L’ellébore est la fleur des fous, On l’a dédie a maints poètes.
Once people blessed their cattle with it to keep them from evil spells, and “for this purpose it was dug up with certain attendant mystic rites: the devotees first drawing a circle round the plant with a sword, and then turning to the east and offering a prayer to Apollo and Æsculapius for leave to dig up the root.”[108] In the old French romance, _Les Quatre Fils Aymon_, the sorcerer, Malagis or Maugis, when he wishes to make his way, unchallenged, through the enemy’s camp, scatters powdered hellebore in the air as he goes. Both the Black and the White Hellebore, Parkinson says, are known to be very poisonous, and the white hellebore was used by hunters to poison arrows, with which they meant to kill “wolves, foxes, dogs,” etc. Black Hellebore was used to heal and not to hurt, and “a piece of the roote being drawne through a hole made in the eare of a beast troubled with cough, or having taken any poisonous thing, cureth it, if it be taken out the next day at the same houre.” This writer believes that White Hellebore would be equally efficacious in such a case, but Gerarde recommends the Black Hellebore only as being good for beasts. He says the old Farriers used to “cut a slit in the dewlap and put in a bit of Beare-foot, and leave it there for daies together.” _Verbascum thapsis_ was called Bullock’s Lungwort, from the resemblance of its leaf to a dewlap, and on the Doctrine of Signatures was therefore given to cattle suffering from pneumonia.
_Samoclas_, or Marchwort, was a strange herb which used to be put in the drinking-troughs of cattle and swine to preserve their health. But to obtain this desirable result it had to be “gathered fasting, and with the left hand, without looking back, when it was being plucked.”[109] Gervase Markham mentions a curious evil among cattle. He says if a shrew-mouse run over a beast “it feebleth his hinder parts and maketh him unable to go. The cure is to draw him under, or beat him with a Bramble, which groweth at both ends in the furrowes of corne lands.” Markham was a noted authority on Husbandry and Farriery in the early part of the seventeenth century, and he gives advice for the various ills afflicting horses. For nightmare he prescribed balls composed of Aniseed, Liquorice and Garlic, and other ingredients. For toothache, Ale or Vinegar, in which Betony has been seethed; and loose teeth are to be rubbed with the leaves of Elecampane, which will “fasten” them. Stubwort (wood-sorrel), “lapped in red Dock leafe and roasted in hot cinders, will eat away the dead flesh in a sore,” and any “splint, iron, thorne or stub” may be drawn out by an application of Yarrow, Southernwood, Cummin-seed, Fenugreek and Ditany, bruised with black soap. Horse Mint, Wormwood and Dill are other herbs recommended by this author.