Ragwort is specially beloved by the Leprehauns, or Clauricanes, the little fairy cobblers, who are sometimes seen singing or whistling over their work on a tiny shoe. They wear “deeshy-daushy” leather aprons, and usually red nightcaps.
Do you not catch the tiny clamour,
Busy click of an elfin hammer,
Voice of the Lepracaun singing shrill,
As he merrily plies his trade.
W. B. Yeats.
There is a very nice legend of the Field of Boliauns, which turns on the belief that every Leprehaun has a hidden treasure buried under a ragwort. And if anyone can catch the little man, and not for one second take his eyes off him until the plant is reached, the Leprehaun must show him exactly where to dig for it. In the Isle of Man, they used to tell of another steed, not the fairies’ horse, but a fairy or enchanted horse, ridden by mortals. If anyone on St John’s Eve, they said, trod on a plant of St John’s Wort after sunset, the horse would spring out of the earth, and carry him about till sunrise, and there leave him wherever they chanced at that moment to be.
William Coles[102] speaks with great decision as to the various remedies which animals find for themselves. “If the Asse be oppressed with melancholy, he eats of the herbe Asplenium... so the wilde Goats being shot with Darts or Arrows, cure themselves with Dittany, which Herb hath the power to worke them out of the Body and to heale up the wound.” Gerarde adds that the “Deere in Candie” seek the same remedy, and Parkinson remarks of Hemp Agrimony, “It is sayd that hunters have observed that Deere being wounded by the eating of this herbe have been healed of their hurts.” Drayton’s Hermit refers to dictam or dittany.
And this is dictam which we prize
Shot shafts and darts expelling.
Shelley is less definite. He only laments:
The wounded deer must seek the herb no more
In which its heart cure lies.
[102] “Art of Simpling.”
Goats do not seek Sea-Holly as a remedy, but it has a startling effect upon them if, by accident, they touch it. “They report that the herb Sea-Holly (Eryngium maritimum), if one goat take it into her mouth, it causeth her first to stand still, and afterwards the whole flocke, untill such time as the Shepherd take it forth of her mouth, as Plutarch writeth.”[103] However much these wild theories may exceed facts as to animals curing themselves, they are not altogether without reason, for the instinct of beasts leading them to healing herbs has often been noticed. Evelyn says: “I have heard of one Signior Jaquinto, Physician to Queen Anne (Mother of the Blessed Martyr, Charles the First), and was so to one of the Popes. That observing the Scurvy and Dropsy to be the Epidemical and Dominent Diseases of this Nation, he went himself into the Hundreds of Essex (reputed the most unhealthy County of this Island), and us’d to follow the Sheep and Cattell on purpose to observe what Plants they chiefly fed upon; and of those Simples compos’d an excellent Electuary of extraordinary Effects against those Infirmities.