112 FAMILIAR WILD FLOWERS. 



The generic name is derived from two Greek words, 

 signifying good and merit its goodness consisting in the 

 ancient belief in its power to drive away serpents and the 

 dreaded basilisk; while the specific name, Clinopodium, 

 means bed-foot '' the tufts of the plant are like the knobs 

 at the feet of a bed/' an old writer tells us. 



The basilisk was in mediaeval times a fabled monster 

 the king of the serpents, and in calamint lore the sense of 

 the word basil seems hopelessly obscure, the general medi- 

 cinal value of the plant and its special efficacy in basilisk 

 destruction being more or less mixed together, and the name 

 is emphasised in one or the other direction according to the 

 idiosyncrasy of the writer. If a basilisk only set his eyes 

 on a man it caused his death. We see this idea in Shakes- 

 peare's Henry VI.. : " Come, basilisk, and kill the innocent 

 gazer with thy sight ; " and Beaumont and Fletcher, too, 

 in their " Woman-hater," speak of " the basilisk's death- 

 doing eye." Under these circumstances the knowledge of 

 the properties of herb-basil was a decided advantage. The 

 only way, we are gravely told, to kill these monsters was to 

 put a mirror in their haunts, as the actual sight of its own 

 horror was no less fatal to itself than to mankind. 



