GROUND IVY 173 



tute for tea, the decoction being sweetened with 

 honey or sugar, though some rustic connoisseurs 

 held that liquorice was the correct thing to add. 

 Others held its bitter foliage an improvement to 

 the flavour of their home-brewed beer, but in any 

 and every form it would, we imagine, be a rather 

 nauseous brew. It was also formerly added to ale 

 to clarify and preserve it, or, to use the older word, 

 to gill it, so that alternative names for the ground 

 ivy in the old herbals are ale-hoof and gill-run-by- 

 ground, 1 the latter portion of this later name being 

 clearly allusive to the creeping habit of the plant. 

 The hoof in the former name was probably from 

 the Anglo-Saxon hufa, a garland or chaplet, and 

 this in turn reminds us of the old Latin name of 

 the plant, the corona terrae, " because," as Parkinson 

 tells us, and observation shows us, " it spreadeth as 

 a garland upon the ground." Another old local 

 name of the plant is cat's-foot, its rounded leaves 

 being supposed to be suggestive of the feline paw, 

 and in old herbals it is called the horseshoue. A 



1 Others would tell us that this Gill was the name of a girl 

 a name that in aristocratic circles would be Julia or Juliana, 

 but that in humbler life was contracted to Gill. It will be 

 recalled how in nursery-lore Jack and Jill wandered off 

 together in the journey that ended so disastrously, and how 

 the rustic saying anent the old, old story is that " every Jack 

 must have his Jill." This introduction of the feminine 

 element in the name of the plant seems to need some little 

 elucidation. Another old name of the plant is hedge-maid, 



