All shall yield to the Mulberry-tree;
Bend to the blest Mulberry;
Matchless was he who planted thee;
And thou, like him, immortal shall be.”
To dream of Mulberries is of good import: they denote marriage, many children, and all sorts of prosperity: they are particularly favourable to sailors and farmers.——Among the hill tribes of Burmah, the Mulberry-tree is regarded as sacred, and receives a kind of worship.——A Chinese folk-lore tale records that in the Tse dynasty, one Chang Ching, going out at night, saw a woman in the south corner of his house. She beckoned him to come to her, and said: “This is your honour’s Mulberry-ground, and I am a shên (fairy); if you will make next year, in the middle of the first moon, some thick congee and present it to me, I will engage to make your Mulberry-trees a hundred times more productive.” Ching made the congee, and afterwards had a great crop of silkworms. Hence came the Chinese custom of making thickened congee on the fifteenth of the first month.
MULLEIN.—The Mullein (Verbascum) was formerly employed by wizards and witches in their incantations. The plant is known as the Flannel-flower from its stem and large leaves being covered with wool, which is often plucked off for tinder. The Great Mullein (V. Thapsus) was called by the old Romans Candela regia, and Candelaria, because they used the stalks dipped in suet to burn at funerals, or as torches; the modern Romans call the plant Light of the Lord. In England, the White Mullein was termed Candle-week-flower; and the Great Mullein’s tall tapering spikes of yellow flowers suggested, at a period when candles were burnt in churches, the old names of Torches, Hedge-taper, High-taper, and Hig-taper, which became corrupted into Hag-taper, from a belief that witches employed the plant in working their spells.——The little Moth Mullein (V. Blattaria) derives its specific name from blatta, a cockroach, it being particularly disliked by that troublesome insect. Gerarde explains its English prefix by stating that moths and butterflies, and all other small flies and bats, resort to the place where these herbs are laid or strewed.——Mullein is known by country people as Bullock’s Lungwort, a decoction of the leaves being considered very efficacious in cases of cough: probably we are indebted to the Romans for this specific, for they attributed extraordinary properties to the Mullein as a remedy for coughs. (See also [Hag-taper]).
MUGWORT.—The old Latin name for this species of Wormwood was Artemisia, mater herbarum; and, according to Gerarde, the plant was so named after Artemisia, the wife of Mausolus, King of Caria, who adopted it for her own herb.
“That with the yellow crown, named from the queen
Who built the Mausoleum.”—Smith’s ‘Amarynthus.’
Other authorities say that Artemisia is derived from Artemis, one of the names of Diana, and that the plant was named after that goddess, on account of its being used in bringing on precocious puberty. Among the ancients, the Mugwort had a reputation for efficacy in the relief of female disorders. It was also used for the purpose of incantations. Pliny says that the wayfarer having this herb tied about him feels no fatigue, and that he who hath it about him can be hurt by no poisonous medicines, nor by any wild beast, nor even by the sun itself. Apuleius adds that it drives away lurking devils and neutralises the effect of the evil eye of men. The plant was also considered a charm against the ague.—T—here is an old Scotch legend which tells how a mermaid of the Firth of Clyde, upon seeing the funeral of a young girl who had died of consumption, exclaimed—