90 
SHAKESPEARE’S GARDEN 
annexed a Declaration of the Virtues of the Hearbes 
Carduus Benedictus and Angelus.** 
The distilled leaves, it is said, “helpeth the hart/* 
He concludes: “ I counsell all them that have 
gardens to nourish it, that they may have it always 
to their own use, and the use of their neighbours 
that lack it.” The lines in which it is mentioned 
are those playful ones between Margaret and Beatrice 
where the couple pun upon the word, Much Ado 
about Nothing, III. iv. 73 : 
Marg. Get you some of this distilled Carduus Benedictus, 
and lay it to your heart: it is the only thing for a qualm. 
Hero. There thou prickest her with a thistle. 
Beat. Benedictus! why Benedictus ? you have some moral 
in this Benedictus. 
Marg. Moral! no, by my troth, I have no moral meaning ; 
I meant, plain holy-thistle. 
But even wild thistles had medical properties 
assigned to them; witness the following cure for 
hydrophobia (Alexis of Piedmont, “ Mysteries/* 
i. 28, in d.) : 
“ Take the blossomes of flowers of wylde thystles 
dryed in the shadow, and beaten into powder, give 
him drynke of the same powder, in whyte wyne 
halfe a walnuttshell full, and in thrise takynge 
it, he shall bee healed: a thynge found true by 
experience.*’ 
As the badge of Scotland the thistle deserves a 
more than parting notice. Woodward (“Brit, and 
For. Her./* p. 334) tells us it was first used in 1474, 
on the silver groats of King James XI., while the arras 
in the background cf an altar diptych at Holy rood, 
with portraits of James III. and his Queen, Margaret 
of Denmark, is powdered with it. The painting 
dates from 1485. The thistle badge is first seen on 
Scotch gold coins in 1525. The Order of the Thistle 
was created in 1540 by James V,, although there is 
