90 WILD FLOWERS. 



" Get water of fumitory, liver to cool, 

 And others the like, or. else go like a fool!" 



brought the plant (which is well known to be bitter, 

 diaphoretic, and slightly aperient), into rather gene- 

 ral use ; but it is now, I believe, forgotten again, 

 though it yet lingers as one of the " simples " of the 

 wonderful old woman who usually forms the medi- 

 cal oracle of a retired country village. 



Clare, too, in one of his pastoral poems writes a 

 commentary on the lines of the manuscript which 

 I have quoted : 



" It drywyth away fowle nutrures, 

 And distroith ye morphe 

 And disposing to ye lepre," 



when he speaks of 



* # Fumitory, too, a name 

 Which superstition holds to fame ; 

 Whose red and purple mottled flowers 

 Are cropped by maids in weeding hours, 

 To boil in water, milk, or whey, 

 For washes on a holiday, 

 To make their beauty fair and sleek, 

 And scare the tan from summer's cheek." 



Well has he said that superstition holds the name 

 to fame ; for the appellation, the fume, or smoke of 

 the earth (Fumus terrce), which, as will be per- 

 ceived, is common to almost all the European 

 languages, arises from the following extraordinary 

 fable of the origin of the plant, recorded in the 

 " Grete HerbaJe," a work which, bearing the date 

 1516, was the first book on plants ever printed 



