THE WOOD SORREL. 15 



spots from linen, twenty pounds of sorrel- leaves yielding 

 between two and three ounces of the salt. A conserve of 

 the leaves was also for a long- time a very favourite remedy 

 in malignant fevers, in scurvy, and in all ailments sug- 

 gesting the use of a cooling and acid drink. Gerarde 

 recommends it highly as making a " better greene sauce 

 than any other herbe whatsoever/' and also in that it 

 " cooleth mightily an hot pestilentiall fever, especially 

 being made in a syrrup with sugar." 



The wood-sorrel bears many other names. It is with 

 some old herbalists the three-leaved grass, grass being a 

 very general term indeed in mediaeval days. It is also 

 the cuckoo-sorrel, panis cuculi, or " cuckow's meate/' 

 from an old belief that the bird in question cleared his 

 voice by its agency. In Scotland it is gowke-meat, in 

 Wales suran y coed yyffredin, and in Ireland the 

 seamsog. We have already given one French name for 

 it: a second is pain dii coucon. In Italy it is the 

 Iiiliola. A very common English name for the wood- 

 sorrel, though it is rarely used now, is the stub- wort, 

 the plant growing abundantly amongst the " stubs " 

 and roots of trees, and so getting its name. Another 

 familiar medieval name was the Hallelujah. Many of 

 our readers will no doubt be familiar with the legend that 

 St. Patrick, unable to make his savage auditory at all 

 comprehend the doctrine of a Triune Deity, saw at his 

 feet the leaf of the wood-sorrel, and made its familiar 

 form a symbol of the truth he would fain impress upon 

 them, and that henceforth the plant became dedicated to 

 that saint. The monkish name Hallelujah would appear, 

 however, to have been no song of joy and victory over 

 converted pagans ; it has been suggested that it derived 



