The Beard- Blown Goat. 267 



devil, who is so very busy about us, is as plump as a | 

 partridge, and has another property very different from \^ 

 what your devils are wont to have, who all smell of brim- \ 

 stone." ( 



It is a curious point, too, that in England, as well as in f 

 other countries, the goat is considered a healthy animal, and | 

 its fragrance especially is supposed to be beneficial to cattle, ; 

 horses, and sheep. For this obsolete reason a single goat 1 

 is still often kept in our farmyards. 



This may have arisen out of the world-wide superstition, 

 that these creatures are wise in simples and the medicine of 

 the fields. Indeed, it is said that man got his first ideas of 

 vegetable efficacies from the leechcraft of this animal and 

 its knowledge of the uses of wild balsam. 



" Fresh dittany beloved of goats " is a poet's allusion to 

 the wondrous _,virtues of the herb which the deer also are 

 said to have recourse to when wounded. 



It had other drugs, too, "for its secure." Thus — 



" Here grows melampode everywhere, 

 And terebinth good for goats, 

 The one my madding kids to smear, 

 The next to heal their throats." 



Mrs. Bury Palliser, in her delightful work, tells us 

 how the Count of Soriano, who fell by the hand of 

 Francis I. at Pavia, bore the device of the wild 

 goat, " which when pierced by the arrow-shaped leaves of 

 the palm-tree, seeks, to heal its wounds, for the herb 

 dittany, which grows under the shade of the same tree," 

 with the motto " Hinc vulnus, salus et umbra." Of the 

 herb dittany PUny says, "The goats first showed us the 

 virtue of the herb dictamnus or dittany, to draw out arrows 

 forth of their bodies. Perceiving themselves shot with a 

 shaft, they have recourse presently to that herb, and with 

 eating thereof it is driven out again." So in Virgil we find 



