"Our ordinary Camomill [says Parkinson] is well known to all to have many small trailing branches set with very fine small leaves and spreading thick over the ground taking root as it spreadeth; the tops of the branches have white flowers with yellow thrums in the middle, very like unto the Featherfew, but somewhat greater not so hard but more soft and gentle in handling and the whole herb is to be of a very sweet scent.
"Camomill is called Anthemis Leucanthemis and Leucanthemum of the whiteness of the flowers; and Chamœmœlum of the corrupted Italian name Camomilla. Some call the naked Camomill Chrysanthemum odoratum. The double Camomill is called by some Chamœmœlum Romanum flore multiplici.
"Camomill is put to divers and sundry uses both for pleasure and profit; both for inward and outward diseases, both for the sick and the sound, in bathings to comfort and strengthen the sound and to ease pains in the diseased. The flowers boiled in posset drink provoketh sweat and helpeth to expel colds, aches and other griefs. A syrup made of the juice of the double Camomill with the flowers and white wine is used by some against jaundice and dropsy."
V
Dian's Bud and Monk's-hood Blue
DIAN'S BUD (Artemesia). This plant is nothing more nor less than absinthe, or wormwood. It is mentioned under its poetic name by Shakespeare in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" when Oberon bids Puck find him the "little purple flower called Love in Idleness," the juice of which placed on sleeping eyelids would make man, or woman, madly dote on the first object beheld on awakening, and with which he intended to anoint the eyelids of the sleeping Titania. He also told the mischievous sprite that the charm could be removed with another herb—Dian's bud, the flower sacred to the goddess Diana. Later in the play, touching the eyes of the spellbound fairy with this second herb, Oberon pronounces the following incantation:
Be as thou was wont to be,
See as thou was wont to see;
Dian's bud on Cupid's flower
Hath such force and blessed power.
From the earliest times absinthe was associated with sorcery and was used for incantations. Pliny says the traveler who carried it about him would never grow weary and that it would drive away any lurking devils and counteract the evil eye. Ovid calls it absinthium and speaks of its bitterness.
The Greeks also called it artemesia after the goddess Artemis, or Diana, and made it a moon-plant. Very poetically, therefore, Shakespeare alludes to it as "Dian's Bud,"—and most appropriately does it appear in the moon-lit forest. Gerard, however, quaintly says that is was named for Queen Artemesia, wife of Mausolus, King of Caria, who built the Mausoleum, which was one of the "Seven Wonders of the World." The ancients liked its flavor in their wine as many people still like vermouth, one of its infusions.
In Shakespeare's time people hung up sprays of wormwood to drive away moths and fleas; and there was a homely verse:
Whose chamber is swept and wormwood is thrown
No flea for his life dare abide to be known.