72 SUPPOSED QUALITIES OF VERVAIN. 
fore the different nations had lost all communication 
with each other.” We might with some appearance of 
reason, perhaps, name the Druids of Gaul as the point, 
whence certain mysteries and observances were con- 
veyed to the priesthood of various nations ; but it would 
be difficult to assign a motive for their fixing upon such 
plants as vervain, and some others, to give efficacy to 
their ceremonies and rites. In some of the Welsh coun- 
ties, vervain is known by the name of “ Ilyssiaur hudol,” 
the enchanter’s plant. It seems to have had ascribed to 
it the power of curing the bites of all rabid animals, 
arresting the progress of the venom of serpents, recon- 
ciling antipathies, conciliating friendships, &c. Gerard, 
after detailing some of its virtues from Pliny, observes, 
that “ many odde old wives’ fables are written of ver- 
vaine tending to witchcraft and sorcerie, which you may 
read elsewhere, for I am not willing to trouble you with 
reporting such trifles as honest ears abhorre to hear.” 
To us moderns its real virtues are unknown ; regular 
practice does not allow that it possesses any medicinal 
efficacy, and its fanciful peculiarities are in no repute ; 
yet it seems to hanker after its lost fame, and lingers 
around the dwellings of man ; for though not solely 
found about our habitations, as Miller thought, yet 
generally, when perceived, it is near some inhabited 
or ruined residence, not as a stray from cultivation, but 
from preference. Our village doctresses, an almost ex- 
tinct race of useful, valuable women, the consolers, the 
comforters, and often mitigators of the ailments of 
the poor, still make use of vervain tea as a strengthened 
and the dried powder of its leaves as a vermifuge ; but 
probably in another generation all the venerated virtues 
of the vervain will be consigned to oblivion. This plant 
seems to be the native growth of many districts in 
Europe, Asia, and Africa. 
The dyers’ weed, yellow weed, weld, or wold (reseda 
luteola), thrives in all our abandoned stone quarries, 
upon the rejected rubbish of the lime-kiln, and waste 
places of the roads, apparently a perfectly indigenous 
plant. Unmindful of frost, or of drought, it preserves a 
degree of verdure, when nearly all other vegetation is 
