86 THE BOOK OF HERBS 



Give us bacon, rinds of walnuts, 

 Shells of cockles and of small nuts, 

 Ribands, bells, and saffron'd linen, 

 All the world is ours to win in. 



Ths Gipsies Metamorphosed, 



Gerarde says : " The chives (stamens) steeped in 

 water serve to illumine or (as we say) limme pictures 

 and imagerie," and Canon EUacombe quotes from an 

 eleventh century work, showing that it was employed 

 for the same purpose then. " If ye wish to decorate 

 your work in some manner, take tin, pure and finely 

 scraped, melt it and wash it like gold, and apply it with 

 the same glue upon letters or other places which you 

 wish to ornament with gold or silver ; and when you 

 have polished it with a tooth, take Saffron with which 

 Silk is coloured, moistening it with clear of egg without 

 water ; and when it has stood a night, on the following 

 day, cover with a pencil the places which you wish 

 to gild, the rest holding the place of silver." — Theophilus, 

 Hendrie's Translation. 



Meadow-SafFron, or Colchicum, yields a drug still much 

 prescribed, of which Turner uttered a caution in 1568. 

 He says it is a drug to " isschew." He warns those 

 " syke in the goute " (for whom it was, and is, a standard 

 remedy) that much of it is " sterke poyson, and will 

 strongell a man and kill him in the space of one day." 

 Drugs must, indeed, have been administered in heroic 

 measures at that time — if he really ever heard of such 

 a case at first hand. It is from the corm, or bulb, of 

 the plant that Colchicum is extracted. 



Samphire (^Crithium maritimwn). 



Edgar. Half way down 



Hangs one that gathers Samphire, dreadful trade I 

 Methinks he seems no bigger than his head. 



King Lear, iv, 6. 



Samphire is St Peter's Herb, and gains the distinction 



