Isaac Walton observes that, “Parsley and Garden earth recovers and refreshes sick fish.” The Alder or Aul is indirectly connected with trout in a Herefordshire rhyme:—
When the bud of the Aul is as big as the trout’s eye,
Then that fish is in season in the River Wye.
Among other counsels Piscator speaks of the perch’s tastes. “And he hath been observed by some not usually to bite till the mulberry-tree buds—that is to say, till extreme frosts be past in the spring.... Some think [of grayling] that he feeds on water-thyme, and smells of it at his first taking out of the water.” A pike has a liking for lavender, and the directions for trying for this fish with a dead bait begin: “Dissolve gum of ivy in oil of spike [lavender], and then anoint the bait with it. Wheat boiled in milk and flavoured with Saffron is a choice bait for Roach and Grayling, and Mulberries and those Blackberries which grow upon briars, be good baits for Chubs and Carps.” Gerarde says that Balm rubbed over hives will keep the bees there, and cause others to come to them, and Parkinson thought that the “leaves or rootes of Acorus (sweet-smelling Flagge) tyed to a hive” would have the same effect.
To turn to the herbs prescribed by men for beasts, we find that Spenser alludes to two of them:—
Here grows melampode everywhere
And terebinth good for gotes.
July—Shepheard’s Calendar.
A marginal note suggests that the latter meant the “turpentine tree.” “The tree that weepeth turpentine” is mentioned by Drayton, and we may suppose that both poets referred to the same tree, the Silver Fir (Pinus picra). Melampode was hellebore or bear’s foot, a very important plant, and it was much used in magic. A cynical French verse says:—
L’ellébore est la fleur des fous,
On l’a dédie a maints poètes.
Once people blessed their cattle with it to keep them from evil spells, and “for this purpose it was dug up with certain attendant mystic rites: the devotees first drawing a circle round the plant with a sword, and then turning to the east and offering a prayer to Apollo and Æsculapius for leave to dig up the root.”[108] In the old French romance, Les Quatre Fils Aymon, the sorcerer, Malagis or Maugis, when he wishes to make his way, unchallenged, through the enemy’s camp, scatters powdered hellebore in the air as he goes. Both the Black and the White Hellebore, Parkinson says, are known to be very poisonous, and the white hellebore was used by hunters to poison arrows, with which they meant to kill “wolves, foxes, dogs,” etc. Black Hellebore was used to heal and not to hurt, and “a piece of the roote being drawne through a hole made in the eare of a beast troubled with cough, or having taken any poisonous thing, cureth it, if it be taken out the next day at the same houre.” This writer believes that White Hellebore would be equally efficacious in such a case, but Gerarde recommends the Black Hellebore only as being good for beasts. He says the old Farriers used to “cut a slit in the dewlap and put in a bit of Beare-foot, and leave it there for daies together.” Verbascum thapsis was called Bullock’s Lungwort, from the resemblance of its leaf to a dewlap, and on the Doctrine of Signatures was therefore given to cattle suffering from pneumonia.
[108] Timbs.