186 THE OLD ENGLISH HERBALS 



These still-room books are as much part of a vanished past 

 as the old herb-gardens, those quiet enclosures full of sunlight 

 and delicious scents, of bees and fairies, which we foolish moderns 

 have allowed to fall into disuse. The herb garden was always 

 the special domain of the housewife, and one likes to think of 

 the many generations of fair women who made these gardens 

 their own, tending them with their own hands, rejoicing in 

 their beauty and peace and interpreting in humble, human 

 fashion something of the wonder and mystery of Nature in 

 the loveliness of a garden enclosed. For surely this was the 

 charm of these silent secluded places, so far removed from 

 turmoil that from them it was possible to look at the world 

 with clear eyes and a mind undisturbed by clamour. And what 

 of the fairies in those gardens? We live in such a hurrying, 

 material age that even in our gardens we seem to have forgotten 

 the fairies, who surely have the first claim on them. Does not 

 every child know that fairies love thyme and foxgloves and 

 the lavish warm scent of the old cabbage rose? Surely the 

 fairies thronged to those old herb-gardens as to a familiar 

 haunt. Can you not see them dancing in the twilight? 



The dark elves of Saxon days have well-nigh vanished with 

 the bogs and marshes and the death-like vapours which gave 

 them birth. With the passing of centuries the lesser elves have 

 become tiny of stature and friendly to man, warming them- 

 selves by our firesides and disporting themselves in our gardens. 

 Perhaps now they even look to us for protection, lest in this 

 age of materialism they be driven altogether from the face of 

 the earth. As early as the twelfth century we find mention of 

 creatures akin to the brownies, whom we all love; for the 

 serious Gervase of Tilbury tells us of these goblins, less than 

 half an inch high, having faces wrinkled with age, and dressed 

 in patched garments. These little creatures, he assures us, 

 come and work at night in the houses of mankind; but they 

 had not lost their impish ways and elvish tricks, " for at times 

 when Englishmen ride abroad in the darkness of night, an 



