ASH 141 



aromatic and a little bitter. After one's first taste one is 

 not conscious of any special hankering after them. 



The " virtues " of the ash were held to be great. The 

 little shrew mouse was held in the good old times to be 

 of a terribly vindictive and hurtful nature, one of its 

 favourite recreations being to run over horses, sheep, or 

 cattle and paralyse them. To counteract so very objection- 

 able a proceeding all that was necessary when any of 

 the farmer's stock was suffering was, not to send for the 

 " Vet," for he was not invented in those days, but to 

 gently stroke the parts affected with a twig of shrew-ash. 

 To make shrew-ash all that was needful was to bore a 

 deep hole in any ash-trunk, insert alive a shrew mouse, 

 and, with divers mystic rites, plug the opening up again. 



Pliny taught his disciples that no serpent dare come 

 within the shadow of an ash tree, and that if a serpent be 

 surrounded and penned in with ash-boughs, except where 

 the circle be interrupted by a fierce fire, the creature will 

 prefer to make its exit through this than through the fence of 

 ash-stems. It is wonderful how these old beliefs held their 

 ground for centuries, when the test of experiment would 

 at any time have shattered them in ten minutes. It was, 

 however, considerably easier for one writer after another to 

 repeat what their predecessors had said than to venture 

 on a proceeding so iconoclastic as to bring the statements 

 of venerated authorities to the proof. Culpeper, however, 

 seems to have been thus daring, for while he quotes the 

 statement that " ash tree leaves are good against the bitings 

 of serpents and vipers," he adds, " I suppose this had its 

 rise from Gerrard or Pliny, both which hold that there is 

 such an antipathy between an adder and an Ash tree that 



