JOHN BECOMES AN ESS A VIST. 267 



they had growing in their gardens. They said > ' Oh, we 

 have nothing but green kale, but you may come and see 

 .our yard.* We were thinking to sow a pickle onion ["pin"] 

 seed ; where would we sow them ? ' Weel, I looked around 

 me in the yard, and all was close with weeds. They said, 

 ' Oh, you will delve a bit and sow the onion seed.' I said 

 to them, 'I have not a spade.' They said, 'We have a 

 spade.' They brought an old spade not above six inches 

 long to me ! 



" I have walked by the way and have looked in over 

 yards in country places and seen nothing but a coquiny f 

 of green kale and berry bushes, growing like rasp bushes 

 close with weeds such as ranunculus, and couch grass 

 (triticum repens) and galeopsis (hemp nettle) and the lamium 

 purpureum (red dead nettle) and the stachys pahistris 

 (marsh wound-wort) and the henbit nettle (lamium am- 

 plexicaule) and the holctis mollis^ or Creeping Soft Grass. 

 Now, they could have a good many useful ["yousefl"] plants 

 instead of all these weeds ; such as horehound and hyssop 

 and sage and caraway and rhubarb and scurvy grass and 

 rue and sweet marjoram and thyme and parsley and 

 parsnips % and plenty of green kale, and a great many 

 flowers of hardy annuals and biennials and perennials, of 

 various sorts, both for use and beauty [" boiuty "]. But it is 



* The common name in Scotland for a garden, being the same as 

 the first syllable of the English word. 



t Evidently meaning " wheen," the Scotch form of an old Anglo- 

 Saxon word, hivaene, a few. The Scotch is also written quhene, 

 quhoyne, etc. 



I These plants were greatly used by John in his herbal pharma- 

 copoeia and were cultivated by himself in his garden at Droughsburn. 

 He practised what he preached. 



