52 THE BOOK OF HERBS 



of plantain were considered good for wounds, but the 

 saying that "plantage" is true to the moon is hard to 

 solve. Buck's-horne is a plant that has gone altogether 

 out of fashion. In 1577 Hill wrote, " What care and 

 skil is required in the sowing and ordering of the 

 Buck's-horne, Strawberries and Mustardseede," — and 

 how odd it looks now to see it coupled with the two other 

 names, as a cherished object to spend pains upon ! Le 

 Quintinye says that the leaves, when tender, were used 

 in " Sallad Furnitures . . . and the little Birds are very 

 greedy of them." It used to be held profitable for agues 

 if " the rootes, with the rest of the herb," were hung 

 about the necke, " as nine to men and seven to women 

 and children, but this as many other are idle amulets of 

 no worth or value . . . yet, since, it hath been reported 

 to me for a certaintie that the leaves of Buck'shorne Plan- 

 tane laid to their sides that have an ague, will suddenly 

 ease the fit, as if it had been done by witcherie ; the 

 leaves and rootes also beaten with some bay salt and 

 applied to the wrestes, worketh the same effects, which 

 I hold to be more reasonable and proper." Parkinson is 

 very ready to lay down the law as to the limits of empiri- 

 cism. He is very severe about a superstition connected 

 with Mugwort,butthough the same tradition exists of plan- 

 tain, and (under Mugwort) he quotes Mizaldus as men- 

 tioning it, he says nothing about this folly here. Aubrey, 

 however, gives an account of it in his " Miscellanies." 

 " The last summer, on the day of St John Baptist, I 

 accidently was walking in the pasture behind Montague 

 House ; it was twelve o'clock. I saw there about two 

 or three and twenty young women, most of them well 

 habited, on their knees, very busie, as if they had been 

 weeding. I could not presently learn what the matter 

 was ; at last a young man told me that they were look- 

 ing for a coal under the root of a plantain, to put under 

 their heads that night, and they should dream who 



