192 THE BOOK OF HERBS 



When the new wash'd flock from the river side, 



Coming as white as January's snow, 

 Tlie ram with nose-gays bears his horns in pride. 



And no less brave the bell-wether doth go. 



Nep or Cat-mint is said to have a great attraction for 

 cats. Of which there is this old rime : — 



If you set it, the catts will eate it. 

 If you sow it, the catts won't kno^ 



ow it.^ 



The weasel, with a grand knowledge of counter- 

 poisons, " arms herself with eating of Rue," before fight- 

 ing a serpent. Folkard says that in the north of England 

 there is a tradition that when hops were first planted there, 

 nightingales also made their first appearance, and he 

 adds that both have long since disappeared, north of the 

 Humber. In other parts of England there is an idea 

 (quite a false one) that nightingales will only sing where 

 cowslips flourish. The cuckoo is connected with both 

 plants and minerals. In some parts of Germany, Mr 

 Friend writes, the call of the cuckoo is thought to 

 reveal mines, and the cuckoo's bread, the purple orchis, 

 grows most abundantly where rich veins of metal lie 

 beneath. There is a story about the plantain, a plant 

 with a most interesting legendary history, in which the 

 cuckoo appears. Once the Plantain or Waybread was 

 a maiden, always watching for her absent lover, and 

 at last she was changed into the plant that almost 

 always grows by the road-side. And now every seventh 

 year the plantain becomes a bird, either the Cuckoo or 

 the Cuckoo's servant, the Dinnick. 



The Yellow Rattle is sometimes called Gowk's Siller, 

 and Gowk may mean either the Cuckoo or a fool, so 

 they may quarrel for it. Johnston seems to think that the 

 siller belongs rather to the fool, for he remarks : " the 

 capsules rattle when in seed . . . being like the fool un- 

 able to conceal its wealth." The Swallow restored sight 



1 Coles. 



