NETTLE BROTH. 235 



drank a funny decoction composed of Marsala and water half- 

 and-half in which a large onion, sliced lemon-wise, had been 

 steeping for the whole previous night a drink which the Major 

 tasted, and in very emphatic phrase declared to be " beastly," but 

 which he shrewdly guessed had something to do with the General's 

 rheumatism and gout. Any of our readers having a tendency 

 thitherwards might do worse than take the hint. There may be 

 something in it, for we recollect, when a little boy in Morven, that 

 an onion was somehow considered a panpharmacon, a perfect 

 panacea good for any and every ailment. That the mediaeval 

 herbalist, like the mediaeval alchemist, was often a quack is very 

 likely. In many instances he could hardly be otherwise when his 

 profession was in such repute ; but it is a question if our revulsion 

 has not gone too far ; if our modern medicinists do not rather 

 much overlook, too contemptuously ignore, the inherent virtues, 

 as to human ailments, of roots and herbs and " flowers of the 

 field." An old lady in our neighbourhood, shrewd and intelligent 

 beyond most of her class, told us not long ago as she was cutting 

 nettles by the roadside, as an evening bonne bouche for her cow, 

 that Stewart of Invernahyle, Sir Walter Scott's friend, made it a 

 point every spring to have nettle broth or soup on three consecutive 

 days about the season of the vernal equinox, which he religiously 

 believed acted as a safe and efficient diuretic for the remainder of 

 the year. From Mairi Bhan, Invernahyle's sister, the 



" Mhairi Bhan yur barratt thu " 



of Macintyre's well-known song, are descended at least two Presby- 

 terian clergymen, though the Invernahyles themselves were strongly 

 Episcopalian ourselves, namely, and the Rev. Mr. Cameron, Free 

 Church minister of Ardersier. And the writing of the word 

 " Episcopalian " above reminds us of the fact that the titular 

 dignity of the Bishopric of Argyll and the Isles is at present 



