Bachelor’s Buttons.—See [Ranunculus].
BALBAGA.—The Indian Grass, Eleusine Indica, had, according to De Gubernatis, the Vedic name of Balbaja: and, as a sacred herb, was employed in Indian religious festivals for litter, in ceremonials connected with the worship of the sacred Cow.
BALDMONEY.—According to Gerarde, the Gentian was formerly called Baldmoyne and Baldmoney; but Dr. Prior considers that the name appertains to Meum athamanticum, and that it is a corruption of the Latin valde bona, very good. The Grete Herball, speaking of Sistra, he says, gives the following explanation:—“Sistra is Dyll, some call it Mew; but that is not so. Howbeit they be very like in properties and vertue, and be put eche for other; but Sistra is of more vertue then Mew, and the leaves be lyke an herbe called Valde Bona, and beareth smaller sprigges as Spiknarde. It groweth on hye hylles” (See [Feldwode]).
BALIS.—This herb was believed by the ancients to possess the property of restoring the dead to life. By its means Æsculapius himself was said to have been once resuscitated; and Pliny reports that, according to the Greek historian Xanthus, a little dog, killed by a serpent, was brought back to life by this wonderful herb Balis.
BALSAM.—The seed vessel of this plant contains five cells. When maturity approaches, each of these divisions curls up at the slightest
touch, and darts out its seeds by a spontaneous movement: hence its generic name Impatiens, and its English appellation Noli me tangere—Touch me not. Gerarde calls it the Balsam Apple, or Apple of Jerusalem, and tells us that its old Latin name was Pomum Mirabile, or Marvellous Apple. He also states that the plant was highly esteemed for its property of alleviating the pains of maternity, and that it was considered a valuable agent to remove sterility—the patient first bathing and then anointing herself with an oil compounded with the fruit.——The Turks represent ardent love by this flower.——Balsam is under the planetary influence of Jupiter.
BALM.—The Melissa, or Garden Balm, was renowned among the Arabian physicians, by whom it was recommended for hypochondria and affections of the heart, and according to Paracelsus the primum ens Melissa promised a complete renovation of man. Drunk in wine, it was believed to be efficacious against the bitings of venomous beasts and mad dogs. A variety called Smith’s or Carpenter’s Balm, or Bawm, was noted as a vulnerary, and Pliny describes it of such magical virtue, that Gerarde remarks, “though it be but tied to his sword that hath given the wound, it stancheth the blood.” On account of its being a favourite plant of the bees, it was one of the herbs directed by the ancients to be placed in the hive, to render it agreeable to the swarm: hence it was called Apiastrum.——The astrologers claimed the herb both for Jupiter and the Sun.——In connection with the Garden Balm, Aubrey relates a legend of the Wandering Jew, the scene of which he places in the Staffordshire moors. When on the weary way to Golgotha, Jesus Christ, fainting and sinking beneath the burden of the cross, asked the Jew Ahasuerus for a cup of water to cool his parched throat, he spurned the supplication, and bade him speed on faster. “I go,” said the Saviour, “but thou shalt thirst and tarry till I come.” And ever since that hour, by day and night, through the long centuries, he has been doomed to wander about the earth, ever craving for water, and ever expecting the Day of Judgment, which alone shall end his frightful pilgrimage. One Whitsun evening, overcome with thirst, he knocked at the door of a Staffordshire cottager, and craved of him a cup of small beer. The cottager, who was wasted with a lingering consumption, asked him in and gave him the desired refreshment. After finishing the beer, Ahasuerus asked his host the nature of the disease he was suffering from, and being told that the doctors had given him up, said, “Friend, I will tell thee what thou shalt do; and by the help and power of Almighty God above, thou shalt be well. To-morrow, when thou risest up, go into thy garden, and gather there three Balm-leaves, and put them into a cup of thy small beer. Drink as often as you need, and when the cup is empty, fill it again, and put in fresh Balm-leaves every fourth day, and thou shalt see, through our Lord’s great goodness and mercy, that before twelve days shall be past, thy disease shall be cured and thy body altered.” So saying, and declining to eat, he departed and was never seen again. But the cottager gathered his Balm-leaves, followed the prescription of the Wandering Jew, and before twelve days were passed was a new man.
BALM OF GILEAD.—The mountains of Gilead, in the east of the Holy Land, were covered with fragrant shrubs, the most plentiful being the Amyris, which yielded the celebrated Balm of Gilead, a precious gum which, at a very early period, the Ishmaelites or Arabian carriers trafficked in. It was to a party of these merchants that Joseph was sold by his brethren as they came from Gilead, with their camels, bearing spicery, and Balm, and Myrrh, going to carry it down to Egypt (Gen. xxxvii., 25). There were three productions from this tree, all highly esteemed by the ancients, viz.: Xylobalsamum, a decoction of the new twigs; the Carpobalsamum, an expression of the native fruit; and the Opobalsum, or juice, the finest kind, composed of the greenish liquor found in the kernel of the fruit. The principal quantity of Balm has, however, always been produced by excision. The juice is received in a small earthen bottle, and every day’s produce is poured into a larger, which is kept closely corked. So marvellous were the properties of this Balm considered, that in order to test its quality, the operator dipped his finger in the juice, and then set fire to it, expecting fully to remain scathless if the Balm was of average strength. The Balm of Gilead has always had a wonderful reputation as a cosmetic among ladies. The manner of applying it in the East is thus given by a traveller in Abyssinia:—“You first go into the tepid bath, till the pores are sufficiently opened; you then anoint yourself with a small quantity, and as much as the vessels will absorb: never-fading youth and beauty are said to be the consequences.” By the Arabs, it is employed as a stomachic and antiseptic, and is believed by them to prevent any infection of the plague.——Tradition relates that there is an aspic that guards the Balm-tree, and will allow no one to approach. Fortunately, however, it has a weakness—it cannot endure the sound of a musical instrument. As soon as it hears the approaching torment, it thrusts its tail into one of its ears, and rubs the other against the ground, till it is filled with mud. While it is lying in this helpless condition, the Balm-gatherers go round to the other side of the tree, and hurry away with their spoil.——Maundevile says that the true Balm-trees only grew in Egypt (near Cairo), and in India. The Egyptian trees were tended solely by Christians, as they refused to bear if the husbandmen were Saracens. It was necessary, also, to cut the branches with a sharp flint-stone or bone, for if touched with iron, the Balm lost its incomparable virtue. The Indian Balm-trees grew “in that desert where the trees of the Sun and of the Moon spake to King Alexander,” and warned him of his death. The fruit of these Balm-trees possessed such marvellous properties, that the people of the country, who were in the habit of partaking of it, lived four or five hundred years in consequence.
BAMBOO.—The Bambusa Arundinaceæ is one of the sacred plants of India: it is the tree of shelter, audience, and friendship. As jungle fires were thought to be caused by the stems of Bamboos rubbing together, the tree derived from that fact a mystic and holy character, as an emblem of the sacred fire.——Indian anchorites carry a long Bamboo staff with seven nodes, as a mark of their calling. At Indian weddings, the bride and bridegroom, as part of the nuptial ceremony, get into two Bamboo baskets, placed side by side, and remain standing therein for some specified time. The savage Indian tribe called Garrows possess neither temples nor altars, but they set up a pillar of Bamboo before their huts, and decorate it with flowers and tufts of cotton, and sacrifice before it to their deity. In various parts of India there is a superstitious belief that the flowering and seeding of various species of Bamboo is a sure prognostication of an approaching famine.——Europeans have noticed, as an invariable rule, in Canara, that when the Bamboos flower and seed, fever prevails. At the foot of the Ghauts, and round Yellapûr, it has been observed that when the Bamboos flowered and seeded, fever made its appearance, few persons escaping it. During blossom, the fever closely resembles hay fever at home, but the type becomes more severe as the seeds fall.——The poor, homeless fishermen of China, to supply themselves with vegetables, have invented a system of culture which may move with them, and they thus transport their gardens wherever they may go. This they do by constructing rafts of Bamboo, which are well woven with weeds and strong grass, and then launched on the water and covered with earth. These floating gardens are made fast to the stern of their junks and boats, and towed after them.
BANANA.—The Banana (Musa sapientum) and the Plantain (M. paradisiaca) are so closely related, as to be generally spoken of together. The Banana has been well designated the king of all fruit, and the greatest boon bestowed by Providence on the inhabitants of hot countries. According to Gerarde, who calls it in his Herbal, Adam’s Apple Tree, it was supposed in his time by the Grecians and Christians inhabiting Syria, as well as by the Jews, to be that tree of whose fruit Adam partook at Eve’s solicitation—the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, planted by the Lord Himself in the midst of the Garden of Eden. It has also been supposed that the Grapes brought by the Israelites’ spies to Moses out of the Holy Land, were in reality the fruit of the Banana-tree.——In the Canary Islands, the Banana is never cut across with a knife because it then exhibits a representation of the Crucifixion. Gerarde refers to this mark, remarking that the fruit “pleaseth and entiseth a man to eate liberally thereof, by a certaine entising sweetnesse it yields; in which fruit, if it be cut according to the length, oblique, transverse, or any other way, whatsoever, may be seene the shape and forme of a crosse, with a man fastened thereto. My selfe have seene the fruit, and cut it in pieces, which was brought me from Aleppo, in pickle: the crosse, I might perceive, as the form of a spred-Egle in the root of Ferne; but the man I leave to be sought for by those which have better eies and judgement than my selfe.”——A certain sect of Brahmans, called Yogis, place all their food in the leaves of the Plantain, or Apple of Paradise, and other large leaves; these they use dry, never green, for they say that the green leaves have a soul in them; and so it would be sinful.