“Out ’ettle
In dock. 
Dock shall ha’a a new smock,
’Ettle zbant
Ha’ nanun.”

The young tops of the common nettle are still made by the peasantry into nettle-broth, and, amongst other directions enjoined in an old Scotch rhyme, it is to be cut in the month of June, “ere it’s in the blume":—­

“Cou’ it by the auld wa’s,
Cou’ it where the sun ne’er fa’
Stoo it when the day daws,
Cou’ the nettle early.”

The juice of fumitory is said to clear the sight, and the kennel-wort was once a popular specific for the king’s-evil.  As disinfectants, wormwood and rue were much in demand; and hence Tusser says:—­

  “What savour is better, if physicke be true,
  For places infected, than wormwood and rue?”

For depression, thyme was recommended, and a Manx preservative against all kinds of infectious diseases is ragwort.  The illustrations we have given above show in how many ways plants have been in demand as popular curatives.  And although an immense amount of superstition has been interwoven with folk-medicine, there is a certain amount of truth in the many remedies which for centuries have been, with more or less success, employed by the peasantry, both at home and abroad.

Footnotes: 

1.  See Tylor’s “Primitive Culture,” ii.

2.  See Folkard’s “Plant-lore Legends and Lyrics,” p. 164.

3.  “Mystic Trees and Shrubs,” p. 717.

4.  Folkard’s “Plant-lore,” p. 379.

5.  Hunt’s “Popular Romances of the West of England,” 1871, p. 415

6.  Folkard’s “Plant-lore Legends and Lyrics,” p. 216.

7.  See Black’s “Folk-medicine,” 1883, p.195.

8. Quarterly Review, cxiv. 245.

9.  “Sacred Trees and Flowers,” Quarterly Review, cxiv. 244.

10.  Folkard’s “Plant Legends,” 364.

11. Fraser’s Magazine, 1870, p. 591.

12.  “Mystic Trees and Plants;” Fraser’s Magazine, 1870, p. 708.

13.  “Reliquiae Antiquse,” Wright and Halliwell, i. 195; Quarterly Review,
     1863, cxiv. 241.

14.  Coles, “The Art of Simpling,” 1656.

15.  Anne Pratt’s “Flowering Plants of Great Britain,” iv. 9.

16.  Black’s “Folk-medicine,” p. 201.

17.  Folkard’s “Plant-Lore Legends and Lyrics,” p. 248.

18. Fraser’s Magazine, 1870, p. 591.

19.  “Plant-Lore Legends and Lyrics,” p. 349.

20.  Black’s “Folk-medicine,” p. 185.

21.  See Hunt’s “Popular Romances of the West of England.”

22.  Black’s “Folk-medicine,” p. 193.

23.  “Rabies or Hydrophobia,” T. M. Dolan, 1879, p. 238.

24.  Black’s “Folk-medicine,” p. 193.

CHAPTER XXII.

PLANTS AND THEIR LEGENDARY HISTORY.