Of centaury: “If it be joyned with the bloude of a female lapwing or black plover and be put with oyle in a lampe, all they that compasse it aboute shal beleue themselves to be witches so that one shall beleve of an other that his head is in heaven and his fete in the earth. And if the aforesaid thynge be put in the fire whan the starres shine it shall appeare yt the sterres runne one agaynste another and fyght.”
Of vervain: “This herbe (as witches say) gathered, the sunne beyng in the signe of the Ram, and put with grayne or corne of pyonie of one yeare olde healeth them yt be sicke of ye falling sykenes.”
Of powder of roses: “If the aforesayde poulder be put in a lampe and after be kindled all men shall appeare blacke as the deuell. And if the aforesaid poulder be mixed with oyle of the olyue tree and with quycke brymstone and the house anointed wyth it, the Sunne shyning, it shall appeare all inflamed.”
WOODCUT FROM THE TITLE-PAGE OF THE “GRETE HERBALL” (1526)
Of verbena: “Infants bearing it shalbe very apte to learne and louing learnynge and they shalbe glad and joyous.”
It is the only book on the virtues of herbs in which I have found a recipe to revive drowning flies and bees! This is to be done by placing them in warm ashes of pennyroyal, and then “they shall recover their lyfe after a little tyme as by ye space of one houre.” The book ends with a curious philosophical dissertation, “Of the mervels of the worlde,” which is followed by a series of charms—to stop a cock crowing, to make men look as though they had no heads, to obtain rule over all birds, to keep flies away from a house, to write letters which can only be read at night, to make men look as though they had “the countenance of a dog,” to make men seem as though they had three heads, to understand the language of birds, to make men seem like angels, and to put things in the fire without their being consumed.
Though lacking in the charm of the quaint and typically English Banckes’s Herbal, the most famous of the early printed herbals was the Grete Herball printed by Peter Treveris in 1526.[52]
“The grete herball | whiche geueth parfyt knowlege and under- | standyng of all maner of herbes & there gracyous vertues whiche god hath | ordeyned for our prosperous welfare and helth, for they hele & cure all maner | of dyseases and sekenesses that fall or mysfortune to all maner of creatoures | of god created, practysed by many expert and wyse maysters, as Auicenna and | other &c. Also it geueth full parfyte understandynge of the booke lately pryn | ted by me (Peter treveris) named the noble experiens of the vertuous hand | warke of surgery.”