“Having a most grievous ague,” he writes, “and of long continuance, notwithstanding Physick charmes, the little wormes found in the heads of Teazle hanged about my necke, spiders put in a walnut shell, and divers such foolish toies, that I was constrained to take by fantasticke peoples procurement, notwithstanding I say my helpe came from God himselfe, for these medicines and all other such things did me no good at all.”
Under “gourd” Gerard gives a use of this herb which, though popular, is not to be found in any other English herbal. “A long gourd,” he says, “or else a cucumber being laid in the cradle or bed by the young infant while it is asleep and sicke of an ague, it shall very quickly be made whole.” The cure was presumably effected by the cooling properties of the fruit. In another place he recommends the use of branches of willow for a similar purpose. “The greene boughes of willows with the leaves may very well be brought into chambers and set about the beds of those that be sick of fevers, for they do mightily coole the heate of the aire, which thing is wonderfull refreshing to the sicke Patient.”
There is so much contemporary folk lore embodied in Gerard that it is disappointing to find that when writing of mugwort, a herb which has been endowed from time immemorial with wonderful powers, he declines to give the old superstitions “tending to witchcraft and sorcerie and the great dishonour of God; wherefore do I purpose to omit them as things unwoorthie of my recording or your receiving.” He also pours scorn on the mandrake legend. “There have been,” he says, “many ridiculous tales brought up of this plant, whether of old wives or runnegate surgeons, or phisick mongers I know not, all whiche dreames and old wives tales you shall from hencefoorth cast out of your bookes of memorie.” The old legend of the barnacle geese, however, he gives fully. It is both too long and too well known to quote, but it is interesting to remember that this myth is at least as old as the twelfth century. According to one version, certain trees growing near the sea produced fruit like apples, each containing the embryo of a goose, which, when the fruit was ripe, fell into the water and flew away. It is, however, more commonly met with in the form that the geese emanated from a fungus growing on rotting timber floating at sea. This is Gerard’s version. One of the earliest mentions of this myth is to be found in Giraldus Cambrensis (Topographia Hiberniæ, 1187), a zealous reformer of Church abuses. In his protest against eating these barnacle geese during Lent he writes thus:—
“There are here many birds which are called Bernacae which nature produces in a manner contrary to nature and very wonderful. They are like marsh geese but smaller. They are produced from fir-timber tossed about at sea and are at first like geese upon it. Afterwards they hang down by their beaks as if from a sea-weed attached to the wood and are enclosed in shells that they may grow the more freely. Having thus in course of time been clothed with a strong covering of feathers they either fall into the water or seek their liberty in the air by flight. The embryo geese derive their growth and nutriment from the moisture of the wood or of the sea, in a secret and most marvellous manner. I have seen with my own eyes more than a thousand minute bodies of these birds hanging from one piece of timber on the shore enclosed in shells and already formed ... in no corner of the world have they been known to build a nest. Hence the bishops and clergy in some parts of Ireland are in the habit of partaking of these birds on fast days without scruple. But in doing so they are led into sin. For if anyone were to eat the leg of our first parent, although he (Adam) was not born of flesh, that person could not be adjudged innocent of eating flesh.”
Jews in the Middle Ages were divided as to whether these barnacle geese should be killed as flesh or as fish. Pope Innocent III. took the view that they were flesh, for at the Lateran Council in 1215 he prohibited the eating of them during Lent. In 1277 Rabbi Izaak of Corbeil forbade them altogether to Jews, on the ground that they were neither fish nor flesh. Both Albertus Magnus and Roger Bacon derided the myth, but in general it seems to have been accepted with unquestioning faith. Sebastian Munster, in his Cosmographia Universalis (1572), tells us that Pope Pius II. when on a visit to Scotland was most anxious to see these geese, but was told that they were to be found only in the Orkney Islands. Sebastian believed in them himself, for he wrote of them:—
“In Scotland there are trees which produce fruit conglomerated of leaves, and this fruit when in due time it falls into the water beneath it is endowed with new life and is converted into a living bird which they call the tree-goose.... Several old cosmographers, especially Saxo Grammaticus, mention the tree and it must not be regarded as fictitious as some new writers suppose.”[84]
Even Hector Boece, in his Hystory and Croniklis of Scotland (1536), took the myth seriously, but in his opinion “the nature of the seis is mair relevant caus of their procreation than ony uther thyng.” William Turner accepted the myth and gives as his evidence what had been told him by an eye-witness, “a theologian by profession and an Irishman by birth, Octavian by name,” who promised him that he would take care that some growing chicks should be sent to him! In later times we find that Gaspar Schott (Physica Curiosa Sive Mirabilia Naturæ et Artis, 1662, lib. ix. cap. xxii. p. 960) quotes a vast number of authorities on the subject and then demonstrates the absurdity of the myth. Yet in 1677 Sir Robert Moray read before the Royal Society “A Relation concerning Barnacles,” and this was published in the Philosophical Transactions, January-February 1677-8. Among illustrations of the barnacle geese, that in de l’Obel’s Stirpium Historia (1571) depicts the tree without the birds. Gerard shows the tree with the birds; in Aldrovandus leaves have been added to the tree and there is also an illustration showing the development of the barnacles into geese.
As in all herbals the element of the unexpected is not lacking in Gerard. Who would think of finding under the eminently dull heading “fir trees” the following gem of folk lore? “I have seen these trees growing in Cheshire and Staffordshire and Lancashire, where they grew in great plenty as is reported before Noah’s flood, but then being overturned and overwhelmed have lien since in the mosse and waterie moorish grounds very fresh and sound untill this day; and so full of a resinous substance, that they burne like a Torch or Linke and the inhabitants of those countries do call it Fir-wood and Fire-wood unto this day: out of the tree issueth the rosin called Thus, in English Frankincense.” In these days of exaggerated phraseology one is the more appreciative of that word “overturned.” Gerard mentions the famous white Thorn at Glastonbury, but he is very cautious in his account of it. “The white thorn at Glastonbury ... which bringeth forth his floures about Christmas by the report of divers of good credit, who have seen the same; but myselfe have not seen it and therefore leave it to be better examined.”
Another attractive feature of this Herbal is the preservation in its pages of many old English names of plants. One species of cudweed was called “Live-for-ever.” “When the flower hath long flourished and is waxen old, then comes there in the middest of the floure a certain brown yellow thrumme, such as is in the middest of the daisie, which floure being gathered when it is young may be kept in such manner (I meane in such freshnesse and well-liking) by the space of a whole year after in your chest or elsewhere; wherefore our English women have called it ‘Live-long,’ or ‘Live-for-ever,’ which name doth aptly answer his effects.” Another variety of cudweed was called “Herbe impious” or “wicked cudweed,” a variety “like unto the small cudweed, but much larger and for the most part those floures which appeare first are the lowest and basest and they are overtopt by other floures, which come on younger branches, and grow higher as children seeking to overgrow or overtop their parents (as many wicked children do), for which cause it hath been called ‘Herbe impious.’” Of the herb commonly known as bird’s-eye he tells us: “In the middle of every small floure appeareth a little yellow spot, resembling the eye of a bird, which hath moved the people of the north parts (where it aboundeth) to call it Birds eyne.” “The fruitful or much-bearing marigold,” he writes, “is likewise called Jackanapes-on-horsebacke: it hath leaves, stalkes and roots like the common sort of marigold, differing in the shape of his floures; for this plant doth bring forth at the top of the stalke one floure like the other marigolds, from which start forth sundry other smal floures, yellow likewise and of the same fashion as the first, which if I be not deceived commeth to pass per accidens, or by chance, as Nature often times liketh to play with other floures; or as children are borne with two thumbes on one hand or such like, which living to be men do get children like unto others: even so is the seed of this marigold, which if it be sowen it brings forth not one floure in a thousand like the plant from whence it was taken.” Goat’s-beard still retains its old name of ‘go-to-bed-at-noon,’ “for it shutteth itselfe at twelve of the clocke, and sheweth not his face open untill the next dayes Sun doth make it flower anew, whereupon it was called go-to-bed-at-noone: when these floures be come to their full maturitie and ripenesse they grow into a downy Blow-ball like those of dandelion, which is carried away with the winde.” Of the wild scabious (still called devil’s-bit by country folk) he tells us: “It is called Devil’s bit of the root (as it seemeth) that is bitten off. Old fantasticke charmers report that the Devil did bite it for envie because it is an herbe that hath so many good vertues and is so beneficent to mankind.” Gerard’s, again, is the only herbal in which we find one of the old names for vervain: “Of some it is called pigeons grasse because Pigeons are delighted to be amongst it as also to eat thereof.” Golden moth-wort, he tells us, is called God’s flower “because the images and carved gods were wont to wear garlands thereof: for which purpose Ptolomy King of Egypt did most diligently observe them as Pliny writeth. The floures ... glittering like gold, in forme resembling the scaly floures of tansy or the middle button of the floures of camomil, which, being gathered before they be ripe or withered, remaine beautiful long after, as myself did see in the hands of Mr. Wade, one of the Clerks of her Majesties Counsell, which were sent him among other things from Padua in Italy.” The variety of daisy which children now call “Hen and Chickens” was known as the “childing daisy” in Gerard’s time. “Furthermore, there is another pretty double daisy which differs from the first described only in the floure which at the sides thereof puts forth many foot-stalkes carrying also little double floures, being commonly of a red colour; so that each stalke carries as it were an old one and the brood thereof: whence they have fitly termed it the childing Daisie.” Of silverweed he tells us: “the later herbarists doe call it argentine of the silver drops that are to be seen in the distilled water thereof, when it is put into a glasse, which you shall easily see rowling and tumbling up and downe in the bottome.” Delphinium, we learn, derives its name from dolphin, “for the floures especially before they be perfected have a certain shew and likeness of those Dolphines which old pictures and armes of certain antient families have expressed with a crooked and bending figure or shape, by which signe also the heavenly Dolphin is set forth.” Rest-harrow, he says, is so called “because it maketh the Oxen whilest they be in plowing to rest or stand still.” One of the most attractive names which he accounts for is cloudberry. “Cloudberrie groweth naturally upon the tops of two high mountaines (among the mossie places), one in Yorkshire, called Ingleborough, the other in Lancashire called Pendle, two of the highest mountains in all England, where the clouds are lower than the tops of the same all winter long, whereupon the country people have called them cloudberries; found there by a curious gentleman in the knowledge of plants, called Mr. Hesketh, often remembered.”
For those who care to seek it Gerard supplies an unequalled picture of the wild-flower life in London in Elizabethan days. It is pleasant to think of the little wild bugloss growing “in the drie ditch bankes about Piccadilla” (Piccadilly), of mullein “in the highwaies about Highgate”; of clary “in the fields of Holborne neere unto Grays Inn”; of lilies of the valley, the rare white-flowered betony, devil’s-bit, saw-wort, whortleberries, dwarf willows and numerous other wild plants on Hampstead Heath; of the yellow-flowered figwort “in the moist medowes as you go from London to Hornsey”; of the yellow pimpernel “growing in abundance between Highgate and Hampstead”; of sagittaria “in the Tower ditch at London”; of white saxifrage “in the great field by Islington called the Mantles and in Saint George’s fields behinde Southwarke”; of the vervain mallow “on the ditch sides on the left hand of the place of execution by London called Tyburn and in the bushes as you go to Hackney”; of marsh-mallows “very plentifully in the marshes by Tilbury Docks”; of the great wild burnet “upon the side of a causey, which crosseth a field whereof the one part is earable ground and the other part medow, lying between Paddington and Lysson Green neere unto London upon the highway”; of hemlock dropwort “betweene the plowed lands in the moist and wet furrowes of a field belonging to Battersey by London, and amongst the osiers against York House a little above the Horse-ferry against Lambeth”; of the small earth-nut “in a field adjoyning to Highgate on the right side of the middle of the village and likewise in the next field and by the way that leadeth to Paddington by London”; of chickweed spurry “in the sandy grounds in Tothill fields nigh Westminster”; of the pimpernel rose “in a pasture as you goe from a village hard by London called Knightsbridge unto Fulham, a village thereby”; of dwarf elder “in untoiled places plentifully in the lane at Kilburne Abbey by London”; of silver cinquefoil “upon brick and stone walls about London, especially upon the bricke wall in Liver Lane”; of water-ivy, “which is very rare to find, nevertheless I found it once in a ditch by Bermondsey house near to London and never elsewhere.”