VESTIGES OF DRUIDICAL RITES AT THE PRESENT DAY.
It may be interesting to detect vestiges of Druidical rites tenaciously adhering to the altered life of modern civilization.
In the department of Seine-et-Oise, twelve leagues from Paris (says a recent writer), when a child had a rupture (hernia) he was brought under a certain oak, and some women, who no doubt earned a living in that trade, danced around the oak, muttering spell-words till the child was cured,—that is, dead.—(“Notes and Queries,” 5th series, vol. vii. p. 163.)
It has already been shown that the Druids ascribed this very medical quality to the mistletoe of the oak.
“In Brittany a festival for the mistletoe is still kept.... The people there call it ‘touzon ar gros,’—‘the herb of the cross.’”—(“Commonplace Book,” Buckle, vol. ii. of his Works, p. 440, London, 1872.)
Mistletoe has been burned in England in love divinations.—(See Brand, “Popular Antiquities,” London, 1872, vol. iii. p. 358, article “Divination by Flowers.”)
Frommann enumerates mistletoe among “Recentiorum ad fascinum remedia.... Viscum corylinum et tiliaceum” (hazel or filbert and linden trees). The genitalia of the bewitched person were anointed with an ointment prepared from the hazel mistletoe to untie “ligatures.” (See Frommann, “Tractatus de Fascinatione,” Nuremberg, 1675, pp. 938, 957, 958, 965.)
“We find that persons in Sweden who are afflicted with the falling sickness carry with them a knife having a handle of oak mistletoe, to ward off attacks. A piece of mistletoe hung round the neck would ward off other sicknesses. We have Culpepper’s authority for saying ‘it is excellent good for the grief of the sinew, itch, sores, and tooth-ache, the biting of mad dogs, and venemous beasts, and that it purgeth choler very gently.’ Grimm notes that it was with a branch of mistletoe that Balder was killed.... The Kadeir Taliasin says that the mistletoe was one of the ingredients in the awen a gwybodeu, or water of inspiration, science, and immortality, which the goddess Kod prepared in her cauldron. Witches were thought to have no power to hurt those who bore mistletoe round their neck. Sir Thomas Browne speaks of the virtues of mistletoe in cases of epilepsy.”—(“Folk-Medicine,” Black, London, 1883, p. 196.)
The same belief in Waters of Life, science, immortality, etc., seems to obtain among the Slav nations, who also speak in their myths of “the crazy weed,” which may, perhaps, be classified with the weed of the Borgie well, which, as we have seen, “set a’ the Camerslang fo’k wrang i’ th’ head.”—(See “Myths and Folk-Tales of the Russians, Western Slavs, and Magyars,” Jeremiah Curtin, Boston, Mass., 1890.)
The mistletoe, especially that from the linden and the oak, was enumerated by Etmuller among the cures for epilepsy (“tiliaceum et quercinum”); others recommended that from the elder or willow. For the same disease, on the same page, “zibethum” was prescribed. (See Etmuller, “Opera Omnia,” Lyons, 1690, vol. i. p. 198: “Comment. Ludovic.”)
The mistletoe of the juniper, gathered in the month of May, was good for eye-water. “Maio mense instar musci adnascitur inservit aquæ ophthalmicæ.”—(Etmuller, vol. i. p. 84, “Schroderi Dilucidati Phytologia.”)
Fungi of different kinds dried were used as styptics.—(Idem, p. 70.)
The fungus of the oak was especially good for this purpose.—(Idem, p. 127.)
The mistletoe of the oak was regarded as of special value in all uterine troubles, hemorrhages, suppression of the menses, etc.—(Idem, p. 127.)
In the Myth of Kale-wala a young maiden is represented as becoming pregnant by eating a berry. (See “Myth, Ritual, and Religion,” Andrew Lang, London, 1887, vol. ii. p. 179.)
We may ask the question, what kind of a berry this was. Reference may also be had to what Lang has to say on the mythical conceptions alleged to have been induced by juniper and other berries.—(Idem, p. 180.)
The “mistletoe of the oake” was administered internally against “epilepsie.”—(“Most Excellent and Most Approved Remedies,” London, 1654, p. 14.)
“A ring made of mistletoe is esteemed in Sweden as an amulet.”—(“Folk-Medicine,” Black, p. 173.)
In Murrayshire, Scotland, “at the full moon in March, the inhabitants cut withies of the mistletoe or ivy, make circles of them, keep them all the year, and pretend to cure hectics and other troubles with them.”—(Brand, “Popular Antiquities,” vol. iii. p. 151, article “Moon.”)
“In North Germany, where the old Teutonic cult still lingers, the villagers run about on Christmas, striking the doors and windows with hammers, and shouting, ‘Guthyl! Guthyl!’—plainly the Druidical name for mistletoe used by Pliny. In Holstein, the people call the mistletoe ‘the branch of spectres;’ ... they think it cures fresh wounds and ensures success in hunting.” Stukeley is quoted to show that the veneration for the plant prevailed at the Cathedral of York down to the most recent times.—(Encyclopædia Metropolitana.)
“Misseltoe of the oake drunk cureth certainly this disease” (epilepsy).—(“The Poor Man’s Physician,” John Moncrief, Edinburgh, 1716, p. 71.)
Still another writer reckons it a specific in epilepsy; also in apoplexy, vertigo, to prevent convulsions, and to assist children in teething, being worn round their necks. “We have accounts of strange superstitious customs used in gathering it, and that if they are not complied with it loses its virtue. This is by some conjectured to be the golden bough which Æneas made use of to introduce him to the Elysian regions, as is beautifully described in Virgil’s sixth Æneid.”—(“Complete English Dispensatory,” John Quincy, M.D., London, 1730, p. 134.)
Culpepper wrote that the mistletoe, especially that growing upon the oak, was beneficial in the falling sickness, in apoplexy, and in palsy; also as a preventive of witchcraft; in the last-named case it should be worn about the neck. He did not seem to know anything of the origin of these ideas and practices.—(See Richard Culpepper, “The English Physician,” London, 1765, p. 217.)
Pomet, in his “History of Drugs,” London, 1737, describes agaric as an excrescence “found on the larch, oak, etc.... The best agaric is that from the Levant;” only that “which the antients used to call the female should be used in medicine.” It was prescribed in “all distempers proceeding from gross humors and obstructions,”—such as epilepsy, vertigo, mania, etc.; and this partly on the sympathetic or similia similibus principle.
In one of the preparations for epilepsy, said by Beckherius to have been recommended by Galen, occurs “Agaricus Viscus Querci.”—(See Danielus Beckherius, “Medicus Microcosmus,” London, 1660, p. 208.)
“When found growing on the oak, the mistletoe represented man.”—(Opinion of the French writer Reynaud, in his article “Druidism,” quoted in the Encyclopædia Britannica.)
Notwithstanding this abundant proof, which might, if necessary, be swollen in volume, of the survival in domestic medicine, as well as in medical practice of a more pretentious character, of the use of the mistletoe, more particularly in cases of epilepsy, there is no instance of its employment noticed in “Saxon Leechdoms.”
The explanation may be found in the fact that that compilation was rather exponential of the knowledge still possessed by the monks of classical therapeutics than of the skill attained by the Saxons themselves; there are pages of quotations from Sextus Placitus and other authorities, but scarcely anything to show that the ideas of the Saxons themselves were represented.