of them.”
John Ray, in his treatise on ”The Wisdom of G.o.d in Creation,” was among the first to express his disbelief of this idea, and writes:--”As for the signatures of plants, or the notes impressed upon them as notices of their virtues, some lay great stress upon them, accounting them strong arguments to prove that some understanding principle is the highest original of the work of Nature, as indeed they were could it be certainly made to appear that there were such marks designedly set upon them, because all that I find mentioned by authors seem to be rather fancied by men than designed by Nature to signify, or point out, any such virtues, or qualities, as they would make us believe.” His views, however, are somewhat contradictory, inasmuch as he goes on to say that, ”the noxious and malignant plants do, many of them, discover something of their nature by the sad and melancholick visage of their leaves, flowers, or fruit. And that I may not leave that head wholly untouched, one observation I shall add relating to the virtues of plants, in which I think there is something of truth--that is, that there are of the wise dispensation of Providence such species of plants produced in every country as are made proper and convenient for the meat and medicine of the men and animals that are bred and inhabit therein.”
Indeed, however much many of the botanists of bygone centuries might try to discredit this popular delusion, they do not seem to have been wholly free from its influence themselves. Some estimate, also, of the prominence which the doctrine of signatures obtained may be gathered from the frequent allusions to it in the literature of the period. Thus, to take one ill.u.s.tration, the euphrasia or eye-bright (_Euphrasia officinalis_), which was, and is, supposed to be good for the eye, owing to a black pupil-like spot in its corolla, is noticed by Milton, who, it may be remembered, represents the archangel as clearing the vision of our first parents by its means:--
”Then purged with euphrasy and rue His visual orbs, for he had much to see.”
Spenser speaks of it in the same strain:--
”Yet euphrasie may not be left unsung, That gives dim eyes to wander leagues around.”
And Thomson says:--
”If she, whom I implore, Urania, deign With euphrasy to purge away the mists, Which, humid, dim the mirror of the mind.”
With reference to its use in modern times, Anne Pratt[3] tells us how, ”on going into a small shop in Dover, she saw a quant.i.ty of the plant suspended from the ceiling, and was informed that it was gathered and dried as being good for weak eyes;” and in many of our rural districts I learn that the same value is still attached to it by the peasantry.
Again, it is interesting to observe how, under a variety of forms, this piece of superst.i.tion has prevailed in different parts of the world. By virtue of a similar a.s.sociation of ideas, for instance, the gin-seng [4]