“All in ye Merrie Month of May ” 
want to have bad dreams or go crazy, go sleep in a bean- 
field.” There was an old belief that in Bean-flower time 
people were more apt to grow crazy. Certainly an acre of 
Beans in flower fills the air with a very strong smell, almost 
too delicious. Some people dislike it. I like it. Water 
distilled from Bean-flowers is said to take away freckles and 
sunburn, and as to the virtues of the Bean as food, “ they 
are so many I will refrain from setting them down lest I 
weary me.” The Potato in its neat rows does not look 
very romantic, and even less so in heaps preparatory to 
being stacked and covered over with earth. But if you 
carry a potato about your person, it is a Scotch belief you 
will not suffer from rheumatism. Curiously enough, it was 
a poor pedlar called Prentice who is said to have started 
growing potatoes in fields in Scotland. He died in 1788. 
It was deemed at first a vegetable of evil tendencies, and 
was not always a persona grata in consequence in every- 
body’s vegetable-basket. There is a curious mention of 
potatoes as being half-a-crown a peck in an old account- 
book of the Duchess of Buccleuch and Monmouth, 1701. 
I believe this is the earliest known mention of potatoes in 
Scotland. 
There is a quaint old saying about folk who look for 
impossibilities : “ Wad ye hae taties grow by the potside ? ” 
It is curious that Potato is said to be a corruption of 
Patatas. I suppose old Spanish, as they were introduced 
from the Spanish Main by Sir Walter Raleigh, and to this 
very day the sweet potatoes, a sort of yam, of the West 
Indies are called Patates by the French. Pataties is the 
Scotch name for the ordinary potato. There is an edition 
of Gerarde’s Herbal, with a picture of Gerarde with a potato 
in his hand, I suppose because it was such a valuable find. 
It is said to be very good against consumption and many 
other ills. It has sundry funny local names, such as Red 
Eyes and Leatherjackets, also Blue Eyes, and, curiously 
enough, is cousin, as Boy would say, to Tomatoes and my 
beloved Winter Cherry, with its orange seed-vessels, and 
to the Petunia. The Potato-flower is very pretty, and at a 
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