VIL] THE FOLK-LORE OF PLANTS. 119 



reputation of undoing any lock, bolt, or bar to which 

 it might be applied. Withers (1622), author of the 

 well-known " Emblems," thus refers to it in verse: 



" There is an herbe, some say, whose virtue's such 

 It in the pasture only with a touch 

 Unshoes the new-shod steed." 



Culpepper says : " Moonwort is an herb which (they 

 say) will open locks and unshoe such horses as tread 

 upon it. This some laugh to scorn, and those no 

 small fools neither; but country people that I know 

 call it Unshoe the Horse. Besides, I have heard 

 commanders say that on White Down in Devonshire, 

 near Tiverton, there were found thirty Horseshoes, 

 pulled off from the feet of the Earl of Essex's horses, 

 being there drawn up in a body, many of them being 

 but newly shod, and no reason known, which caused 

 much admiration, and the herb described usually 

 grows upon heaths." 



A subsequent writer Coles thus refers to the 

 above : 



" It is said, yea, and believed by many, that Moon- 

 wort will open the locks wherewith dwelling-houses 

 are made fast if it be put into the keyhole ; as, also, 

 that it will loosen the locks, fetters, and shoes from 

 those horses' feet that go upon the place where it 

 groweth ; and of this opinion was Master Culpepper, 

 who, though he railed against superstition in others, 

 yet had enough of it himself, as may appear from his 

 story of the Earl of Essex his horses, which being 

 drawn up in a body, many of them lost their shoes 

 upon Whitedown, in Devonshire, because Moonwort 

 grows upon the heath." 



