“As high as a house,
As little as a mouse,
As round as a ball,
As bitter as gall,
As white as milk,
As soft as silk”.
There is an old tradition that the more the branches are beaten, the more prolific the fruit will be. There is a fable in Æsop of a woman who asked the walnut tree growing by the wayside, which was pelted at with stones and sticks by them that passed by, why it was so foolish as to bring forth fruit seeing that it was so beaten for its pains, to which the tree rehearsed these two proverbial verses:—
“Nux, Asinus, Mulier, Simili suret lege legati,
Haes tria nil recte faciunt si verbera cessent”.
“The English whereof,” the chronicler quaintly continues, “I could tell you, but that I fear the women of this preposterous age would be angry.” True it is that this tree, the more it is beaten the more nuts it bears. The walnut was one of the chief ingredients in the celebrated antidote against poison which was attributed to the wise king Mithridates. The formula ran as follows: “Two (wall) nuttes and two figges and twenty rewe beans, stamped together with a little suet and eaten fasting, doth defende a man from poison and pestilence that day”.[5]
Sage was much esteemed by the housewife for simple ailments, and its properties are embodied in the following lines, which are of great antiquity:—
“Sage helpes the nerves, and by its powerfull might
Palsies and Feavers, sharp it puts to flight”.[6]
An old writer says, “Be sure you wash your sage for fear the Toades, who as I conceive come to it to discharge their poyson, should leave some of their venom upon the Leaves”.
Of rue, which was largely used as a carminative, the following couplet has been handed down:—
“Rue maketh chast, and eke preserveth sight,
Infuseth wit, and Fleas doth put to flight”.
Tradition says that a weasel, going to fight with a serpent, eateth rue, and rubbeth herself therewith to avoid his poison. Crollius states: “The sign of the cross upon the seed of the rue, drives away all phantoms and evil spirits by signature”.