Buck’s-horne (Senebiera Coronopus).
As true as steel,
As Plantage to the moon.
Troilus and Cressida, iii. 2.
And plantain ribb’d that heals the reaper’s wound,
And marg’ram sweet, in shepherds’ posies found.
The School-Mistress.—Shenstone.
Buck’s-horne is distinct from Buckshorn Plantain (Plantago Coronopus), but it is the latter which is chiefly interesting, and which is meant here. In Evelyn’s day the Latin name was Cornu Cervinum, and other names are Herba Stella, Herb Ivy and Corne de Cerf. Some kinds of plantain were considered good for wounds, but the saying that “plantage” is true to the moon is hard to solve. Buck’s-horne is a plant that has gone altogether out of fashion. In 1577 Hill wrote, “What care and skil is required in the sowing and ordering of the Buck’s-horne, Strawberries and Mustardseede,”—and how odd it looks now to see it coupled with the two other names, as a cherished object to spend pains upon! Le Quintinye says that the leaves, when tender, were used in “Sallad Furnitures... and the little Birds are very greedy of them.” It used to be held profitable for agues if “the rootes, with the rest of the herb,” were hung about the necke, “as nine to men and seven to women and children, but this as many other are idle amulets of no worth or value... yet, since, it hath been reported to me for a certaintie that the leaves of Buck’shorne Plantane laid to their sides that have an ague, will suddenly ease the fit, as if it had been done by witcherie; the leaves and rootes also beaten with some bay salt and applied to the wrestes, worketh the same effects, which I hold to be more reasonable and proper.” Parkinson is very ready to lay down the law as to the limits of empiricism. He is very severe about a superstition connected with Mugwort, but though the same tradition exists of plantain, and (under Mugwort) he quotes Mizaldus as mentioning it, he says nothing about this folly here. Aubrey, however, gives an account of it in his “Miscellanies.” “The last summer, on the day of St John Baptist, I accidently was walking in the pasture behind Montague House; it was twelve o’clock. I saw there about two or three and twenty young women, most of them well habited, on their knees, very busie, as if they had been weeding. I could not presently learn what the matter was; at last a young man told me that they were looking for a coal under the root of a plantain, to put under their heads that night, and they should dream who would be their husbands. It was to be found that day and hour.” This miraculous “coal” also preserved the wearer from all sorts of diseases.
Camomile (Anthemis nobilis).
Diana!
Have I (to make thee crowns) been gathering still,
Fair-cheek’d Eteria’s yellow camomile?
Br. Pastorals.
Flowers of the field and windflowers springing glad
—In airs Sicilian, and the golden bough
Of sacred Plato, shining in its worth.
. . . With phlox of Phœdimas and chamomile,
The crinkled ox-eye of Antagoras.