258 
A DICTIONARY OR 
overtop those that came first, as many wicked children do unto their 
parents.’ Ger. 519. Prior, p. 111. 
Herb Ive. (1) Plantago Coronopiis, L. — Lyte, Turn. J^^ames. In 
Ger. Herb Ivie. Camb. Turn. Names. 
(2) Ajuga Chamcepitys, L. — Lyte, Ger. Wr. Hal. 
(3) Senebiera Coronopus^ Poir. — Culpeper, Herb-ivy. Prior, p. 111. 
Herb John. (1) Hypericum perforatum, L. — Grete Herball. 
(2) This name is given in N. & Q. 2, vii. 456, in a quotation from 
Gurnall’s Christian Armonr, ed. 1679, pt. ii. p. 12: ‘Like herb John 
in the pot, which does neither much good nor hurt.’ There is an 
editorial note which may be consulted, but the plant meant has not 
been identified. It would hardly be the Hypericum just named. 
Herb Margaret. Beilis perennis,'h. — ‘Of Herha Margarita, 
or Margarites herbe.’ Ger. 512. Prior, p. 111. 
Herb of Grace. Ruta graveolens, L. — Park. Theatr. Called ‘ Hearbe 
Grace, or Hearbe of Grace, for the many good properties where unto 
it serveth’ (p. 134). We may quote the following from a paper on 
Rue communicated by one of us to Gard. Chron., Nov. 20, 1875: 
‘ It is usually stated in books of reference that it was so called in 
allusion to its having been employed as an aspergillum, or holy- water 
brush, in the ceremony known as the asperges, which usually precedes 
the Sunday celebration of High Mass ; but for this supposition there 
is no ground, as there is no anthentic record that the plant was ever 
so used. Jeremy Taylor refers to an employment of Rue in exor- 
cisms, which plant, he says, “from thence, as we suppose, came to be 
called herb of grac^f’ and this passage seems to have been the fons et 
origo of all kindred and subsequent explanations. It does not appear 
to be generally known that this name was in Shakespeare’s time or 
thereabouts applied also to another plant, probably Wormwood 
[^Artemisia Absinthium, L.]; but in a letter of Edward Alleyn, the 
actor, dated August 1, 1593, he advises his wife, among other 
remedies against the plague which was then raging, to have in her 
windows “ good store of rue and herbe of grace : ” the conjunction 
clearly indicating that two distinct plants were intended. That both 
wormwood and rue were regarded as protecting from plague is clear 
from Tusser’s lines : 
“What savor is better, if physicke be true. 
For places infected, than Wormwood and Rue ? ” ’ 
See Prior, p. 111. 
Herb of Life. ‘ In Erasmus’s Praise of Folly, some mythical plant 
that cannot be identified.’ Prior, p. 111. 
Herb of Repentance. Rnta graveolens, L. — ‘ Is well known at the 
Old Railey as the Herb of Repentance.' Phyt. iii. 207, N. s. It was 
long, and probably is still, the custom to strew the dock of the 
Central Criminal Court at the Old Bailey with Rue. It arose in 1750, 
when the contagious disease known as jail-fever raged in Newgate to 
a great extent, from which time ‘ up to this day it has been usual to 
place sweet- swelling herbs in the prisoner’s dock to prevent infection.’ 
See F. Lawrence’s Life of Fielding (1855), p. 296. It may be remem- 
