Wormwood (Artemisia Absinthium).
And none a greater Stoick is, than I;
The Stoa’s Pillars on my stalk rely;
Let others please, to profit is my pleasure.
The love I slowly gain’s a lasting treasure.
Of Plants, book i.—Cowley.
What savour is better, if physic be true,
In places infected than wormwood and rue
It is as a comfort for heart and the brain,
And therefore to have it, it is not in vain.
July’s Husbandry.—Tusser.
Here is my moly of much fame
In magic often used;
Mugwort and nightshade for the same,
But not by me abused
Muses’ Elysium.—Drayton.
Traditions cluster round Artemisia Absinthium and A. Vulgaris, Mugwort. Canon Ellacombe says that the species are called after Diana, as she was supposed to “find them and delivered their powers and leechdom to Chiron the Centaur... who named these worts from the name of Diana, Artemis;” and he thinks therefore that “Dian’s bud,” spoken of in the Midsummer Night’s Dream was one of them. The plant was of some importance among the Mexicans, and when they kept the festival of Huixtocihuatl, the Goddess of Salt, they began with a great dance of women, who were joined to one another by strings of different flowers, and who wore on their heads garlands of wormwood. This dance continued all night, and on the following morning the dance of the priests began. (Nineteenth Century, Sept. 1879.)
According to the ancients, Wormwood counteracts the effects of poisoning by toadstools, hemlock, and the biting of the shrew mouse or sea-dragon; while Mugwort preserves the wayfarer from fatigue, sun-stroke, wild beasts, the Evil Eye in man, and also from evil spirits! Lupton says that it is “commonly affirmed that, on Midsummer Eve, there is found at the root of Mugwort a coal which keeps safe from the plague, carbuncle, lightning, and the quartan ague, them that bear the same about them; and Mizaldus, the writer hereof, saith that it is to be found the same day under the Plantain, which is especially and chiefly to be found at noon.”[83] Later writers have unkindly insisted that these wonderful “coals” were no more nor less than old dead roots! Gerarde and Parkinson are both dignified and contemptuous over these stories. Gerarde says, “Many other fantasticall devices invented by poets are to be seen in the works of ancient writers. I do of purpose omit them, as things unworthy of my recording or your reviewing.” Parkinson is still more severe on “idle superstitions and irreligious relations,” and abuses this special “idle conceit,” which Gerarde has not deigned to repeat. It is told even by “Bauhinus, who glorieth to be an eye-witnesse of this foppery. But oh! the weake and fraile nature of man! Which I cannot but lament.” Turner devotes a great deal of space to the disputes of writers as to the identity of the “true Ponticke Wormwood,” and says that “he himselfe is certainly accurate on the point, having been taught it by Gerhardas de Wyck, at that tyme the Emperour’s secretary” at Cologne. “This noble Clerk was afterwards sent by Charles the fyft, Embassator to the great Turke.”
It is from wormwood that Absinthe is made; and it has been used instead of hops in making beer. It used to be laid among stuffs and furs to keep away moths and insects—by its bitterness, ordinary folk supposed, but Culpepper knew better, and gives an astrological reason: “I was once in the tower and viewed the wardrobe and there was a great many fine cloaths (I can give them no other title, for I was never either linen or woolen draper), yet as brave as they looked, my opinion was that the moths might consume them. Moths are under the dominion of Mars; this herb Wormwood (also an herb of Mars) being laid among cloaths will make a moth scorn to meddle with the cloaths as much as a lion scorns to meddle with a mouse, or an eagle with a fly.” One would not expect to find a moth a “martial creature,” but evidently he is, and this explanation of the working of the law of “sympathies,” not only tells us so, but kindly shows us a sure means of safeguarding our goods from an ubiquitous enemy.