98 WILD FLOWEES. 



of ignorance or knavery, may produce a tendency 

 to shrink from the examination and assertion of 

 such facts, it can in no way lessen the sad reality 

 of their existence. 



Yet I am far from insensible to the poetic sense 

 of beauty pervading many of the more harmless of 

 these, otherwise, dreary beliefs; and, if ever this 

 charm be allowed to cover the more repulsive qua- 

 lities of superstition, it is when a grateful admiration 

 of the works of the Maker of all created things, a 

 childlike trust in the benefits to be derived from 

 their use, has invested them with, or rather has 

 arrogated for them, a sort of holy power, an inhe- 

 rent virtue such as our forefathers attributed to the 

 herb tutsan, and which they faithfully expressed in 

 its various names. 



Dedicating it to St. John the Baptist, on whose 

 night demons were supposed to be unusually ac- 

 tive, people of old summed up all which they be- 

 lieved it capable of effecting in the single name of 

 "grace of God/' While in that of tutsan, they ex- 

 pressed its qualities : for the word is simply a cor- 

 ruption of tout sain, all healing ; or of toute sainte, 

 all holy, for it was believed to have a power of 

 exorcism, so that no evil spirit or goblin of any 

 kind could endure its presence. Hence, pro- 

 bably, its name of Fuga dcemonum; though some 

 writers assure us it is a purely medical cognomen, 

 indicating its remedial power in melancholy, and 

 hypochondriacal complaints ; hence also its Welsh 

 appellation of y fendigedi, the blessed; and that yet 

 more expressive name, Creu-lys bendiged, the blessed 



