# Folk-Lore Record/Volume 1/Plant-lore Notes to Mrs. Latham's West Sussex Superstitions

PLANT-LORE NOTES
TO MRS. LATHAM'S WEST SUSSEX SUPERSTITIONS.
HAVING had the privilege of reading in proof Mrs. Latham's charming little monograph of West Sussex Folk-Lore, which may well serve as a model for other papers of similar character, I am induced to offer a few hurried notes upon some of the plant-lore therein recorded. I regret that time does not permit me to make similar comments upon the whole paper, so far as it relates to natural history, in the folk-lore of which I am especially interested; but I trust to have an opportunity at some future period of bringing before the members some further communications upon this subject, and may therefore perhaps be allowed to say how glad I shall be to receive information regarding the folk-lore of any branch of natural history.
The Blackberry.
P. 14 (60). I am informed that in some parts of Ireland it is believed that the devil puts his foot on the blackberries after Michaelmas day; and Threlkeld, in his Synopsis Stirpium Hibernicarum (1727), speaking of blackberries, mentions as a "vulgar error" the belief that "after Michaelmas the D——l casts his club over them."
The Hazel Nut.
P. 14 (61). In Suffolk and Kent (Notes and Queries, 4th Series, ix. 166), and in Lincolnshire (ibid . 225), Holy Eood Day (Sept. 14th) was supposed to be the special occasion when nutters were likely to meet the devil, or "to come to grief of some kind." This is the more strange, seeing that the same day was recognised by ​others as especially suited to nutting; thus in "Grim the Collier" Act ii. sc. i. (1662) we have the lines—
"To-morrow is Holy Rood day When all a nutting take their way."
See also Brand (Bohn's edition), i. 353, and Notes and Queries, 1st series, x. 263, where a long account is given of the keeping of the "festival of nutting-day" at Penryn, Cornwall, "on some particular day in September or October," which was in all probability the day above named.
The Yarrow.
P. 32 (100). The use of this plant in love-divinations is widespread. In Suffolk it is employed in a curious manner: a leaf is placed in the nose, with the intention of making it bleed, while the following lines are recited:—
"Green 'arrow, green 'arrow, yon bears a white blow, If my love love me, my nose will bleed now; If my love don't love me, it 'ont bleed a drop; If my love do love me, 'twill bleed every drop."
The old English name of the plant, Nose-bleed, may have been bestowed upon it either because "the leaves being put into the nose do cause it to bleede, and easeth the paine of the megrim," as Gerard tells us; or because, on the contrary, "assuredly it will stay the bleeding of it." The styptic properties of the plant are alluded to in the names Bloodwort and Carpenters'-grass, both given by Treveris in the Grete Herball, and in the Scotch name Stanch-girss. Drayton refers to
"The yarrow wherewithal he stops the new-made gore."
In Dublin on Mayday, or the preceding night, women place a stocking filled with yarrow under their pillow, reciting the following lines:—
"Good morrow, good yarrow, good morrow to thee, I hope by the morrow my lover to see; And that he may be married to me. The colour of his hair and the clothes he does wear, And if he be for me may his face be turned to me, And if he be not, dark and surly may he be, And his back be turned to me."
It does not seem quite clear from the context whether this is an Eastern Counties custom.
Having said so much about yarrow, two other notes may be added. The gathering of the plant with an incantation was one of the charges against one Elspeth Keoch, on her trial for witchcraft in March, 1616. It was alleged that she had plucked "ane herb called melefour"—in which name we see a modification of milfoil, another name of the plant,—sitting on her right knee, and pulling it "betwixt the midfinger and thombe, and saying of In nomine Patris, Filii, et Spiritus Sancti." By the plant so gathered she was enabled to cure distemper and to impart the faculty of prediction. There is no doubt that the yarrow was the plant referred to, as the "melefour" is said to be the herb "quhilk causis the nose bleed."
The Ash.
P. 41 (129). In Science-Gossip for 1865, p. 85, a correspondent, "R. H." (Mr. Robert Holland), gives the following as a Cheshire remedy for warts in connection with the ash-tree, "which is by many implicitly believed in." "Steal a piece of bacon; rub the warts with it; then cut a slit in the bark of an ash-tree, raise up a piece of the bark, put in the bacon, and close the bark down again. In a short time the warts will die away from the hand, but will make their appearance on the bark of the tree as rough excrescences. This remedy has been quite successful in the case of my man, who told me!" A Leicestershire remedy, corresponding more closely with the East Sussex formula, will be found in Notes and Queries, 1st series, vii. 81.
Unlucky Plants.
The bringing of a solitary primrose into the house (pp. 52, 174–5) is considered unlucky in East Anglia. In Notes and Queries 1st series, vii. 201, "E. G. R." (the late Rev. Edward Gillett, of Rainham) says, "My gravity was sorely tried by being called on to settle, a quarrel between two old women, arising from one of them having given one primrose to her neighbour's child, for the purpose of making her hens hatch but one chicken out of each set of eggs, and it was seriously maintained that the charm had been successful." It is subsequently stated that geese are specially influenced by this charm; in Worcestershire less than a handful of primroses or violets, taken into the house, will bring destruction to the young ducks and chickens. In some parts of Essex it is believed that sickness or death will ensue if the blossoms of the whitethorn be brought into a house; in Norfolk, that no one will be married from the house during the year. In Switzerland it is also considered "unlucky" to bring the flowers indoors. Many of our English spring wild flowers are regarded, in different parts of the country, as of ill-omen. In Cumberland, about Cockermouth for example, the red campion ('Lychnis diurna) is called " mother-dee," and there is a superstition among the children ​that if they pluck it some misfortune will happen to their parents. "Death-come-quickly," a West Cumberland name for the herb robert (Geranium Robertianum), seems to point to some similar belief. In some parts of Yorkshire it is said that if a child gathers the germander speedwell (Veronica Chamædrys) its mother will die during the year. In Middlesex, schoolboys offer to their uninitiated companions a plant of the shepherd's purse (Capsella Bursa-pastoris), and request them to pluck off one of the heart-shaped seed-pods, which done, they exclaim, "You've picked your mother's heart out!" This was practised at Chelsea in my own school-days; and, as a Lancashire name for the plant is "Mother's-heart," it seems likely that the custom is widely extended. Something of the same sort exists in Birmingham: Mr. W. Macmillan says: "I remember when at school at Birmingham that my playmates manifested a very great repugnance to this plant…Very few of them would touch it, and it was known to us by the two bad names 'Naughty man's plaything' and 'Pick your mother's heart out.'" Dr. Berthold Seemann says, that in Hanover, as well as, according to Hartmann, in the Swiss Canton of St. Gall, the same plant is offered to an uninitiated person with a request to pluck off one of the pods; should he do so, the others exclaim, "You have stolen a purse of gold from your father and mother!" It is interesting to find that a common tropical weed, Ageratum conyzoides, is employed by children in Venezuela in a very similar manner. Dr. Ernst gives its vernacular Venezuelan name as "Rompes araguëlo," and says, "It is explained by some as 'rompes á tu abuelo' (you tear your grandfather), with reference to a child's play. One child takes hold of the lower part of a leaf, another of the upper. If one pulls as hard as to tear the leaf, the other exclaims, 'Rompes á tu abuelo.'"
* ↑ Herbal, p. 615
* ↑ Parkinson's Theatrum Botanicum, p. 695
* ↑ Irish Folk-Lore: by "Lageniensis." (1870).
* ↑ Popular Rhymes, p. 223.
* ↑ Notes and Queries, 4th series, x. 24.
* ↑ Notes and Queries, 2nd series, iii. 343.
* ↑ Notes and Queries, 4th series viii. 4.
* ↑ Science-Gossip, xi. (1876) 94.
* ↑ Hannoversche Sitten und Gebräuche in ihrer Beziehung zur Pflanzenwelt (Leipzig, 1862), p. 33.
* ↑ Seemann's Journal of Botany, iii. 316 (1865).