Reach up to the star that hangs the lowest, Tread down the drift of the apple blow, Ride your ragweed horse to the Isle of Wobles.
Ragwort is specially beloved by the Leprehauns, or Clauricanes, the little fairy cobblers, who are sometimes seen singing or whistling over their work on a tiny shoe. They wear “deeshy-daushy” leather aprons, and usually red nightcaps.
Do you not catch the tiny clamour, Busy click of an elfin hammer, Voice of the Lepracaun singing shrill, As he merrily plies his trade.
There is a very nice legend of the Field of Boliauns, which turns on the belief that every Leprehaun has a hidden treasure buried under a ragwort. And if anyone can catch the little man, and not for one second take his eyes off him until the plant is reached, the Leprehaun must show him exactly where to dig for it. In the Isle of Man, they used to tell of another steed, not the fairies’ horse, but a fairy or enchanted horse, ridden by mortals. If anyone on St John’s Eve, they said, trod on a plant of St John’s Wort after sunset, the horse would spring out of the earth, and carry him about till sunrise, and there leave him wherever they chanced at that moment to be.
William Coles[102] speaks with great decision as to the various remedies which animals find for themselves. “If the Asse be oppressed with melancholy, he eats of the herbe _Asplenium_... so the wilde Goats being shot with Darts or Arrows, cure themselves with Dittany, which Herb hath the power to worke them out of the Body and to heale up the wound.” Gerarde adds that the “Deere in Candie” seek the same remedy, and Parkinson remarks of Hemp Agrimony, “It is sayd that hunters have observed that Deere being wounded by the eating of this herbe have been healed of their hurts.” Drayton’s _Hermit_ refers to dictam or dittany.
And this is dictam which we prize Shot shafts and darts expelling.
Shelley is less definite. He only laments:
The wounded deer must seek the herb no more In which its heart cure lies.
Goats do not seek Sea-Holly as a remedy, but it has a startling effect upon them if, by accident, they touch it. “They report that the herb Sea-Holly (_Eryngium maritimum_), if one goat take it into her mouth, it causeth her first to stand still, and afterwards the whole flocke, untill such time as the Shepherd take it forth of her mouth, as Plutarch writeth.”[103] However much these wild theories may exceed facts as to animals curing themselves, they are not altogether without reason, for the instinct of beasts leading them to healing herbs has often been noticed. Evelyn says: “I have heard of one Signior _Jaquinto_, Physician to Queen _Anne_ (Mother of the Blessed _Martyr_, Charles the First), and was so to one of the _Popes_. That observing the _Scurvy_ and _Dropsy_ to be the Epidemical and Dominent Diseases of this Nation, he went himself into the _Hundreds_ of _Essex_ (reputed the most unhealthy County of this _Island_), and us’d to follow the Sheep and Cattell on purpose to observe what Plants they chiefly fed upon; and of those _Simples_ compos’d an excellent _Electuary_ of extraordinary Effects against those Infirmities.