BILBERRIES.
Plate XXV.
Bilberries are a modern article of sale, and were first brought to London about forty years ago by countrymen, who appeared in their smock-frocks, with every character of rusticity. In the course of a little time, bilberries were so eagerly bought that it induced many persons to become vendors, and they are now brought to the markets as a regular article of consumption for the season.
These berries mostly grow in Hertfordshire, from whence indeed they are brought to town in very high perfection, and are esteemed by the housewife as wholesome food when made into a pudding; and, though usually sold at fourpence a pint, they are sometimes admitted to the genteel table in a tart.
Dr. Buchan has the following remarks on the Bilberry-bush: he says that it is “a little tough shrubby plant, common in our boggy woods, and upon wet heaths. The stalks are tough, angular, and green; the leaves are small; they stand singly, not in pairs, and are broad, short, and indented about the edges. The flowers are small but pretty, their colour is a faint red, and they are hollow like a cup. The berries are as large as the biggest pea; they are of a blackish colour, and of a pleasant taste. A syrup made of the juice of bilberries, when not over ripe, is cooling and binding.”
Among the former Cries of London, those of Elderberries, Dandelion, &c. were not unfrequent, and each had in its turn physicians as well as village doctresses to recommend them. “The inner part of the Elderberry-tree,” says Dr. Buchan, “is reputed to cure dropsies, when taken in time, frequently repeated and long persevered in; a cooling ointment is made by boiling the flowers in lard till they are crisp, and then straining it off; the juice of the berries boiled down with sugar, or without, till it comes to the consistence of honey, is the celebrated rob of elder, highly extolled in colds and sore throats, though of late years it seems to have yielded to the preparations of black currants. Wine is made from elderberries, which somewhat resembles Frontiniac in flavour.”
The same author says of Dandelion, that “the root is long, large, and white within; every part of the plant is full of milky juice, but most of all the root, from which, when it is broken, it flows plentifully, and is bitterish, but not disagreeable to the taste.”
The leaves are sometimes eaten as sallad when very young, and in some parts of the Continent they are blanched like celery for this purpose; taken this way, in sufficient quantity, they are a remedy for the scurvy.
Bryant, in his “Flora Diætetica,” page 103, says, “The young tender leaves are eaten in the spring as lettuce, they being much of the same nature, except that they are rather more detergent and diuretic. Boerhaave greatly recommended the use of dandelion in most chronical distempers, and held it capable of resolving all kinds of coagulations, and most obstinate obstructions of the viscera, if it were duly continued. For these purposes the stalks may be blanched and eaten as celery.”
There is a fashion in the Cries of London as there are “tides in the affairs of men,” particularly in articles that are used as purifiers of the blood. About fifty years ago, nothing but Scurvy-grass was thought of, and the best scurvy-grass ale was sold in Covent Garden, at the public-house at the corner of Henrietta Street.
