Stray Leaves from a Border Garden 
flight of witches to destroy it, but in vain ; the young man 
prevailed, as the ballad says : 
The spells were vain ; the hags returned 
To the Queen in sorrowful mood, 
Crying that witches have no power 
Where there is Roantree wocd. 
Bamborough Castle is said to be the Castel Orgueilleux 
mentioned in my kinsman, George Ellis’s “ Metrical 
Romances.” 
In February, such was the mildness of the weather, we 
actually gathered in the old red-walled kitchen-garden a 
posy of a dozen pink and yellow primroses, brown auriculas, 
“cousin to primrose,” Boy calls them, in which he is more 
correct than he knows, since the old name for auriculas was 
“ primrose bear’s ear.” A Gloucestershire name is “ tanner’s 
apron.” In Roxburghshire the auricula was called “cat’s lug,” 
meaning “cat’s ear.” “French cowslips” is a pretty old name 
mentioned by Parkinson. It was deemed a sovereign 
remedy, when made into a balsam, “ against the bitings of 
the Sea-Hare and of the Toad.” At least so says my old 
Queen Anne Herbal, where the information is of a most 
uncommon kind. What species of animal a sea-hare is I 
have yet to find out, since my Herbal telleth not. One 
golden wallflower — Boy is as keen after wallflower as a 
rabbit, and nips off an early bloom before I can look 
round — one violet, growing in a strawberry bed, some sweet 
white arabis right in the middle of my tiny wild strawberry 
bed, one early golden crocus, and some naked-jasmine 
against the wall. There is in this kitchen-garden such a 
dear old arbour called the Fady’s Bower ; Fady was the 
title formerly given, it seems, to all wives of landholders, 
such as Lady Billy, whose husband was a Mr. Ninian Home, 
owning the Billy estate in the middle of the eighteenth century. 
Fady, I believe, came from an old Saxon word meaning the 
“ loafgiver ” or “ household bread dispenser,” a rather nice 
meaning, I think. This arbour is cut out of an ancient 
holly-tree with a hawthorn growing entwined with it, haunted 
