112 OLD ENGLISH FLOWER NAMES 



to a scorpion's tail. This was quite enough, according 

 to the doctrine of signatures, to ensure its prescription 

 as a remedy for the bite of a scorpion. Gerarde was 

 far too good a man of science to endorse the empirics, 

 though he always quotes their writings, and leaves his 

 readers to form their own opinion on the credibility 

 of them. In this instance he cites Dioscorides, 'that 

 the leaues of Scorpion grass applyed to the place, are 

 a present remedy against the stinging of Scorpions: 

 and likewise boyled in wine and drunke, preuaile 

 against the said bitings, as also of addars, snakes, and 

 such venomous beasts.' Should any of my readers 

 unluckily be bitten by a scorpion, and this remedy 

 either fail or not be at hand, he may fall back on that 

 prescribed by Jonston in his History of the Wonderful 

 Things in Nature, written a century later than Gerarde's 

 Herball, which is just as likely to prove efficacious: 

 namely 'if he (the person bitten) sit upon an Asse 

 with his face toward the tayl, the Asse will endure 

 the pain and not he.' 



Another old name for the scorpion grass, with its 

 ' floures of a light blew or watchet colour, with a spot 

 of yellow among the blew/ is mouse-ear, owing to 

 the shape of its leaves, a fancy perpetuated in the 

 scientific title Myosotis. But the present popular 

 name has not belonged to this pretty blue flower for 

 much more than half a century. Somewhere in the 

 'twenties a ballad was written connecting it with the 

 story of a drowned lover ; but up to that time forget- 

 me-not had been the name of one of the bugles, 



