Saffron used to be much employed to colour and to flavour pies and cakes, and it was this reason that Perdita sent the “Clown” to fetch some, when she was making “Warden” (Pear) pies for the sheep-shearing. Saffron cakes still prevail in Cornwall, and come over the border into the next county, and a chemist, in Somerset, said quite lately, that thirty years since, he used to sell quantities of Saffron at Easter-time, but that much less is asked for now. It seems to have been specially used in the materials for feasting at this season. Evelyn tells us that the Germans made it into “little balls with honey, which afterwards they dry and reduce to powder, and then sprinkle over salads” for a “noble cordial.” For medicinal purposes Saffron is imported, for in spite of “I. W.’s” praise, that grown in England is far from equalling that of Greece and Asia Minor, though in any case it is only now used as a colouring matter. The saying which survives, “So dear as Saffron,” to express anything of worth, is a proof of how great its value once was; and it is true that the plant was credited with powers nothing short of miraculous. Perhaps Fuller tells us the most startling news: “In a word, the Sovereign Power of genuine Saffron is plainly proved by the Antipathy of the Crocodiles thereunto. For the Crocodile’s tears are never true save when he is forced where Saffron groweth (whence he hath his name of γξοκό-ςτπλθ or the Saffron-fearer) knowing himselfe to be all Poison, and it all Antidote.”
After this, Gerarde’s assertion that for those whom consumption has brought “at death’s doore, and almost past breathing, that it bringeth breath againe,” sounds moderate. On the doctrine of Signatures, Saffron was prescribed for jaundice and measles, and it is also recommended to be put into the drinking water of canaries when they are moulting. Irish women are said to dye their sheets with Saffron, that it may give strength to their limbs. Saffron has long been much esteemed as a dye, and Ben Jonson tells us of this use for it in his days in lines that literally rollick:—
Give us bacon, rinds of walnuts,
Shells of cockles and of small nuts,
Ribands, bells, and saffron’d linen,
All the world is ours to win in.
The Gipsies Metamorphosed.
Gerarde says: “The chives (stamens) steeped in water serve to illumine or (as we say) limme pictures and imagerie,” and Canon Ellacombe quotes from an eleventh century work, showing that it was employed for the same purpose then. “If ye wish to decorate your work in some manner, take tin, pure and finely scraped, melt it and wash it like gold, and apply it with the same glue upon letters or other places which you wish to ornament with gold or silver; and when you have polished it with a tooth, take Saffron with which Silk is coloured, moistening it with clear of egg without water; and when it has stood a night, on the following day, cover with a pencil the places which you wish to gild, the rest holding the place of silver.”—Theophilus, Hendrie’s Translation.
Meadow-Saffron, or Colchicum, yields a drug still much prescribed, of which Turner uttered a caution in 1568. He says it is a drug to “isschew.” He warns those “syke in the goute” (for whom it was, and is, a standard remedy) that much of it is “sterke poyson, and will strongell a man and kill him in the space of one day.” Drugs must, indeed, have been administered in heroic measures at that time—if he really ever heard of such a case at first hand. It is from the corm, or bulb, of the plant that Colchicum is extracted.
[51] July 22nd and August 15th.
TITLE-PAGE OF GERARD’S “HERBAL”