The Folk-lore of Plants

And the common fumitory, "was used when gathered in wedding hours, and boiled in water, milk, and whey, as a wash for the complexion of rustic maids." [16] In some parts of France the water-hemlock (Œnanthe crocata), known with us as the "dead-tongue," from its paralysing effects on the organs of voice, was used to destroy moles; and the yellow toad-flax (Linaria vulgaris) is described as "cleansing the skin wonderfully of all sorts of deformity." Another plant of popular renown was the knotted figwort (Scrophularia nodosa), for Gerarde censures "divers who doe rashly teach that if it be hanged about the necke, or else carried about one, it keepeth a man in health." Coles, speaking of the mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris), says that, "if a footman take mugwort and put it in his shoes in the morning, he may go forty miles before noon and not be weary;" but as far back as the time of Pliny its remarkable properties were known, for he says, "The wayfaring man that hath the herb tied about him feeleth no weariness at all, and he can never be hurt by any poisonous medicine, by any wild beast, neither yet by the sun itself." The far-famed betony was long credited with marvellous medicinal properties, and hence the old saying which recommends a person when ill "to sell his coat and buy betony." A species of thistle was once believed to have the curious virtue of driving away melancholy, and was hence termed the "melancholy thistle." According to Dioscorides, "the root borne about one doth expel melancholy and remove all diseases connected therewith," but it was to be taken in wine.