148 WILD FLOWERS. 



most true remark : " pity it were that even a fic- 

 titious expellant of the blue devils should become 

 obsolete ; better even to be cheated into good spirits, 

 than suffered to sink into melancholia for want of 

 a little credulity/' It would be well, indeed, and 

 the world would be a happier world if more men 

 and women acted in accordance with this wish ; for 

 here credulity might be satisfactorily carried to a 

 tolerably high pitch. " The leaf/' says Bacon, " of 

 burrage hath an excellent spirit to repress the fuli- 

 ginous vapour of dusky melancholia \" and, accord- 

 ing to Salmon, " Borage is one of the four cordial 

 flowers ; it comforts the heart, cheers melancholy, and 

 recovers the fainting spirits/' Bruel prescribes an 

 "epithem " to be applied to the heart, of borage, bu- 

 gloss, and water-lily, &c., for the same purpose ; while 

 Burton, in his "Anatomie of Melancholy/' says that 

 Diodorus, Pliny, Plutarch, Dioscorides, and Ccelius, 

 all thought it so valuable in this disorder, that they 

 regarded it as the famous nepenthe of Homer, which 

 Polydamna " sent Helena for a token, of such rare 

 vertue, that if taken steept in wine, if wife and 

 children, father and mother, brother and sister, and 

 all thy dearest friends should dye before thy face, 

 thou couldst not grieve nor shed a tear for them ! " 



After such accounts as these, and more especially 

 when we see that its very names express the quali- 

 ties assigned to it Borago, corrupted from cor (the 

 heart), and ago (to bring), Llawenlys (herb of glad- 

 ness), Bronwerth, breast (for heart) herb,* and others 



* The Welsh name Tafod yr ych, or ox-tongue, is equiva- 

 lent to the Arabic Lissdn-et-tor, or bull's-tongue. 



