RAG-WORT. 119 



In some parts of the country the rag-wort is accredited 

 with the power of preventing infection. When people 

 visit any one who is suffering from any illness that may be 

 transmitted, they carry with them into the sick-room, a 

 piece of the plant, and thus, as they believe, are preserved 

 from taking the complaint, whatever it may be. Some 

 little time ago we heard of a case of an old village woman 

 who had adhered to the practice ever since she was a girl, 

 and still preserved a robust faith in the herbal specific. 



The plant is called rag-wort, or rag-weed, from its very 

 finely divided and somewhat ragged-looking leaves, " wort," 

 of course, being the old name for a plant ; thus we find 

 awl- wort, bladder- wort, butter- wort, lung- wort, and 

 many other examples. The leaf-segments seem to be more 

 numerous and finer in proportion to the dryness of the 

 soil ; a moist soil develops ranker-looking plants, but the 

 foliage, though larger, is not so deeply divided and cut 

 up. The plant is in various parts of the country known 

 under the names of St. James's wort, segrum, or seggrum, 

 stammer-wort, and stagger-wort, and in Wales and Ireland 

 it is known under the somewhat lengthy titles of " carnedd 

 felen wrryw " and " pfullan buih balkisan " respectively. 

 The apostolic title is a relic of medieval days; in old 

 herbals it is the Ilerlia Sancti Jacobi, or the Sancti Jacobi flo$ } 

 and in France one of its names is the Fleur de S. Jacques. The 

 Latin word Jacobus is the equivalent of the modern James. 

 Parkinson, we see, names the plant the Jacobcea vulgar is. 

 11 Stamrner-wort " would seem to indicate a belief in its 

 efficacy as a remedy for impediment of speech, and the 

 other old names all refer to its supposed value to the 

 veterinary surgeon and cattle-doctor. In an old herbal we 

 find it put down as "a certaine remedie to help the 



