I think Mauve means mallow, Guimauve, marsh-mallow. Beyond these simples that I have mentioned as being in popular use, various English plants and herbs are used not much (if at all) by country people, but by medical men, and a few of those included in the British Pharmacopœia may be remarked on here.
Hops are used in the form of Infusum Lupuli. They have long had the reputation of inducing sleep, and George III. slept on a hop-pillow. To prevent the hops crackling (and producing exactly the opposite effect) it is advised that a little alcohol should be sprinkled on them. To eat poppy-seed was thought a safe means of bringing drowsiness. “But,” says Dr Primrose (about 1640), “Opium is now brought into use, the rest [of soporifics] being layd aside. Yet the people doe abhorre from the use thereof and avoyd it as present poyson, when notwithstanding being rightly prepared, and administered in a convenient dose, it is a very harmlesse and wholesome medicament. The Ancients indeed thought it to bee poyson, but that is onely when it is taken in too great a quantity.” One wonders what experiences “the people” went through to learn this terror of the drug! Gerarde and Parkinson both commend it as a medicine that “mitigateth all kinde of paines,” but say that it must be used with great caution. Browne refers to the poppy’s power of soothing.
“Where upon the limber grass
Poppy and mandragoras,
With like simples not a few
Hang for ever drops of dew.
Where flows Lèthe without coil,
Softly like a stream of oil.
Hie thee, thither, gentle Sleep.”
In The Inner Temple Masque.
It is from the seed of the White Poppy (Papaver somniferum) that opium is prepared, and that procured from poppies grown in England is quite as good, and often purer, than opium imported from the East. The first poppies that were cultivated in this country for the purpose were grown by Mr John Ball of Williton about 1794. Timbs quotes: “‘Cowley Plantarium. In old time the seed of the white poppy parched was served up as a dessert.’ By this we are reminded that white poppy seeds are eaten to this day upon bread made exclusively for Jews. The ‘twist’ bread is generally prepared by brushing over the outside upper crust with egg and sprinkling upon it the seeds.” In Germany, Mond-kuchen, a kind of pastry in which poppy seeds are mixed, is still a favourite dish. Mond-blumen (moon-flowers) is a name not unnaturally given to poppies, as they have been emblems of sleep ever since the Greeks used to represent their deities of Sleep, Death and Night as crowned with them.
“The water-lily from the marish ground
With the wan poppy,”
were both dedicated to the moon.
Gentian is greatly valued and largely prescribed by our doctors, but Parkinson raises a curious echo from a time when, it is generally supposed, people were less “nice” than they are to-day. “The wonderful wholesomeness of Gentian cannot be easily knowne to us, by reason our daintie tastes refuse to take thereof, for the bitternesse sake, but otherwise it would undoubtedly worke admirable cures.” Valerian was, and is officinal, but seldom finds its way into “pottage” nowadays. Gerarde, however, writes: “It hath been had (and is to this day among the poore people of our Northerne parts) in such veneration amongst them, that no broths, pottage or physicall meats are worth anything if Setwall were not at an end: whereupon some woman Poet or other hath made these verses:
“They that will have their heale,
Must put Setwall in their keale (kail).”
The herbalist speaks of “Garden Valerian or Setwall” as if they were one and the same, but Mr Britten says that Setwall was not Valeriana officinalis but V. pyrenaica. All varieties seem to have been used as remedies, and in Drayton’s charming “Eclogue,” of which Dowsabel is the heroine, he shows that it was used as an adornment.