[15] The hawthorn,
too, was in repute among the fair sex, for, according to an old piece of
proverbial lore:--
"The fair maid who, the first of May,
Goes to the fields at break of day,
And washes in dew from the hawthorn tree,
Will ever after handsome be;"
And the common fumitory, "was used when gathered in wedding hours, and
boiled in water, milk, and whey, as a wash for the complexion of rustic
maids." [16] In some parts of France the water-hemlock (_OEnanthe
crocata_), known with us as the "dead-tongue," from its paralysing
effects on the organs of voice, was used to destroy moles; and the
yellow toad-flax (_Linaria vulgaris_) is described as "cleansing the
skin wonderfully of all sorts of deformity." Another plant of popular
renown was the knotted figwort (_Scrophularia nodosa_), for Gerarde
censures "divers who doe rashly teach that if it be hanged about the
necke, or else carried about one, it keepeth a man in health." Coles,
speaking of the mugwort (_Artemisia vulgaris_), says that, "if a footman
take mugwort and put it in his shoes in the morning, he may go forty
miles before noon and not be weary;" but as far back as the time of
Pliny its remarkable properties were known, for he says, "The wayfaring
man that hath the herb tied about him feeleth no weariness at all, and
he can never be hurt by any poisonous medicine, by any wild beast,
neither yet by the sun itself.
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