Being credited with such strong feelings amongst themselves, it is easier to understand how they were supposed to sympathise with their “environment.” Honesty, of course, grew best in a very honest man’s garden. Where Rosemary flourishes, the mistress rules. Sage will fade with the fortunes of the house and revive again as they recover; and Bay-trees are famous, but melancholy prophets.
_Captain._--’Tis thought the king is dead; we will not stay, The Bay-trees in our country are all wither’d.
From this, it is not a great step to acknowledge that particular plants have power to produce certain dispositions in the mind of man. So, the possession of a Rampion was likely to make a child quarrelsome: while, on the contrary, eating the leaves of Periwinkle “will cause love between a man and his wife.” Laurel greatly “composed the phansy,” and did “facilitate true visions,” and was also “efficacious to inspire a poetical fury” (Evelyn). Having admitted the power of herbs over mental and moral qualities, we easily arrive at the recognition of their power in regard to the supernatural. If, as Culpepper tells us, “a raging bull, be he ever so mad, tied to a Fig-tree, will become tame and gentle;” or if, as Pliny says, any one, “by anointing himself with Chicory and oile will become right amiable and win grace and favour of all men, so that he shal the more easily obtain whatsoever his heart stands unto,” it is not much wonder that St John’s Wort would drive away tempests and evil spirits, four-leaved Clover enable the wearer to see witches, and Garlic avert the Evil Eye. Thus many herbs are magical “in their own right,” so to speak, apart from those that are connected with magic, from being favourites of the fairies, the witches, and, in a few cases, the Evil One!