OF SUNDRY HERBS 137 



last name to the fact that it so frequently grows over the 

 stumps of old trees. Parkinson tells us, " It is called by the 

 apothecaries in their shoppes Alleluia and Lugula, the one 

 because about that time it is in flower, when Alleluya in 

 antient times was wont to be sung in the Churches; the 

 other came corruptly from Juliola as they of Calabria in 

 Naples doe call it." The name cuckoobread, by which many 

 children call it now, it owes to the fact that it flowers when 

 the cuckoo's note is most heard. Formerly, both the leaves 

 and flowers were a common ingredient in salads. 



AN EXCELLENT AND WHOLESOME WATER-GRUEL WITH 

 WOOD-SORREL AND CURRANTS. Into a posset of two quarts 

 of water, besides the due proportion of beaten oat -meal, 

 put two handfuls of Wood-sorrel a little chopped and 

 bruised, and a good quantity of picked and washed cur- 

 rants, tyed loosely in a thin stuff bag (as a bolter cloth). 

 Boil these very well together seasoning the Composition in 

 due time, with salt nutmeg Mace, or what else you please, 

 as Rosemary, etc., when it is sufficiently boiled strain the 

 Oat-meal and press out all the Juyce and humidity of the 

 Currants and Herbs, throwing away the insipid husks; 

 and season it with Sugar and Butter ; and to each Porrenger- 

 full two spoonfuls of Rhenish Wine, and the yolke of an 

 Egg. The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Opened, 1669. 



WORMWOOD 



" Water of wormwoode is gode. . . . Crete lordes among 

 the Saracenys usen to drinke hitt." Fifteenth-Century MS. 

 Herbal. 



" What savour is better, if physicke be true 



For places infected than Wormwood and Rue ? " 

 Tusser, Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry, 1580. 



There is an old tradition that wormwood sprang up 

 in the track of the serpent as it writhed along the ground 

 when driven out of Paradise. Wormwood was formerly 

 one of the herbs put amongst clothes to keep away moths, 

 and Culpepper tells us, " this herb Wormwood being laid 

 among cloaths will make a moth scorn to meddle with the 



