The instructions for the picking of this joyous flower are given at length. It must be taken only when the moon is in the sign of the Virgin, and not when Jupiter is in the ascendant, for then the herb loses its virtue. And the gatherer, who must be out of deadly sin, must say three Pater Nosters and three Aves. Amongst its many virtues we find that it gives the wearer a vision of anyone who has robbed him. The virtues of vervain also are many; it must be picked “at Spring of day” in “ye monyth of May.” Periwinkle is given its beautiful old name “joy of the ground” (“men calle it ye Juy of Grownde”) and the description runs thus:—

“Parwynke is an erbe grene of colour
In tyme of May he beryth blo flour,
His stalkys ain [are] so feynt [weak] and feye
Yet never more growyth he heye [high].”

Under sage we find the old proverb—“How can a man die who has sage in his garden?”

“Why of seknesse deyeth man
Whill sawge [sage] in gardeyn he may han.”

A manuscript of exceptional interest is one describing the virtues of rosemary which was sent by the Countess of Hainault to her daughter Philippa, Queen of England, and apart from its intrinsic interest it is important from the fact that it is obviously the original of the very poetical discourse on rosemary in the first printed English herbal, commonly known as Banckes’s herbal. Moreover, in this MS. there is recorded an old tradition which I have not found in any other herbal, but which is still current amongst old-fashioned country folk, namely, that rosemary “passeth not commonly in highte the highte of Criste whill he was man on Erthe,” and that when the plant attains the age of thirty-three years it will increase in breadth but not in height. It is the oldest MS. in which we find many other beliefs about rosemary that still survive in England. There is a tradition that Queen Philippa’s mother sent the first plants of rosemary to England, and in a copy of this MS. in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge, the translator, “danyel bain,” says that rosemary was unknown in England until the Countess of Hainault sent some to her daughter.

The only original treatise on herbs written by an Englishman during the Middle Ages was that by Bartholomæus Anglicus, and on the plant-lover there are probably few of the mediæval writers who exercise so potent a spell. Even in the thirteenth century, that age of great men, Bartholomew the Englishman ranked with thinkers such as Roger Bacon, Thomas Aquinas and Albertus Magnus. He was accounted one of the greatest theologians of his day, and if his lectures on theology were as simple as his writings on herbs, it is easy to understand why they were thronged and why his writings were so eagerly studied, not only in his lifetime but for nearly three centuries afterwards. A child could understand his book on herbs, for, being great, he was simple. But although his work De Proprietatibus Rerum (which contains nineteen books) was the source of common information on Natural History throughout the Middle Ages, and was one of the books hired out at a regulated price by the scholars of Paris, we know very little of the writer. He spent the greater part of his life in France and Saxony, but he was English born and was always known as Bartholomæus Anglicus.[39] We know that he studied in Paris and entered the French province of the Minorite Order, and later he became one of the most renowned professors of theology in Paris. In 1230 a letter was received from the general of the Friars Minor in the new province of Saxony asking the provincial of France to send Bartholomew and another Englishman to help in the work of that province, and the former subsequently went there. We do not know the exact date of De Proprietatibus Rerum, but it must have been written about the middle of the thirteenth century; for, though it cites Albertus Magnus, who was teaching in Paris in 1248, there is no mention of any of the later authorities, such as Thomas Aquinas, Roger Bacon and Vincent de Beauvais. It was certainly known in England as early as 1296, for there is a copy of that date at Oxford, and there still exist both in France and in England a considerable number of other manuscript copies, most of which date from the latter part of the thirteenth century and the early part of the fourteenth. The book was translated into English in 1398 by John de Trevisa,[40] chaplain to Lord Berkeley and vicar of Berkeley, and Bartholomew could scarcely have been more fortunate in his translator. At the end of his translation, Trevisa writes thus:—

“Endlesse grace blysse thankyng and praysyng unto our Lorde God Omnipotent be gyuen, by whoos ayde and helpe this translacon was endyd at Berkeleye the syxte daye of Feuerer the yere of our Lorde MCCCLXXXXVIII the yere of ye reyne of Kynge Rycharde the seconde after the Conqueste of Englonde XXII. The yere of my lordes aege, syre Thomas, Lorde of Berkeleye that made me to make this Translacōn XLVII.”

Salimbene shows that the book was known in Italy in 1283, and there are two MS. copies in the Bibliothèque Nationale of Paris, of which the earliest is dated 1297. Before Trevisa made his English translation, it had been translated into French by Jehan Corbichon, in 1372, for Charles V. of France.

The book was first printed at Basle about 1470, and the esteem in which it was held may be judged from the fact that it went through at least fourteen editions before 1500, and besides the English and French translations it was also translated into Spanish and Dutch. The English translation was first printed by Caxton’s famous apprentice, Wynken de Worde.[41] The translator in a naïve little introductory poem says that, just as he had looked as a child to God to help him in his games, so now he prays Him to help him in this book.

“C[?]Rosse was made all of red .
In the begynning of my boke .
That is called, god me sped .
In the fyrste lesson that j toke .
Thenne I learned a and b .
And other letters by her names .
But alway God spede me .
Thought me nedefull in all games .
Yf I played in felde, other medes .
Stylle other wyth noyse .
I prayed help in all my dedes .
Of him that deyed upon the croys .
Now dyuerse playes in his name .
I shall lette passe forth and far .
And aventure to play so long game .
Also I shall spare .
Wodes, medes and feldes .
Place that I have played inne .
And in his name that all thīg weldes .
This game j shall begynne. .
And praye helpe conseyle and rede .
To me that he wolde sende .
And this game rule and lede .
And brynge it to a good ende. .”