OF SUNDRY HERBS 77 



MALLOW 



" For want and famine they were solitary, fleeing into 

 the wilderness . . . who cut up mallows by the bushes and 

 juniper roots for their meat." Job xxx. 3, 4. 



"If thou wilt seem all inflamed or set on fire, take white 

 great mallows or hollyhocks, and anoint your body, then 

 with alum, and then brimstone, and when the fire is enflamed 

 it hurteth not, and yf thou make it upon the palme of thy 

 hande, thou shalt be able to holde ye fire without hurte." 

 The Boke of Secrets of Albertus Magnus of the vertues of 

 Herbes, Stones and certaine beastes, 1525. 



" If that of health you have any special care 

 Use French Mallowes that to the body wholesome are." 

 John Gerard, The Herball, 1597. 



The ancient Romans greatly esteemed mallows, and they 

 are still eaten by the Egyptians, Syrians and Chinese. From 

 the earliest times they have been celebrated for their 

 soothing, healing properties, and they were one of the 

 commonest pot and salad herbs throughout the Middle 

 Ages. It is a tradition that when the ordeal of holding a 

 red-hot iron was inflicted the suspected person covered his 

 hands with a paste made of marsh mallows and white of egg, 

 and could with impunity hold a red-hot iron for a moment. 



Mallow was held to be a herb of sovereign virtue against 

 witchcraft. There is a curious old legend that Mahomet, 

 being pleased with a robe made of the fibre of mallow stalks, 

 transformed the plant into a pelargonium. Parkinson says 

 of the Venice mallow : " These flowers are so quickly faded 

 and gone that you shall hardly see any of them blowne open 

 unlesse it be betimes in the morning before the sun doth 

 grow war me upon them. For as soon as it feeleth the sunnes 

 warme heat it closeth up and never openeth againe so that 

 you shall very seldom see a flower blowne open in the day 

 time after nine o'clock in the morning." Gerard tells us 

 of the beautiful hedges of tree-mallows, " wherewith the 

 people of Narbonne in France doe make hedges to sever or 

 divide their gardens and vineyards." Hollyhocks are of the 

 mallow tribe, and their leaves were also used as a pot-herb, 

 but, as Evelyn says, " they are only commended by some." 



