51 



has become a proverb with them, for they counsel a 

 man in the words, " Sell your coat and buy betony ; " 

 though personally we think the effect would be more 

 efficacious if he were to put on his coat and go a 

 good long walk into the country, and gather his herb 

 for himself. In the same way, when they desire to 

 extol a person they say of him, " He has more virtues 

 than betony/' It is sufficiently evident that this would 

 not be considered a compliment in a community that, on 

 the whole, had lost faith in the plant. We have some- 

 times in our country walks come upon a man carrying a 

 large bundle of the herb, some wandering collector accu- 

 mulating the raw material for the herb-doctors who in 

 London and many large towns have a lucrative practice 

 among the poorer classes. We remember, too, seeing a 

 French manuscript of about the end of the fourteenth 

 century, and one of the illuminations was a certain saint 

 discovering the virtues of the betony. An inscription 

 indicated beneath that this was the subject ; and we have 

 to record of this old illuminator's handiwork that it was 

 not a bit like the plant that, in fact, he had got hold of 

 the wrong thing. What, however, we now wish to prove 

 is that this old illumination was one more indication of 

 the belief of the Middle Ages in the efficacy of the betony; 

 and this, we take it, it does, apart from the question of 

 verisimilitude. 



The leaves and flowers of the betony, like those of 

 several others of the Labiates, have a certain herbaceous 

 and roughish bitter taste, combined with a weak aromatic 

 flavour, while the root is very acrid and nauseous ; the latter 

 is, however, never used in rustic practice now by the 

 herbalists. 



