GERARD'S HERBAL 109 



an ague, it shall very quickly be made whole." The cure was 

 presumably effected by the cooling properties of the fruit. 

 In another place he recommends the use of branches of willow 

 for a similar purpose. " The greene boughes of willows with 

 the leaves may very well be brought into chambers and set 

 about the beds of those that be sick of fevers, for they do 

 mightily coole the heate of the aire, which thing is wonderfull 

 refreshing to the sicke Patient." 



There is so much contemporary folk lore embodied in Gerard 

 that it is disappointing to find that when writing of mugwort, 

 a herb which has been endowed from time immemorial with 

 wonderful powers, he declines to give the old superstitions 

 " tending to witchcraft and sorcerie and the great dishonour of 

 God ; wherefore do I purpose to omit them as things unwoorthie 

 of my recording or your receiving." He also pours scorn on 

 the mandrake legend. " There have been," he says, " many 

 ridiculous tales brought up of this plant, whether of old wives 

 or runnegate surgeons, or phisick mongers I know not, all whiche 

 dreames and old wives tales you shall from hencefoorth cast 

 out of your bookes of memorie." The old legend of the barnacle 

 / geese, however, he gives fully. It is both too long and too well 

 known to quote, but it is interesting to remember that this 

 myth is at least as old as the twelfth century. According to 

 one version, certain trees growing near the sea produced fruit 

 like apples, each containing the embryo of a goose, which, when 

 the fruit was ripe, fell into the water and flew away. It is, 

 however, more commonly met with in the form that the geese 

 emanated from a fungus growing on rotting timber floating at 

 sea. This is Gerard's version. One of the earliest mentions of 

 this myth is to be found in Giraldus Cambrensis (Topographia 

 Hibernice, 1187), a zealous reformer of Church abuses. In his 

 protest against eating these barnacle geese during Lent he 

 writes thus : 



" There are here many birds which are called Bernacae 



