100 THE OLD ENGLISH HERBALS 



and who frequenteth and is conversant in faire and beautifull 

 places to have his minde not faire." 



The bones, so to speak, of Gerard's work are, it is true, taken 

 from Dodoens's splendid Latin herbal, but it is Gerard's own 

 additions which have given the book its hold on our affections. 

 He describes with such simplicity and charm the localities where 

 various plants are to be found, and he gives so much contem- 

 porary folk lore that before we have been reading long we feel 

 as though we were wandering about in Elizabethan England 

 with a wholly delightful companion. 



We know from Gerard's coat of arms that he was descended 

 from a younger branch of the Gerards of Ince, a Lancashire 

 family, but there are no records at the College of Arms to show 

 his parentage. His name is frequently spelt with an e at the 

 end, but Gerard himself and his friends invariably spelt it with- 

 out. (The spelling " Gerarde " on the title-page of the Herbal 

 is probably an engraver's error.) John Gerard was born at 

 Nantwich in Cheshire in 1545, and educated at the school at 

 Wisterson or Willaston, two miles from his native town. In 

 the Herbal he gives us two glimpses of his boyhood. Under 

 raspberry we find : 



" Raspis groweth not wilde that I know of. ... I found it 

 among the bushes of a causey neere unto a village called Wister- 

 son, where I went to schoole, two miles from the Nantwich in 

 Cheshire." 



Writing of yew * he tells us : 



" They say that if any doe sleepe under the shadow thereof 

 it causeth sickness and sometimes death and that if birds do eat 

 of the fruit thereof it causeth them to cast their feathers and 

 many times to die. All which I dare boldly amrme is altogether 

 untrue : for when I was young and went to schoole divers of 



1 Yew berries are an ingredient in at least one prescription in a Saxon 

 herbal (Leech Book of Bald, I. 63). 



