They employed it in their religious rites, swept their temples and cleansed their altars with it, and sprinkled holy water with its branches. They also purified their houses with it, to keep off evil spirits; and in order to make themselves invulnerable, they carried about their persons a blade of Grass and some Vervain. Their ambassadors, or heralds-at-arms, wore crowns of Vervain when they went to offer terms of reconciliation, or to give defiance to their enemies, a custom thus noticed by Drayton:—
“A wreath of Vervain heralds wear,
Amongst our garlands named;
Being sent that dreadful news to bear,
Offensive war proclaimed.”
Virgil mentions Vervain as one of the charms used by an enchantress:—
“Bring running water, bind those altars round
With fillets, and with Vervain strew the ground.”
The Druids, both in Gaul and in Britain, regarded the Vervain with the same veneration as the Hindus do the Kusa or Tulasi, and, like the Magi of the East, they offered sacrifices to the earth before they cut this plant. This ceremony took place in Spring, at about the rising of the Great Dog Star, but so that neither sun nor moon would be at that time above the earth to see the sacred herb cut. It was to be dug up with an iron instrument, and to be waved aloft in the air, the left hand only being used. It was also ordained by the Druidical priests, for those who collected it, “that before they take up the herb, they bestow upon the ground where it groweth honey with the combs, in token of satisfaction and amends for the wrong and violence done in depriving her of so holy a herb. The leaves, stalks, and flowers were dried separately in the shade, and were used for the bites of serpents infused in wine.” Another account states that the Druidesses held Vervain in as great veneration as the Druids did the Mistletoe. They were never permitted to touch it. It was to be gathered at midnight, at the full of the moon, in this manner:—A long string with a loop in it was thrown over the Vervain-plant, and the other end fastened to the left great toe of a young virgin, who was then to drag at it till she had uprooted it. The eldest Druidess then received it in a cloth, and carried it home, to use it for medicinal purposes and offerings to their gods. In the Druidic procession, to the gathering of the Mistletoe, the white-clad herald carried a branch of Vervain in his hand, encircled by two serpents. The priests, when performing their daily functions of feeding the never-dying fires in the Druidic temples, prayed for the space of an hour, holding branches of Vervain in their hands. Pliny tells us that the Druids made use of it in casting lots, as well as in drawing omens and in other pretended magical arts; he also says that if the hall or dining chamber be sprinkled with the water wherein Vervain lay steeped, all that sat at the table should be “very pleasant and make merry more jocundly.”
“Lift up your boughs of Vervain blue,