"Having a most grievous ague," he writes, "and of long continuance, notwithstanding Physick charmes, the little wormes found in the heads of Teazle hanged about my necke, spiders put in a walnut shell, and divers such foolish toies, that I was constrained to take by fantasticke peoples procurement, notwithstanding I say my helpe came from God himselfe, for these medicines and all other such things did me no good at all."
Under "gourd" Gerard gives a use of this herb which, though popular, is not to be found in any other English herbal. "A long gourd," he says, "or else a cucumber being laid in the cradle or bed by the young infant while it is asleep and sicke of an ague, it shall very quickly be made whole." The cure was presumably effected by the cooling properties of the fruit. In another place he recommends the use of branches of willow for a similar purpose. "The greene boughes of willows with the leaves may very well be brought into chambers and set about the beds of those that be sick of fevers, for they do mightily coole the heate of the aire, which thing is wonderfull refreshing to the sicke Patient."
There is so much contemporary folk lore embodied in Gerard that it is disappointing to find that when writing of mugwort, a herb which has been endowed from time immemorial with wonderful powers, he declines to give the old superstitions "tending to witchcraft and sorcerie and the great dishonour of God; wherefore do I purpose to omit them as things unwoorthie of my recording or your receiving." He also pours scorn on the mandrake legend. "There have been," he says, "many ridiculous tales brought up of this plant, whether of old wives or runnegate surgeons, or phisick mongers I know not, all whiche dreames and old wives tales you shall from hencefoorth cast out of your bookes of memorie." The old legend of the barnacle geese, however, he gives fully. It is both too long and too well known to quote, but it is interesting to remember that this myth is at least as old as the twelfth century. According to one version, certain trees growing near the sea produced fruit like apples, each containing the embryo of a goose, which, when the fruit was ripe, fell into the water and flew away. It is, however, more commonly met with in the form that the geese emanated from a fungus growing on rotting timber floating at sea. This is Gerard's version. One of the earliest mentions of this myth is to be found in Giraldus Cambrensis (_Topographia Hiberniæ_, 1187), a zealous reformer of Church abuses. In his protest against eating these barnacle geese during Lent he writes thus:--