The Book of Herbs by Rosalind Northcote (christmas read aloud txt) 📕

[109] Timbs.

Gerarde says that the leaves of Arsmart (Persicaria) rubbed on the back of a tired horse, and a “good handfull or two laid under the saddle, will wonderfully refresh him;” and Le petit Albert gives a recipe for making a horse go further in one hour than another would go in eight. You must begin by mingling a handful of “Satyrion” in his oats, and anointing him with the fat of a deer; then when you are mounted and ready to start “vous lui tournerez la têté du coté de soleil levant et vous penchant sur son oreille gauche vous prononçerez trois fois à voix basse les paroles suivantes et vous partirez aussi tôt: Gaspar, Melchior, Merchisard. T’ajonte à cecy que si vous suspenderez au col du cheval les grosses dents d’un loup qui aura étè tué en courant, le cheval ne sera pas fatigue de sa course.” No doubt these proceedings were carried out by the traveller with an air of mystery, and must have impressed the bystanders, but one wonders what the rider thought of them after an hour’s journeying? Satyrion is a kind of orchis. There was a herb called Sferro Cavallo which was supposed to be able to break locks or draw off the shoes of the horses that passed over it. Sir Thomas Browne speaks of it in his “Popular Errors,” and laughs the idea to scorn, and “cannot but wonder at Matthiolus, who, upon a parallel in Pliny, was staggered into suspension” [of judgment]. This plant was probably the Horse-shoe Vetch, whose seed-vessels, being in the shape of horse-shoes, may have given rise to the superstition; but Grimm thought it was the Euphorbia Lathyris. The same belief is found in different countries, referred to other plants; the French thought that Rest Harrow had this marvellous property, and Culpepper tells the same tale about the Moonwort (Botrychium Lunaria), which had the country name of Unshoe-the-Horse. “Besides, I have heard commenders say that in White Down in Devonshire, near Tiverton, there were found thirty horse-shoes, pulled off from the feet of the Earl of Essex’s horses, being then drawn up in a body, many of them being but newly shod, and no reason known, which caused much admiration, and the herb described usually grows upon heaths.” One would hardly have thought that “admiration” was the feeling evoked, but perhaps nobody concerned was pressed for time!

Hound’s Tongue (Cynoglossum officinale) was believed to have the remarkable property that it will “tye the tongues of Houndes, so that they shall not bark at you, if it be laid under the bottom of your feet.”

In Markham’s advice about domestic animals, he alludes to a “certaine stage of madnesse” which attacks rabbits, and says that the cure is Hare-Thistle (Sonchus oleraceus). The “Grete Herbal” called this plant the “Hare’s Palace.” “For yf the hare come under it, he is sure that no best can touche hym.”

These statements lead one to feel that once upon a time, the world was much more like the world of Richard Jefferies than it is, and that “wood magic” was nearer to our forefathers than to ourselves. Nowadays, when everything travels more quickly along the road of life, the eyes of ordinary mortals get confused with the movement and the jostling and they do not see the pretty by-play that goes on in the bushes by the way, nor peer into the depths of the woodland beyond. In this they lose a good deal, but no one can “put back the clock,” and one must feel grateful that the idylls of the forest are still being acted, and that there are still men whose vision is quick enough to catch sight of them, and whose pens have the cunning to put before others the glimpses that they themselves have caught.

A legend exists about the Cormorant, the Bat, and the Bramble—quite inconsequent, but not wholly out of place here, so it shall serve as a conclusion.

Once the Cormorant was a wool merchant and he took for partners the Bat and the Bramble. They freighted a large ship with wool, but she was wrecked and then they were bankrupt. Ever since that, the Cormorant is diving into the deep, looking for the lost ship; the Bat skulks round till midnight, so that he may not meet his creditors, and the Bramble catches hold of every passing sheep to try and make up for his loss by stealing wool. No doubt, you have often noticed their ways, but did you ever before know their reasons?