"Many also use to wear vervain against blasts; and, when they gather it for this purpose, first they cross the herb with their hand, and then they bless it thus:—
"'Hallowed be thou, Vervain,
As thou growest on the ground,
For in the Mount of Calvary,
There thou wast first found.
Thou healedst our Saviour Jesus Christ,
And staunchedst his bleeding wound;
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,
I take thee from the ground.'
"And so they pluck it up and wear it. Their prayers and traditions of this sort are infinite, and the ceremonies they use in their actions are nothing inferior to the Gentiles in number and strangeness. Which any man may easily observe that converseth with them."[84]
TREE BARNACLES; OR, GEESE HATCHED FROM SEA-SHELLS.
The learned and venerable John Gerarde, author or translator of A History of Plants, or Herball; first published in folio in 1597, has the following marvellous story respecting barnacle-shells growing on trees, and giving birth to young geese; not as a thing which some wonder-monger had related to him, but as what he had seen with his own eyes, and the truth of which he could, therefore, and does, most solemnly avouch.
"There are found in the north parts of Scotland, and the isles adjacent called Orcades, certain trees, whereon do grow certain shell-fishes, of a white colour, tending to russet; wherein are contained little living creatures; which shells in time of maturity do open, and out of them grow those little living things; which, falling into the water, do become fowls, whom we call barnacles, in the North of England brant geese, and in Lancashire tree geese; but the others that do fall upon the land perish and do come to nothing. Thus much by the writings of others, and also from the mouths of people of those parts, which may very well accord with truth. But what our eyes have seen and hands have touched, we shall declare. There is a small island in Lancashire called The Pile of Foulders [or Peel of Fouldrey] wherein are found the broken pieces of old and bruised ships, some whereof have been cast thither by shipwreck, and also the trunks or bodies, with the branches, of old rotten trees, cast up there likewise; whereon is found a certain spume or froth, that in time breedeth unto certain shells, in shape like those of the mussel, but sharper pointed, and of a whitish colour; wherein is contained a thing in form like a lace of silk, finely woven as it were together, as of a whitish colour, one end whereof is fastened unto the inside of the shell, even as the fish of oysters and mussels are. The other end is made fast unto the belly of a rude masse or lump, which in time cometh to the shape and form of a bird; when it is perfectly formed the shell gapeth open, and the first thing that appeareth is the foresaid lace or string; next come the legs of the bird hanging out; and as it groweth greater it openeth the shell by degrees, till at length it is all come forth and hangeth only by the bill. In short space after it cometh to full maturity and falleth into the sea, where it gathereth feathers and groweth to a fowl, bigger than a mallard and lesser than a goose; and black legs and bill, or beak, and feathers black and white, spotted in such a manner as is our magpie (called in some places a pie-annet), which [not the magpie, but the barnacle-hatched fowl] the people of Lancashire call by no other name than a tree goose; which place aforesaid, and all those parts adjoining, do so much abound therewith, that one of the best is bought for 3d.; For the truth hereof, if any doubt, may it please them to repair to me, and I shall satisfy them by the testimony of good witnesses(!).... They spawn as it were in March and April; the geese are formed in May and June, and come to fulness of feathers in the month after." "There is another sort hereof, the history of which is true, and of mine own knowledge; for travelling upon the shores of our English coast between Dover and Romney, I found the trunk of an old rotten tree, which (with some help that I procured by fishermen's wives, that were there attending their husbands' return from the sea) we drew out of the water upon dry land. On this rotten tree I found growing many thousands of long crimson bladders, in shape like unto puddings newly filled, before they be sodden, which were very clear and shining; at the nether end whereof did grow a shell-fish, fashioned somewhat like a small mussel, but much whiter, resembling a shell-fish that groweth upon the rocks about Guernsey and Jersey, called a limpet. Many of these shells I brought with me to London, which, after I had opened, I found in them living things, without form or shape; in others, which were nearer come to ripeness, I found living things that were very naked, in shape like a bird; in others, the birds covered with soft down, the shell half open, and the bird ready to fall out, which no doubt were the fowls called barnacles.... That which I have seen with my eyes and handled with my hands, I dare confidently avouch and boldly put down for verity.... We conclude and end our present volume with this wonder of God. For which God's name be ever honoured and praised." This author figures the Britannica Conchæ Anatifera, or the breed of barnacles; the woodcut representing a tree growing by the sea, with leaves like mussel shells, opening, and living creatures emerging; while others, swimming about in the sea beneath, are perfect goslings! Well may the old herbalist call this "one of the marvels of this land; we may say of the world." Dr. Charles Leigh, in his Natural History of Lancashire, gravely labours to refute the notion that barnacles grow into geese, as had been asserted by Speed and others.
Sir J. Emerson Tennent, writing in Notes and Queries (vol. viii. p. 223), referring to Porta's Natural Magic for the vulgar error that not only in Scotland, but in the river Thames, "there is a kind of shell-fish which get out of their shells and grow to be ducks, or such-like birds," observes that this tradition is very ancient, Porta, the author, having died in 1515. In Hudibras is an allusion to those—
"Who from the most refin'd of saints,
As naturally grow miscreants,
As barnacles turn Soland geese,
In th' islands of the Orcades."
The story (says Sir James) has its origin in the peculiar formation of the little mollusc which inhabits the multivalve shell, the Pentalasmi Anatifera, which by a fleshy peduncle attaches itself by one end to the bottoms of ships or floating timber, whilst from the other there protrudes a bunch of curling and fringe-like cirrhi, by the agitation of which it attracts and collects its food. These cirrhi so much resemble feathers, as to have suggested the leading idea of a bird's tail; and hence the construction of the remainder of the fable, which is given with grave minuteness in The Herball, or General Historie of Plants, gathered by John Gerarde, Master in Chirurgie (London, 1597). After quoting the account, Sir James adds, that Gerarde, who is doubtless Butler's authority, says elsewhere, "that in the north parts of Scotland, and the islands called Orcades, there are certain trees whereon these tree geese and barnacles abound." The conversion of the fish into a bird, however fabulous, would be scarcely more astounding than the metamorphosis which it actually undergoes, the young of the little animal having no feature to identify it with its final development. In its early stage (see Carpenter's Physiology, i. 52) it has a form not unlike that of the crab, "possessing eyes and powers of free motion: but afterwards becoming fixed to one spot for the remainder of its life, it loses its eyes, and forms a shell, which, though composed of various pieces, has nothing in common with the jointed shell of the crab." Mr. T. J. Buckton (Notes and Queries, vol. viii. p. 224) says that Drayton (1613), in his Polyolbion, p. iii., in connexion with the river Dee, speaks of—