44 THE OLD ENGLISH HERBALS 



vision of anyone who has robbed him. The virtues of vervain 

 also are many; it must be picked " at Spring of day " in "ye 

 monyth of May." Periwinkle is given its beautiful old name 

 " joy of the ground " (" men calle it ye Juy of Grownde ") 

 and the description runs thus : 



" Parwynke is an erbe grene of colour 

 In tyme of May he beryth bio flour, 

 His stalkys ain [are] so feynt [weak] and feye 

 Yet never more growyth he heye [high]." 



Under sage we find the old proverb " How can a man die who 

 has sage in his garden? ' 



" Why of seknesse deyeth man 

 Whill sawge [sage] in gardeyn he may han." 



A manuscript of exceptional interest is one describing the 

 virtues of rosemary which was sent by the Countess of Hainault 

 to her daughter Philippa, Queen of England, and apart from 

 its intrinsic interest it is important from the fact that it is 

 obviously the original of the very poetical discourse on rosemary 

 in the first printed English herbal, commonly known as Banckes's 

 herbal. Moreover, in this MS. there is recorded an old tradition 

 which I have not found in any other herbal, but which is still 

 current amongst old-fashioned country folk, namely, that 

 rosemary " passeth not commonly in highte the highte of 

 Criste whill he was man on Erthe," and that when the plant 

 attains the age of thirty-three years it will increase in breadth 

 but not in height. It is the oldest MS. in which we find many 

 other beliefs about rosemary that still survive in England. 

 There is a tradition that Queen Philippa's mother sent the first 

 plants of rosemary to England, and in a copy of this MS. in the 

 library of Trinity College, Cambridge, the translator, " danyel 

 bain," says that rosemary was unknown in England until the 

 Countess of Hainault sent some to her daughter. 



The only original treatise on herbs written by an Englishman 

 during the Middle Ages was that by Bartholomaeus Anglicus, 



