“There’s a crying at my window, and a hand upon my door,
And a stir among the Yarrow that’s fading on the floor,
The voice cries at my window, the hand on my door beats on,
But if I heed and answer them, sure hand and voice are gone.”
May Eve.
Johnston[97] says: “Tansy and Milfoil were reckoned amongst plants averse to fascination; but we must retrograde two centuries to be present at the trial of Elspeth Reoch, who was supernaturally instructed to cure distempers by resting on her right knee while pulling ‘the herb callit malefour’ betwixt her mid-finger and thumbe, and saying of, ‘In nomen Patris, Filii, et Spiritus Sancti.’”
[97] “Botany of the Eastern Borders” (1853).
Johnston gathers his information from Dalzell on the “Darker Superstitions of Scotland.”
RAMPION
Wormwood is in some parts of Europe called the “Girdle of St John,” it has so much power against evil spirits. Cumin is much disliked by a race of Elves in Germany, called the Moss-People. Dyer[98] tells us that the life of each one is bound up with the life of a tree, and if the inner bark of this is loosened, the elf dies. Therefore their precept is:—
“Peel no tree,
Relate no dream,
Bake no cumin in bread,
So will Heav’n help thee in thy need.”
[98] “Folk-Lore of Plants.”