ELECAMPANE.—Of the Elecampane (Inula Helenium), Rapin writes:—
“Elecampane, the beauteous Helen’s flower,
Mingles among the rest her silver store;
Helen, whose charms could royal breasts inspire
With such fierce flames as set the world on fire.”
When Paris carried off the celebrated Helen, the lovely wife of Menelaus was said to have had in her hand a nosegay of the bright yellow flowers of the Elecampane, which was thenceforth named Helenium, in her honour. The Romans employed the roots of Elecampane as an edible vegetable; the monks, who knew it as Inula campana, considered it capable of restoring health to the heart; and the herbalists deemed it marvellously good for many disorders, and admirable as a pectoral medicine. Elecampane lozenges have long been popular. Turner, in his ‘Brittish Physician,’ calls the Inula campana, the Sun-flower, and says that the root chewed fastens loose teeth, and preserves them from rotting, and that the distilled water of the green leaves makes the face fair. From its broad leaves, the Elecampane is sometimes called the Elf-dock.——It is held to be under Mercury.
ELICHRYSUM.—This species of everlasting flower derived its name, according to Themistagoras, from the nymph Elichrysa, who having adorned the goddess Diana with its blossoms, the plant was called after her, Elichryson. Its old English name was Golden Flower, or Golden Moth-wort, and Gerarde tells us that the blossoms, if cut before they are quite ripe, will remain beautiful a long time after. “For which cause of long lasting the images and carved gods were wont to weare garlands thereof: whereupon some have called it ‘God’s floure.’ For which purpose Ptolemy, King of Ægypt, did most diligently observe them, as Pliny writeth.”
ELM.—The ancients had a tradition that, at the first sound of the plaintive strains which proceeded from the lyre of Orpheus, when he was lamenting the death of Eurydice, there sprang up a forest of Elms; and it was beneath an Elm that the Thracian bard sought repose after his unavailing expedition to the infernal regions to recover his lost love. Rapin thus tells the tale:—
“When wretched Orpheus left the Stygian coast,
Now hopeless since again his spouse was lost,